"Ringo,.John.-.Council.War.3.-.Against.The.Tide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

Megan "Sung" checked the level of liquid in her "waste" retort and shook her head. She had had enough material for her plans for months, had had to, carefully, dispose of the excess, but just kept building it up. She knew how to kill Paul, but she wasn't sure what to do after that.
Megan had been sixteen when an old traveler found the tall, lithe, pretty, if rather dirty and underfed, young brunette washing clothes by the side of a Ropasan stream. She had helped the old man across the river and the next thing she knew she was here, wherever "here" was, in the harem of Paul Bowman, head of the New Destiny faction of the Council of Key-holders.
Things had initially been . . . tough. The senior female in the harem was Christel Meazell, one of the women with whom Paul had had a child prior to the Fall. She was both in charge of making sure the girls understood their "duties" and managing the logistics of the harem. Since she had gotten very little education—prior to the Fall there was no strict need to learn to even write your name—managing the accounts associated with the girls' supplies was a day-to-day nightmare. Especially since it all had to be done by hand and Christel could not get the same number twice in a row if she had to add two plus two.
She had taken that frustration out on the girls and they had, in turn, passed it on. When Megan had arrived, conditions had been vicious. The girls knew better than to do permanent or disfiguring damage, but they took out their boredom and frustration in other ways, many of them sexual and all of them cruel.
Megan had dealt with that aspect of the life rather quickly. Her father had trained her intensively in almost lost arts of self-defense; he had seen protection fields fail from "personal" reasons too many times to fully trust them. But a blow to the gut was a blow to the gut.
So the "new girl" had not been the soft touch the regulars had come to expect. She had kept the ability more or less secret, only pointing it out a couple of times to the "Alpha Bitches" in the group. But with them firmly under control, the rest didn't dare bother her.
Managing Christel had been harder. But as soon as Megan showed that she was more than capable of doing the "logistic" end, Christel had turned the books over to her with an almost audible sigh of relief. Using that wedge Megan had slowly, more or less, taken over the harem. To the point that from time to time she even gave Christel orders.
So that aspect of the life had gotten better. Recognizing that the biggest problem in the harem was boredom she had cajoled Christel into running exercise classes. These led to more structured learning in sewing, singing, musical instruments. Anything to pass the time and give the girls something to do other than bicker and play "practical jokes" on one another.
She had taken control of that aspect of her life, but there was another over which she had no control. And that had taken a long time to . . . improve.
Megan had not been a virgin when she was brought to Paul's harem but the subsequent rapes, and there was no other term, were not pleasant. But, over time, she had grown not only to accept them philosophically, but even to fall in love with her captor, horrible as that made her feel.
Paul could be a very charming man and he was the only source of news of the outside available to them. Once Megan had, slowly, gotten over her initial revulsion she had grown, however much she hated it, to first liking Paul and then, strangely, haltingly, loving him. She was a strong-willed young lady, educated beyond ninety percent of her generation. She was the daughter of one of the few remaining police in the pre-Fall period. Under her father's pressure, and later her own, she had used advanced technology training methods to become more educated than most human beings in history. She was an expert forensic chemist, was highly trained in self-defense, spoke three dead languages, could cook—another almost lost art—and could do calculus in her head.
Being a harem girl had not been on her list of avocations. So it nearly drove her insane that she was "falling" for her captor.
Eventually Paul, who had done research before setting up what he considered nothing more than a "breeding pool," had explained that her reaction was anticipated. Captives who depended for their survival purely on the will of captors, who kept close and intimate contact, tended to bond to them. Not all; there was one girl, Amber, who had fought the captivity until she was eventually brain drained and left as a willing semivegetable to Paul's desires. But Megan, like most of the rest of the "girls" had come to know Paul, to bond to him and through that bonding to love him.
But that did not mean she wasn't going to kill him.
As soon as she figured out how to do it and survive.
What bothered her about the situation, other than being stuck in a harem, was that she now knew more of the inner workings of the New Destiny faction than anyone outside of it. She knew their weaknesses, knew their strengths, which were many. She longed, dreamed, of getting the information out to the Freedom Coalition. But no matter how she pondered the problem, she couldn't figure out a way to pass on the intelligence and survive. Among other things Paul had let slip in their many conversations was that he had a source very close to the Freedom Council. And escaping with the information would be difficult.
The girls were kept in close confinement, a large compartment in a castle that had been converted to living quarters. There were only two entrances, both blocked by high-technology proscriptions. The walls were stone, which she could deal with, the same way she intended to "deal" with Paul when the time came. But even if the girls somehow made their way past those defenses they were surrounded by the guards of New Destiny, both Paul's special guards, all of them highly trained fighters who were bound to him by Net-imposed loyalty proscriptions, and the Changed legions that made up the bulk of New Destiny's army.
She had only one idea and it was a long-shot. The council members were also called Key-holders because the physical token of their position was a titanium strip. The protocols associated with transfer of "ownership" of the keys were ancient and even baroque. A council member could not "lose" a key; if they absentmindedly left it somewhere the AI that ran the Net, Mother, would simply port it to their location. Paul had told her one time of his early days as a council member when Mother, apparently in exasperation, had ported it One More Time and molecularly glued it to his forehead so he couldn't remove it without a majority vote of the Council. It had taken him a week to build up the votes, over the chuckles, and she sometimes wondered if the compromises over that had led, inexorably, to the present war.
