"James Alan Gardner - League of Peoples 01 - Expendable" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner James Alan)

Our Captain


The jacaranda on the door of the conference room was red. The door opened as it heard our footsteps
approach. Yarrun let me enter firstтАФin public, we made a point of observing rank protocol.

Captain Prope stood at the room's Star Window, apparently lost in thought. She stared out on the
star-filled blackness like the captain of a clipper ship inhaling sea air from the foredeck: spine straight as
iron, hands on hips, head tilted back slightly so her chestnut-red hair hung free of her shoulders. If she
had been facing us, we would have likely seen her nostrils flared to the wind.

No doubt she had assumed this heroic pose several minutes ago, and had been waiting impatiently for us
to walk in. For some reason, she desperately wanted to impress us.

The door closed behind us with a hiss. Prope took this as her cue to turn and notice us. "Oh, come in, sit
down, yes." She laughed lightly, a frothy little laugh guaranteed by Outward Fleet Psych-techs to make
subordinates feel like equals. Prope was an ardent student of the Mechanics of Charisma.
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"Sorry," she said. "My mind was somewhere else." She turned back for one more wistful peek at the
night. "I can never get over how beautiful the stars are."

I did not point out that the view was a color-enhanced computer simulation. A real window would have
jeopardized the integrity of the ship's hull.




The News


We sat in our usual chairs (me on the captain's right, Yarrun on her left), and rolled up to the conference
table.

"Would either of you like coffee?" the captain asked. We shook our heads in unison. "You're sure?
Some fruit juice maybe? No? Well, I hope you don't mind if I have a little something. I always enjoy a
midnight snack."

She smiled in our general direction, but her eyes were too low to meet ours. Like most people, she
could not look at our faces for any length of time. She talked to our chests or our hair or our ears... never
to our faces, except for a quick glance now and then to confirm her squeamishness.

For some reason, she thought Yarrun and I didn't notice.

We watched as she poured herself coffee. In public, she drank it black. When she thought no one was
watching, she used double loads of cream and sugar.