"Eric Flint & K. D. Wentworth - The Course of Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)

Yaut threw him an approving look, quickly suppressed, then locked his hands behind
his back and waited with an air of intense-concentration.
"As you wish, Subcommandant," the Krumat said. He stepped before Aille, his
shoulders straight, his arms angled to indicate resignation-to-duty. "Shall I show you to
your quarters?"
"I wish to go first, Pleniary-Adjunct," Aille said. "Is that not how the natives accord
one another honor?"
The poor Krumat looked as though he might faint at this impropriety. "But we are
Jao!"
 Aille glanced over at his troops. Several were watching the whole scene as though
they spoke fluent Jao, or at least enough to piece things together. "And they are not," he
said pointedly. "Which way?"
"Straight ahead," the Krumat said, and gestured toward the third building to the right,
which was stiff with straight lines and in full sight of the wrack-littered shore.
Aille set off and the troop of Terrans fell in behind. Yaut edged up until he was
almost even with his charge. "This feels strange," he said under his breath. "Keep your
wits about you, youngster. The Commandant of military forces on Terra is Kaul krinnu
ava Dano, and Dano is traditionally aligned with Narvo."
Aille made no reply. But his fingers tightened around his new bau, as he wondered
indeed how long he would be able to keep it.
***
After Mrat krinnu nao Krumat saw the new Subcommandant safely installed in his
quarters, he retreated to his office and sank onto his pile of dehabia to stare at the map-
walls. That brute Kaul had withheld the Subcommandant's identity, reserving it, no
doubt, so that Mrat might experience the shock of this moment and reflect on his own
unworthiness to hold even this unexalted post. Kaul went out of his way to make Mrat
feel most keenly the lowly position of his Krumat kochan.
The new Subcommandant Aille's kochan, on the other hand—Pluthrak!—extended
over many worlds and enjoyed widespread favor, developing associations wherever it
turned and producing countless illustrious scions down through the generations. Mrat's
own Krumat was nothing in comparison, just a backworld moiety formed less than a
hundred orbital cycles ago by the union of two very junior taifs. Their resources were few
and they had only two kochan-houses completed even now. When he'd finished his
training, certainly no wily old fraghta had been available to guard him from serious
errors.
The com buzzed, bringing word of yet another fight in the comestibles dispensary. He
stood and stared blindly out the window at the evil-smelling sea, vast and glittering
beneath this overbearing alien sun, then went to inspect the damage.
Voices stilled as he entered the ugly box-shaped room. Food lay strewn everywhere
and the humans had already been driven into a line along the far wall. He knew the
species well enough now to recognize the expressions on their bruised and bloody faces
as defiance and resentment. One Jao was seriously hurt and had already been removed for
treatment. Two humans lay dead on the floor, along with two more who were badly
injured.
His shoulders tightened. Waste. It was all a stupid, pointless waste. One of the Jao
soldiers had evidently made a comment that offended the natives and once again chaos
was the result.
Humans put their barbaric pride above all else. They simply had no idea how to
cooperate like decent civilized beings, how to build association so that the strength of
others reinforced your own, rather than strove against it. How they'd survived their own