"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - The Room of Lost Souls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

chair on two legs does not satisfy me. The berth—with its built-in desk, view
of the grow pods, and slide-out soft bed—no longer feels like home.

I need to move. I need to get out of here.

I need to spend the night on my ship.

****

By modern standards, Nobody’s Business is a small ship, but by
mine, it’s huge. The Business can fly with a single pilot, but it’s designed
for twenty to fifty people.

When I was wreck diving, I’d fly with ten or less and to me, that felt
crowded. I’d close off the lower levels and lock up the cargo bays.

Sometimes I forget all the space I’m not using. The main level has
the bridge and auxiliary controls. It also has the lounge, where I’ve put most
of my viewing technology so that I can review dives. There are six cabins
on this level as well, including mine.

The captain’s cabin is two levels up. I never use it. My cabin is the
same size as all the others. It looks the same as well, except for the
hard-wired terminal that I use when I don’t want anyone hacking into my
work.

Most (but not all) of the other systems on the Business are
networked, and I’m up front with any crew that I hire that I watch the
systems diligently. If they put something on the system from a virus to a
piece of information, it’s mine. I’ve learned a lot that way.

The Business is docked in the permanent section of the station. I pay
extra to keep her systems disconnected from the station’s systems. I also
bribe the officials to keep an eye on her, to make sure no one enters
illegally.

Even so, I still run several security programs—all of them redundant.
No one, not even the best hacker, can shut off all of them and still have time
to case my ship.

So as I enter the Business, I stand in the airlock and check the first
layer of security, seeing who—if anyone—has crossed this threshold since
I last went through.

According to the programs, no one has.

I let myself in, breathing the stale air. I keep the environmental
systems on low when I’m stationbound—no sense wasting the energy. I
power up, check more redundant security systems, and run a full diagnostic
which I network to my own internal computer.