"Aaron Allston "Iron Fist" (STARWARS. X-Wing #6)" - читать интересную книгу автора

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He made no pretense at being fully human. He had probably been born human, but now mechanical limbs-obvious pros-thetics, shiny stainless metal arms and legs with crude-looking joints-replaced his original flesh, and his entire upper face was a shiny metal surface with a standard computer interface inset in the center of his forehead.
He made no pretense at being friendly, either. He approached the booth where the big, good-looking businessman drank alone, and with neither threat nor comment he swung the wine bottle he held in his hands and brought it down on the businessman's head.
The bottle shattered, spraying glass and red liquid all over the businessman. The man blinked, stood-demonstrating both a resilience and a physique others in the bar found admirable- and struck the cyborg, a blow that rocked the mostly mechani-cal man's head and staggered him back into the booth filled with carousing Imperial pilots.
The pilots seated at the aisle shoved the cyborg forward, straight into the businessman's professional-looking right cross. The blow caught the cyborg across the jaw, spinning him around. The cyborg staggered back to fall across the laps of two of the pilots in the booth. His flailing arm caught their glasses and bottles, throwing wine and liquor across everyone.
The pilots shoved him off to the floor and rose.
"Don't do that," the bartender said. But his voice was a plea and he wasn't aiming a weapon. No one paid attention.
Suddenly hard-faced, a formidable group of six, the pilots glowered at the businessman and the cyborg. Their leader, the shortest of them, a dark-haired man with a face craggy enough for tiny snubfighters to fly their famous Trench Run Defense across, said, "You two owe us for a round and two bottles of local press, and we'll take your booth and a hundred extra credits for our trouble."
The businessman gave him a frosty smile. "With a hun-dred credits I could buy a pilot of your qualifications to lick my boots clean."
"I'm calling the military police," the bartender said.
The pilots surged toward the businessman. The first of
them caught a knuckle punch in the solar plexus and dropped like a sackful of tubers. The second one was tripped up as the cyborg grabbed his knee and squeezed; the pilot's shriek was shrill enough to resonate on empty glasses throughout the bar. The other four slammed into the businessman and bore him to the floor.
The bartender punched his emergency code into the com-link and began wailing to the distant listener.
Two minutes later, it was all but over. Two tables had been smashed, their entertained patrons now occupying booths on the other side of the bar. Five pilots and one cyborg lay at inter-v21s across the floor, stretched out in various poses of very un-comfortable rest, often lying among broken glasses and platters of unhygienic appetizers. The businessman and the pilot leader were still standing, the latter glassy-eyed, barely responding to outside stimuli, while the former still occasionally swung inef-fectual blows against his stomach. Both were drenched with sweat and booze, staggering with every slight move they made.
Then a half-dozen stormtroopers in the uniforms of mili-tary police poured into the bar. Some patrons-those who still had bets going on which of the fighters would win-groaned, but the bartender breathed a sigh of relief.
With calm efficiency, the stormtroopers manacled the
eight malefactors' hands behind their backs; the two men still



standing put up no fight. Three of the downed pilots could not be brought back to consciousness, but one of the stormtroopers picked up two of them, slinging them with considerable ease over his shoulders, and a second picked up the last stubbornly unconscious pilot. The stormtroopers began to move out.
"Wait," the bartender said. "Where do I sign?"
Two of the stormtroopers exchanged a glance. "Why
would you want to sign?" asked one, the ranking officer.
"So I can put in a claim for damages!"
The cyborg sighed. "Oh, just tally up the bill. I'll pay for
the damages."
The bartender rocked back, mollified. "Well, all right, then. Come back soon. We appreciate your patronage."
As they swept out through the door, onto a rainy street of Halmad's capital city of Hullis, the ranking officer among the pilots, the one who'd taken so much abuse at the business-man's hands, gave the cyborg a dizzy but appreciative look. "Hey, you're not all bad."
"I just like a good scrap now and then." The cyborg shrugged. Unfortunately for him, the motion put extra pres-sure on his shackles. They opened and dropped to the muddy ground behind him.
The pilot leader stared. "Hey, what the-"
"Fire," said the stormtrooper leader.
Three of the stormtroopers obliged him. Stun beams hit
the pilots' torsos. The pilots dropped into the mud.
The stormtrooper leader looked around. There was no one to see, not much skimmer traffic this rainy evening, no one en-tering or coming out of the bar. He pulled off his helmet, reveal-ing the features of Wedge Antilles, and took an unencumbered view around. No sign of witnesses. "Let's hustle, people."
The other troopers grabbed the three fallen pilots. They dragged and carried their prisoners around the corner of the building, then around behind, where their skimmer awaited in the darkness of a fallow field. It was no military skimmer, just a medium cargo carrier with a deep bed.
While the others dumped the pilots into the rear and
draped blankets and netting across them, Wedge stripped off
his stormtrooper armor and threw it in after them. "Good
work, Tainer, Phanan. Either of you hurt?"
Kell shook his head and flexed, popping his unsealed manacles loose. "This suit's probably a loss."
Phanan waggled his head. "Kell didn't do me any harm, but the bottle one of them hit my head with wasn't fake glass like mine was. It didn't even break. I hear ringing."
"Sounds like a mild concussion. See our doctor about it."
"Oh, I'm too important a doctor to see anyone as lowly as myself."
Wedge waved at one of the ersatz stormtroopers. "Face, grab these pilots' wallets, money pouches, whatever they're carrying. I want every credit they have, hard currency only. How much damage did you two jokers do?" Kell and Phanan looked at one another.
"Maybe a hundred," Kell said. "Counting everything."
"All right," Wedge said. "If these pilots' personal fortunes don't add up to a hundred and fifty, we'll make up the differ-ence ourselves. Face, run the credits in to the bartender. Tell him the cyborg paid off, instant compensation for the damage, so sorry, he's a miserable old drunk whose only entertainment is causing trouble at bars."