"04 - Space Viking 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

II

A DOZEN men clustered around the bartending robot-his cousin and family
lawyer, Nikkolay Trask; Lothar Ffayle, the banker; Alex Gorram, the
shipbuilder, and his son Basil; Baron Rathmore; more of the Wardshaven nobles
whom he knew only distantly. And Otto Harkaman.

Harkaman was a Space Viking. That would have set him apart even if he hadn't
topped the tallest of them by a head. He wore a short black jacket, heavily
gold-braided, and black- trousers inside ankle-boots; the dagger on his belt
was no mere dress-ornament. His tousled red-brown hair was long enough to
furnish extra padding in a combat-helmet, and his beard was cut square at the
bottom.

He had been fighting on Durendal, for one of the branches of the Royal house
contesting fratricidally for the throne. The wrong one; he had lost his ship,
and most of his men and, almost, his own life. He had been a penniless refugee
on Flamberge, owning only the clothes he stood in and his personal weapons and
the loyalty of half a dozen adventurers as penniless as himself, when Duke
Angus had invited him to Gram to command the Enterprise.

"A pleasure, Lord Trask. I've met your lovely bride-to-be, and now that I meet
you, let me congratulate both." Then, as they were having a drink together, he
put his foot in it by asking, "You're not an investor in the Tanith Adventure,
are you?"

He said he wasn't, and would have let it go at that. Young Basil Gorram had to
get his foot in, too.

"Lord Trask does not approve of the Tanith Adventure," he said scornfully. "He
thinks we should stay home and produce wealth, instead of exporting robbery
and murder to the Old Federation for it."

The smile remained on Otto Harkaman's face; only the friendliness was gone. He
unobtrusively shifted his drink to his left hand.

"Well, our operations are definable as robbery and murder," he agreed. "Space
Vikings are professional robbers and murderers. And you object? Perhaps you
find me personally objectionable?"

10

"I wouldn't have shaken your hand or had a drink with you if I did. I don't
care how many planets you raid or cities you sack, or how many innocents, if
that's what they are, you massacre in the Old Federation. You couldn't
possibly do anything worse than those people have been doing to one another
for the past ten centuries. What I object to is the way you're raiding the
Sword-Worlds."