"Serrano Legacy - 02 - Sporting Chance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

"Mmm. An authority block?"
"I suppose. Except I've never resented your authority, you know. Not with the ship. It never has bothered me who captained a ship, so long as they were good at it. I knew early on I never wouldа.а.а. didn't really want to." That surprised her.
"Didn't you?"
"No. Not all enlisted are lusting for command, you know. Commanders maybe, but not command itself. It's damned scary; I can see that in your eyes. Maybe I feel that way hereЧit's scary, because I'm stepping out of my role, with the commander. It didn't bother me off the shipа.а.а."
"And it's not something I can command," Heris said. Some did; she knew that. But she couldn't. "How about we pretend this isn't the ship?"
"I'll try." It seemed to be workingЧHeris had felt the shifts in her own breathing that went with great pleasure long deferredЧwhen the intercom intruded.
"Captain SerranoЧthere's something on the screenЧ" She lunged across Petris to answer it, and he cursed.
By the time she'd been to the bridge, where the image onscreen had vanished, and gotten back to her quarters, Petris was gone. Heris didn't call him back. Later. There would be time enough later.
а
Chapter Two
Nothing had been settledЧnot about the prince, not about PetrisЧwhen theSweet Delight made its last jump. They came out of the anomalous status of jump space precisely where Sirkin had intended, for which Heris gave her a nod of approval. She wished Sirkin hadn't had a lover waiting at Rockhouse MajorЧshe'd have liked to keep her as crew.
"Somebody flicked our ID beacon," Oblo said. "Stripped it clean and fast: R.S.S., I'd say, remembering the other sideа.а.а."
"We're not fugitive," Heris said. "And they'd be looking for theSweet Delight , consideringа.а.а."
"Mmm. Wish we had better longscans and a decoder that could do the same. Feels all wrong to have someone stripping our beacon when we can't strip theirs."
"Mass sensors show a lot of ships," Sirkin put in. "And the delays are too long to tell me where they are nowЧ"
"That's what I meant," Oblo said. "Now in the Fleet, we've gotЧ" He broke off suddenly as Heris cleared her throat, and looked up at her. "Sorry, Captain. I'm used to being on the inside of security, not outside."
"We'd all best be careful, if we want to stay outside a prison, and not inside," Heris said. The only bad thing about SirkinЧand Bunny's crewЧwas this tension between what the ex-military crew knew and what they weren't supposed to know and couldn't share with shipmates. It would have been easier if they'd all been her former crew members.
She had sent off a message when they first dropped out of FTL, with the codes given them by the Crown Minister. Now the system's outer beacons blipped the first response.
"Captain,Sweet Delight , proceed on R.S.S. escort courseЧ" and the coordinates followed.
Oblo whistled. "They're putting us down the dragon's throat, all right."
"What?" Sirkin asked.
"Escort course is the fastest way insystem; eats power and makes a roil everyone in the whole system can pick up. Hardly what I'd call discreet. All other traffic gives way, and we're snagged by a tug that could stop a heavy cruiser, in a counterburn maneuver. Plus, we go past the heavy guns and damn near every piece of surveillance between us and Rockhouse."
Heris glared at him, and Oblo actually flushed. He knew better, and she had already warned him. Sirkin wasn't military, had never been military, wasn't ever going to be military, and he had no business explaining Fleet procedure to her. But he had a thing for neat-framed dark-haired girls, whether they liked men or not, and he had taken a liking to Sirkin.
They were only halfway home, as Cecelia put it, when the escorts pulled up on either side. R.S.S., both of them; Heris got an exterior visual and grinned. She had once captained one of these stubby, peculiar-looking ships; ridiculously overpowered, designed for fast maneuvers within a single system, their small crews prided themselves on "flair." On distant campaigns, they traveled inside podships, even though they mounted FTL drives.
The voicecom board lit. Heris flicked the lit buttons, and then a sequence which informed the caller that she had no secured channel.
"Ahoy,Sweet Delight . R.S.S. EscortAdrian Channel callingЧ"
"Captain Serrano,Sweet Delight ," Heris said.
"You don't have any kind of secure com?" At least that showed some discretion; she'd been afraid they'd ask in clear if she had the prince aboard.
"Negative."
"Wellа.а.а." A pause, during which Heris amused herself by imagining the comments passing between the two escorts and their base. Then the voice returned. "We understand you have urgent need for priority docking at Rockhouse Major. Is that correct?"
