"David Drake - RCN Leary 1- With The Lightnings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

He returned his attention to the waiting servant. "I'm going to take a stroll down to the docks, Hogg," he said. "I'll watch the cutter lift, and then I'll see if I can find some other entertainment. You needn't wait up for me."
Hogg pursed his lips in whiskery concern. "You'll be alone, then, sir?" he asked. "One of the stewards here-"
"I'll be alone," Daniel said, just as firmly as Weisshampl had spoken before she toppled into the street, "until I find that other entertainment. Carry on, Hogg!"
He strode toward the staircase with a martial stride; and, because Hogg snatched the remains of the chair out of the way, Daniel didn't trip and plunge down those stairs nose first.

The gardens behind the Electoral Place were unlighted except for the lamp hanging in front of the shelter where a dozen guards chewed tobacco and complained of being bored. They watched Adele pass without concern. If she'd been trying to enter the palace they might have challenged her; and again, they might not. Boredom created apathy, and apathy swallowed first initiative and then life itself.
Adele smiled. She'd always found whatever she was doing to be extremely interesting. Her experience didn't include standing in one place and expecting nothing to happen, but there was no lack of other ways to spend one's existence. The guards would probably say that their duties were better than having a real job, but Adele was by no means sure they were correct.
First initiative, then life . . .
The vast black mass of the palace was between her and the vehicles arriving for the other guests, but even so she had a hint of the pomp of the leavetaking. Most of the foreigners and a good third of the Kostromans at the banquet came and left in aircars, either personally owned or hired for the event. Their lights swam across the sky in temporary constellations, multicolored and blinking. Even the guests who used ground vehicles or canal boats appointed like yachts made the air waver with searchlight beams to advertise their importance.
Adele wove past the construction vehicles and locked equipment trailers parked along the rear driveway. The clutter must have complicated deliveries of food for the banquet. The whole area reminded her of the floor of the library.
Walter III was renovating portions of the palace and changing the garden layout as well. Were his other projects as ill-conceived as his creation of an Electoral Library?
An aircar cruised by a thousand feet overhead. Its klaxon grunted over the howl of its drive fans. The racket was unpleasant at ground level and must be downright hideous for the occupants of the car, but pride would be served. The owner could have gained even more attention by painting himself-or herself!-blue and dancing nude in the Grand Salon; though as fat as the banquet guests tended to be, the result might have been even more unaesthetic than the klaxon.
She reached the back of the gardens. The right half of the wrought iron gate was missing, a casualty of the night Walter Hajas became Elector. "Hey!" called one of the guards as Adele walked by.
She threw up her right hand so that the light aimed at her face didn't leach away all of her night vision. "I'm a guest going home," she said and resumed her brisk pace in the direction of her lodgings.
"Don't you have a lantern?" a guard called.
"No," she said without slowing or turning her head.
A light would make her a target. By walking close to the darkened buildings she would be past muggers before they were aware of her presence. If they chose to come after her, then, well . . . her left hand was in her pocket, and it wasn't empty.
The carpenters were sorted out, though she'd revisit the cabinet shop in the morning to make sure Mistress Bozeman hadn't had second thoughts. The crew had the proper materials, now; enough for a start at least.
Three workmen-two, in all likelihood; the Master Carpenter still wasn't going to get shavings on her robes-weren't enough to accomplish anything quickly, and the journeymen weren't trained for this job however good their intentions now were. Still, one step at a time. Adele was further forward than she had been at this time yesterday.
Rainbow light flared several seconds before the roar of plasma motors reached her. A starship was lifting from the sea. The wavering torch of its exhaust continued to climb even after the beat of the motors muted to a throb that was felt rather than heard.
One step at a time.

