mega8750: переводы

→He paused, inviting anyone to disagree with anything he'd just said. Queen Elizabeth clearly didn't, and as much as Grantville would have liked to, he couldn't. Sir Anthony Langtry seemed torn between a diplomat's responsibility to find an option short of war and an ex-Marine's bloodthirsty belligerence. Sir Thomas Caparelli and Admiral Patricia Givens, on the other hand, were in obvious agreement with White Haven.

→"As a matter of fact, I am." White Haven's teeth flashed in something which bore a certain vague resemblance to a smile, and Samantha flattened her ears as she lay stretched tense and angry along the back of his chair. "On the other hand, we're the ones who were supposed to be the recipient of a Pearl Harbor attack this time around, not the ones stupid enough to launch it. And I'm not proposing any of us underestimate the scale of the threat, either. What I am pointing out is that there's no point pretending none of this has happened, or that the League's going to accept the outright destruction of twenty-three superdreadnoughts and the capture of forty-eight more--not to mention all Crandall's escorts, screening elements, and supply ships--without doing its damnedest to turn the entire Star Empire into rubble. In my opinion, Mike did exactly what she should've done under the circumstances, given an opposition force commander who obviously couldn't have poured piss out of a boot even if it did have instructions on the heel. But the fact that she chose the right option doesn't mean she chose a good one, since there weren't any good ones available to her."

→Grantville's face tightened as he heard the combined anger, vengefulness, and confidence in his brother's voice. The Alexander temper was famous throughout the Royal Manticoran Navy, and Grantville had enjoyed even more experience with it than most of White Haven's fellow officers. For that matter, he had it himself, in full measure. And he knew his brother well enough to understand exactly how a man who'd commanded the men and women of the Royal Navy in battle would feel about someone who'd cold-bloodedly set out to annihilate a handful of ­battlecruisers and heavy cruisers with an entire fleet of superdreadnoughts. The fact that things hadn't worked out the way Sandra Crandall had expected wasn't likely to do a thing to make White Haven any less angry, either. Nor, for that matter, should it.

→"You know, Ham, I've been doing a little historical research of my own since Mike's first reports about New Tuscany got back to us," he said. "You were right when you suggested Lincoln to me, but there are some other interesting tidbits in Old Earth history, too. For example, I assume you're familiar with the term ‘victory disease,' aren't you?"

→After all, "it's the thought that counts," isn't it? Grantville reflected. On the other hand . . . 

→"Of course there is! If you can reach your pulser, you put a dart through the six-legged bastard's brain, instead," the Earl of White Haven replied harshly.

→"You really think there's another option, Hamish?" the Prime Minister asked skeptically.

→"Not necessarily, Willie," his brother said. Baron Grantville looked at him, eyebrows rising, and Hamish Alexander-Harrington barked a laugh. There was no humor in the cold sound, and his blue eyes were even colder.

→"I suppose so, Your Majesty," William Alexander replied. "On the other hand, our decision trees have just been rather brutally simplified. Once you're on the hexapuma's back, your only real options are to hang on or get eaten!"

→"Well," Elizabeth Winton said dryly, "I suppose the question presently before us is ‘Now what the hell do we do?' "

→"You know, Denis," Theisman said in a gentler tone, "if he's been out of contact this long, the most likely reason is that he and Zilwicki were both killed on Mesa."

→His three listeners looked at one another with suddenly thoughtful expressions.

→"I'm willing to bet that was pretty much Cachat's analysis," LePic agreed with a nod. "And, if it was, it obviously worked, given Duchess Harrington's evident attitude towards the negotiations. Not only that, but it set up the situation in which she brought us her version of what really happened on Mesa."

→Montreau started to reply, then stopped, visibly thought for a moment or two, and shook her head, almost against her will.

→"From what I know of Cachat--although I hasten to admit it's all second- or thirdhand, since I've never met him personally--he spends a lot of time operating by intuition. In fact, any way you look at it, a huge part of those successes Denis was just talking about have resulted from a combination of that intuition with the personal contacts and relationships he's established. And you've met Alexander-Harrington now, Leslie. If you were going to reach out to a highly placed member of an enemy star nation's political and military establishment because you were convinced someone was trying to sabotage peace talks between us and them, could you think of a better person to risk contacting?"

→"Makes sense?" Montreau repeated incredulously.

→"Actually, it makes sense, you know," Theisman said thoughtfully after a moment.

→LePic only nodded, and Montreau sat back in her chair with an expression of utter disbelief.

→"You're telling us," Montreau said, speaking with the careful precision of someone determined to make certain they really had heard correctly, "that one of FIS's station chiefs really went, with a known Manticoran intelligence operative, to a star system the Manties have declared a closed military reservation, for a personal conversation with the commanding officer of their Eighth Fleet before the Battle of Lovat? And then went off on a completely unauthorized operation to Mesa? Which apparently ran right into the middle of whatever really happened at Green Pines?"

→"My, my, my," she murmured with a crooked smile. "Only Victor Cachat. Now that Kevin's out of the field, anyway."