"Smith, E E Doc - d'Alembert 8 - Eclipsing Binaries" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

strong. Even now, looking at the other woman's slender frame, she found it difficult to
believe.

"You must never question me or my motives again," Lady A said in calm tones as she
resumed her place in the glowing egg. "I have reasons for everything I do and say. It's
not your place to understand them, merely to obey commands. If you do, you'll be richer
for it; if you don't, you'll be dead. That should be reason enough."

"Yes, Gospozha."

The traces of a smile returned to Lady A's lips. "That's much better. Always respect your
elders, child. Now that I've made my point, I will explain some of my thinking not because
you asked, but because I think it's better if you know something of what's going on.

"As I was saying, the failure of Operation Annihilate hurt our cause badly. We are not
strong enough to make another frontal attack on the Empire for quite some time. We're
far from defeat-the Empire still does not realize how thoroughly we have infiltrated and
undermined their structure-but we'll have to return to more guerilla-style tactics for a
while.

"What we need primarily is time to build up our strength again. We were able to do that
the first time because SOTE spent so much time chasing your father we could work in
virtual obscurity. Given those conditions, we could rebuild our forces in just a short while.

"Unfortunately, we no longer have such an effective smokescreen. The Service of the
Empire now knows we exist, and they won't stand idly by and let us re-arm ourselves.
We have the power to cause such chaos that SOTE would be too busy fighting a
thousand different small fires to pay much attention to us-but that would tip our hand
prematurely. That is something we will not do; we must preserve a few secrets until the
final confrontation is assured.

"Therefore we must declare war on SOTE itself. So far the Service has been but an
annoying pest, but it distracted us just enough from our true goal that we miscalculated.
The time has come to rid ourselves of the peskier elements within that organization. You
will play a key part in that campaign. We have a command post called Battle station G-6.
. . . "

"That's one of the automated ones. isn't it?" Boros blurted.Lady A stopped and looked
hard at the younger woman. "I can see," she said after a moment, "that our internal
security needs tightening. That was supposed to be secret. Don't worry, the fault is not
yours," she added as Boros began to quiver again. "You can't help what you overhear.
It's the people who did the talking who are in trouble." Her fingers moved quickly over the
keyboard in the side of the egg as she entered into the computer a reminder to deal with
the problem.

"But returning to your question, yes, G-6 is almost entirely automated. You will be the
only person aboard. I want a live person there to supervise the activities."

To say that Tanya Boros was disappointed with her assignment would have been a vast
understatement. She was a social creature who liked to have other people around