"David Drake - RCN 01 - With the Lightnings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

cap brim against the glare.
Starships took off and landed on water both because of the damage their plasma motors would do to solid
ground and -because water was an ideal reaction mass to be converted to plasma. Once out of a planetтАЩs atmos-phere,
ships used their High Drive, a matter/anti-matter conversion process and far more efficient, but to switch to High Drive
too early was to court -disaster.
At one time Kostroma Harbor had served all traffic, but for the past generation only surface vessels used the city
wharfs. The Floating Harbor built of hollow concrete pontoons accommodated the starships a half-mile offshore.
The pontoons were joined in hexagons that damped the waves generated by takeoffs and landings, isolating
individual ships like larvae in the cells of a beehive. Seagoing lighters docked on the outer sides of the floats to deliver
and receive cargo.
The ship landing just now was a small one of three hundred tons or so; a yacht, or more probably a government
dispatch vessel. The masts folded along the hull indicated the plane on which Cassini Radiation drove the ship
through sponge space was very large compared to the vesselтАЩs displacement.
The hull shape and the way two of the four High Drive nozzles were mounted on outriggers identified the ship as
a product of the Pleasaunce system, the capital of the deceptively named Alliance of Free Stars. That was perfectly
proper since the vessel was -unarmed. Kostroma was neutral, trading with both parties to the conflict.
KostromaтАЩs real value to combatants lay not with her navy but in her merchant fleet and extensive trading
network to regions of the human diaspora where neither Cinnabar nor the Alliance had significant direct contact.
Formally the Reciprocity Agreement granted Cinnabar only the right to land warships on Kostroma instead of staying
ten light-minutes out like those of other -nations.
As a matter of unofficial policy, however, neutral Kostroman vessels carried cargoes to Cinnabar but not to
worlds of the Alliance. That was an advantage for which General Porra, Guarantor of the Alliance, would have given
his left nut.
The dispatch vessel touched down in a vast gout of steam; the roar of landing arrived several seconds later as
the cloud was already beginning to dissipate. Daniel raised his goggles and continued walking. A graceful bridge
humped over a major canal; from the top of the arch Daniel glimpsed the roof of the ElectorтАЩs -Palace.
An Alliance dispatch vessel might mean Porra or his bureaucrats believed there was a realistic chance of
detach-ing Kostroma from Cinnabar. Alternatively, the Alliance could simply be trying to raise the price -Admiral
Lasowski would finally agree to pay. Walter III would have invited an Alliance delegation as a bargaining chip even if
Porra hadnтАЩt planned to send one on his own -account.
Well, that was only technically a concern for Lt. Daniel Leary. As a practical matter, he was a tourist visiting a
planet which provided a range of unfamiliar culture, architecture, and wildlife.
Whistling again, he strolled off the bridge and along the broad avenue leading toward the palace.

Adele Mundy stood in the doorway, fingering a lock of her short brown hair as she surveyed what was only in
name the Library of the Elector of Kostroma. Adele was an organized person; she would organize even this. The
difficulty was in knowing where to start.
The room was large and attractive in its way; ways, really, because whichever Elector had been responsible for
the decoration had been catholic in his taste. Time had darkened the wood paneling from its original bleached pallor.
The enormous stone hood of the fireplace was carved with a scene of hunting in forests that looked nothing like
Kostroman vegetation, and blue-figured tiles formed the hearth itself. The knees -supporting the coffered ceiling
imitated -gargoyles.
The last were a singularly inappropriate choice for the interior of a library. The notion of figures gaping to gargle
rainwater onto AdeleтАЩs collections made her shudder.
The chamber had probably been intended as a drawing room for Electoral gatherings smaller and more private
than those in the enormous Grand Salon below on the second floor. There was quite a lot of space in terms of cubic
feet since the ceiling was thirty feet above, but there would have to be a great deal of modification to make it usable for
shelving books.
The modification was one of the problems Adele had been trying to surmount in the three weeks since she had
arrived in Kostroma City to take up her appoint-ment as the Electoral Librarian. One of many -problems.