"David Weber - Honor Harrington - 02 - The Honor Of The Queen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

She shuddered and turned away from that gorgeous, deadly view to concentrate on her tactical display. The local naval units which had come out to greet them had decelerated to match vectors with the convoy; now they shared Fearless's orbit, and she knew she was studying them to avoid looking at their homeworld until she could come to terms with its reality.
Most of them were light attack craft, purely sublight intrasystem vessels, the largest massing barely eleven thousand tons. The LACs were dwarfed by their light cruiser flagship, yet however large she might be beside her diminutive consorts, the cruiser was only a little over ninety thousand tons, barely two-thirds the size of Alice Truman's Apollo. She was also thirty years old, but Honor's last command had been even smaller and older, and she could only approve of the crisp deft way the Graysons had maneuvered to rendezvous with her own command. Those ships might be old and technically inferior, but their crews knew what they were doing.
She sighed and leaned back, glancing around her bridge once more. Admiral Courvosier's staff had handled all message traffic, but she'd monitored it at his invitation, and she'd been relieved by the genuine welcome in Admiral Yanakov's voice. Maybe this wasn't going to be as bad as she'd feared-and even if it was, her new insight into the environment from whence these people sprang should certainly temper her own reaction.
"Admiral Yanakov will arrive in six minutes, Skipper," Lieutenant Metzinger said suddenly, and Honor nodded. She pressed a button, and her command chair displays folded into their storage positions.
"I think it's time you and I got down to the boat bay to join the Admiral and greet our guests, Exec."
"Yes, Ma'am." Andreas Venizelos climbed out of his own chair and joined her as she headed for the bridge lift.
"Mr. DuMorne, you have the watch."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. I have the watch," DuMorne replied, and moved from his station to the command chair as the lift door slid shut behind her.
* * *
High Admiral Yanakov tasted pure, undiluted envy as HMS Fearless swelled before him. Now that was a warship, he thought, drinking in the sleek, double-ended spindle appreciatively. The big, powerful ship hung against the bottomless stars, gleaming with reflected sunlight, and she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Her impeller wedge and defensive sidewalls were down, displaying her arrogant grace to the naked eye, and her midships section swelled smoothly between the bands of her fore and aft impeller rings, bristling with state-of-the-art radar and gravitic arrays and passive sensor systems. Her hull number-CA 286-stood out boldly against the white hull just aft of her forward impeller nodes, and weapon bays ran down her armored flank like watching eyes.
His cutter shivered as one of the cruiser's tractors locked on, and his pilot cut his thrusters as they slid into the bright cavern of Fearless's boat bay. The tractor deposited the small craft neatly in a cradle, the docking collar nestled into place, and the pressure signal buzzed, indicating a solid seal.
Lieutenant Andrews and his staff fell in behind him as the Admiral swam down the access tube, and he smiled as he saw the Manticoran rating stationed diplomatically by the scarlet-hued grab bar just short of the tube's end. The rating started to speak, but stopped himself as he saw Yanakov already reaching for the bar. The Grayson Navy used green, not scarlet, but the Admiral recognized the meaning of the color code and swung himself nimbly across the interface into the cruiser's internal gravity. He stepped out of the way, moving forward to make room for his staff, and the shrill of the bosun's pipes greeted him as he cleared the tube hatch.
The boat bay gallery was huge compared to the one he'd left behind aboard Grayson, but it seemed absolutely filled with people. The Marine honor guard snapped to attention in its green-and-black dress uniforms, naval personnel in the black and gold of the Royal Manticoran Navy saluted sharply, and Yanakov blinked in surprise.
The damned ship was crewed by children! The oldest person in sight couldn't be over thirty T-years old, and most of them looked like they were barely out of high school!
Trained reflex took his hand through an answering salute even as the thought flashed through his mind, and then he kicked himself. Of course they weren't children; he'd forgotten the prolong treatment was universally available to Manticorans. But what did he do now? He wasn't that familiar with Manticoran naval insignia, and how did he pick the senior officers out of this morass of juvenile delinquents?
