"Timothy Zahn - The Icarus Hunt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

"Part of my job," I said. "As I said, I can cover nav and piloting. How many
of
the rest are you missing?"
He smiled crookedly. "Why? You have some friends who need work?"
"I might. What do you need?"
"I appreciate the offer." He was still smiling, but the laugh lines had
hardened
a bit. "But I'd prefer to choose my own crew."
I shrugged. "Fine by me. I was just trying to save you a little running
around.
What about me personally? Am I in?"
He eyed me another couple of heartbeats. "If you want the job," he said at
last,
not sounding entirely happy with the decision.
Deliberately, I turned my head a few degrees to the left and looked at a trio
of
gray-robed Patthaaunutth sitting at the center of the bar, gazing haughtily
out
at the rest of the patrons like self-proclaimed lords surveying their private
demesne. "Were you expecting me to turn you down?" I asked, hearing the edge
of
bitterness in my voice.
He followed my gaze, lifting his mug for a sip, and even out of the corner of
my
eye I could see him wince a little behind the rim of the cup. "No," he said
quietly. "I suppose not."
I nodded silently. The Talariac Drive had hit the trade routes of the Spiral a
little over fifteen years ago, and in that brief time the Patth had gone from
being a third-rate race of Machiavellian little connivers to near domination
of
shipping here in our cozy corner of the galaxy. Hardly a surprise, of course:
with the Talariac four times faster and three times cheaper than anyone else's
stardrive, it didn't take a corporate genius to figure out which ships were
the
ones to hire.
Which had left the rest of us between a very big rock and a very hard vacuum.
There were still a fair number of smaller routes and some overflow traffic
that
the Patth hadn't gotten around to yet, but there were too many non-Patth ships
chasing too few jobs and the resulting economic chaos had been devastating. A
few of the big shipping corporations were still hanging on, but most of the
independents had been either starved out of business or reduced to intrasystem
shipping, where stardrives weren't necessary.
Or had turned their ships to other, less virtuous lines of work.
One of the Patth at the table turned his head slightly, and from beneath his
hood I caught a glint of the electronic implants set into that gaunt,
mahogany-red face. The Patth had a good thing going, all right, and they had
no
intention of losing it. Patth starships were individually keyed to their
respective pilots, with small but crucial bits of the Talariac access