"S. M. Stirling & David Drake - The Chosen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

CHARTER ONC

Visager

K2I AJ=. (After the Fall)

3OS YJO. (Year of the Oath)

Commodore Maurice Fair lifted the uniform cap from his head and wiped at the
sweat on his forehead with a handkerchief. He was standing on the liner docks
on the north shore of Oathtaking's superb C-shaped harbor. Behind him were the
broad quiet streets of Old Town, running out from Monument Square behind his
back. There the bronze figures of the Founders stood, raised weapons in their
handsтАФthe cutlasses and flintlocks common three centuries ago. The
Empire-Alliance war had ended an overwhehning Imperial victory. The first
thing the Alliance refugees had done was swear a solemn oath of vengeance
against those who'd broken their ambitions and slaughtered everyone of their
fellows who hadn't fled the mainland.

After three years in the Land of die Chosen as a naval attach^, Farr was
certain of two things: their descendants still meant it, and they'd extended
the future field of attack from the Empire to everyone else on the planet
Visager. Perhaps to the entire universe.

West and south around the bay ran the modern city of Oathtaking, built of
black basalt and gray tufa from the quarries nearby. Rail sidings, shipyards,
steel mills, factories, warehouses, the endless tenement blocks that housed
the Protggg laborers. A cluster of huge buildings marked the commercial
center; six and even eight

2 S.M. Stirling 6- David Drake

stories tafl, their girder frames sheathed in granite carved in the severe
columnar style of Chosen architecture. A pall of coal smoke lay over most of
the town below the leafy suburbs on the hill slopes, giving the hot tropical
air a sulfurous taste. A racket of shod hooves sounded on stone-block
pavement, die squeal of iron on iron and a hiss of steam, the hoot of factory
sirens. Ships thronged die docks and harbor, everything from old-fashioned
windjammers in with cargoes of grain from the Empire to modern steel-hulled
steamers of Land or Republic build.

Out in die middle of the harbor a circle of islands finked by causeways marked
the site of an ancient caldera and the modem navy basin. Near it moved the low
hulk-log gray shape of a battlewagon, spewing black smoke from its stacks. His
mind categorized it automatically: Ezerherzoe Grufan, name-ship of her class,
launched last year. Twelve thousand tons displacement, four 250-mm rifles in
twin turrets fore and aft, eight 175mm in four twin-tube wing turrets, eight
155mm in barbette mounts on either side, 200mm main belt, face-hardened alloy
steel Four-stacker with triple expansion engines, eighteen thousand
horsepower, eighteen knots.