"Wen Spencer - Endless Blue" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spencer Wen)

do you stand now? Are you at full strength?"

Had Heward been trying to get Mikhail to lower his guard? The truth was that while Heward had been
at the palace often, Mikhail would not have called him a friend of the family.

"My ship is fully repaired," Mikhail said carefully. "My Red commander is picking up replacements for
the men I lost."

Heward nodded blandly, but there was a tightening around his mouth as if the news was bad. "Anytime
you take on a large number of Reds, you end up with dominance issues."

So Heward was going to want him to ship out immediately.

"I have no concerns." Mikhail put steel into his words. Most Captains made the mistake of pulling
replacements from multiple cr├иches, which resulted in all the Reds vying with each other. Mikhail
deliberately tapped only one cr├иche at a time so the replacements already had an established dominance
order. The in-fighting was kept to a fight between the leader of the cr├иche Reds and his foster brother,
Turk, who was his Red commander.

Heward waited for him to add more, but Mikhail wouldn't weaken his position by trying to justifying his
statement.

Instead Mikhail took command of the discussion, pointing to the drive. "Where did that come from?"

"It warped into localPlymouth space seventy-eight hours ago. A crew went out to clear it and when they
realized what it was, they brought it in."

Seventy-eight hoursтАФallowing for Heward's travel time toPlymouth тАФmeant that Heward's choice of
theSvoboda wasn't based on convenience. There were many ships closer to hand.

"Come on," Heward said. "I want you to see this first hand."

As they stepped into the confines of the airlock, Heward said, "You'll have to get your nose fixed before
taking over for your father. It makes you look too much like a Red."

Mikhail nodded to the last statement; that was what he liked about his skewed nose. At the time he
merely just didn't want to look like Viktor or his father anymore. That it gained him respect from the
battle-torn Reds was now the main reason he didn't get it fixed. Besides, he wasn't sure he wanted to
inherit his father's position. Considering the mess he'd made of his life, it was also unclear if the loyalist
party would allow him. That was the whole point of him being the captain of a war ship: if he became a
military hero his early misadventures might be overlooked.

The airlock opened to the drydock which was under pressure but still at zero gravity. A skimmer was
waiting to take them across the vast floor, touching down and locking into place just short of the rocky
edge. The drydock's floodlights cast multiple shadows of the drive on them, layering them in shades of
gray.
 The rock gave way to fist-sized objects, seemingly organic in nature, clustered tight together. The
creatures reeked like dead fish. Under their stench was another odor, something elusively familiar, but he
couldn't name it. The band of organisms was three meters wide, ending in the durasteel housing which
was coated with a rough layer of white powder. A fine grit drifted in a halo around the base. Mikhail