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

A car stopped in front of her with a clatter and squeal. She ignored it as she had the arrival of a party of
laborers on the platform, shuffling heavy boots and talking about a ball game.

"Hey, Chief?" a laborer called.

Primary residence on Holroyd Square, Xenos, with secondary residencesтАФ

A different voice bellowed, "Lady, ain't this one yours?"

Adele's mind rose shatteringly from depths of pure knowledge where she preferred to live; it reformed in
the present. An empty car stood in front of her. The lighted banner over the open door read ity enter.
Fifty yards down the rail, slowing as it approached the platform, was the Manine Village car that would
haul home the laborers, crammed in as tightly as books in dead storage.

"Thank you," she called, stowing her data unit in its pocket with the ease of long habit and a precise
mind. She stepped aboard the car just before the door closed; touched the destination plate over the
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PentacrestтАФthe map's clear cover was smeared almost illegible by the fingers of previous users, so
Adele had to peer in doubt before she made her choice; and then sat back on one of the pair of facing
benches as the car rocked into motion.

She was alone in a car in which twelve could sit and thirty ride in some degree of comfort. She might
have taken out her data unit again, but she decided to experience the trip instead. She wasn't going to
enjoy the ride, but there were things she could usefully learn about Xenos after her fifteen years of exile.

Besides, she was punishing herself for not noticing the car's arrival. She could've spent all afternoon there
on the platform, lost in personal researches when she had business for others to accomplish. Adele had
never been one to shirk her responsibilities, but the very degree of focus that made her effective
sometimes got in the way of carrying out social obligations.

Not that this meeting was social except in the general sense of being part of Adele's involvement in
human society.

The car swerved and squealed along the serpentine track serving a section of three docks. TheAristotle
dominated the whole area, an outward-curving wall of steel as viewed from the car's grimy windows.
Even if Adele craned her neck, she couldn't have seen the midpoint where the curve of the battleship's
cylindrical hull reversed.

In some places the shipfitters had removed plates, giving glimpses of tubing, vast machinery, and once an
open space the size of the Senate Chamber. It would be daunting to a civilian and was impressive even to
Adele, who was beginning to look at the world with the eyes of a naval officer.

A warship was a community. TheAristotle was a town of some size, with a complex street system and
rituals shared only with similar towns. Its population would be standoffish with strangers, even strangers
who wore the same uniform.