"William C. Dietz - By Force of Arms" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dietz William)

The businessman felt his face flush red. He knew Jepp
all right. Plenty of people did and would love to get their
hands, tentacles, or graspers on him. A sometimes pros-
pector, he owned a ship named the Pelican, and was
eternally broke. One hundred and sixty-five thousand two-
hundred and ten credits plus interest. That's how much the
slimy, no-good, piece of space crap owed Small.

But Jepp had disappeared more than a year back, which
meant some stupid bastard was having him on. Small was
about to say as much, about to rip McGurk a new asshole,
when the idiot in question offered the corn set. "Here, it's
Jorely Jepp."

In spite of the fact that his relationship with the Hoon was
basically cordial, it was hardly collegia!, which meant the
computer never bothered to announce what the fleet was
going to do next. A fact that bothered the human no end.
That being the case, Jepp usually gathered information
through his robots or via his own senses.

The human had lived on the Sheen ship for quite a while
by then, and was used to the way air whispered through
the ducts, the hull vibrated beneath his feet, and the push
of die engines. So when the fleet dropped hyper, slowed,
and dropped into orbit, Jepp sensed the change and sent
his minions to investigate.

The Thraki robot was called "Sam," short for "Good
Samaritan" and, though small, was able to assume a variety
of configurations. Some of which came in handy from time

BY FORCE OF ARMS 13

to time. The fact that it served as a translator made the
machine even more useful.

Henry, the only surviving component of the good ship
Pelican, was a navcomp by trade and currently trapped
within a body that looked like a garbage can. Though sen-
tient and capable of speech, the host mechanism wasn't.
That left the computer dependent on Sam.

The two robots, along with the ever-obedient Alpha, left
Jepp's self-assigned quarters, passed an example of the re-
ligious graffiti that the prospector liked to spray paint onto
the ship's bulkheads, and made for the nearest data port.
Sam plugged in, sampled the flow, and found what the
master was looking for. With that accomplished, it was a
relatively simple matter to transmit the data to Henry, who