"Forward, Robert L - Rocheworld 01 - Rocheworld (The Flight of the Dragonfly) 5.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Forward Robert L)

"Close in! You squinty-eyed offspring of a BASIC program. So what if you've lost your outside video! You've still got radar and ground plots! Close in!"
The words came from deep inside a short, chunky, round-faced woman with dark-black skin, a close-cropped head of curly black hair, and a crisp Marine Officer's uniform seemingly tattooed on her muscular body.
General Virginia Jones punched her supervisory keyboard as her parade-ground voice echoed off the naked beams and taut pressurized walls of the crowded cubicle. Crammed into the compact control room of a Space Marine Lightsail Interceptor, the programmers were short-circuiting the software in the ship's computer to optimize an "unwilling capture" trajectory between their low acceleration twenty-five kilometer-diameter sailcraft and the radar image of a lumbering cargo hauler. The huge heavy-lift vehicle was rising slowly from its launch pad deep in Soviet Russia on its way to resupply one of the Soviet bases in geosynchronous orbit.
"Boarding party!" General Jones roared to the deck below. "You've got ten minutes to do the fifteen-minute suiting drill! Move it!"
There was a bustle as hammocks were stowed to give a little more room in the tiny communal barracks. Suits were lifted from lockers and donned -- rapidly, but carefully. General Jones looked sternly around at the organized pandemonium and took a bite of her energy stick. She looked at it in distaste, thought blissfully of the excellent mess back at the Space Marine Orbital Base, then stoically took another bite of the energy bar. If it was good enough for her Marines, it was good enough for her.
Like the PT boats in World War II almost a century ago, the Interceptors had to be fast. With only the light pressure from the Sun to push them, that meant keeping weight down. It was battle rations every meal when the Space Marines were on Interceptor duty.
General Jones carefully watched the captain of the Interceptor as he swung his ungainly craft smoothly around. Captain Anthony Roma was short and handsome, with dark flashing eyes and a youthful wave of hair over his forehead that had Jinjur's mind wandering slightly. Captain Roma was the best lightsail pilot in space (with the possible exception of Jinjur herself).
The lightsail scooped, dumping its cross-orbit excess speed in the upper atmosphere by using its huge expanse of sail like a sea anchor. It tilted to maximize the solar photon pressure and rose again in a pursuit trajectory of the bogey. Ten minutes later General Jones called a halt to the hunt of the phantom fox.
"Freeze program," she said, then turned and tapped a code word into her command console. The computer memory of the practice pursuit was locked until she released it. The primary purpose of this exercise had been to test the reconfiguration skills of the human element of her computer-operated spaceship -- the programmers. By reconfiguring the software in the computer to take into account its loss of components and capabilities, the programmers could hopefully tune the program to obtain its optimum response time. She wished the Interceptors could have the latest in self-reprogramming computers, or at least the touch-screen input terminals, but that was many fiscal-budget cycles away.
The study of the programmer responses could take place later. General Jones lifted herself up in the weak acceleration, coiled her short, powerful legs under her compact body, hooked the toes of her corridor boots under the command console, and launched herself toward the "sortie" port. There was more to a Space Marine Interceptor than sail, computer, and programmers, and she was the preventive maintenance technician for that fourth component.
The Space Marines were still frozen at attention in the sortie port, their 'stiction boots firmly attached to the deck. Their commander swam in free-fall among them, the lieutenant of the boarding party close behind her.
She approached the first Marine, punched a code into his chest-pack and read the result.
"Fine, Pete," she said. "Shuck the suit and take a break." She moved to the next one.
"Hi, Amalita." She punched the Marine's chest-pack and read out the performance index.
"Good timing!" she said. Her eyes grinned up at the proud Marine. "Seven minutes, thirteen seconds, and no suit flags! I'm proud of you!"
She moved on to the next. The readout had no flags, but her instincts knew something was wrong. She stared at the face of the Marine through the visor. His bewildered eyes indicated something unknown was bothering him. She grabbed him by both arms, planted herself on the deck, lifted him bodily, and turned him around. He felt oddly out of balance. She examined the tell-tales on his support pack. They were fine -- both tanks full of air. She stopped and raised a sharp pale-brown knuckle and gave the rounded ends of the two air tanks a rap. One tinked like a fiber-wound titanium balloon stretched to its utmost. The other tonked.
