[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
coaxing the ceiling panel to fall back into place before he dropped from
maximum downward extension, fearful for his bones. Nothing broke. He slipped
across the portal to the main building and took to the ducts as soon as
possible, the corridors having been proved dangerous. He lay on his back in
the narrow tube and balanced the blueprint holocube on his belly, picking out
a new and safer route not necessarily passable to a couple of husky troopers.
And where did one look for a monster? A closet?
It was at about the third turn, inching his way through the system dragging
the weapon pack, that he became aware that the territory no longer matched the
map. Hell and damnation. Were these changes in the system since its
construction, or a subtly sabotaged map? Well, no matter, he wasn't really
lost, he could still retrace his route.
He crawled along for about thirty minutes, discovering and disarming two alarm
sensors before they discovered him. The time factor was getting seriously
pressing. Soon he would have to?ah, there! He peered through a vent grille
into a dim room filled with holovid and communications equipment. Small
Repairs, the map cube named it. It didn't look like a repairs shop. Another
change since Ryoval had moved in? But a man sat alone with his back to Miles's
wall. Perfect, too good to pass up.
Breathing silently, moving slowly, Miles eased his dart-gun out of the pack
and made sure he loaded it with the right cartridge, fast-penta spiked with a
paralyzer, a lovely cocktail blended for the purpose by the Ariel's medtech.
He sighted through the grille, aimed the needle-nose of the dart gun with
tense precision, and fired. Bulls-eye. The man slapped the back of his neck
once and sat still, hand falling nervelessly to his side. Miles grinned
briefly, cut his way through the grille, and lowered himself to the floor.
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rt%20Story%20-%20Labyrinth.txt
The man was well-dressed in civilian-type clothes?one of the scientists,
perhaps? He lolled in his chair, a little smile playing around his lips, and
stared with unalarmed interest at Miles. He started to fall over.
Miles caught him and propped him back upright. "Sit up now, that's right, you
can't talk with your face in the carpet now, can you?"
Page 24
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Nooo . . ." The man bobbled his head and smiled agreeably.
"Do you know anything about a genetic construct, a monstrous creature, just
recently bought from
House Bharaputra and brought to this facility?"
The man blinked and smiled. "Yes."
Fast-penta subjects did tend to be literal, Miles reminded himself. "Where is
it being kept?"
"Downstairs."
"Where exactly downstairs?"
"In the sub-basement. The crawl-space around the foundations. We were hoping
it would catch some of the rats, you see." The man giggled. "Do cats eat rats?
Do rats eat cats . . . ?"
Miles checked his map-cube. Yes. That looked good, in terms of the penetration
team getting in and out, though it was still a large search area, broken up
into a maze by structural elements running down into the bedrock, and
specially-set low-vibration support columns running up into the laboratories.
At the lower edge, where the mountainside sloped away, the space ran
high-ceilinged and very near the surface, a possible break-out point. The
space thinned to head-cracking narrowness and then to bedrock at the back
where the building wedged into the slope. All right. Miles opened his dart
case to find something that would lay his victim out cold and nonquestionable
for the rest of the night. The man pawed at him and his sleeve slipped back to
reveal a wrist-comm almost as thick and complex as Miles's own. A light
blinked on it. Miles looked at the device, suddenly uneasy. This room . . .
"By the way, who are you?"
"Moglia, Chief of Security, Ryoval Biologicals," the man recited happily. "At
your service, sir."
"Oh, indeed you are." Miles's suddenly-thick fingers scrabbled faster in his
dart case. Damn, damn, damn.
The door burst open. "Freeze, mister!"
Miles hit the tight-beam alarm/self-destruct on his own wrist comm and flung
his hands up, and the wrist comm off, in one swift motion. Not by chance,
Moglia sat between Miles and the door, inhibiting the trigger reflexes of the
entering guards. The comm melted as it arced through the air?no chance of
Ryoval security tracing the outside squad through it now, and Bel would at
least know something had gone wrong.
The security chief chuckled to himself, temporarily fascinated by the task of
counting his own fingers. The red-clad guard sergeant, backed by his squad,
thundered into what was now screamingly obvious to Miles as the Security
Operations Room, to jerk Miles around, slam him face-first into the wall, and
begin frisking him with vicious efficiency. Within moments he had separated
Miles from a clanking pile of incriminating equipment, his jacket, boots, and
belt. Miles clutched the wall and shivered with the pain of several
expertly-applied nerve jabs and the swift reversal of his fortune.
