"Elizabeth Moon - Familias 04 - Once A Hero" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

"Have your officers fill out these forms—" he handed her a sheaf
of them. "Turn them in, completed and countersigned by you, within
forty-eight hours, and I'll forward them to the admiral's staff for
approval. If approved, that will authorize officers to arrange for
replacements of uniforms—and yes, that will include Fleet authorization
to forward measurements to registered tailors, so they can get started.
Now, we need to deal with the basic reports that should have been
filed, or ready to file, at the time when you were relieved of command of
Despite."
The junior officers were not delighted with the forms; some of
them procrastinated, and Esmay found herself having to nag them to
finish the paperwork by the deadline. "None too early," grunted Hosri's
senior clerk, when Esmay brought the reports in. He glanced at the
clock. "What'd you do, wait until the last minute?"
She said nothing; she didn't like this clerk, and she had had to
work with him for two straight shifts on the incomplete reports Hosri
thought she should do. Just let it be over with, she told herself, even
though she knew that the reports were the least of her problems. While
she worked on those, the other young officers faced daily sessions with
investigators determined to find out exactly how it was that a R.S.S.
patrol ship had been captained by a traitor, and then embroiled in
mutiny. Her turn would come next.

Forensics had swarmed over the Despite, stripping the records
from the automatic surveillance equipment, searching every
compartment, questioning every survivor, examining all the bodies in the
ship's morgue. Esmay could only imagine that search, from the questions
they asked each day. First with no visual cues at all, when they asked
her to explain, moment by moment, where she had been and what she
had seen, heard, and done when Captain Hearne took the ship away
from Xavier. Later, with a 3-D display of the ship, they led her through it
again. Exactly where had she been? Facing which way? When she said
she saw Captain Hearne the last time, where was Hearne, and what had
she been doing?
Esmay had never been good at this sort of thing. She found out
quickly that she had apparently perjured herself already: she could not,
from where she remembered she'd been sitting, have seen Lt.
Commander Forrester come out of the cross-corridor the way she'd
said. It was, the interrogator pointed out, physically impossible to see
around corners without special instruments. Had she had any? No. But
her specialty had been scan. Was she sure she had not rigged something
up? And again here—lines of her earlier testimony moved down the
monitor alongside the image of the ship. Could she explain how she had
gotten from her own quarters back here all the way forward and down
two decks in only fifteen seconds? Because there was a clear picture of
her—she recognized herself with familiar distaste—in the access
corridor to the forward portside battery at 18:30:15, when she had
insisted she was in her own quarters for the 18:30 duty report.
Esmay had no idea, and said so. She had made a habit of being in
her quarters for that duty report; it had meant that she didn't have to