"John Ringo - Council War 3 - Against the Tide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

"Earliest convenience?" the instructor asked with a slight grin, wiping his hands again.
"Yes, sir," the private replied.
"The commandant?"
"No, sir," the private said, biting her lip, "Duke Talbot, sir."
The instructor paused and then turned on one heel to the fascinated ensigns.
"Class," he snapped. "Your assignment for tomorrow is to examine the Inchon landing and the
Nipponese attack on Myanmar in the Axis-Allies War. Come up with at least three viable alternatives
for each. Be prepared to defend your alternatives. Attention!" He waited until the group had snapped to
the position of attention then looked around at them.
"What's our motto, boys and girls?" he sang out.
"No plan survives contact with the enemy!" the class shouted in unison.
"And who are we?" he asked.
"THE ENEMY!"
"Dismissed."
With that he marched out of the room.
***
Megan "Sung" checked the level of liquid in her "waste" retort and shook her head. She had had
enough material for her plans for months, had had to, carefully, dispose of the excess, but just kept
building it up. She knew how to kill Paul, but she wasn't sure what to do after that.
Megan had been sixteen when an old traveler found the tall, lithe, pretty, if rather dirty and underfed,
young brunette washing clothes by the side of a Ropasan stream. She had helped the old man across the
river and the next thing she knew she was here, wherever "here" was, in the harem of Paul Bowman,
head of the New Destiny faction of the Council of Key-holders.
Things had initially been . . . tough. The senior female in the harem was Christel Meazell, one of the
women with whom Paul had had a child prior to the Fall. She was both in charge of making sure the girls
understood their "duties" and managing the logistics of the harem. Since she had gotten very little
education-prior to the Fall there was no strict need to learn to even write your name-managing the
accounts associated with the girls' supplies was a day-to-day nightmare. Especially since it all had to be
done by hand and Christel could not get the same number twice in a row if she had to add two plus two.
She had taken that frustration out on the girls and they had, in turn, passed it on. When Megan had
arrived, conditions had been vicious. The girls knew better than to do permanent or disfiguring damage,
but they took out their boredom and frustration in other ways, many of them sexual and all of them cruel.
Megan had dealt with that aspect of the life rather quickly. Her father had trained her intensively in
almost lost arts of self-defense; he had seen protection fields fail from "personal" reasons too many times
to fully trust them. But a blow to the gut was a blow to the gut.
So the "new girl" had not been the soft touch the regulars had come to expect. She had kept the
ability more or less secret, only pointing it out a couple of times to the "Alpha Bitches" in the group. But
with them firmly under control, the rest didn't dare bother her.
Managing Christel had been harder. But as soon as Megan showed that she was more than capable
of doing the "logistic" end, Christel had turned the books over to her with an almost audible sigh of relief.
Using that wedge Megan had slowly, more or less, taken over the harem. To the point that from time to
time she even gave Christel orders.
So that aspect of the life had gotten better. Recognizing that the biggest problem in the harem was
boredom she had cajoled Christel into running exercise classes. These led to more structured learning in
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sewing, singing, musical instruments. Anything to pass the time and give the girls something to do other
than bicker and play "practical jokes" on one another.
She had taken control of that aspect of her life, but there was another over which she had no