The security chief, when un-penta'd at last, was not at all pleased with the
guard sergeant's confession about the three uniformed men he had let go with a
fine earlier in the evening. He put the whole guard shift on full alert, and
sent an armed squad out to try and trace the escaped Dendarii. Then, with an
apprehensive expression on his face very like the guard-sergeant's during his
mortified admission?
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lois%20McMaster%20Buj...20-%20Vorkosigan%20Shor
t%20Story%20-%20Labyrinth.txt (24 of 52)16-2-2006 21:30:19
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lois%20McMaster%20Bujold%20-%20Vorkosigan%20Sho
rt%20Story%20-%20Labyrinth.txt compounded with sour satisfaction,
contemplating Miles, and drug-induced nausea?he made a vid call.
"My lord?" said the security chief carefully.
"What is it, Moglia?" Baron Ryoval's face was sleepy and irritated.
"Sorry to disturb you sir, but I thought you might like to know about the
Page 25
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
intruder we just caught here.
Not an ordinary thief, judging from his clothes and equipment. Strange-looking
fellow, sort of a tall dwarf. He squeezed in through the ducts." Moglia held
up tissue-collection kit, chip-driven alarm-
disarming tools, and Miles's weapons, by way of evidence. The guard sergeant
bundled Miles, stumbling, into range of the vid's pick-up. "He was asking a
lot of questions about Bharaputra's monster."
Ryoval's lips parted. Then his eyes lit, and he threw back his head and
laughed. "I should have guessed. Stealing when you should be buying, Admiral?"
he chortled. "Oh, very good, Moglia!"
The security chief looked fractionally less nervous. "Do you know this little
mutant, my lord?"
"Yes, indeed. He calls himself Miles Naismith. A mercenary?bills himself as an
admiral. Self-
promoted, no doubt. Excellent work, Moglia. Hold him, and I'll be there in the
morning and deal with him personally."
"Hold him how, sir?"
Ryoval shrugged. "Amuse yourselves. Freely."
When Ryoval's image faded, Miles found himself pinned between the speculative
glowers of both the security chief and the guard sergeant.
Just to relieve feelings, a burly guard held Miles while the security chief
delivered a blow to his belly.
But the chief was still too ill to really enjoy this as he should. "Came to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl exclamation.htw.pl
coaxing the ceiling panel to fall back into place before he dropped from
maximum downward extension, fearful for his bones. Nothing broke. He slipped
across the portal to the main building and took to the ducts as soon as
possible, the corridors having been proved dangerous. He lay on his back in
the narrow tube and balanced the blueprint holocube on his belly, picking out
a new and safer route not necessarily passable to a couple of husky troopers.
And where did one look for a monster? A closet?
It was at about the third turn, inching his way through the system dragging
the weapon pack, that he became aware that the territory no longer matched the
map. Hell and damnation. Were these changes in the system since its
construction, or a subtly sabotaged map? Well, no matter, he wasn't really
lost, he could still retrace his route.
He crawled along for about thirty minutes, discovering and disarming two alarm
sensors before they discovered him. The time factor was getting seriously
pressing. Soon he would have to?ah, there! He peered through a vent grille
into a dim room filled with holovid and communications equipment. Small
Repairs, the map cube named it. It didn't look like a repairs shop. Another
change since Ryoval had moved in? But a man sat alone with his back to Miles's
wall. Perfect, too good to pass up.
Breathing silently, moving slowly, Miles eased his dart-gun out of the pack
and made sure he loaded it with the right cartridge, fast-penta spiked with a
paralyzer, a lovely cocktail blended for the purpose by the Ariel's medtech.
He sighted through the grille, aimed the needle-nose of the dart gun with
tense precision, and fired. Bulls-eye. The man slapped the back of his neck
once and sat still, hand falling nervelessly to his side. Miles grinned
briefly, cut his way through the grille, and lowered himself to the floor.
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lois%20McMaster%20Buj...20-%20Vorkosigan%20Shor
t%20Story%20-%20Labyrinth.txt (23 of 52)16-2-2006 21:30:19
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lois%20McMaster%20Bujold%20-%20Vorkosigan%20Sho
rt%20Story%20-%20Labyrinth.txt
The man was well-dressed in civilian-type clothes?one of the scientists,
perhaps? He lolled in his chair, a little smile playing around his lips, and
stared with unalarmed interest at Miles. He started to fall over.
Miles caught him and propped him back upright. "Sit up now, that's right, you
can't talk with your face in the carpet now, can you?"
Page 24
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Nooo . . ." The man bobbled his head and smiled agreeably.
"Do you know anything about a genetic construct, a monstrous creature, just
recently bought from
House Bharaputra and brought to this facility?"
