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

"Thank you, Commander." White Haven's tone was equally courteous, and no one
could have been blamed for failing to realize it was an absent courtesy. But
then, no one else could have guessed at the emotions raging behind his calm,
ice-blue eyes as he glanced past the Peep to the tall, one-armed woman waiting
just beyond the side party.

They clung to her, those eyes, but again, no one could reasonably have faulted
that. No doubt people had stared at Lazarus, too.

She looks like hell . . . and she looks wonderful, he thought, taking in the
blue-on-blue Grayson admiral's uniform she wore instead of her Manticoran
rank. He was glad to see it for at least one intensely personal reason. In the
Grayson Space Navy, her rank actually exceeded his own, for she was the second
ranking officer of that explosively growing service, and that was good. It
meant that at least he would not have to address her from the towering
seniority of a full admiral to a mere commodore. And the uniform looked good
on her, too, he thought, giving her unknown tailor high marks.

But good as she looked, he could not pull his eyes away from the missing left
arm, or the paralyzed left side of her face. Her artificial eye clearly wasn't
tracking as it was supposed to, either, and he felt a fresh, lavalike burn of
fury. The Peeps might not actually have executed her, but it seemed they'd
come close to killing her.

Again.

She has got to stop doing this kind of thing, he thought, and his mental voice
was almost conversational. There are limits in all things . . . including how
many times she can dance on the edge of a razor and survive.

Not that she would pay him any attention if he said as much. Not any more than
he would have paid if their roles had been reversed. Yet even as he admitted
that, he knew it wasn't the same. He'd commanded squadrons, task forces, and
fleets in action, in an almost unbroken series of victories. He'd seen ships
blown apart, felt his own flagship shudder and buck as fire blasted through
its defenses. At least twice, he'd come within meters of death. Yet in all
that time, he'd never once been wounded in action, and not once had he ever
actually faced an enemy. Not hand-to-hand. His battles had been fought across
light-seconds, with grasers and lasers and nuclear warheads, and for all that
he knew his personnel respected and trusted him, they did not idolize him.
Not the way Honor Harrington's people idolized her. For once, the newsies had
gotten something exactly right when they dubbed her "the Salamander" from her
habit of always being where the fire was hottest. She'd fought White Haven's
sort of battle all too often for someone of her comparative youth, and she had
the touch, the personal magic, that made her crews walk unflinchingly into the
furnace beside her. But unlike the earl, she had also faced people trying to
kill her from so close she could see their eyes, smell their sweat, and God
only knew what she'd been doing when she lost her arm. No doubt he'd find out
soon enough, and, equally no doubt, it would be one more thing for him to
worry that she might be crazy enough to repeat in the future. Which was