"E. E. Doc Smith - D' Alembert 7 - Planet of treachery" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

one raid had been a fluke. Either the Imperial Navy or the Service of the Empire must
have learned of the base through outside sources and acted against it on an impromptu
basis. C had said he'd be checking out the details further. But for now, Ling was dead
and any mistakes he'd made to reveal his location to the Empire had died with him.

Lady A was never one to dwell on past failures, except to make them object lessons for
the future. "The loss of the Lucinda doesn't trouble me greatly," she said. "As you
yourself pointed out, a few losses are inevitable. But aboard the Lucinda, the Navy found
the body of Karla Jost-a woman who was exiled to Gastonia twelve years ago and who,
as far as the Empire's official files went, was still there. Up until that time, the
enforcement arms of the Empire had not suspected our Gastonian operations; now they
do. Karla Jost was supposed to remain here with you. What was she doing on the
Lucinda?"

If the implied charges of malfeasance bothered Shen, he did not let his feelings show.
"She was going to be one of my wing commanders," he explained coolly. "Yet she hadn't
been aboard a ship, except to come here from Gastonia, in a dozen years. I don't know
about you, milady, but I don't want to put someone in a position of command until they've
proven they can handle it. Jost was on a shakedown cruise, to regain her space legs and
get the feel of command. It was only bad luck that her ship was the one the Navy
snatched."

"Bad luck is the excuse of incompetent planners."

Shen smiled disarmingly. Not even Lady A could force him to lose his composure. "Quite
so, but we've all had our share of it, eh? What about your government contacts? Couldn't
they have hushed the matter before it reached SOTE's ears?"

Lady A frowned. "Unfortunately, by the time it came through official channels there was
little we could do. There is a point of no return, after which an attempted coverup only
makes matters worse rather than better. Covering up would have meant too many
corpses, too many transferred personnel, too many falsified records-and if anyone had
caught wind of that, they might realize how well organized our forces are. We decided it
best to leave SOTE with the impression we're more fallible, to lull them into a false sense
of security. In fact, we're working on a plan to turn the error to our advantage."

She stopped abruptly. "But that's not your concern. Whether we can profit by our
mistake is immaterial; the fact remains that the mistake should never have been made in
the first place." She did not have to say more. Her words implied strongly enough that
Shen was to avoid such occurrences in the future. If he was not smart enough to read
the implication, she would soon have a new admiral.

"I agree," Shen said amiably. "But here we run into a problem of morale. That first false
alarm dashed everyone's hopes; sitting here on a jungle world, parsecs away from
civilization, with nothing to do all day but polish the ships' noses is having a bad
psychological effect on my people. We can't make the mistake of giving them too much
time to think; who knows what dangers that might lead to? I must give them something to
do. I'd rather send them out on their occasional piratical jaunts and risk losing a ship
every so often than have them sit around and grumble and grow discontented. That's no
way to win a war, milady."