The man blinked and smiled. "Yes."
Fast-penta subjects did tend to be literal, Miles reminded himself. "Where is
it being kept?"
"Downstairs."
"Where exactly downstairs?"
"In the sub-basement. The crawl-space around the foundations. We were hoping
it would catch some of the rats, you see." The man giggled. "Do cats eat rats?
Do rats eat cats . . . ?"
Miles checked his map-cube. Yes. That looked good, in terms of the penetration
team getting in and out, though it was still a large search area, broken up
into a maze by structural elements running down into the bedrock, and
specially-set low-vibration support columns running up into the laboratories.
At the lower edge, where the mountainside sloped away, the space ran
high-ceilinged and very near the surface, a possible break-out point. The
space thinned to head-cracking narrowness and then to bedrock at the back
where the building wedged into the slope. All right. Miles opened his dart
case to find something that would lay his victim out cold and nonquestionable
for the rest of the night. The man pawed at him and his sleeve slipped back to
reveal a wrist-comm almost as thick and complex as Miles's own. A light
blinked on it. Miles looked at the device, suddenly uneasy. This room . . .
"By the way, who are you?"
"Moglia, Chief of Security, Ryoval Biologicals," the man recited happily. "At
your service, sir."
"Oh, indeed you are." Miles's suddenly-thick fingers scrabbled faster in his
dart case. Damn, damn, damn.
The door burst open. "Freeze, mister!"
Miles hit the tight-beam alarm/self-destruct on his own wrist comm and flung
his hands up, and the wrist comm off, in one swift motion. Not by chance,
Moglia sat between Miles and the door, inhibiting the trigger reflexes of the
entering guards. The comm melted as it arced through the air?no chance of
Ryoval security tracing the outside squad through it now, and Bel would at
least know something had gone wrong.
The security chief chuckled to himself, temporarily fascinated by the task of
counting his own fingers. The red-clad guard sergeant, backed by his squad,
thundered into what was now screamingly obvious to Miles as the Security
Operations Room, to jerk Miles around, slam him face-first into the wall, and
begin frisking him with vicious efficiency. Within moments he had separated
Miles from a clanking pile of incriminating equipment, his jacket, boots, and
belt. Miles clutched the wall and shivered with the pain of several
expertly-applied nerve jabs and the swift reversal of his fortune.
The security chief, when un-penta'd at last, was not at all pleased with the
guard sergeant's confession about the three uniformed men he had let go with a
fine earlier in the evening. He put the whole guard shift on full alert, and
sent an armed squad out to try and trace the escaped Dendarii. Then, with an
apprehensive expression on his face very like the guard-sergeant's during his
mortified admission?
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lois%20McMaster%20Buj...20-%20Vorkosigan%20Shor
t%20Story%20-%20Labyrinth.txt (24 of 52)16-2-2006 21:30:19
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Lois%20McMaster%20Bujold%20-%20Vorkosigan%20Sho
rt%20Story%20-%20Labyrinth.txt compounded with sour satisfaction,
contemplating Miles, and drug-induced nausea?he made a vid call.
"My lord?" said the security chief carefully.
"What is it, Moglia?" Baron Ryoval's face was sleepy and irritated.
"Sorry to disturb you sir, but I thought you might like to know about the
Page 25
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
intruder we just caught here.
Not an ordinary thief, judging from his clothes and equipment. Strange-looking
fellow, sort of a tall dwarf. He squeezed in through the ducts." Moglia held
up tissue-collection kit, chip-driven alarm-
disarming tools, and Miles's weapons, by way of evidence. The guard sergeant
bundled Miles, stumbling, into range of the vid's pick-up. "He was asking a
lot of questions about Bharaputra's monster."
Ryoval's lips parted. Then his eyes lit, and he threw back his head and
laughed. "I should have guessed. Stealing when you should be buying, Admiral?"
he chortled. "Oh, very good, Moglia!"
The security chief looked fractionally less nervous. "Do you know this little
mutant, my lord?"
"Yes, indeed. He calls himself Miles Naismith. A mercenary?bills himself as an
admiral. Self-
promoted, no doubt. Excellent work, Moglia. Hold him, and I'll be there in the
morning and deal with him personally."
"Hold him how, sir?"
Ryoval shrugged. "Amuse yourselves. Freely."
When Ryoval's image faded, Miles found himself pinned between the speculative
glowers of both the security chief and the guard sergeant.
Just to relieve feelings, a burly guard held Miles while the security chief
delivered a blow to his belly.
But the chief was still too ill to really enjoy this as he should. "Came to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]