"Yes, it is," Heris said. "The relevant enabling codes were in my initial transmissionЧ"
"Yes, ma'am. Well, ma'am, we're here just to see you make a safe transit, and chase any boneheaded civvie that doesn't listen to his Traffic Control updates out of your way. Our instruments show you on courseЧ" Oblo scowled at that; with him on the board there was no question of being off course.
The counterburn maneuver, when it came, strained the resources of theSweet Delight 's artificial gravity; dust shimmered in the air and made everyone on the bridge cough. For one moment Heris felt nausea, then her stomach ignored the odd sensations. Others were not so lucky. She saw a medic light go on in the prince's stateroom, and in the galley.
Then the internal gravity stabilized again; the tug's grapple snagged the yacht's bustle, and Petris shut down their drive. Far faster than a commercial tug, the R.S.S. ship shoved them toward Rockhouse Major, and put them in a zero-relative motion less than 100 meters away from the docking bay. Visuals, boosted several magnifications, showed the Royal Seal above their assigned bay, and the gleaming sides of a Royal shuttle and a larger, deepspace yacht twice the size ofSweet Delight . Grapples shot out, homing on magnetic patches on the yacht's hull. These would stabilize, but not change, their inward drift under docking thrusters. Heris had always enjoyed docking maneuvers, and the chance to show off at a Royal berth delighted her. She eased the yacht in, with neither haste nor delay, until the grapples were fully retracted and the hull snugged against the access ports.
Until this moment, she had spoken with the Rockhouse Major Sector Landing ControlЧa professional exactly like any other landing control officerЧand their exchanges were limited to the necessary details of bringing the yacht in. Now another channel lit on the board. Heris took a steadying breath. This would be a very different official, she was sureЧand even after hours reading everything Cecelia's library had on Royal protocol, she wasn't sure she would get it right. Once, she could have relied on the military equivalent, but as a civilian captainЧ
"Royal Security to the captain ofSweet Delight Ч"
"Captain Serrano here," she said.
"We need to establish a secure communications link before your passengers debark; we'll need hardwire access. Open the CJ-145 exterior panel next to the cargo access, please."
At least he'd said "please." For a moment she was surprised that they knew which panel to use, but of course they would: the yacht was a standard design, built at a well-known yard. They'd had weeks to get all the specs.
"Just a moment, please," she said. She nodded at Oblo, who put the relevant circuits up on a screen, and cut out all but the communications input. No reason to give them easy access to Cecelia's entire system, just in case they were of a mind to strip that, too. When he grinned at her, she popped the latch and waited while Security set the link up.
And after all that, the formalities were no different than docking at any fairly large Fleet base. Mr. SmithЧthe princeЧhad spoken to Security from his suite, she presumed in some code. She herself admitted the Royal Security team (one technician in gray, the others in dress blues, a major commanding) who would escort the prince down to the planet. No one seemed to expect any protocol from her that she didn't already understand.
But when the prince came into the lounge, Lady Cecelia was with him. Her maid followed, with a small travel case in her hand. The prince's servants, behind the maid, filled the passage with luggage.
"I'm going with him," Cecelia said. Heris, who hadn't expected this, stared at her. Cecelia pulled herself to her full height, and looked every millimeter the rich, titled lady she was. "The Crown Minister gave me the responsibilityЧ"
"But madamа.а.а. we're Royal Security." The major looked unhappy, as well he might.
"Very well. Then you can make sure that I also reach groundside safely."
"But our orders were to takeа.а.а. erа.а.а. Mr. Smithа.а.а."
The red patches of incipient temper darkened on Cecelia's cheekbones. "Your sacred charge, young man, is the personal safety, the life itself, of your prince. If you thinkI endanger it, you are sadly mistaken about the source of danger. I suggest you need to have a long talk with the Crown Council. I went out of my way, at my own expense, to bring this young man safely home from a life-threatening situation. It might be asked where you, the Royal Security, were when he was being shot at!"
"Shot at!" Clearly this man had not heard the whole story. Heris wished Cecelia had not said so much; she'd assumed they would know already. "But he was on a training mission, with military guardЧ"
Cecelia glared. "Perhaps your superior will, if you prove discreet, tell you the full truth later. Suffice it to say that my honor, and my family's honor, are involved in this, and I will witness Mr. Smith's return to his father myself. You will find that his father agrees, should you care to take it that far."
"Yes, madam." The Security man still looked unhappy, but resigned. Exactly what she wanted.