"Serrano Legacy - 01 - Hunting Party" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

Hunting Party
by Elizabeth Moon

Copyright 1993

Familias Regnant Books by Elizabeth Moon
Hunting Party
Sporting Chance
Winning Colors
Once a Hero
Rules of Engagement
Change of Command
Against the Odds


PARTY FAVORS

They were somewhere inside, dry and safe. He imagined nooks and crannies
cushioned with colorful pillows and rugs, rock-walled chambers where naked
nymphs bathed in clear subterranean pools or streams.... He crept through the
darkness, smugly certain of what he would find. The light strengthened; he
felt his way around a corner of the rock, and saw them at last.
His first thought was disappointment; the dark-haired girl had her arm around
the lucky first-comer. The Prince wondered why he'd preferred her to the more
curvaceous blonde. His second thought stumbled over the first in a wave of
righteous rage. Ronnie!
"You unspeakable cad!" he said. "What are you..."
His voice trailed away as he noticed that the two black circles facing him
were the bores of hunting rifles like his own. Each girl, blonde and dark,
held hers steadily. "You're hunters, too?" he asked, with a half-nervous
laugh.
Ronnie's head came around, and he saw the dark stain of a black eye and
bruised face. "My sainted aunt," Ronnie said, in a voice that didn't sound
much like his own. "It's the Prince."
Chapter One
Heris Serrano went from her room in the small but respectable dockside hotel
on Rockhouse Station to the berth of her new command convinced that she looked
like an idiot. No one laughed aloud, but that only meant the bystanders had
chosen to snicker later rather than risk immediate confrontation with an
ex-Regular Space Services officer on the beach.
Heris kept her eyes away from any of those who might be contemplating humor,
the dockside traffic of the commercial district. Her ears burned; she could
feel the glances raking her back. She would not have changed her military
posture even if she could have walked any other way; she had been R.S.S. from
birth or before, daughter of officers, admirals' granddaughter and niece, a
service family for all the generations anyone bothered to count. Even that
miserable first year at the Academy had seemed familiar, almost homey: she had
heard the stories from parents, uncles, aunts, all her life.
And here she was, tricked out in enough gold braid and color to satisfy a