bloodmoon: переводы

→“I don’t think there’s anything they can do,” Caddell-Markham replied. “I think they’re in so deep they figure the only thing they can do is keep bashing straight ahead and hope for the best.”

→“He doesn’t seem very impressed by my warning, does he?” Hiram Ivanov observed as the icons of the Solarian formation continued their remorseless, silent advance on the terminus.

→* * *

→Of course, neither he nor Pyun had been anywhere near the Talbott Sector when that incomparable military genius Josef Byng managed to get his flagship blown away at New Tuscany. Nor had they been in the vicinity when Sandra Crandall set out to avenge her fellow genius, so there was no way they could have any firsthand impression of the weapons Manticore might have used. Unlike Gilmore, however, Pyun had enjoyed the dubious pleasure of actually meeting Crandall, and based on that, the Manties’ version of what she’d done at Spindle carried a pronounced ring of truth. Which suggested the rest of their version of the Battle of Spindle was also at least reasonably accurate. Pyun might be willing to play devil’s advocate with Gilmore, but he shared his ops officer’s disinclination to simply dismiss the “preposterous” ranges which had been reported by at least some Solarian observers even before whatever happened to Crandall. Thirty million kilometers still sounded like too much to be true, but…

→Sharon Selkirk, Shadwell Corporation’s senior shipping executive for the Mendelschon System, stared at her com display, and the man on it shook his head regretfully.

→And while we keep Othello out of harm’s way, he added silently to himself. Unlike her more youthful consort, Tornado, the elderly destroyer wasn’t armed with Mark 16s, and Pang had already decided to keep her as far to the rear as he could.

→“Let Percy take AuxCon while you head back over to the Bridge to relieve me,” he continued to Sadowski. Lieutenant the Honorable Percival Quentin-Massengale, Onyx’s assistant tactical officer, was the senior of Sadowski’s officers in Auxiliary Control. “We’ll pull Smilodon and the tin-cans back and let Onyx take point for the first twelve hours, or until our friend Chalker decides to take himself elsewhere. After that, Smilodon can have the duty for the next twelve hours. We’ll let the cruisers swap off while the destroyers watch our backs.”

→Better to be hung for a hexapuma than a housecat, he thought. And it’s not like I could’ve found some kind of magic formula to keep the jerk happy, no matter what I did! At least this way if he’s stupid enough to pull the trigger, it won’t be because he didn’t know exactly how I’d respond.

→“You think you can come waltzing into Solarian space and threaten Solarian citizens? Tell a Solarian warship you’ll open fire on it?” Chalker said sixteen seconds later.

→“Yes, Sir.” Frazier nodded with an answering smile. “I do. By the strangest coincidence, I’ve just this minute discovered that I’ve got her IDed, dialed in, and locked up, as a matter of fact.”

→“I acknowledge your authorization to return fire if we’re fired upon, Sir,” Sadowski said a bit more formally, and Pang nodded again, then stood and looked back to Frazier.

→“I acknowledge your authorization to return fire if we’re fired upon, Sir,” Sadowski said a bit more formally, and Pang nodded again, then stood and looked back to Frazier.

→“Good.” Pang nodded curtly, then looked back down at Sadowski. “You heard, Myra?”

→The tall, attractive, and very dangerous blonde flung herself backward into the threadbare armchair. She leaned back, crossed her arms, and glowered out the huge crystoplast wall at what any unbiased person would have to call the magnificent vista of Yamato’s Nebula.

→“This,” Yana Tretiakovna announced, “is booooooring.”