"Jody Lynn Nye - Medecine Show" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nye Jody Lynn)

Verdadero had once been the chief operating officer of the Galactic Laboratory Corporation, the largest,
most diversified company in the galaxy. Up until the time he attempted to use Shona as a dupe to cover
his conspiracy to commit mass murder, he had been coldly killing off entire populations of outdated
planetary colony settlements for the billions of credits that the contracts were worth. He had considered
the personnel to be unnecessary and costly liabilities, and had treated them accordingly.
Lani's natural family, and the whole population of her native planet, Karela, had fallen victim to an
engineered virus let loose in its midst by a hireling of Verdadero's. The perpetrator had also died in the
plague, leaving no way to trace the connection to the top office at GLC, or so Verdadero had hoped.
Only Shona's tireless care saved the child from sharing her people's fate. In the process, she had also
inadvertently foiled Verdadero's purpose in slaughtering the colony. Instead of devolving to the
Corporation, the wealth of Karela fell to Lani, leaving her an heiress, but orphaned. It took months of


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 Jody Lynn Nye - Medicine Show


negotiation with the Galactic Government, but the Taylors had obtained permanent custody of Lani and
were in the process of adopting her. A stable and loving family had done much to erase the trauma the
child had suffered, even though Shona had to admit that the Sibyl's crew was hardly what one would call
a traditional family environment.
The increasing number of fatal coincidences in her wake had alerted Shona to the fact that there was
more going on in the targeted colonies than environmental breakdown. Verdadero's final crime was
engineered so that Shona would fall victim as well, posthumously taking the blame for the rash of
plagues that had seemed to follow her across the galaxy from Corpo-ration colony to colony. She
survived to expose Verdadero's plot to the authorities.
For dethroning him just before he was about to accomplish a spectacular feat of embezzlement,
Verdadero harbored a deadly grudge against the Taylor family, Shona in particular. Though forbidden
outside contact while in prison, he had managed to put out a "dead or alive" contract on her through the
great communications net that tied the settled systems and spaceways together. The file containing the
contract was periodically wiped from the net by the system operators, but it seemed always to reappear.
Investigators couldn't tell how it was reentered, or who was responsible, since the source code was
different every time. Assassins greedy for the spectacularly large award turned up now and again to try
their luck. Shona had to admit that only purest good fortune had kept her family and the Sybil's crew
from falling victim to one of them. She prayed that their luck would hold once more.
The intercom line from the bridge opened. "Are you all right back there?" Gershom asked.
"We're fine," Shona assured him. She tightened her grip on Lani, who huddled down tightly under her
arm.
"Daddy! Gemme down!" Alex shouted. Concerned, Shona glanced up at her son. In his cocoon the baby
was safer than they were.
"Getting a look at them now," Gershom said. From where she was crouched, Shona craned her neck to
see the video link. The scout ship displayed on the screen didn't look that much different from their own.
Shona could see the streamlined forms of sophisticated engines, probably capable of executing long
jumps without juddering like the poor Sibyl did. And also, Shona noted with a wince as a brilliant white
tracer beam shot out of her bows, the Sibyl wasn't armed with anything more deadly than a sonic probe
to burst small asteroids heading for the hull.
"Lasers! Damn them," Ivo's voice rumbled through the intercom. He was at the third command position,
monitoring telemetry.
Gershom must have been anticipating such an attack, be-cause the ship slewed sideways beneath them.