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Earth Strike. Ian Douglas
Читать онлайн.Название Earth Strike
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007482955
Автор произведения Ian Douglas
Жанр Книги о войне
Издательство HarperCollins
The ship’s pitted and sandblasted forward shield caught the wan glow of a particularly brilliant star—the sun of this system nearly seventy-one astronomical units distant. The data now flooding America’s sensors were almost nine and a half hours old.
Within his electronic cocoon on the America’s Combat Information Center, the Battlegroup Commander linked in through the ship’s neural net, watching the data scroll past his in-head display.
STAR: Eta Boötis
COORDINATES: RA: 13h 54m 41.09s Dec: +18? 23’ 52.5” D 11.349p
ALTERNATE NAMES: Mufrid, Muphrid, Muphride, Saak, Boötis 8 (Flamsteed)
TYPE: GO IV
MASS: 1.6 Sol; RADIUS: 2.7 Sol; LUMINOSITY: 9 Sol
SURFACE TEMPERATURE: ~6100oK
AGE: 2.7 billion years
APPARENT MAGNITUDE (SOL): 2.69; Absolute magnitude: 2.38
DISTANCE FROM SOL: 37 ly
BINARY COMPANION: White dwarf, mean orbit: 1.4 AU; period: 494 d
PLANETARY SYSTEM: 14 planets, including 9 Jovian and sub-Jovian bodies, 5 rocky/terrestrial planets, plus 35 dwarf planets and 183 known satellites, plus numerous planetoids and cometary bodies …
Rear Admiral Alexander Koenig was, in particular, interested in the planetary data for just one of the worlds circling that distant gold-hued star: Eta Boötis IV, known formally as Al Haris al Sama, informally as Haris, and more often and disparagingly within the fleet as “Ate a Boot.”
“God,” he said as he watched the planetary data unfold. “What a mess.”
America’s AI did not reply, having learned long ago that human statements of surprise or disgust generally did not require a reply.
Eta Boötis IV was not even remotely Earthlike in atmosphere or environment—greenhouse-hot with a deadly, poisonous atmosphere—a wet Venus, someone had called it. What the Arabs had seen in the place when they put down a research station there was anybody’s guess.
As the America’s computer net built up models of the sensor data, it became clear that the enemy fleet was already there, as expected, orbiting the planet—or, rather, that they’d been there when the electromagnetic radiation and neutrinos emitted by them had begun the journey over nine hours ago. It was a good bet that they were there still, circling in on Gorman’s Marines. America’s delicate sensors could detect the hiss and crack of EMP—the telltale fingerprints of nuclear detonations and particle beam fire—even across the gulf of more than seventy AUs.
“All stations, we have acquired Objective Mike-Red,” the fleet commander said. “Launch ready-one fighters.”
The America had a long reach indeed.
And now she was going to prove it.
Chapter One
25 September 2404
VFA-44 Dragonfires
Eta Boötis System
0311 hours, TFT
Lieutenant Trevor Gray watched the numbers dwindle from ten to zero on his IHD, as the Starhawk’s AI counted them off. He was in microgravity at the moment, deep within the carrier’s hub core, but that would be changing very soon, now.
“Three …” the female voice announced, a murmur in his ear, “two … one … launch.”
Acceleration pressed him back into the yielding foam of his seat, a monster hand bearing down on chest and lungs until breathing deeply was nearly impossible. At seven gravities, vision dimmed…
… then flashed back as the crushing sensation of weight abruptly vanished. It took the Starhawk 2.39 seconds to traverse the two-hundred-meter cat-launch tube, and as it emerged into open space it was traveling at just over 167 meters per second relative to the drifting America.
“Blue Omega Seven, clear,” he announced.
“Omega Eight, clear,” another voice echoed immediately. Lieutenant Katie Tucker, his wing, was somewhere off his starboard side, launched side-by-side with him through the twin launch tubes.
He brought up an aft view in time to see the rapidly receding disk of the America’s shield cap dwindling away at over six hundred kilometers per hour. In seconds, the dull, silver-white shield had fallen astern to a bright dot … and then even that winked out, vanished among the stars. Icy and remote, those stars gleamed hard and unblinking across night; the other fighters of VFA-44, even the other capital ships of the Confederation fleet, all were lost in dark emptiness.
“Imaging, full view forward.”
The view from his SG-92 Starhawk’s cockpit was purely digital illusion, of course. At his command, the aft view projected across the curving inner surface of his cockpit vanished, replaced by different stars. One, directly ahead, gleamed with an intense golden brilliance—the local sun, though it was too distant to show a disk.
To port and low, another gold-red star shone almost as brilliantly—twice as bright as Venus at its brightest, seen from Earth. That, Gray knew from his briefings, was the star Arcturus, just three light years away.
Arcturus, however, was not his problem. Not anymore.
And not yet.
“Imaging,” he said. “Squadron ships.”
Green-glowing, diamond-shaped icons appeared on the stellar panorama, above, below, and to the left, each attended by a string of alphanumerics giving ship number and pilot id, and Gray felt just a little less lonely. Eight other Starhawks besides his drifted in the void out there, their AIs nudging them now into a ring ten kilometers across. As the minutes passed, three more strike-fighters moved up from astern, taking their places with the squadron.
The formation was complete.
“Okay, chicks,” Commander Marissa Allyn said over the squadron comnet. She was VFA-44’s CO, and Flight Leader for this op. “Configure for high-G.”
Each of the Starhawks had emerged from the diamagnetic launch tubes in standard flight configuration, a night-black needle shape twenty meters long, with a central bulge housing the pilot and control systems, and the mirror-smooth outer hull in a superconducting state. At Gray’s command, his gravfighter began reshaping itself, the complex nanolaminates of its outer structure dissolving and recombining, drive units and weapons and sensors folding up and out and back, everything building up around the central bulge in a blunt and smoothly convoluted egg-shape with a slender spike tail off the narrow end, and with the fat end aligned with the distant, golden gleam of Eta Boötis.
“Blue Omega Leader, Omega Seven,” he reported. “Sperm mode engaged. Ready for boost.” Gravfighter pilots claimed their craft looked like huge spermatozoa when they were in boost configuration. His Starhawk was now only seven meters long—not counting the field bleed spike astern—and five wide, though it still massed twenty-two tons.
“America CIC, this is Alpha Strike Blue Omega One,” Allyn said. “Handing off from PriFly. All Blues clear of the ship and formed up. Ready to initiate PL boost.”
“Copy, Blue Omega One,” a voice replied from America’s Combat Information Center. “Primary Flight Control confirms handoff to America CIC. You are clear for high-grav boost.”
“Acknowledge squadron clear for boost,”