"David Weber - Honor 09 - Ashes of Victory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

their battlecruiser to the mountainous surface of San Martin. The planet's
heavy gravity scarcely qualified it as a vacation resort, but at least it had
plenty of room. And after twenty-four T-days crammed into Farnese's
overcrowded berthing spaces, a little thing like weighing twice one's proper
weight would be a minor price for the glorious luxury of room in which to
stretch without putting a thumb into someone else's eye.

But even as she felt her crew eagerly anticipating the end of its confinement,
her own attention was locked upon the lead pinnace, for she knew whose it was.
Over two T-years had passed since she'd last faced the officer to whom it
belonged, and she'd thought she'd put her treacherously ambiguous feelings
about that officer aside. Now she knew she'd been wrong, for her own emotions
were even more confused and turbulent than those of the people about her as
she waited to greet him once again.
***
Admiral of the Green Hamish Alexander, Earl of White Haven and Commanding
Officer, Eighth Fleet, forced his face to remain immobile as GNS Benjamin the
Great's pinnace approached rendezvous with the battlecruiser his flagship had
come to meet. ENS Farnese -- and just what the hell is an "ENS?" he wondered.
That's something else I should have asked her -- was a Warlord-class unit. The
big ship floated against the needle-sharp stars, well out from San Martin,
where no unauthorized eye might see her and note her Peep origin. The time to
acknowledge her presence would come, but not yet, he thought, gazing through
the view port at the ship logic said could not be there. No, not yet.

Farnese retained the lean, arrogant grace of her battlecruiser breed, despite
the fact that she was even larger than the Royal Manticoran Navy's Reliant-
class. Small compared to his superdreadnought flagship, of course, but still a
big, powerful unit. He'd heard about the Warlords, read the ONI analyses and
appreciations of the class, even seen them destroyed in combat with units
under his own command. But this was the first time he'd ever come close enough
to see one with the unaided human eye. To be honest, it was closer than he'd
ever anticipated he might come, except perhaps in that unimaginable time
somewhere in the distant reaches of a future in which peace had come once more
to this section of the galaxy.

Which isn't going to happen any time soon, he reminded himself grimly from
behind the fortress of his face. And if I'd ever had any happy illusions in
that respect, just looking at Farnese would disabuse me of them in a hurry.

His jaw set as his pilot, obedient to his earlier orders, swept down the big
ship's starboard side and he studied her damage. Her heavy, multilayered armor
was actually buckled. The boundary layers of antikinetic armor seemed to have
slagged and run; the inner, ablative layers sandwiched between them were
bubbled and charred looking; and the sensors and antimissile laser clusters
which once had guarded Farnese's flank were gutted. White Haven would have
been surprised if half her starboard weapons remained functional, and her
starboard sidewall generators couldn't possibly have generated any realistic
defense against hostile fire.