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

asked, his thin, ascetic face as cold as space.

Clearly the admiral doesn't agree with my assessment. Peter shifted in his
chair again, drawing Grettirson's glittering eye. He froze instantly, like
a buck under the eye of a hungry mountain lion. Oops.

Not that the admiral was a total monster; he was simply convinced that
today's subordinates emerged from a very inferior mold to the one that had
shaped him.

Peter examined the other members of the board, trying to read reactions in
their impenetrable expressions. Vice-Admiral Paula Anderson he knew from
Cynthia's hearing, and he felt her to be intrinsically fair. Commodore
Wayne Gretsky and Commodore Margaret Trudeau of the Intelligence Corps
were complete unknowns. But Marine General Kemal Scaragoglu was a power,
if not truly a known factor. Conspiracy, rumor and paranoia followed him
around like besotted puppies.

Scaragoglu was so Machiavellian that he even looked like an African copy
of the sixteenth-century statesman. He had the same tight-lipped,
sharp-eyed intensity, coupled with a high-bridged nose and sharp chin;
some said it was biosculp. Raeder didn't think so; he figured the Marine
general was more likely a reincarnation of some extremely successful
condottiere.

"And how is it," Admiral Grettirson was saying, "that neither you nor your
chief engineer thought of Commander Raeder's rather simple fix for the
damaged antihydrogen bottle?"

"I'm not an engineer by training, Admiral," Montoya answered quietly. "As
for Chief Casey, I cannot say. Perhaps it was the heat of the moment. But,
of course, the flight deck had taken a direct and catastrophic hit. It was
a shunt from a Speed's engine that Commander Raeder used to empty the
damaged bottle. Such an item would have been unavailable to Chief Casey,
even if he had thought of using one."

"Have that checked," Grettirson said, and an aide in the audience spoke a
reminder into a wrist filo.

The interrogation of Captain Montoya went on and on, and Raeder cringed
mentally. If this is how he's handling people who behaved like a perfect
textbook scenario of responsible and heroic behavior, what's he going to
say to me?

As if he didn't know.

His own captain, Knott, had torn a nice long strip off Raeder for, as he
had put it, "Going off to perform one of the most harebrained pieces of
showboating I've ever seen in my entire career!"