Part of the problem answered itself as a small, round-faced man in civilian clothing stepped forward. Logic suggested he had to be the delegation head, and that meant he was Admiral Raoul Courvosier. At least he looked like an adult-there was even gray in his hair-but he was far less impressive than Yanakov had anticipated. He'd read every article and lecture of Courvosier's he could find, and this smiling man looked more like an elf than the brilliant, sharp-eyed strategist the admiral had anticipated, but-
"Welcome aboard, High Admiral," Courvosier said, clasping Yanakov's hand firmly, and his deep voice, unlike his face, was exactly what Yanakov had envisioned. The crisp accent sounded odd-Grayson's long isolation had produced one which was much softer and slower paced-but its very oddness was somehow right and fitting.
"Thank you, Admiral Courvosier, and allow me, in the name of my government and people, to welcome you to our system."
Yanakov returned the handclasp while his staff assembled itself behind him. Then he glanced around the crowded gallery once more and stiffened. He'd known Manticore allowed women to serve in its military, but it had been an intellectual thing. Now he realized almost half the people around him-even some of the Marines!-were female. He'd tried to prepare himself for the alien concept, but the deep, visceral shock echoing deep inside him told him he'd failed. It wasn't just alien, it was unnatural, and he tried to hide his instinctive repugnance as he dragged his eyes back to Courvosier's face.
"On behalf of my Queen, I thank you," his host said, and Yanakov managed to bow pleasantly despite the reminder that a woman ruled Manticore. "I hope my visit will bring our two nations still closer together," Courvosier continued, "and I'd like to present my staff to you. But first, permit me to introduce Fearless's captain and our escort commander."
Someone stepped up beside Courvosier, and Yanakov turned to extend his hand, then froze. He felt his smile congeal as he saw the strong, beautiful, young face under the white beret and the tight-curled fuzz of silky brown hair. Yanakov was unusually tall for a Grayson, but the officer before him was at least twelve centimeters taller than he was, and that made it irrationally worse. He fought his sense of shock as he stared into the Manticoran captain's dark, almond eyes, furious that no one had warned him, knowing he was gaping and embarrassed by his own frozen immobility-and perversely angry with himself because of his embarrassment.
"High Admiral Yanakov, allow me to present Captain Honor Harrington," Courvosier said, and Yanakov heard the hissing gasp of his staff's utter disbelief behind him.

CHAPTER SIX
"I don't like it. I don't like it at all, Mr. Ambassador."
Leonard Masterman, the Havenite ambassador to Grayson, looked up and frowned. Captain Michaels was seldom this vocal, and his expression was uneasy.
"Why in hell did they have to send her?" The senior military attache paced back and forth across the ambassador's carpet. "Of all the officers in the Manticoran Navy, they had to stick us with Harrington! God, it's like history repeating itself!" he said bitterly, and Masterman's frown deepened.
"I don't quite understand your concern, Captain. This isn't the Basilisk System, after all."
Michaels didn't reply at once, for Masterman was an anachronism. The scion of a prominent Legislaturist family, he was also a career diplomat who believed in the rules of diplomacy, and Special Ops had decided he shouldn't know about Jericho, Captain Yu, or Thunder of God on the theory that he could play his role far more convincingly if they never told him it was a role.
"No, of course it's not Basilisk," the captain said finally. "But if any Manticoran officer has reason to hate us, it's her, and she gave us a hell of a black eye over Basilisk, Mr. Ambassador. The Graysons must have heard about it. If Courvosier uses her presence to play up the 'Havenite threat' to their own system-"
"You let me worry about that, Captain," Masterman responded with a slight smile. "Believe me, the situation's under control."
"Really, Sir?" Michaels regarded the ambassador dubiously.
