"Douglas Hill - The Last Legionary 01 - Galactic Warlord" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hill Douglas)

He threaded his way through the clatter and glitter of the streets, thronged with people idling past the
tawdry attractions offered to space-weary visitors – everything from ordinary holoscreens to shadowy,
semi-illicit drug dives. Methodically he worked his way from place to place, concentrating mainly on the
attendants, doorkeepers, bartenders – those in a position to collect and distil the talk, the gossip, of their
hundreds of customers.

But he also watched faces in the crowds. Many people turned towards him with a flicker of curiosity –
their interest caught for a moment by his tall leanness, the controlled litheness of his movements, most of
all by the grey-black uniform with the brilliant, sky-blue circlet on shoulder and upper chest. Sometimes a
person would glance at him curiously and then look again, with a flicker of recognition in their eyes. And
then the uniformed man would pause, and intercept, and ask his questions.

Always the answers were the same. A shrug, a shake of the head, a negative. Sometimes a shadow of
sympathy – most often the blankness of indifference. The Inhabited Galaxy was a big place; everybody
had problems of their own.

Undeterred, he kept moving, as he had on a dozen planets or more before Coranex – while the pain
clamoured for his full attention, while twilight darkened into deep night. His head remained high and his
shoulders square, for a lifetime of military training cannot be erased in a few months – not by pain, not by
weariness, not by loneliness, not even by despair.

Despair was near enough, though, ready to overwhelm him. He knew how much time he had left to go
on searching. It was a good deal less than the time he had already spent. Yet in those months he had
picked up nothing except scattered hints, all of them vague, fragmentary. They were enough to keep him
going – but they were never enough to give his search some point, some clear direction.

But he kept on. He had nothing else to do. And the fiery pain in his body was nothing compared to the
grim, vengeful determination that fuelled his search.

He was Keill Randor, once the youngest and, some said, the finest Strike Group Leader in the 41st
Legion of the planet Moros.

But now he was a soldier without an army, a wanderer without a home, a man without a people.

And he was dying.

The bar was dim, half-empty, squalid, stinking of stale spilled drink and unwashed bodies. The bartender
was an off-worlder, from one of the ’altered worlds’ – where, over the centuries, local conditions had
caused changes, mutations, in the humans who inhabited them. He was dwarfish and stocky,
orange-skinned and hairless. But his shrug, when Keill asked his question, was an exact replica of all the
others Keill had met in his searching.

‘Legionaries? I heard what happened to ’em. Nothin’ else. Anyway, got no time to stand around jawin’,
pickin’ up rumours. Got a business t’ run.’

The orange-skinned dwarf moved as if to turn away, but glanced up at Keill and changed his mind.
Keill’s expression had not altered, but something in his eyes told the bartender that, if he moved, he might
not enjoy what would happen next.