"Zahn, Timothy - Cobra 03 - Cobra Bargain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

"You got it," Justin said, a touch of bitterness seeping into his tone. "No gun, no spray, not even a tangler reel. Just a simple, harmless, unarmed crank. And I shot him."

Jin looked past him at the maintenance robot. "Was it a setup?" she asked.

From the corner of her eye she caught her father's frown. "What do you mean?" he asked carefully.

"Was Monse trying to goad you or Uncle Corwin into attacking him? Trying to make you look bad?" She turned back to face him. "I don't know if you've seen the net yet, but an absolute flood of condemnation hit the thing practically from the minute Monse was taken off to the hospital. That wasn't reaction-those people had their rhetoric primed and ready to go."

Justin hissed through his teeth. "The thought has crossed my mind, I'll admit.

And you haven't even heard the best part yet: the fact that Monse is going to live despite taking a pair of setting-two fingertip laser blasts square in the center of his chest. Want to hazard a guess as to how he managed that?"

She frowned. Body armor was the obvious answer... but it was clear from her father's tone that it was something more interesting than that. Monse would have needed some kind of protection, though-at short range, a twin laser burst at number-two setting would have been perfectly adequate to cut through bones the thickness of ribs or breastbone and take out the lungs or heart beneath them.

Adequate, at least, to cut through normal bones... "The same reason Winward lived?" she asked hesitantly.

Justin nodded. "You got it."

A shiver went up Jin's spine. Michael Winward, shot in the chest by a projectile gun during the first Qasaman mission twenty-eight years ago... surviving that attack solely because the bullet was deflected by the ceramic laminae coating his breastbone and ribcage. "A Ject," she murmured. "That little phrijpicker

Monse is a lousy Ject."

"Bull's-eye," Justin sighed. "Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that he was unarmed when I shot him."

"Why not?" Jin demanded. "It means I was right-that the whole thing was a setup-and it means that Priesly is behind it."

"Whoa, girl," Justin said, putting a hand on each of her shoulders. "What may look obvious to you or me or Corwin isn't necessarily provable."

"But-"

"And until and unless we can prove any such connection," he continued warningly,

"I'll thank you to keep your allegations to yourself. At this stage it would hurt us far more than it would hurt Priesly."

Jin closed her eyes briefly, fighting back sudden tears. "But why? Why is he picking on you?"

Justin stepped to her side, slipping his arm tightly around her shoulders. Even full-grown, she was a few centimeters shorter than he was-the ideal height, she'd always felt, to nestle in under his arm. "Priesly's not after me in particular," Justin sighed. "I doubt he's even especially after Corwin, except as he's an obstacle that's in Priesly's way. No, what really after is nothing less than the elimination of Cobras from the Cobra Worlds."

Jin licked her lips and hugged him a little closer. She'd heard all the rumors, arguments, and speculations... but to hear it said in such a straightforward, cold-blooded way by someone in a position to know the truth sent a chill up her back. "That's insane," she whispered. "Totally insane. How does he expect

Esquiline to expand without Cobras leading the way into the wilderness?-Esquiline or the other New Worlds? Not to mention the Caelian

Remnant-what's he going to do, just throw them to the peledari and let them get eaten alive?"

She felt his sigh against her side. "Jin, as you grow older you're going to run into a surprising number of otherwise intelligent people who get themselves trapped into some single-rail goal or point of view and never get out of it.

Caelian is a perfect example-the people still living there have been fighting that crazy ecology for so long they can't break the habit long enough to back out and accept resettlement somewhere else. Some of the Jects-not all, certainly, but some-are equally single-minded. They wanted to be Cobras-wanted it very badly, most of them-but were deemed unfit, for one reason or another... and the love they had has been twisted into hatred. Hatred that demands revenge."

"No matter what the consequences are for the rest of the Cobra Worlds?"