"Steve Perry - Matador 01 - The Man Who Never Missed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

approached. He had to get one last shot in, though.
"What about him?" He pointed at the man behind Dirisha.
She didn't bother to turn and look at the second soldier. "He's got the same
options you do, Deuce. So what say you just have a seat and work this out
like preachlegals." It was not a request.
The tension seemed to drain away suddenly. The larger man behind
Dirisha sat on his stool and reached for his mug of splash. The soldier facing
Dirisha wiped at the back of his uniform collar with one hand and nodded.
"Okay. We don't want any trouble with the Flower, we can work it out later,
maybe."
 Dirisha's smile broadened. "Good thinking, Deuce. Tell you what, the
house buys the next round for this table, tell the server Dirisha okays it."
She turned and walked away quickly, in Khadaji's direction. He smiled at
her and she stopped. The pub noises picked back up around them.
"Nice work."
She nodded. "For a second, it could have gone over and I would have had
to thump him. You lose points when you have to thump them."
Khadaji nodded. He understood. He had spent much of the fourteen years
after Maro studying various fighting disciplines and that had been a point in
most of them: to have to use physical technique was a failure of sorts. An
expert should be able to project enough ki so that a potential opponent
would stop hostility. A real expert could defuse almost any fight situation
simply by being there.
"Ever give any thought to your future, Dirisha?"
She shrugged. "I take it as it comes."
He thought about it for a few seconds. It was no riskier than a lot of other
things he'd done. He said, "You ever hear of Renault?"
"Backwater world in the Shin System," she said. "I don't know much about
it."
"It would be a good place to be in three or four years," Khadaji said,
looking past her around the octagon. "Somebody there might make you an
offer you'd find interesting."
The big woman looked at him carefully. "What kind of an offer?"
He shrugged. "It might not happen. A lot of things could get in the way.
Let's just say if situations go as designed, Renault could be a place for you to
stretch yourself a little."
"Um. Any particular place on Renault?"
"There's a small coastal town, Simplex-by-the-Sea."
She didn't say anything for a moment. Then, "But how could I leave you,
Emile? You need me here."
He smiled, recognizing the fugue in her statement. "I expect to be out of
the rec-chem business pretty soon."
"And on Renault?"
He sighed. "No. You won't see Emile Khadaji on Renault."
She considered that, and apparently decided not to ask anything more. "I'd
better get back to work," she said.
 "Good idea. I need to check with Anjue and see how the crowd is building.
Later."
He watched her move away. She walked with a smooth, rolling motion
that bespoke her years of training and excellent physical conditioning. He