"SD Gottesman - Firepower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gotlieb Phyllis)

window, Babe, and try to forget you're a lady!"
THE HUE and cry has been called the most shameful tradition of genus homo; for
generations it had been abandoned in favor of more civilized and efficient
methods, such as teletype alarms and radio squad cars. Now, in the taking-over
by the Navy, the dishonorable tradition was revived as a further testimony that
this taking-over was nothing short of barbarism once you sheared it of the
nickelplate of the lineships and the gold braid dripping from officers'
shoulders
Behind the two fleeing people poured a ragged mob of marines and sailors,
roaring inarticulate things about what they would do to the sneaking murderers
when they caught them.
Luckily--in a way--an officer of the Navy popped from a doorway armed to the
teeth and charging them to surrender. This they gladly did as he stood off the
mob with his weapons.
They found themselves at last in a lighter, one of the small boats connected to
the Stupendous.. In an off-hand way, as the boat left the ground, the officer
said: "I recognized you, you know."
"Really ?" asked Babe, frozen-faced.
"Not you," he hastily explained. "But Commander Bartok--I've seen his picture.
Did you know you were proscribed, Commander?"
"I assumed so," answered the commander dryly. The officer--an ensign--was very
young and callow. The hard lines were growing about his mouth, though. When he
could call this "pacification" without laughing out loud, thought Bartok, he'd
be a real Navy man.
"How's everything going?" asked the commander. "Would you know how the
campaign's progressing in other parts?"
The ensign, seemingly delighted to converse on equal terms with a Wing
Commander, even though a proscribed one, drew nearer as much nearer as he could,
in the windowless, tiny, completely enclosed compartment that was the load-space
of the lighter, and grinned: "Some dashed mysterious things have been happening,
and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you johnnies in Intelligence were behind
them."
He shifted uneasily beneath Bartok's steady, piercing stare. "You needn't look
at me like that," he complained. "Even if it isn't true it's the official
non-official news--if you understand me." He chuckled.
Bartok moved swiftly then, clutching the ensign by the throat and bringing an
elbow into his midriff. The ensign, not wholly taken by surprise, apparently,
drew his gun and fired.
THEY DRAGGED his bloody body--he had been shot in the face, and it had run all
over the enclosed space--from the lighter a few minutes later. Babe was having
an hysterical attack and the ensign frantically signalled to the sailors who
took in the boat to relieve him of her. The engineer of the little craft came
from his cubbyhole in the bow and took her by the arm, led her away from the
mess on the floor.
"Poor girl," said the ensign. "She must have loved him terribly."
To follow Babe MacNeice, after the first torrential outburst she was dry-eyed,
but there was a catch in her voice when she spoke: "Where are you taking me?"
"To the O. D., lady. he'll route you."
The Officer of the Day decided that she was important enough to go directly to
the Admiral.