"Absolutely." Masterman tipped his chair back and crossed his legs. "In fact, I can't think of a Manticoran officer I'd rather see out here. I'm astonished their foreign ministry let their admiralty send her."
"I beg your pardon?" Michaels' eyebrows rose, and Masterman chuckled.
"Look at it from the Graysons' viewpoint. She's a woman, and no one even warned them she was coming. However good her reputation may be, it's not good enough to offset that. Graysons aren't Masadans, but their bureaucrats still have trouble with the fact that they're dealing with Queen Elizabeth's government, and now Manticore's rubbed their noses in the cultural differences between them."
The ambassador nodded at Michaels' suddenly thoughtful expression.
"Exactly. And as for the Basilisk operation-" Masterman frowned, then shrugged. "I think it was a mistake, and it was certainly execrably executed, but, contrary to your fears, it can be made to work for us if we play our cards right."
The captain's puzzlement was obvious, and Masterman sighed.
"Grayson doesn't know what happened in Basilisk. They've heard our side and they've heard Manticore's, but they know each of us has an axe to grind. That means they're going to take both versions with more than a grain of salt, Captain, but their own prejudices against women in uniform will work in our favor. They'll want to believe the worst about her, if only to validate their own bias, and the fact that we don't have any female officers will be a factor in their thinking."
"But we do have female officers," Michaels protested.
"Of course we do," Masterman said patiently, "but we've carefully not assigned any to this system. And, unlike Manticore-which probably didn't have any choice, given that their head of state is a woman-we haven't told the locals we even have any. We haven't told them we don't, either, but their sexism cuts so deep they're ready to assume that unless we prove differently. So at the moment, they're thinking of us as a good, old-fashioned patriarchal society. Our foreign policy makes them nervous, but our social policies are much less threatening than Manticore's."
"All right, I can see that," Michaels agreed. "It hadn't occurred to me that they might assume we don't have any female personnel-I thought they'd just assume we were being tactful-but I see what you're driving at."
"Good. But you may not realize just how vulnerable Harrington really is. Bad enough she's a woman in a man's role, but she's also a convicted murderer," the ambassador said, and Michaels blinked in astonishment.
"Sir, with all due respect, no one's going to believe that. Hell, I don't like her a bit, but I know damned well that was pure propaganda."
"Of course you do, and so do I, but the Graysons don't. I'm quite aware the entire thing was a show trial purely for foreign consumption, and to be perfectly honest, I don't like it. But it's done, so we may as well use it. All any Grayson knows is that a Haven court found Captain Harrington guilty of the murder of an entire freighter's crew. Of course Manticore insists the 'freighter' was actually a Q-ship caught red-handed in an act of war-what else can they say?-but the fact that a court pronounced her guilty will predispose a certain percentage of people to believe she must have been guilty, particularly since she's a woman. All we have to do is point out her 'proven guilt' more in sorrow than in anger, as the natural result of the sort of catastrophe which results when you put someone with all of a woman's frailties in command of a ship of war."
Michaels nodded slowly. He felt a twinge of guilt, which surprised him, but Masterman was right, and the locals' prejudices would make them far more likely to accept a story no civilized planet would believe for a moment.
"You see, Captain?" Masterman said quietly. "This will let us change the entire focus of the internal Grayson debate over Manticore's overtures from a cold-blooded consideration of advantages to an emotional rejection based on their own bigotry. And if I've learned one thing over the years, it's that when it comes down to raw emotion against reason, emotion wins."
* * *
" . . . and this is our combat information center, gentlemen." Andreas Venizelos was short by Manticoran standards, but he stood centimeters taller than the Grayson officers in the compartment as he gestured about himself at the shining efficiency.
Admiral Yanakov managed not to gawk, but his palms itched as he took in the superb instrumentation. The holo tank was over three meters across, and the flat-screen displays around him showed every ship within ten light-minutes of Grayson. Not with single, annotated light codes for groups of vessels, but as individual units with graphic representations of mass and vector.