Emperor Mollusk Versus the Sinister Brain Read Online Free PDF

snarled.
    “Who sent you?”
    “Time out.” I pulled her away from him. “There’s no need for that.”
    She smirked. “I didn’t think you Neptunons had such delicate sensibilities. If you only give me a few minutes, I can get him to talk.”
    The Atlantese tried to sneak away while our backs were turned. Snarg let him know it was a bad idea with a hiss.
    “I can get him to talk,” I said, “and it’ll be a lot easier than whatever interrogation technique you were about to employ. I haven’t found pain all that conducive to conversation. I’ve managed to make it work to my advantage, but it’s just as often counterproductive. And I don’t do that kind of thing anymore.”
    “Still trying to convince me you’ve changed?”
    “I haven’t changed,” I replied. “I still don’t get why Venusians respect the dead more than the living. And I still don’t bother wasting my time knocking assassins around for information…when I can just bribe them.”
    She gnashed her fangs. “You’re going to pay him? After he just tried to kill you?”
    “And I’m sure this notion offends you in some way, but since this is my life we’re talking about, we’ll do it my way. If you have a problem with my methods…”
    I left the sentence hanging, knowing full well that I was offering her an illusion of choice. Her sense of honor and duty meant she couldn’t abandon me. It was a very complicated set of rules she lived by, and while I found them ridiculous and unnecessary, I found some ridiculous and unnecessary rules people lived by to be useful.
    And I rather enjoyed watching her squirm.
    “How do you know he’ll take the money?” she asked smugly.
    “Because if he doesn’t I’ll feed him to my ultrapede.” I addressed her, but I was clearly talking to him.
    “A loyal soldier accepts death before tarnished honor.”
    “That’s up to him now, isn’t it?”
    I turned to the prisoner. “So what’s it going to be?”
    Snarg snapped her hungry jaws.
    “I’ll take the money,” he said.
    “See how easy that was?” I asked.
    Zala’s feathers ruffled, and she snorted, obviously disgusted by his unwillingness to die horribly for the sake of his principles. But her mistake was assuming everyone followed her code.
    The code of the Atlantese army was simple. Much more understandable than Venusian rules of honor. It was a profit-making venture. Not quite mercenaries, but close enough. This soldier’s failure would go on his performance evaluation, and in order to minimize the damage, he wanted to bring something back.
    My small army of maintenance robots puttered around fixing the damage while we hammered out the details. They reupholstered and straightened the furniture, extracted the hundreds of razor-sharp discs embedded everywhere, and began bricking up the hole in the wall. In a few hours, the townhouse would be restored. Except for the couch. The chief robot reported it as unsalvageable.
    I deducted it from the payment. Only a few hundred dollars. But a Neptunon had his principles, and I’d really loved that couch.
    I forked over a few million, enough to cover the retrieval and repair done to the craft, the training and hiring of new personnel, with enough left over for a small profit. It was a very generous offer, considering I had the advantage, but it was only money. I had unlimited assets and all manner of convenient currency tucked away here and there. I hadn’t walked away from warlordship with a light shell.
    The soldier called in a quick credit check, had me sign a cessation of hostility contract.
    “Pleasure doing business with you, Lord Mollusk.”
    Zala stood in rigid disapproval of the whole affair. “Well, if you were just going to take a bribe, why did you bother trying to kill the Neptunon in the first place?”
    “Contractual obligation,” explained the soldier. “We’re signed for one elimination attempt. We tried. We failed. If the client is unhappy with the results, he’s