"Elizabeth Moon - Serrano 3 - Winning Colors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

trust those of us who can be trusted, and recognize deceit even in former shipmates."
"And you think the way to do this is to hire civilians." That came out flat, with an edge of sarcasm. She didn't
like that "chose to live in a civilian world." If there'd been any other way . . .
"I think the way to do it is to admit what went wrong and work on correcting it. Isn't that what you would do if
an admiral pointed out a characteristic error?"
Heris wanted to say that Cecelia was no admiral, but she had to admit the logic of Cecelia's argument. She
had mistaken the cause of Sirkin's problem; she had not even looked for sabotage, not seriously. "I don't
want to fire any of our present crew," she began, crossing mental fingers as she told herself that Koutsoudas,
not yet aboard, still counted as "present crew."
"No need. Just hire civilians for a while. Like Brun." Heris almost glared. Had she set this up with Bunny, as
much to force a civilian crew on Heris as to help Brun? Cecelia smiled at her. "I'm sure you can find others,
perhaps not as good as Sirkin, but good enough. Think of recruits, if you must, rather than the trained people
you had. Surely there were good and bad recruits."
"Oh yes." Heris chuckled in spite of herself, remembering a miserable tour as an officer in charge of basic
training. She had hated it, and she hadn't been very good at it. Of course there had been bad recruitsтАФZitler,
for instance, who had come into the Fleet convinced that he could make a fortune manufacturing illicit drugs
aboard ship. Or the skinny girl from some mining colony who had gotten all the way through medical
screening without anyone noticing she had parasites.
"There you are, then," Cecelia said. "It's just a matter of overcoming your biases."
"Yes, ma'am," said Heris, with enough emphasis that Cecelia should know when to quit. She hoped. It was
unnerving to see all those years of experience in the bright eyes across from her. She began to understand
why Cecelia had been reluctant to have rejuv treatments before.

"I don't see why it makes the least difference," Ronnie said, into Raffaele's dark hair. "I didn't go along with
my family; you know that. I'm the one who got Aunt Cecelia out of that nursing home. Why should your
parents take it out on me?"
"They're not taking it out on you," Raffaele said. "They're pulling their investments out of your parents'
operations, and they don't think that's a good time to discuss marriage settlements."
"But will they come around later?" He didn't want later; he wanted right this minute. But with Raffaele,
pressure wouldn't work.
"I don't know, Ron. They're seriously annoyed with your parents, and they don't see your prospects improving
any time soon. They think you'll be under a cloud politicallyтАФ"
"Hang politics!" Ronnie said. "I have enough; you have enough; we could go off somewhere and just liveтАФ"
"But you have a Seat in Council nowтАФ"
"As long as that lasts," Ronnie said under his breath. While daily life seemed to be unchanged, the political
structure had shifted back and forth dramatically in the past few weeks.
"They don't want trouble between us because you're voting your family stock, and your Seat, and they're
voting against you. And don't say it wouldn't cause trouble, because look how angry you are now."
Unfair. He wasn't angry because they'd voted against him in Council; he was angry because they didn't want
Raffa to marry him because he might be upset later if they voted against him. That was too complicated; he
fell back on the obvious. "I love you, Raffa," Ronnie said.
"I know. And I love you. But we are both wound up in our families and their rivalries, and I can't see either of
us pulling something dramatic and stagey." With her hair in a neat braid behind, and a tailored soft tunic over
the blouse and slacks, she looked entirely too rational.
"Brun did," Ronnie said. He could imagine himself running off with Raffa . . . he thought . . . but then again he
wanted to have his usual credit line, his usual communications links. . . .
"Brun is a law unto herself," Raffa said. "Even as a fluffhead, she was, and nowтАФwe aren't like Brun, either of
us. We were born to be respectable."
"We did have one adventure," Ronnie said, almost wistfully. He didn't like thinking of most of their time on the
island, but finding Raffa and being comforted . . . that he could live with.