But Keys could be transferred. They could be transferred voluntarily, say if a council member wanted to retire. . . . But if a council member died it was "finders keepers." Minjie Jiaqi, who had been one of Paul's first and closest allies on the Council, had been killed by his military aide, who had taken his Key. Paul, in turn, had had the aide assassinated. But both methods of killing were out of Megan's reach. Minjie's death was from a binary neurotoxin, and although she had a fairly decent chemical laboratory disguised as a "perfumery," binary toxins were a bit out of her league.
His aide had been assassinated, in turn, by being attacked "in flagrante delicto." Council members habitually used personal protection fields. The fields were impermeable to any harm possible to man, certainly given the explosive protocols. But they had to be lowered at certain times. Such as during sex or any sort of intimate contact. Paul always dropped his when he was in the harem and had to recite a pass code to raise it. Thus he was vulnerable.
The problem was Paul also had functional medical nannites. The nannites would scavenge any simple toxin before it took effect. Megan wasn't sure of the extent to which they could cure him from a serious injury. But she was sure that if she could destroy his cerebral cortex, there wasn't much the nannites were going to be able to do.
Therefore, if she could only figure out where he kept his Key when he came to the harem she could kill him, take the Key and port out.
If.
She had been with Paul . . . well she'd quit counting. A large number of times. And she thought she had subtly checked most of his body. So far, he didn't seem to have it on him. He, conceivably, could have it up his rectum. But Paul's personality mitigated against that. She simply could not envision him slipping the key up his ass before he ported to the harem.
But it had to be there, somewhere, and as soon as she figured out where, he was going to be a footnote in history.
No matter how much she loved him.

Chapter Two
"Ya gotta love it," Gerson Tao said, collapsing theatrically on Van Krief's bunk. The ensign was larger than most of his class, if not of the massive stature of their instructor, and while he kept up with the studies, he was never going to make honor graduate. "Come up with three alternates to a campaign I'd never heard of before today?"
"Two campaigns," the ensign said. "And get up, you're ruining my dressing."
"Well, excuse me," Tao said, getting up and expertly tightening the blue woolen blanket on the bunk. When he was done a bronze chit would bounce off it.
"Hmmm," the female ensign said, picking up a book and leafing through the pages until she got to a map. "I read the alternate plans in here somewhere . . ."
"What?" Tao replied, sitting up as the door opened. "What is that?"
"Mo," Ensign Asghar Destrang said, walking into the room without knocking. The ensign was a tall, elegant young man with sandy hair and an abstracted manner. But the three had sparred enough to know that while he did not have Tao's mass he was lightning quick. And all the thoughtfulness he gave to his studies came out when he had a sword in his hand. "I'm reading about the Myanmar campaign . . ."
"Is that Defeat Into Victory?" Van Krief asked, not bothering to look up. "Read it."
"Why am I not surprised?" Destrang said with a grin. He was a thin young man, just starting to get his full adult form. But his forearms were corded with wiry muscles and like the rest he moved with a confidence that was sometimes belied by his abstracted frown. "What have you got?"
"American Caesar," Van Krief replied. "It's the biography, more of a hagiography, of MacArthur and covers Korea in great detail. There's things in it that only make sense if you know some of the details the writer left out, though."
"My brain hurts," Tao said, grabbing his head. "Who is MacArthur? Where in the hell is Myanmar? Why does any of this matter? How do you know what to study? In advance? Been getting some sideline tutoring?"
"Tao . . ." Destrang warned, angrily.
"Jesus," Tao said, immediately, looking at Van Krief. "I didn't mean it like that, you know that Mo." He looked at the female ensign pleadingly.
"As far as I know, Captain Herrick has never even noticed me as a female," Van Krief said, tightly. "I'll assume that you've just managed to put your foot in your mouth, again. God knows it's big enough."
"I said I was sorry," Tao said. "But, really, how do you know?"
Van Krief thought about that and then she shrugged.
"Captain Herrick is not much older than we are," she said. "And while he's far more experienced in war, he, from what I've gleaned, was not a scholar before he was assigned to the Academy. He hits particular areas and stays there for a while. He caught me out when he started talking about the communist war in Chin and the American defeat in Vietnam, but after that I realized he was concentrating on the twentieth century in Asia. From there I researched all the books related to that area and period and started reading them as fast as I could. There are only so many that survived the Fall. Captain Herrick has access to Duke Edmund's library, as well, but he seems to be drawing on historical actions that are in books in the Academy library. Personally, I think he's doing that so we can do the research he assigns and tries to limit himself to what he knows is available. So if you work at it, you can stay ahead of the assignments."
"That's . . . twisted," Destrang said.
"It's using intelligence and planning to stay ahead of your enemy's thoughts," the female ensign said with a grin. "Call it . . . subtle. Now, Asghar," she continued, looking at Destrang. "I'll help you find the relevant sections in there if you'll help me with that damned engineering assignment."
"What's so hard?" the ensign replied, picking up a sheet of paper with a vague sketch on it. "It's just bridge design."
"It's the schedule he required," Van Krief answered. "I can design the bridge, it's a straightforward pile bridge like we made in Blood Lords school, just bigger. But first you have to come up with the materials list, then a plan to gather the materials, then implementation. With a single legion."
"Legion and supports," Destrang said, sitting down. "Don't forget the camp followers. You're allowed six hundred camp followers as well; which is low according to the texts. Of those, some two hundred are going to be male. Some of them are semicritical servants, make it a hundred and fifty available. You don't assemble the materials and then get started, you start to assemble the materials and then as soon as you have a certain amount you devote most of the legion to building while the camp followers continue cutting trees. You're the one that keeps reading ahead, you might want to think back instead to Gallic Wars."
"Ah," Van Krief replied, with a smile. "But there's no mention of using the camp followers in there."