"David Weber - Honor 01 - On Baslisk Station" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

playful tussle, and the treecat uncoiled to its full sixty-five centimeters
(discounting its tail) and buried its true-feet in her midriff with the deep,
buzzing hum of its purr. The hand-paws tightened their grip, but the murderous
claws-a full centimeter of curved, knife-sharp ivory-were sheathed. Honor had
once seen similar claws used to rip apart the face of a human foolish enough
to threaten a treecat's companion, but she felt no concern. Except in self-
defense (or Honor's defense) Nimitz would no more hurt a human being than turn
vegetarian, and treecats never made mistakes in that respect.
She extricated herself from Nimitz's grasp and lifted the long, sinuous
creature to her shoulder, a move he greeted with even more enthusiastic purrs.
Nimitz was an old hand at space travel and understood shoulders were out of
bounds aboard small craft under power, but he also knew treecats belonged on
their companions' shoulders. That was where they'd ridden since the first 'cat
adopted its first human five Terran centuries before, and Nimitz was a
traditionalist.
A flat, furry jaw pressed against the top of her head as Nimitz sank his four
lower sets of claws into the specially padded shoulder of her uniform tunic.
Despite his long, narrow body, he was a hefty weight-almost nine kilos-even
under the shuttle's single gravity, but Honor was used to it, and Nimitz had
learned to move his center of balance in from the point of her shoulder. Now
he clung effortlessly to his perch while she collected her briefcase from the
empty seat beside her. Honor was the half-filled shuttle's senior passenger,
which had given her the seat just inside the hatch. It was a practical as well
as a courteous tradition, since the senior officer was always last to board
and first to exit.
The shuttle quivered gently as its tractors reached out to the seventy-
kilometer bulk of Her Majesty's Space Station Hephaestus, the Royal Manticoran
Navy's premiere shipyard, and Nimitz sighed his relief into Honor's short-
cropped mass of feathery, dark brown hair. She smothered another grin and rose
from her bucket seat to twitch her tunic straight. The shoulder seam had
dipped under Nimitz's weight, and it took her a moment to get the red-and-gold
navy shoulder flash with its roaring, lion-headed, bat-winged manticore,
spiked tail poised to strike, back where it belonged. Then she plucked the
beret from under her left epaulet. It was the special beret, the white one
she'd bought when they gave her Hawkwing, and she chivied Nimitz's jaw gently
aside and settled it on her head. The treecat put up with her until she had it
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adjusted just so, then shoved his chin back into its soft warmth, and she felt
her face crease in a huge grin as she turned to the hatch.
That grin was a violation of her normally severe "professional expression,"
but she was entitled. Indeed, she felt more than mildly virtuous for holding
herself to a grin when what she really wanted to do was spin on her toes,
fling her arms wide, and carol her delight to her no-doubt shocked fellow
passengers. But she was almost twenty-four years old-over forty Terran
standard years-and it would never, never have done for a commander of the
Royal Manticoran Navy to be so undignified, even if she was about to assume
command of her first cruiser.
She smothered another chuckle, luxuriating in the unusual sense of complete
and simple joy, and pressed a hand to the front of her tunic. The folded sheaf