Poor Man's Sky by Wil McCarthy

Author:Wil McCarthy [McCarthy, Wil]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781982192341
Amazon: 1982192348
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2023-01-03T05:00:00+00:00

Sighing inwardly, Dona prepared for violence. She was trained in a dozen martial arts, honed and shaped by a dozen times actually fighting for her life against unpredictable humans. The crown jewel, though, was Zedo, the zero-gravity grappling style taught to her by the U.S. Space Force, back when they still thought she was working for an allied government. Back when anyone thought she was working for any government at all. Her chief instructor had called her “the most gifted micro-gee fighter I’ve ever seen.” Except himself, he had meant, but then she had whipped him, too. Her body seemed built for it; she was immune to vertigo, immune to motion sickness and disorientation. She always knew exactly where her hands and feet were, exactly what direction her center of mass was moving, and pain did not startle or distract her. She did not suffer from the sort of empathy that kept people from winning fights. However, she had never in her life faced more than two attackers at a time, and there were twenty potential enemies in this room.

She didn’t know this man who was talking to Orlov, but the name tag on his uniform shirt said epureanu, and apparently he and Orlov were on a first-name basis. Which was a good thing, but probably not good enough.

He was a bold one, she had to admit. But he was within arm’s reach now, and the tone of this meeting—already setting off alarm bells for her—was headed nowhere but south. And so, if Epureanu so much as twitched, she was going to windpipe him. Assuming of course that Morozov didn’t beat her to it. Or Orlov himself, for that matter. Voronin she wasn’t so sure about, so her planned choreography simply regarded him as dead mass she could brace against for a jump.

“Grigory, come on,” Epureanu said. “You are on the wrong side of this one, and surely a part of you knows it. Is this why you’re so angry? Because your business model failed to take shore leave expenses into account, and now your earnings projections are garbage?”

“You presume too much,” Orlov said. “You think you’re a businessman now? I made you. This minor thing that you are, I made.”

“You did,” Epureanu agreed.

“I could have you mopping toilets in Siberia. I could have you buried.”

“You could,” Epureanu agreed. “But it would not serve you.”

“Oh, think harder than that, little man,” Orlov warned. “You’ve gone and made it personal. You had all better hope the public never learns the details of what went on here today. If that happens, you will all be liabilities. Ask yourself what happens to liabilities.”

“This is not productive,” Epureanu said, sounding less certain than he had a few moments before. Sounding like a man who had just overplayed his hand, and knew it.

“You are not productive,” Grigory said in return, his eyes sweeping the room. “Any of you.”

And that was apparently seven words too many, because the crowd bristled, drew in a collective breath, and

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