Ahilezz: переводы

→“I think it’s time to make use of the Ballroom again.”

→“What?” Benjamin asked.

→“Yes, that does seem to be the case,” Kolokoltsov agreed in a tone of deliberate understatement, and MacArtney flushed. He looked as if he might be about to say something, but then he bit his lip. Kolokoltsov gazed at him for a moment longer, then sighed.

→“I’m not wildly enamored of it myself,” Malachai Abruzzi told her, “but we’ve damned well got to do something. Something that looks at least moderately aggressive, I mean. And after what happened to Filareta, I don’t see a lot of other options.”

→“I’m still not sure this is the best policy,” Agatá Wodoslawski said unhappily.

→“So we’re agreed?” Kolokoltsov asked, and looked around the faces of his fellows.

→He shook his head, and Honor nodded again.

→And then there were Ghost Rider and Apollo.

→“Nice to find out we got something right, Your Grace,” Brigham muttered, and Honor snorted.

→Which wasn’t the case for her missiles.

→Her lips twitched ever so slightly, but her eyes were intent. She’d launched her own shipkillers first. That meant her massive attack was going to reach its target fifteen seconds before Filareta’s reached her, despite the Solarian missiles’ unanticipated performance. Unfortunately, the Solarians, without Apollo, would have cut their telemetry links long before that, and their missiles would follow their seekers into the targets they’d been ordered to attack, whatever had happened to the humans who’d given those orders. If they lost lock on those targets, they’d be forced to quest around for replacements on their own, strictly limited initiative, but either way, they’d already have switched to autonomous mode, and not even the total destruction of the ships which had launched them would make any difference at all.

→“Wonderful,” Albrecht said bitterly.

→“What?” Albrecht blinked in surprise. “We didn’t have anything to do with that!”

→“Oh, shit,” Albrecht said with quiet, heartfelt intensity.

→“With Elizabeth?”

→Within those limitations, they were actually a well thought out, workmanlike proposition. Which, unfortunately for the Solarian League Navy, was nowhere near good enough.

→That was actually a bit better—about 2,000 KPS better, in fact—than the RMN’s own Mark 23 could do, Honor reflected. Obviously, the same thought had occurred to Truman, as well.

→His voice trailed off into silence, and Alfred shrugged.

→“Well, now that we’ve all expressed our surprise, what do we do about it?” Elizabeth asked.

→“It does seem that way,” she acknowledged. “I guess the real question is whether or not the good surprises outnumber the bad ones. I remember my father saying true leadership isn’t the ability to accomplish the things you plan on; it’s the ability to cope with the things you never in a thousand years saw coming.” She smiled a bit raggedly. “I seem to’ve been getting a lot of practice at that lately.”