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

of the Compassionate Hand to the berserker brigandry of Aethar's World. But aside from those whose
business it was to keep the borders safe and enforce the laws, most of the Familias worlds and the people on
them had behaved as if nothing but fashion would ever change.
And now it had. With the king's resignation, with Lorenza's flight, the founding families looked at each other
with far more suspicion than trust. If the king had poisoned his own sonsтАФor if Lorenza had done it for himтАФif
she had attacked the powerful de Marktos family through CeceliaтАФthen who else might have been her target?
Her allies? Those who had used her services through the decades tried to cover their tracks, and others
worked to uncover them.
What bothered Heris the most, in all this, was the civilians' innocent assumption that "the Fleet" would never
let anything bad happen. She had heard it from one and then anotherтАФno need to worry about Centrum
Rose; the Fleet will see that they stay in the alliance. No need to worry about the Benignity attacking; the
Fleet will protect us. Yet she knewтАФand Bunny should have knownтАФthat the Fleet itself was suspect.
Lorenza hadn't been the only rat in the woodpile. Admiral Lepescu and whoever cooperated with him . . .
But she could not solve everything, not all at once. She had other work to do before Cecelia came aboard the
yacht.
Her personal stack had a message from Arash Livadhi. Now what, she thought. It had been a long enough
day already, and she had hoped Petris would get back in time for some extended dalliance. She called
Arash.
"How are things going?" he asked brightly, as if she had initiated the contact.
"Fine with me . . . and you?"
"Oh, very well, very well. It's been an interesting few weeks, of course."
So it had, with rumors of entire squadrons of Fleet in mutiny. With one cryptic message from her
grandmother, and a very uncryptic message from the cousin who had always hated her.
"Yes," said Heris, drumming her fingers on her desk. "I had a message that you called," she said finally,
when the silence had gone on too long.
"Oh. Yes. That. I just . . . I just wondered if you'd like to have dinner sometime. Tonight maybe? There's a
new band at Salieri's."
"Sorry," Heris said, not really sorry at all. "There's ship's business to deal with." Certainly the captain's
relationship with the First Engineer was ship's business.
"Oh . . . ah . . . another time? Maybe tomorrow?"
Tone and expression both suggested urgency. What was he up to? Heris opened her mouth to tell him to
come clean, then remembered the doubtful security of their link. "I . . . should be free then. Why not? What
time?"
"Whatever's best for you . . . maybe mid-second shift?" An odd way of giving a time, for either a civilian or a
Fleet officer. Heris nodded at the screen, and hoped she could figure out later what kind of signal he was
giving her.
"Mid-second indeed. Meet you there?"
"Why not at the shuttle bay concourse? You shouldn't have to dash halfway across the Station by yourself."
Odder and odder. Arash had never minded having his dates use up their own resources. Heris entered the
time and place in her desktop calendar and grinned at him.
"It's in my beeper. See you tomorrow."
"Yes . . ." He seemed poised to say more, then sighed and said "Tomorrow, then" instead.

"There's a little problem," Arash Livadhi said. He had been waiting when Heris reached the shuttle docks
concourse; he wore his uniform with his old dash and attracted more than one admiring glance. Heris wanted
to tell the oglers how futile their efforts were, but knew better. Now he walked beside her as courteously as a
knight of legend escorting his lady. It made Heris nervous. "Nothing major, just a bit . . . awkward."
"And awkward problem solving is a civilian specialty? Come on, Arash, you have some of the best finaglers in
Fleet on your ship."
"It's not that kind of thing, exactly."