"FWLS41" - читать интересную книгу автора (A Future We'd Like to See)

"Big deal! Some metermaid kicked your ass two months ago
and everybody knows it."

"Metermaids are cops, not mailmen," I said. "You grow
boring. Nighty night."

With that, I fired the stun blaster I had quietly unsheathed
while he was foaming at the mouth. It hit him squarely in the
shoulder, and the energy crackled along his body. He fell, like
anybody else I shoot with my trusty stunner. (Emerald, the
saloon manager, doesn't tolerate fights. She doesn't mind me,
though, because I clean up once I'm done.)

I drank the rest of my whackbuggl (much better than the thin
Terran equivalent), and holstered the stunner.

"Need a hand with him?" Emerald asked, pointing to the
crumpled form with the hand that wasn't polishing the bar.

"No thanks. I'll handle the poor guy. Put the drink on my
tab," I said, setting down the glass.

*

I dragged his unconscious form back to his ship a few
minutes later. I tucked him in, placed a small mint on his
pillow in such a way that he would roll over and get it stuck in
his hair, and headed back to my own ship.

I never worry about vengeance. You need to treat everybody
with respect and trust if you plan to lead a long and healthy
life out here, in the Anarchy Zones. Nobody else seems to have
realized that, which is why the loud, rude ones tend to die off a
few months after arriving. If the bar patron decided he still
wanted to mess around with me, he'd get the exact same
treatment -- stun, back to bed. Mint for his troubles.
Eventually he'd get bored and leave me alone. I have no real
rivals thanks to this policy, other than the traders I send
packing.

There is one trader, however, that I have a hands-off policy
on. He's the top, best in the business, and we have a mutual
truce declared to keep both our records clean. We have a
scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours type relationship.

In this case, he was scratching my back. I had just entered
my cockpit after my 'escort delivery' then the call came through.

His familiar Saren features flooded my 3-D holoscreen. (Top