"Steve Perry - Battle Surgeons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

zones for as much time as he hadтАФsounded. In the mo-mentary ringing silence that followed, heralding
drops of the storm pattered on the foamcast roof. Within sec-onds, the sky opened up, and the drumming of
the rain became a constant barrage.
And, just as he'd anticipated, the leaks began stream-ing.
The water puddled on the floor for the most part, without hitting anybody as it cascaded. A newbie here
and there was surprised and awarded laughter by his comrades for his soaking. At the end of the bar, an
Ishi Tib mechanic stripped out of his lube-spotted coveralls and undulated under a steady stream, moving
his eye-stalks and clacking his beak in time to the music.
Den shook his head. What a life. Cantina-crawling in yet another dung-hole, all in the service of the
Public's Need to Know.
A blast of hot, wet wind swirled over him as the door seal parted. Den knew without even turning around
who had entered; he could tell by the smell of damp Hutt that suddenly filled the room.
The Hutt shook himself, ignoring the annoyed looks and exclamations the spray of water brought from
nearby patrons, and slithered toward the bar. He came to a stop on the ground level next to Den.
Den drained the last of his drink and took a moment to compose himself before looking at the Hutt.
"Filba," he said. "How's it flopping?"
The Hutt didn't seem surprised to see him hereтАФno doubt he'd been notified of the arrival of the press.
He hardly spared Den a glance. "Dhur. Why aren't you out somewhere making up more lies about honest
working folk?"
Den smiled. "I can make them up just as well in a dryтАФwell, relatively dryтАФcantina." Honest working
folk, my dewflaps, he thought. If honest work came anywhere near Filba, the huge gastropod would
proba-bly shrivel up and die like his remote ancestors did when covered in salt.
The tender approached. "Dopa boga noga," Filba growled in Huttese, holding up two fingers.
The tender nodded and drew two mugs of something yellow and fizzy, which he set in front of the Hutt.
Filba knocked them both back, barely taking a breath be-tween them.
"Not one to savor your drink, I see," Den said.
Filba turned one enormous, bilious eye in his direc-tion. "You have to drink Huttese ale fast," he
ex-plained. "Otherwise it eats through the mug."
Den nodded in sage comprehension. The tender filled his glass again, and the reporter raised it. "War and
 taxes," he said, and drank.
"Koochoo," Filba muttered. Den wasn't familiar enough with Huttese to recognize the word, but from
Filba's tone it sounded like an insult. Of course, most of what Filba said sounded like an insult. The
Sullustan shrugged. Either Filba still had a problem with him, or he was just venting. Either way, Den wasn't
particularly worried. In his experience there were very few problems in this galaxy that couldn't be cured,
or at least put in proper perspective, by liberal doses of alcohol or its many equivalents.
The rain stopped almost as quickly as it began. Den stared at the puddles on the floor, knowing it would
take days for them to evaporate in the humid air. And long before they did, it would have rained again. He
asked a Bothan who stood at the bar a few steps away, "Why don't you guys throw a field over this place,
keep it dry?"
The Bothan looked at him. "Tell you whatтАФif you can rec one from Central or find one around here
that's not being used, I'll be happy to put it up. And don't sug-gest fixing it the old-fashioned wayтАФwe do
that all the time. As soon as we get one hole patched, the milking spores eat open another one."
Den shrugged againтАФhe had a feeling he would be doing a lot of that on DrongarтАФand turned back to
his drink. Before he could give it the attention it deserved, however, he noticed a group sitting at a table a
couple of meters away. There were four: two males and two fe-males. One of the males was a Zabrak;
the rest were hu-mans. Den made a wry face. Although he tried to be open-minded and tolerant, he had to
admit that he had little use for humans. They tended to be louder than most species, and whenever a
ruckus started in a place like this, it was usually a human at the bottom of it. He remembered one time, on
Rudrig, whenтАФ
He blinked.