"David Weber - Dahak 03 - Heirs of Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

empty air surprised none of them. They'd known Dahak all their lives, and the self-aware computer's
starship body was one of their favorite playgrounds.
"Who cares?" Sandy demanded gleefully. "I got him! Zap!" She pointed her pistol at Sean and
collapsed with a wail of laughter at his expression.
"Luck!" he shot back, holstering his own pistol with dignity he knew was threadbare. "You were just
lucky, Sandy!"
"That is incorrect, Sean," Dahak observed with the dispassionate fairness Sean hated when it was on
someone else's side. " 'Luck' implies the fortuitous working of chance, and Sandra's decision to conceal
herself in the lake—which, I observed, you did not check once—was an ingenious maneuver. And as she
has cogently if unkindly observed, she 'got' you."
"So there!" Sandy stuck out her tongue, and Sean turned away with an injured air. It didn't get any
better when Harriet grinned at him.
"I told you Sandy was old enough, didn't I?" she demanded.
He longed to disagree—violently—but he was an honest boy, and so he nodded begrudgingly, and
tried to hide his shudder as a vision of the future unrolled before him. Sandy was Harry's best friend,
despite her youth, and now the little creep was going to be underfoot everywhere. He'd managed to fend
that off for over a year by claiming she was too little. Until today. She was already two course units
ahead of him in calculus, and now this!
The universe, Sean Horus MacIntyre concluded grumpily, wasn't exactly running over with justice.
***
Amanda Tsien and her husband stepped out of the transit shaft outside Dahak's command deck. Her
son, Tamman, followed them down the passage, but he was almost squirming in impatience, and Amanda
glanced up at her towering husband with a twinkle. Most described Tsien Tao-ling's face as grim, but a
smile flickered as he watched Tamman. The boy might not be "his" in any biological sense, yet that didn't
mean he wasn't Tamman's father, and he nodded when Amanda quirked an eyebrow.
"All right, Tamman," she said. "You can go."
"Thanks, Mom!" He turned in his tracks with the curiously catlike awkwardness of his age and
dashed back towards the transit shaft. "Where's Sean, Dahak?" he demanded as he ran.
"He is on Park Deck Nine, Tamman," a mellow voice responded.
"Thanks! See you later, Mom, Dad!" Tamman ran sideways for a moment to wave, then dove into
the shaft with a whoop.
"You'd think they hadn't seen each other in months," Amanda sighed.
 "I do not believe children live on the same time scale as adults," Tsien observed in his deep, soft
voice as she tucked a hand through his elbow.
"You can say that again!"
They turned the final bend to confront the command deck hatch. Dahak's crest coiled across the
bronze-gold battle steel: a three-headed dragon, poised for flight, clawed forefeet raised to cradle the
emblem of the Fifth Imperium. The crowned starburst of the Fourth Empire had been retained, but now a
Phoenix of rebirth erupted from the starburst, and the diadem of empire rested on its crested head. The
twenty-centimeter-thick hatch—the first of many, each fit to withstand a kiloton-range warhead—slid
soundlessly open.
"Hello, Dahak," Amanda said as they walked forward and other hatches parted before them.
"Good evening, Amanda. Welcome aboard, Star Marshal."
"Thank you," Tsien replied. "Have the others arrived?"
"Admiral Hatcher is en route, but the MacMahans and Duke Horus have already joined Their
Majesties."
"One day Gerald must learn there are only twenty-eight hours even in Birhat's day," Tsien sighed.
"Oh, really?" Amanda glanced up at him again. "I suppose you've already learned that?"
"Perhaps not," he agreed with another small smile, and she snorted as a final hatch admitted them to
the dim vastness of Dahak's Command One.