"David Weber - Fifth Imperium 02 - The Armageddon Inheritance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

"Hast an uncommon low sense of humor, Colin," she said darkly, accepting the change of subject with a
smile of her own. "So long as I do recall have I awaited this dayтАФyea, and seldom with true hope mine
eyes might see it. Yet now'tis close upon me, and if truth be known, there lies some shadow of fear within
my heart. It is most unmeet in thee so to tease me over it."

"I know," he admitted wickedly, "but its too much fun to stop."

She snorted and shook a dripping fist at him, yet there was empathy as well as laughter in his green eyes.
Jihanith had been a child, her muscles and skeleton too immature for the full bioenhancement Battle
Fleet's personnel enjoyed, when the mutiny organized by Fleet Captain (Engineering) Anu marooned
Dahak in Earth orbit and the starship's crew on Earth. The millennia-long struggle her father had led
against Anu had kept her from receiving it since, for the medical facilities aboard the sublight parasite
battleship Nergal had been unable to provide it. Jiltanith had received the neural computer feeds, sensory
boosters, and regenerative treatments before the mutiny, but those were the easy parts, and Colin was
fresh enough from his own enhancement to understand her anxieties perfectlyтАжand tease her to ease
them.

"Bawcock, thou'lt crow too loud one day."

"Nope. I'm the captain, and rankтАФ"

"тАФhath its privileges,' she broke in, shaking her head ominously. That phrase shall haunt thee."

"I donтАЩt doubt it" He smiled down at her, tempted to shuck off his own uniform and join herтАж if he
hadnтАЩt been a bit afraid of where it might lead Not that he had any objection to where it could lead, but
there was plenty of time (assuming they lived beyond the next two years), and that was one complication
neither of them needed right now.

"Well, gotta get back to the office," he said instead. "And you, Madam XO, should get back to your own
quarters and catch some sleep. Trust meтАФDahakтАЩs idea of a slow convalescence from enhancement isn't
exactly the same as yours or mine."

"Of thine, mayhap," she said sweetly.

IтАЩll remember that when you start moaning for sympathy." He drew his toes from the tub and activated a
small portion of his own biotechnics. The water floated off his feet on the skin of a repellent force field,
and he shook the drops away and pulled on his socks and gleaming boots.

"Seriously, Tanni, get some rest. YouтАЩll need it"

"In truth, I doubt thee not," she sighed, wiggling in the hottub, "yet still doth this seem heaven's foretaste,
IтАЩll tarry yet a while, methinks."

"Go ahead," he said with another smile, and stepped off the edge of the balcony onto a waiting presser. It
floated him gently to the atrium floor, and his implant force fields were an invisible umbrella as he
splashed through the rain to the door/hatch on the far side of his private park.

It opened at his approach, and he stepped through it into a yawning, brightly lit void over a thousand
kilometers deep. He'd braced himself for it yet he knew he appeared less calm than he would have
likedтАФand felt even less calm than he managed to look as he plunged downward at an instantly attained