"David Feintuch - Seafort 03 - Prisoner's Hope" - читать интересную книгу автора (Feintuch David)

was icy. "Admiral Tremaine, you are relieved. Mr. Seafort, you may go,"

"Aye aye, sir." I saluted and quickly made my escape.

1 trudged the back yard of Admiralty House to the spaceport perimeter and the
terminal building seventy yards beyond. Other than the hum of a distant engine,
all was silent.
At the far end of the tarmac, freight was piled high. My Hibernia's cargo would
soon be to the supplies and equipment stockpiled here for the U.N. defending
our colony from the aliens.

When last I'd seen Hope Nation I'd been so young, and innocent of the shattered
oath that damned me.

Though I was fully recuperated from my physical ordeal on Challenger, my
appalling misdeeds left me subject to fits of black despair. On our long journey
to Hope Nation my companion and lover, Annie Wells, had done her best to allay
them in the solitude of our cabin. ,

I wondered if Annie knew how I relied on her ministrations. Now even she would
soon be gone. I'd come to know Annie on Challenger; she'd been among the
transients from the slums of Lower New York bound for faraway Detour as
part of a foolish social welfare program. After Challenger's ill-fated voyage,
we'd sailed again on Hibernia.

We'd made the sixteen-month cruise in one interminable Fuse, with a tiny
corrective jump at the end. I'd docked at massive Orbit Station, taken the
shuttle groundside, reported to the now bustling Admiralty House, Admiral
Tremaine's recall orders among the packet of chips in my case.

Now I looked around, wondered what to do with my day before going back aloft to
Annie.

I wished I could talk over the morning's encounter with a friend like Midshipman
Derek Can, one of the officers I'd forced to stay behind when I was transferred
to Challenger. But Derek was stationed on U.N.S. Catalonia en route to Detour,
and not expected home for months. So I was alone, on my mandatory long-leave,
free of responsibilities. I had time to look up Vax Holser and the others.

As I crossed the terminal a whoop split the air; I turned to see Lieutenant
Alexi Tamarov bounding after me. "You're here! Thank Lord God, you made it!" He
snapped a crisp salute, grinning with pleasure. Then he saw my face and
blanched. "My God, what happened, sir?"

My scar had that effect.

I offered him my hand, relieved beyond words to see him safe and well, "A laser,
on board Challenger, It's healed,**

"You lookтАФ" He remembered his manners and bit it off. Friend or no friend, I was