"JAMES LUCENO. SABOTEUR" - читать интересную книгу автора

agent's raps on the door frame.
"Come on up," the man said. "Everyone else is already here."
Bruit. Darth Maul waited until the three agents were inside, then he hurried
from the shadows and planted himself under an open side window. Not content with
his choice, he ducked beneath the house and clambered up one of the stilts to
wedge himself between the floor joists of the front room. In the room above,
someone was pouring liquid into several glasses.
Maul extracted a miniature recording device from the breast pocket of his
utility suit and placed it against the underside of the rough-hewn floorboards.
"Here's the long and short of it," Bruit said while the glasses were being
filled. "Arrant has decided that we need to level the playing field. We're going
to strike at InterGal at Eriadu. Our shipments will reach the planet, and theirs
won't."
Someone whistled in astonishment.
"Does the boss realize what he's letting loose?" perhaps the same man asked.
"This is going to lead to a shooting war."
"This comes straight from Arrant," Bruit said. "He's been in the trenches
before. Those are his words, and this is his show."
"His show and our livelihood," someone pointed out. "There has to be a better
way of settling this. What about petitioning the senate to intervene?"
"A cure that can be worse than the disease," another answered, much to Maul's
amusement. "The senate will defer to committees run by corrupt bureaucrats. It
will take months for it to get to the courts."
"No senate, no courts," Bruit said. "That much has already been decided. It's up
to us."
"So what happens at Eriadu?"
"We've been able to learn the hyperspace route InterGal's ships are going to
take. They'll arrive by way of Rimma 13, and are scheduled to decant from
hyperspace at 1400 hours, Eriadu local time. The folks we're employing to
execute the strike will be able to calculate the precise reentry coordinates."
"Who are we employing?"
"The Toom clan."
Expressions of dismay flew from all corners.
"Cutthroats," someone said.
"Exactly," Bruit said. "But we need to team up to accomplish this, and Arrant's
willing to spend the necessary credits. By using them, no one will suspect us,
and Arrant doesn't care, because he doesn't want to know any more than he has
to. He wants to keep his hands clean while I make the connections. Besides, the
Tooms have the means to get the job done."
"And no scruples to stand in the way."
"Have they agreed to terms?"
"At first contact," Bruit said. "Although I have to say that I sometimes wish I
could see both Lommite and InterGal brought down, so that someone with real
foresight could build a better organization from the dregs."
Several glasses clinked together.
"So what's our part in this, Chief, if the deal has already been struck?"
Bruit snorted. "We need to prepare ourselves for InterGal's counterpunch."
Maul peeled the recorder from the floorboards and dropped down to the loamy soil
below the house. He remained still for a long moment, crouched in the darkness,
listening to sounds of distant laughter and the stridulations of profuse insect