"Doohan, James & Stirling, S M - Flight Engineer 02 - The Privateer 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doohan James)

He'd left his post for the best of reasons, naturally; risking his life to
save a precious five-month supply of enemy antihydrogen that would
certainly have been lost without his interference. It was an open secret
that the Commonwealth's supply of A-H was running perilously low. And
without antihydrogen fuel, the Commonwealth couldn't continue to exist and
the war with the Mollies would be over. And he'd saved what remained of
the Dauntless, the ship transporting it, and the life of a very fine
engineer.

Which made him a hero.

Bigtime.

The captain had recommended him for a Stellar Cross.

A corner of his mouth twitched up.

Y'know Raeder, sometimes you worry too much.

On the other hand, there was a nasty undercurrent here that kept him
shifting in his seat no matter how he reassured himself. Someone in this
room was going to be damn lucky to walk out of it with nothing worse than
a reprimand. Of that he was perfectly sure.

Because just now Admiral Einar Grettirson, the presiding officer, was
grilling Captain Jill Montoya of the Dauntless with an attitude that
raised the hairs along the back of Peter's neck.

"Cap-tain Montoya," Grettirson drawled, thick gray eyebrows drawn down
over ice blue eyes, "you lost a total of one thou-sand seven hundred and
ten of your people, as well as twenty-five Speeds in this action. Did you
not?"

"Yes, Admiral," she answered stiffly.

And no one could have tried harder to save them, Peter thought
resentfully. Captain Montoya had actually carried one wounded crew-woman
to the lifeboats on her back.

But Grettirson was a well-known martinet, and a slave to the book; it was
rumored that he slept with a copy of the Commonwealth Standard Manual of
Operations under his pillow.

Montoya had managed to get her crippled ship to the edge of Ontario Base's
defensive perimeter, and with the antihydrogen.

To me, Peter thought, that kind of a save says, "Wow! What a leader!"

"And just how do you explain such cat-a-strophic losses?" Grettirson