"Serrano Legacy - 01 - Hunting Party" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

"Thank you," she said, as if it had been her idea. Bates touched a magnetic
wand to the lockfaces; she put her hand on each one. After a moment, the
doorcall's pleasant anonymous voice said, "Name, please?" and she gave her
name; the doorcall chimed once and said, "Welcome home, Captain Serrano."
Bates handed her a fat ring of wands.
"These are the rekeying wands for ship's crew and all the operating
compartments. They're all coded; you'll find the full architectural schematics
loaded on your desk display. The crew will await your arrival on the bridge,
at your convenience."
She didn't even know if she could ask Bates to tell the crew when to expect
her, or if that was something household staff never did. She had already
discovered that the house staff and the ship crew had very little to do with
each other.
"I could just pass the word to Mr. Gavin, the engineer," Bates said, almost
apologetically. "Since Captain Olin left" -- Captain Olin, Heris knew, had
been fired -- "Lady Cecelia has often asked me to speak to Mr. Gavin."
"Thank you," Heris said. "One hour." She glanced at the room's chronometer, a
civilian model which she would replace with the one in her luggage.
"Philip will escort you," Bates said
She opened her mouth to say it was not necessary -- even in this perfumed and
padded travesty of a ship she could find the bridge by herself -- but instead
said, "Thank you" once more. She would not challenge their assumptions yet.
Her master's certificate went into the mounting plaque on the wall; her other
papers went into the desk. Her luggage -- she had asked that it not be
unpacked -- cluttered one corner of her office. Beyond that was a smaller
room, then the bathroom -- her mouth quirked as she forced herself to call it
that. And beyond that, her bedroom. A cubage larger than an admiral would have
on most ships, and far larger than anyone of her rank ever had, even on a
Station. A suite, part of the price being paid to lure a real spacer, a real
captain, into this kind of work.
In the hour she had unpacked her few necessary clothes, her books, her
reference data cubes, and made sure that the desk display would handle them.
The chronometer on the wall now showed Service Standard time as well as ship's
time and Station time, and had the familiar overlapping segments of color to
delineate four-, six-, and eight-hour watches. She had reviewed the crew bios
in the desk display. And she had shrugged away her regrets. It was all over
now, all those years of service, all her family's traditions; from now on, she
was Heris Serrano, captain of a yacht, and she would make the best of it.
And they wouldn't know what hit them.
-=O=-***-=O=-
Some of them suspected within moments of her arrival on the bridge. Whatever
decorator had chosen all the lavender and teal furnishings of the rest of the
ship, the bridge remained functional, if almost toylike in its bright, shiny,
compactness. The crew had to squeeze in uncomfortably; Heris noticed who
squeezed in next to whom, and who wished this were over. They had heard, no
doubt. They could see what they could see; she might be wearing purple and
scarlet, but she had the look, and knew she had it; all those generations of
command came out her eyes.
She met theirs. Blue, gray, brown, black, green, hazel: clear, hazy, worried,
frightened, challenging. Mr. Gavin, the engineer -- thin, almost wispy, and