"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Alliances" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

“I know,” she said.
“Don’t you know what kind of problems this will create?” Ivy, her pilot, asked.
“I know,” Roz said.
“And you did it anyway?” Ivy asked. “Don’t you know what’s going to happen to
you?”
“Nothing that hasn’t happened already,” Roz said. “I need a quick meeting of the
senior staff. It’s time you all know what’s going on.”
They frowned and returned to their posts.
She sat back and let Ivy do the hard piloting. But Roz made sure the computer was
charting their course, and taking readings of the rocks and debris near the strange
twists and turns. Maybe, just maybe, she’d be lucky enough to find a common
material in all of that junk.
Maybe she’d discover how to locate a Ba-am-adian mine.
“He’s been tampering with all of our records?” Ethan asked, pacing around the
conference desk.
The conference room in the Millennium was probably the prettiest room on the
ship. On one wall, it had floor-to-ceiling windows open to space, on the others it had
hand-painted maps of the known universe-maps which could be covered by screens
if someone needed to make a large presentation.
Ethan was a burly man who’d made his way through the ranks on sheer brute force.
It had taken her-and her crew- to show him that he had the intelligence to match that
strength.
Now, however, she wished he was small and puny. He was using that strength to
knock empty chairs and eventually, he’d knock them clear of their anchors in the
floor.
Ivy was huddled beside Roz, looking as if she didn’t want to be there. Three other
staff members, petite Gina Fishel who headed security, no-nonsense Belle Curry
who ran the medical team, and sturdy Tom O’Neal who led the engineering team,
watched Ethan warily. He was expressing the anger all of them felt-Roz was smart
enough to know that-but they still weren’t comfortable with the edge of violence that
was in all of his movements.
She was. She remembered having the same feeling in Galland’s office.
“Yes,” Roz said patiently. “He tampered with everything.”
“And you trusted him?”
“He was my superior officer,” she said. “We were following regulations.”
Ethan growled and smacked another empty chair. “You should have double-checked
on him.”
“Why didn’t you?” she asked, unable to control the impulse.
“Because that was your job.”
“So, under your logic, you should have made sure that I did it properly.” She folded
her hands. “We’d all been on base since the loss of the St. Petersburg. We all had
the opportunity to make sure that Galland was telling us the truth. We all chose to
believe the system was working.”
Ethan whirled, slapping his large hands on the table. “You can’t blame this on us.”
“I’m not,” Roz said. “But I am pointing out that the mistake I made was somewhat
logical. I’ve had a week to think about this. I screwed up, yes, and I allowed my
desire to maintain a ship and a command compromise all of us. But we’re here
now-”
“We wouldn’t be here if you’d told us that on base,” Gina said softly.
Roz nodded. “I know that.”