Honor Harrington #13 - A Rising Thunder by David Weber

Author:David Weber [Weber, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adventure, Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Space Opera
ISBN: 9781451638066
Google: _wgJfAEACAAJ
Amazon: 145163806X
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2012-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

It was undoubtedly, Honor thought, surveying the outsized conference room, the most unlikely meeting she’d ever attended. In fact, it was the sort of meeting no Manticoran could have imagined outside a drug dream as recently as last month.

Empress Elizabeth, President Pritchart, Benjamin Mayhew, Michael Mayhew, Prime Minister Grantville, Foreign Minister Langtry, and Secretary of Commerce Nesbitt sat ranged around the head of the enormous conference table. (Nesbitt was substituting—not without some obvious reservations—for Leslie Montreau, who’d been sent home with the daunting task of presenting Elizabeth’s and Pritchart’s draft treaties to the Havenite Senate.) Stretched along one of the table’s long sides were Honor herself, Hamish, High Admiral Judah Yanakov, Sir Thomas Caparelli, Admiral Pat Givens, and Admiral Sonja Hemphill. Stretched along the other were Thomas Theisman, Admiral Lester Tourville, Kevin Usher, Vice Admiral Linda Trenis, and Rear Admiral Victor Lewis. And at the end of the table, facing Elizabeth, Benjamin, and Pritchart, were First Director at Large Fedosei Demianovich Mikulin and Third Director at Large Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou.

The one star nation conspicuous by its absence was the Andermani Empire, but that was by design. Chien-lu Anderman had decided to recommend that Gustav take Elizabeth’s and Pritchart’s advice and stand aside from the Star Empire’s confrontation with the League. Accordingly, the Andermani battle squadrons attached to Eighth Fleet had been withdrawn to Trevor’s Star, and no Andermani officers were present.

If they were missing, however, there were more than enough treecats present to make up for their absence.

Nimitz, Samantha, and Ariel would have been there anyway, but now treecats sat on the backs of Benjamin’s, Pritchart’s, Theisman’s, Tourville’s, her Uncle Jacques’, Caparelli’s and Grantville’s chairs, as well, and it was virtually certain that everyone else sitting at that table would be receiving his or her own personal furry bodyguard very shortly.

Most of the Havenites still seemed a little awkward, a little unsure about the notion of allowing an entire crew of telepaths inside all of the security systems protecting whatever was said and discussed in this conference room. It wasn’t that they thought any of the ’cats were going to turn out to be Solarian or Mesan spies. They just weren’t used to them yet, despite Nimitz’ constant presence at Honor’s own diplomatic meetings with most of the same people in Nouveau Paris.

But that’ll change, she told herself, and tried not to smile as she looked at Lester Tourville.

Alone of the Havenites, Tourville had acquired at least a little fluency in reading sign during his period as a POW here in the Manticore Binary System. He couldn’t sign himself—very few humans could do that, even in the Star Empire—and his ability to understand what his newly assigned guardian’s fingers were saying remained limited, to say the very least. Despite that, however, he was considerably ahead of the others. And it didn’t hurt any that the basic personality of his new treecat companion—Lurks in Branches—complemented his own so well. Both of them had a “cowboy” streak about two meters

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.