"Doyle, Debra And James D MacDonald - Mageworlds 01 - Price Of The Stars (V1.0)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Debra)

She bit her lip and said nothing. A few minutes later they reached the low-walled, roofless enclosure where Warhammer’s flattened disk shape loomed against the white glow of the dock lights. Beka paused in the entrance to the bay.
"Damn, but she’s still a pretty ship," she said, more to herself than to her companion. "Makes Claw Hard look like a flying rock. Did Dadda bring her in alone?"
"Not quite," said Ransome. "I was copilot."
"Just like old times," said Beka, as they crossed the open bay toward the ship. In her fighting days, the ’Hammer had carried a full crew: pilot, copilot, engineer, and a pair of gunners. But Jos Metadi had flown Warhammer solo after the long conflict had ended, and had taught all three of his children to do the same.
Beka smiled a little in spite of herself. Art and Owen never loved it like I did, though - and I could fly rings around them both from the moment I was old enough to start learning. The smile faded as quickly as it had come. I wonder if Dadda would have taught me, if he’d known what I was going to do with all those lessons?
She hesitated at the foot of the lowered ramp, and looked at her father’s onetime copilot and oldest friend.
"Master Ransome, can you tell me what he wants?"
The Adept shook his head. In the shadow of Warhammer’s bulk, she couldn’t make out his expression. She shrugged, and went on up the ramp.
The ship’s door was open, and the faint glow of a force field stretched across the gap. Master Ransome reached out one hand toward it, and the light faded. He gestured at her to go ahead. She stepped through with Master Ransome following a staff-length behind. The air brightened again behind them.
Beka made her way forward to the ’Hammer’s dimly lit common room. A lean, dark-clad figure half-lounged in a, chair at the mess table: Jos Metadi, once captain of the privateer ship Warhammer, now Commanding General of the Republic’s Space Force. Marriage to Perada Rosselin had given him the rank - in the old days before the Magewar, "General of the Armies" had been one of the honorifics granted by custom to the consort of the Domina of Entibor - but Metadi’s own formidable talents had made the courtesy title into a powerful reality.
His chair spun round as the first footstep sounded on the common-room floor, and a small but deadly blaster appeared in the General’s hand. After a moment the blaster disappeared again into its hidden grav-clip up Metadi’s sleeve.
"Sorry," he said. "Old habits die hard."
Beka nodded, unsurprised. Innish-Kyl has that effect on people. She’d almost gone for her blaster herself back in the cantina, and she was nothing like the old hand that her father was. Behind her, she heard Errec Ransome half-laugh.
"You could get a bodyguard from the Guild any time you wanted," the Adept said. "Will you take one?"
"I’ll take a bodyguard when I run into somebody who’s even fonder of keeping my hide in one piece than I am," Metadi said. "And I don’t mink the creature exists." He turned back to Beka. "Sit down, girl. We have to talk."
Beka took a chair on the other side of the mess table and braced herself for a struggle. She hadn’t written or spoken to anyone on Galcen - except, once in a great while, to her brother Owen - since that last, bitter quarrel the night she left home. She wondered what twist in galactic politics had convinced the Domina to send for the family’s runaway daughter.
It must really be bad, she thought. The realization stiffened her resolve. If Mother wants me to come back again, she’s going to have to take me on my own terms, not hers.
There was a long pause. Finally her father said, "You look like you’ve done well enough for yourself."
"I’m piloting for Frizzt Osa on Claw Hard," she said. "The ship’s a pile of junk, and Osa’s a bastard, but it’s a job."
Metadi nodded. There was another pause. Finally Beka said, "I never expected to see you here."
"I never expected to come back," said the General. "The town’s gone downhill since the old days - the Magelords turned Entibor into an orbiting slag heap, but that’s nothing next to what peace and prosperity can do to a place." He gave Beka an appraising look. "That blaster you’ve got - are you willing to use it?"
"I already have once," she said.
"Good," said Metadi.
Once again, conversation lapsed. Warhammer’s environmental systems kept up their low, almost subliminal hum. Beka looked from her father to Master Ransome, who had made himself inconspicuous after an Adept’s fashion, leaning against the wall in a shadowed corner.
The Adept’s face was hidden, and her father’s was unreadable. Neither man seemed ready to break the silence. She drew a deep breath.