Daniel stood beside the timber piling at the end of a pier in the natural harbor, now used only by surface traffic. Half a mile to the west, the tide rocked starships in the Floating Harbor.
When Daniel was younger he'd have sat cross-legged on top of the piling instead of resting his palm on the wood as he did now. The staff at Bantry used to joke that the boy thought he was a seabird, though it wasn't anything so simple as that. The pose required a degree of agility, an awareness of the wind's strength and direction.
And yes, it set Daniel Leary a little apart. He relished the feet-on-the-ground human world, but he hadn't been willing to be limited to it even as a boy.
Daniel snorted. He'd be on the piling now if he weren't wearing his only 2nd Class uniform. The damp wood would stain the cloth, and he had further use for the uniform tonight. Women noticed a uniform, oh yes they did. A uniform meant the wearer was committed and disciplined. You didn't have to be much of a naturalist to know that females of most species were hardwired to value those traits.
The surface harbor was active even at this hour. The larger vessels that fed the people and industries of Kostroma City generally docked during daylight hours, but loading and unloading proceeded around the clock. Several big freighters sat in floodlit pools across which their irregular outlines threw wedges of shadow. A derrick squealed; whistles called, and once a voice boomed in tones of unintelligible anger from a distant ship.
Lighters served the starships in the Floating Harbor, transferring cargo in both directions. One was even now nosing toward a quay to the right, its diesel engine chuffing an ill-tempered rhythm. Tarpaulins covered three pieces of heavy equipment on the open deck. Tokamaks for fusion power generation, Daniel thought, but he couldn't be sure even when he dialed his goggles' magnification and light-gathering features full on.
There was more than human activity going on in the harbor. Ripples crossed the water in faintly starlit Vs. By switching to thermal imaging Daniel could see the fish that cruised beneath the surface, browsing the microorganisms which bloomed in the nutrient-rich sewage borne here by the city's canals.
Daniel was focused on a fish longer than his arm. A leatherfin, he thought, though the Aglaia's natural history database hadn't been specific to Kostroma.
A shadow flicked in and out of the goggles' present narrow focus. The water exploded in foam.
Daniel reflexively switched back to a normal field of view while remaining in the infrared spectrum. A whiptail had been sitting on a bollard not far from him. It had just glided out over the water and snagged the fish with a stroke of its barbed, prehensile tail.
"Bravo!" Daniel shouted. A perfectly executed attack on a worthy opponent!
Flapping laboriously with the fish snugged close to its belly, the furry-winged "bird" swept in broad circuit around the harbor. The whiptail's vans flared like stage curtains as it landed on a freighter's foremast. Its lower beak stabbed once, severing its victim's notocord at the base of the skull; then it began to feed on strips daintily pincered from the flanks.
Daniel supposed it was a common enough sight to anyone on Kostroma who paid attention to what went on around them; but it wasn't common to him. And indeed, how many people on any planet paid attention to anything at all?
The freighters served the city; the lighters served the starships in the Floating Harbor. Smaller vessels yet, bumboats, served the crews of those starships.
Some of them were little more than dinghies. They carried fruit, liquor, and sexual partners to the personnel who had to remain on board. Not infrequently the boats returned to land with drugs and other contraband, but that had been a fact of ports throughout human history.
At this hour most bumboats clustered either along the harbor shore or were tied to concrete floats among the starships. A few of the craft burred slowly over the water, driven by tiny engines. They were probably acting as water taxis, taking officers out to their ships or bringing to shore ratings finally released on leave when they completed their duties.
Officers, even Cinnabar naval officers, allowed the bumboats to attend their ships because they couldn't stop it. A captain who tried to isolate his crew after a voyage through sponge space would lose his personnel to desertion if not his life to mutiny.
Starship crews had to be highly trained and motivated to do their jobs. They understood the need for groundside maintenance and an anchor watch; but a wise captain, a sane captain, likewise understood the need for relaxation after touchdown. A disciplined, happy crew kept its on-board partying within bounds; but it would party.
Plasma bloomed in the Floating Harbor, casting into relief the starships tethered on the land side of the Aglaia. Daniel watched the cutter lift on its single plasma jet.
The little vessel was fitted with High Drive, but it was too small for the masts and crew necessary to enter sponge space. Lt. Mon would carry a message cell above Kostroma's magnetosphere, then launch it toward Cinnabar.
Interstellar messages had to be carried, either by ships or by unmanned message cells. A message cell was programmed to a fixed interdimensional course. Because the Matrix through which it proceeded wasn't fixed, not really, cells were much less trustworthy than a manned vessel.
Their advantage was their relatively small size. The Aglaia carried ten 30-foot message cells in a volume that would have been barely sufficient for a single pinnace capable of interstellar travel. A fleet would include dispatch vessels, but a single ship which needed to send a message home used a message cell.
To Daniel's surprise another cutter rose, this time from the opposite end of the Floating Harbor. It had been launched from the Goetz von Berlichingen, the Alliance dispatch vessel.
No doubt the Alliance crew was on the same mission as Lt. Mon, to send home a message of great import. The Alliance delegation must have used shore-to-ship radio despite the risk of interception, since no courier had flown out to the starship to deliver the message.
The message was probably about the deep diplomatic significance of somebody farting at the official dinner. People who spent their lives studying minutiae found crises in events that would be utterly forgotten in weeks if not days. The stars were eternal, and there was always something genuinely new among them for humans to discover.
Daniel laughed with joy at being alive. The pause had brought his system back close to normal functioning despite the load of alcohol he'd taken on board. He could navigate without the risk of falling over.
The supper club where he'd met Silena the other night was only a few blocks away. It was possible that she'd be there again; and if not, well, places like that usually had at least one sweet young thing who'd welcome rescue by an officer of the RCN.
Whistling a gavotte, Lt. Daniel Leary sauntered toward his duty.