Read StarCraft II: Devils' Due for Free Online

found this beyond hilarious.
    Even now, the sight made him smile as he and
    Tychus entered, climbing up the familiarly creaking
    wooden steps into a bar/gambling house/“dance hal ”
    that was raucous, smel y, and lively. Jim loved the
    energy of this place. Unlike some places he and
    Tychus had visited, it did not have any pal of despair
    hanging over it like a thick cloud. No one came here
    to drown their troubles. People came here to have fun.
    Big Eddie—Jim and Tychus had been coming here
    for years, and Raynor stil didn’t know the man’s last
    name—had an eye for finding and removing not only
    bel igerent and possibly violent customers, but
    morose and melancholy ones as wel . Wayne, for
    whom the place was named, once said a sad drunk
    was just as bad as a mad one, and neither would be
    tolerated in his establishment.
    “Evenin’, Mr. Raynor, Mr. Findlay,” Big Eddie said.
    Every bit as large as Tychus, he was much better
    weathered, lacking scars or a broken nose.
    “Welcome back.”
    “Hey, Eddie,” Raynor said, and slipped him a
    handful of credits. “When you’re off duty, enjoy yourself
    on me.”
    Eddie chuckled. “I wil at that, Mr. Raynor. Thank
    you.”
    “Daisy working tonight?” asked Tychus.
    Eddie’s smile, wide as the sky, widened further,
    showing he stil had al his teeth. “She most certainly
    is, but if she wasn’t, I’m sure she’d come in special for
    you.”
    Tychus grinned.
    Lots of people did things special for Jim and
    Tychus. They always spent their money freely and with
    good cheer, and Wayne, Eddie, Daisy, and the others
    looked out for them. Many a time had Butler and his
    deputies tried to surprise the two, and each time their
    plans had been foiled. Wicked Wayne’s looked after
    two of its best clients in every way.
    The music was loud, with a heavy thudding boom
    that Jim could feel in his bones. The air was thick and
    gray with smoke, and the laughter was raucous and
    frequent. Tychus took a deep breath.
    “That’s the smel of pleasure, Jim,” he said. “Only a
    couple scents missing: the sweat of the man who’s
    losing to you, and the perfume of the girl you’re
    slamming.”
    “You’re a poet, Tychus.”
    “Heh. Don’t I know it. Ah, there’s my girl.”
    The stage was in the center of the place, with the
    bar on the left side and a VRcade off to the right.
    Several gambling tables were set up in the back, near
    an easy exit. On the stage now, wearing luminescent
    jewelry and enough scanty pieces of clothing so that
    they’d actual y have something to remove for the
    customers, were the girls—and boys—of Wicked
    Wayne’s.
    Tychus went right up to the chairs closest to the
    stage. He glared at the man currently seated within
    groping reach of the dancers. “You’re in my seat,”
    Tychus rumbled.
    The man looked up at him. “Don’t have your name
    on it.”
    “This does.” Tychus made a fist with his left hand
    and brought it close enough to the man’s face so that
    he could read the letters P-A-I-N—a letter tattooed on
    each finger.
    Jim chuckled at just how fast the blood drained
    from the man’s face as his eyes flickered from the
    word to Tychus’s implacable expression. Without a
    word, he and his buddies picked up their drinks and
    relocated. Tychus settled into the chair, plopped his
    booted feet on another one, and grinned up at one of
    the gyrating dancers. Tal , red-haired, with legs up to
    here and breasts out to there , she wore infinitesimal
    scraps of fabric that barely concealed the gifts that
    nature and, Raynor always suspected, technology had
    given her. This was Daisy, Tychus’s favorite of al the
    girls at Wicked Wayne’s, and she gave him a big
    smile, a wink, and a shake of her finely curved behind
    as she continued to dance in heels so high and so
    spiked that Jim always thought they could be used as
    weapons.
    Jim grinned and headed for the bar on the left.
    Misty was tending tonight, and he was