"Miller,.Steve.And.Lee,.Sharon.-.Liaden.Universe.01.-.Conflict.Of.Honors.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Steve)

forewarned, at least. Can you last till the run's over, girl?"

"It's only another six months, Standard." She touched the other
woman's arm. "I'll be fine."

"Hmmph." Shelly shouldered her bag and took the two strides
necessary to get her from cot to door. In the hall, she turned again.
"Take care of yourself, then, girl-o. Sorry we didn't meet in better
times."

"Take care: Shelly," Priscilla responded. It seemed that she was
hovering on the edge of something else, but the other woman had
turned and was stomping off, shoulders rounded and head bent in
mute protest at the short ceiling.

Priscilla turned in the opposite directionЧtoward the Trader's
roomЧher own head slightly bent. She was not tall as Terrans
went, and the ceiling was a good three inches above her curls;
there just seemed something about Daxflan that demanded bowed
heads.

Nonsense, she told herself firmly, rounding the corner by the
shuttlebay.

But it wasn't nonsense. All that Shelly had said was trueЧand
more. To be Terran was to be a second-class citizen on Daxflan,
with quarters beyond the cargo holds and meals served half-cold in
a cafeteria rigged out of what had once been a storage pod. The
Trader didn't speak Terran at all, though the captain had a few
words, and issued his orders in abrupt Trade unburdened with
such niceties as "please" and "thank you."

Priscilla sighed. She had served with Liadens on other trade ships,
though never on a Liaden ship. She wondered if conditions were
the same on all of them. Her thoughts went back to Shelly, who had
sworn she would never serve on another Liaden ship; though
Shelly had done okay until the Healer had left two ports ago, to be
replaced by a simple robotic medkit. That move had been called
temporary. "More Liaden lies!" She had said. "They're liars. All
liars!"

The first mate was a crook and the second a rounderЧwhatever,
Priscilla amended, a rounder was. Liaden and Terran, respectively,
and as alike as if the same mother had borne them.

Perhaps, Priscilla thought, the Trader only hired a certain type of
person to serve him. She wondered what that said about Priscilla
Mendoza, so eager for a berth as cargo master that she had not
stopped first to look about her. Yet she had been eager. In a mere
ten years she had gone from Food Service TechnicianЧwhich