muracan: переводы

→“No, Captain Holden. No sticks,” Duarte said. “When you fight gods, you storm heaven.”

→“Prepare us for what?” Holden asked. “To poke gods with a sharp stick?”

→“I think,” Duarte said, “it may be time I met this Captain Holden.”

→Duarte pulled up the new file, opening it with a gesture. Cumulative update on the debriefing of Prisoner 17. Duarte spooled down the file, seeing Cortazár’s questions, the prisoner’s responses. They were only words. Designs of light drawn on air. After glimpsing the living thoughts of Dr. Singh and her daughter, mere language seemed sterile. He looked at Kelly, closed the file.

→“Roci’s a little bored, but she’s in good condition,” Alex said from the flight deck. “A little impurity in the water supply we should look at, but it’s likely just a seal that’s wearing out. A little stray leaching.”

→“What’s the good word?” she said.

→As she packed her things from the captain’s cabin, her guard watching wordlessly from the doorway, she opened a connection to Alex.

→They moved through the ship like they were visiting someone in prison. The guards went with them everywhere, examined everything they took from their cabins, watched every command they gave the ship, copied every report the ship returned. The resentment in Bobbie’s gut ached, but there wasn’t anything to be done about it. Their pass allowed them to retrieve personal items and any tools they needed for their work, provided they didn’t present a security risk. Which was a shame. There was a part of her that would have liked to explain that she worked as a mercenary so that she could walk out of here with Betsy around her like a shell.

→On the traffic-control channel, the captain of the Tori Byron was hailing the Laconian whatever it was, ordering it to come to a full stop. Bobbie nodded at the screen, willing Trejo to respond. To make this a more normal interaction. Instead the strange ship continued on its course, placid and implacable. Another drive plume still showed on the other side of the gate. Much smaller, but a second ship all the same. After a moment, the Tori Byron lit its main drive, moving itself in on an intercept. It was like watching a house cat preparing to face down a lion.

→“That ain’t one of ours,” Alex said. “Shit. Where did they get that?”

→The ship that came through first looked wrong. It was something more than the weirdly organic shape of it. The way the false color struggled to make sense of its surface was like a graphical glitch or something out of a dream. She found herself looking for seams where its plating came together, and there was nothing. Her mind kept trying to see it as a ship, but defaulting to some kind of ancient sea creature from the deep trenches of Earth.

→Unless it was something else.

→“Throw me the update, please,” Bobbie said, and the screen with Laconia gate on her monitor shifted to a live feed of the gate itself, enhanced in false color to make the darkness legible. The weird circle of the gate. The wavering stars beyond it, and a looming shadow coming through. Even just watching the stars go out behind it, Bobbie could tell it was a big ship. Maybe it was their Donnager-class battleship. And that in itself would be the Laconians making a statement.

→“It would be a very different case,” Santos-Baca agreed. It was good that they were on the same page with this. Drummer had half-feared that the board was going to come up with their own strategy. Her job was herding kittens. Only thankfully not this time. She was trying to avoid being a police force. She sure as hell didn’t want to command a full military. If there was going to be a war on the far side of Laconia gate, let Mars fight it.

→Drummer considered. “We can get a couple ships as backup, just in case. If it turns out Laconia needs its ass kicked, I’m not sending our ships through their gate. But it may make that charter an easier sell. Let Mars smell blood and vengeance and see if the EMC gets more interested in enforcement and policing than it was before?”

→Santos-Baca opened her hands, an old-school gesture that said, It’s right here in front of you. “I think we’re about to see a bunch of self-centered assholes who’ve realized that their glorious independence isn’t going to work out in isolation. If we can keep them from losing face, we can probably find a negotiated path to reintegration. But Mars is going to be a problem. They’re going to want all of them trotted back to Olympus Mons and hung as traitors.”

→“It’s not the odds-on bet. Even when their fleet was new, taking out the rail-gun emplacements would have been a mighty tall order.”

→“All right then,” Drummer said. “Nothing we can’t handle.”

→“With ships that haven’t resupplied or seen a shipyard in decades,” Drummer said. “And with our rail-gun emplacements all warmed up and ready to poke holes in anyone that gets too rowdy. Are we thinking that’s a realistic possibility?”

→“The other possibility is that they’re going to try force.”