"Steve Perry - Matador 5 - The 97th Step" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

and profit. Were the local cools or the Confed military to implode-bomb this
place, the serious crime rate for five light-years would drop dramatically. Ferret
was merely a thief and smuggler like his friend Stoll, but there were others "Who
dealt in worse crimes. Some who made slavers look like saints, dark dancers on
the fringe of the fringe.

The slaver's voice rose as he used it to cut at the thin boy who stood with his head
bowed under the abuse.

Over the years, "Ferret had learned to mind his own business, sometimes the hard
way, and this was none of it.

None of his business at all, until the strap appeared.

The slaver, a bulky human mue with the look of a heavy-gravity childhood,
produced the strap from a belt pouch. It looked like hebi-skin in the dim light, soft
and pliable, but pebbled and rough like shark or ray hide, and it would be heavier
than it appeared, were that the case. The big mue meant to work on his thrall with
the strap, that much was obvious, and nobody in the pub was likely to stand in his
way. Why should they? Might draw attention, and who knew what that might
bring?

Ferret's grip tightened on the plastic ale stein; tendons raised on the back of his
hand.

Stoll must have caught the movement, subtle as it was. He said, "Easy, lad. There's
no profit to be made for the risk here."


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 Perry, Steve - The 97th Step


Ferret looked at his friend, and nodded. He relaxed his hold on the stein. "You're
right, Shanti." He struggled to calm the tension he felt. The slaver mue was big
and obviously violent, and there was no way to tell how good he was. Ferret had
learned not to judge from appearances. He'd studied close combat for more than a
year with Elvin Dindabe, who'd been rated a Top Player in the Musashi Flex
before he'd retired. Some men could kill you without raising their heartbeats, and
they looked like nothing. It was not his business, no, he wasn't some kind of
cosmic do-gooder, you got started on that and there was no end to it. But there was
that strapтАФ

The slaver's mistake was in timing. At that precise instant, he flicked the supple
snakeskin strap up and snapped it at the cowering boy. The pop! of the leather as
the tip slapped against the boy's shoulder reached Ferret then, and all logic, self-
interest and thoughts of minding his own business fled before a fifteen-year-old
memory. Against that power, all else was blown away like pollen in a windstorm.
The past reached out and claimed him.