"David Drake - RCN 02 - Lt. Leary Commanding" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

is with the number of ships going into service, there's a risk that some bosun'll snatch you up for a rigger
and you'll be off-planet before you can catch your breath."

Uncle Stacey couldn't walk thirty feet unaided any more, though he seemed more resigned to his
weakness than Daniel himself was. Some of Daniel's earliest memories were of being carried in his uncle's
arms along the yards of a ship being refitted, hopping from spar to spar over what seemed like
chasmsтАФand probably were six feet or more. It had been a good upbringing for a boy who was to enter
the RCN, not that anybody had imagined that at the time.

Daniel pushed the wheelchair down the concrete apron, glad to be off the catwalk which crossed the
open dock to the corvette's main hatch. It was a steel grating and not much wider than the chair, though
that didn't concern either Daniel or his uncle.

What had concerned Daniel was Adele. His signals officerтАФhis friendтАФhad many skills beyond those to
be expected from one trained as a librarian, but a sense of balance was noticeablynot one of those.

"Leary!" called one of the new arrivals. "By God, that's Daniel Leary, isn't it?"

Daniel turned, rotating the wheelchair to the side with one hand. That gave Uncle Stacey a clear view
also instead of him trying to look over his shoulder in desperate isolation.

Mixed groups of civilians and senior officers in 1st Class uniforms were getting out of the limousines, but
the speaker was the lieutenant in charge of the detachment of ratings from the van. He was of middling
height with a florid face and a few extra poundsтАФlike Daniel himself. Daniel found him half-recognizable
but not really familiar.

"Tom Ireland, Leary," the fellow called, striding down the apron with his hand out to clasp Daniel's.
"Two years ahead of you at the Academy, but in South Battalion while you were in North."

Good God, Ireland claiming his acquaintance! To the junior cadets upperclassmen at the Academy were
generally aloof strangers, sometimes slavering monsters. Ireland had been in the former category, a vague
presence to Cadet Daniel Leary; and Daniel Leary would have been less than the paving stones of the
Quad to Ireland. Suddenly they'd become fellow schoolmates. . . .

"I heard about your little affair on Kostroma," Ireland said, seizing Daniel's hand and pumping it. Behind
him the passengers from the limousines were drifting toward them with the sort of meaningful aimlessness
of goats grazing across a field. "Well handled, I'll tell the world! Though you had a bit of luck come your
way, it seems to me. Not so?"

"Very definitely so," Daniel said, feeling his lips form a smile hard enough to cut glass. "Permit me to
introduce you to a great part of that luck, my signals officer, Mistress Mundy."
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Ireland blinked with mild confusion; his little mustache twitched. If he'd noticed Adele at all it was as a
signalman; a specialist, atechnician , a category necessary for the proper functioning of the RCN but
which operated on a different plane from commissioned officers like himself and Daniel.