"Kathy Tyers - Firebird 1 - Firebird" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tyers Kathy)

gone recently in a suspicious ground-car accident, but her grief was still too fresh to discuss with Phoena.
Lord Rendy had wanted so badly to live, had lived so hard and wild.

Phoena snorted. тАЬAll right, Wastling. Waste yourself in aтАФa TS-whatever-it-is.тАЭ

Firebird shook her hair behind her slender shoulders and stood to leave. тАЬIтАЩd better get to class. We
have a speaker today.тАЭ

PhoenaтАЩs breakfast arrived, carried by a mincing white-haired waiter. As Firebird snatched up the
scanbook and swung out the double doors, Phoena called, тАЬIтАЩll help them put the black edging on your
portrait.тАЭ

Firebird ignored her and stopped in the long private hallway to gather up the rest of her Academy scan
cartridges. Wistfully she shot a look down the gallery, past the spiral-legged tables weighted with
heirlooms, to the formal portrait to which Phoena had referred: she had been sixteen and star-eyed when
it was painted, absorbed in her piloting and her music, years away from the shadow of death under
which, at twenty-two, NтАЩTaian calendar, she now lived. The scarlet velvric gown with white sash and
diadem made her look queenly, but the artist had put a characteristic, mischievous smile between
brave-set chin and proud brown eyes. A scarcely tangible sadness in those painted eyes always haunted
Firebird. Did others see the flaws in the courage she held up to the world, too?

She straightened her brownbuck flight jacket before the jeweled hallway mirror. Well, she thought,
thereтАЩs one advantage to dying young: people will remember you as pretty. Humming a defiant
ballad from the Coper Rebellion, she dashed off for the Academy.

If Firebird had been born an heir, sheтАЩd have had a hard choice between the Sae Angelo Music
Conservatory and the NPN Academy. She loved flying, though, and had trained long and hard to
develop from a skillful pleasure pilot into a Naval officer.

She almost crashed into Corey in the crowded passway just before the special afternoon session. тАЬEasy,
Firebird.тАЭ He stepped back, and his grin faded. тАЬWhatтАЩs wrongтАФ Phoena again?тАЭ

тАЬOf course,тАЭ she muttered. тАЬAnd Her Majesty, tonight.тАЭ

тАЬOh, thatтАЩs right. I forgot.тАЭ He nodded sympathetically and palmed the doorpanel for her.

The briefing room was hushed, and Firebird felt hostile anticipation in the air. She and her classmates had
waited all term to meet the speaker, Vultor Korda, who had come in midwinter from the Federate world
of Thyrica. Korda was one of the ThyriansтАЩ тАЬstarbredтАЭ telepathic minority, but had turned traitor and
come secretly to Naetai.

As Firebird and Corey slipped into adjacent seats and loaded their viewers, a little man entered, carrying
several scan cartridges himself. Physically, he looked anything but powerful: narrow-shouldered without
muscle, he had too much belly straining the belt of his brown shipboards. His complexion was the fragile
white of the academician or the UV-allergic spacer, and silky brown hair framed his tiny-eyed face.

She had heard rumors of the starbred. Allegedly they descended from the extragalactic Aurian race that
had been devastated by plague, the makkah, half a millennium ago, three centuries after the first cosmic
rays of the Six-Alpha Catastrophe reached Naetai. The makkah had killed many of the Aurian women
and every male, regardless of age. Even the unbornтАФif maleтАФhad not been spared. Many women had