"How did you know I was going to be in Waycross tonight?"
The answer came quickly. It wasn’t, she thought, the question they’d been expecting.
"Owen told us you were on Claw Hard," Master Ransome said. "Learning your next port of call wasn’t hard after that."
"Owen," said Beka slowly. She’d kept in touch, over the years, with the younger of her two brothers, certain that the ally and co-conspirator of her childhood would never betray any secret she confided to him. If he’d come out with her ship’s name of his own accord…
"Whatever Mother needs me for has got to be more than just family politics. Now, is somebody going to tell me about it, or are we going to sit here and make small talk until I have to get back to Claw Hard for lift-off?"
Her father looked at Master Ransome.
The Adept sighed, and came over to take a seat at the table. He glanced down for a moment at the tabletop, rubbing his finger lightly over decades-old scratch marks in the grey plastic, and then lifted his head again. "The Domina of Entibor is dead."
For a moment, the words meant nothing. Then Beka heard a voice that had to be hers, although she didn’t recognize it.
"So that’s what the bartender meant. Mother is dead - and I’m the Domina now."
Errec Ransome’s dark eyes were somber. "Yes, my lady."
"Don’t call me that," she said automatically - the reflex of years. Inside her head, the old, old argument played on: Mother is "my lady," not me… I’m going to be a star-pilot, one of the best, not just some kind of political figurehead… and someday I’m going to run so far away from Galcen that nobody will care who I am.
Under the cover of the tabletop, her fists clenched so tightly that the nails, even trimmed short for handling a starship’s controls, bit deep into her palm. She hadn’t cried in public since she was twelve, and she was damned if she was going to start now. She pressed her lips together until they stopped trembling, and then turned to her father.
"When - how - did it happen?"
More silence. "Tell her, Errec," her father said.
After another long pause, the Master of the Adepts’ Guild began to speak. "There was a debate in the Grand Council," he said. "Hearings, on the expulsion of Suivi Point. The Domina…your mother… was against expulsion."
Beka nodded. Suivi Point had been a blot on the Republic’s honor for longer than she’d been alive; this wasn’t the first time the wide-open asteroid spaceport had come near expulsion from the community of worlds. She remembered a family dinner, long ago on Galcen, and her mother saying to somebody - had it been Councillor Tarveet of Pleyver? - "Suivi’s a disgrace, I’ll grant you that. But if the Suivans leave the Republic, there’ll be no way left to control them short of open warfare. And gentlesir, I’ve seen enough of war."
Tarveet. It was Tarveet, and that was the night I put a garden slug into his salad. Mother spanked me for it - but I heard her laughing about it later. She didn’t really like Tarveet any more than I did….
Her eyes stung; she blinked once, hard, and kept her eyes on Master Ransome.
"The Visitors’ Gallery was crowded that day. It always was, whenever your mother spoke." Master Ransome smiled briefly. "Even your father was there."
Which meant, Beka knew, that the debate would have been more than usually important - her father had no use for politics, as a rule. "It makes no difference to me what they decide," she’d heard him say once. "All it ever means is more work for the Space Force." Then he’d laughed, and smiled at her mother. "You shouldn’t make so many speeches. It only encourages them."
She didn’t dare look at her father now. Watching Master Ransome’s face was bad enough. It made her wonder if the old portside story was true - that when Domina Perada Rosselin of Entibor came to Waycross in search of a new commander for the Republic’s shattered spacefleet, she’d taken away the hearts of Warhammer’s captain and copilot both.
"Somehow," said Master Ransome, "the force field in the Visitor’s Gallery went down. And there was an assassin. With a blaster. He got off one shot. Your father shot him before he could fire again."
Beka swallowed, and wet her lips. When she spoke, her voice sounded old and rusty. "That was how it happened?"
"Not quite," said the Adept. "Unlike your father, the assassin missed his target. All his shot hit was the floor of the Council Hall. But one of the flying shards of marble from the floor struck your mother. It was just a scratch, barely enough to justify visiting the Council’s medics. But she went… and somebody had given them Clyndagyt instead of their usual variety of antiseptic spray."
"I don’t understand," Beka said. "There’s nothing wrong with Clyndagyt. It’s what we've got on Claw Hard."