In her rage, she smashed the offending tell-tale with her fist and jerked the poor Marine around until he was facing her. Tears welled from her dark brown eyes.
"Everlasting elephants, Mike!! If it doesn't feel right, don't put it on!!! Even if the blazzflaggin' thing says it's OK! I want you alive!!"
She jammed the stricken Marine back down to the floor where his 'stiction boots took hold again. Then pushing against him, she rose up and grabbed a handhold in the ceiling of the crowded port.
"I want you _ALL_ alive!" she roared, looking around at the ranks of cowed killers.
"The next time one of you blue-nosed monkeys puts on a bad suit, I'll personally kick you from here to PLUTO!"
She turned, and sucking the back of her hand, swam out the lock, leaving a thoughtful lieutenant to finish the inspection. General Jones had not yet mentioned his responsibilities in this infraction, but he expected to hear about it as soon as they were where the troops couldn't overhear. He wasn't looking forward to it, for General "Jinjur" had not gotten her nickname by being lenient with officers that allowed her troops to get into danger.
General Jones was half-way through the analysis of the interception exercise when a message came through from the Space Marine Orbital Base. The Russians had announced a launch to resupply one of their geosynchronous-orbit manned space stations. The Interceptor that Jinjur was inspecting was in the best position, and was assigned the job of monitoring the launch. She carefully watched the Captain of the Interceptor as he swung his ungainly craft smoothly around. The sunlight hit the sail, the acceleration built up to a few percent of Earth's gravity, and the floating objects in the room drifted downward. The Captain called on one of the orbiting space forts above him for more power, and there was a blinding flash in the video monitor as a powerful laser beam struck the sail with a light beam five times brighter than the Sun. The acceleration rose to one-tenth gee and they skimmed rapidly above the Earth's atmosphere, gaining speed by the minute.
Soon the sailcraft's trackers had the Russian booster on their screens. Jinjur watched as the massive payload pushed its way slowly up out of the sea of air, rising vertically to over two thousand kilometers. As it reached the peak of its trajectory, the tiny image began to grow wings. The wings became larger and larger until they dwarfed the twenty-five kilometer diameter sail of the Interceptor. Jinjur admired the deployment speed of the lightsail. The pilot must be Ledenov or Petrov with a new deployment program.
The huge sailship caught the Sun's rays and started its climbing spiral outward to the distant space station thirty-six thousand kilometers overhead. Unlike the Interceptor, which was built for speed, this was a tug. It would take almost a month to haul its heavy load into the heavens.
The Interceptor Captain glanced at Jinjur and she nodded approval. He reached for a microphone and made a call to the U.N. Space Peacekeeping Authority. UNSPA had no forces. They used those of the spacefaring nations instead. The United States had put Jinjur's sailcraft in a position where it could carry out an interception to check and make sure that no unauthorized weapons were in the enemy cargo. But not all ships were searched, only a random sample. The keeper of the random number generator was UNSPA.
"This is Captain Anthony Roma of the Greater United States Space Marine Interceptor Iwo Jima calling United Nations Space Peacekeeping Authority. I have intercepted a cargo light-tug of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Request permission to board for Space-Peacekeeping inspection," he asked.
There was a pause as the UNSPA operator consulted a UN official. The official pushed a button on a carefully guarded machine.
"Permission granted," came the reply.
"GONG!" shouted Jinjur. "We've hit the jackpot!"
"Attention all hands!" said Captain Roma. "Prepare for an authorized inspection of a foreign spacecraft." There was a bustle as the control room filled up, while down below, spacesuits recently stored away in lockers were removed again, checked over carefully, then just as carefully donned.
Jinjur watched through the next hour as Captain Roma closed in on the Russian sail. They zoomed in with their video camera and explored the outside of the payload section. It was nearly lost in the immense sea of shining aluminum film.
"Looks like a perfectly ordinary cargo hauler to me," said Jinjur to the Captain. "But the way to keep those Ruskies honest is to give them a good shakedown whenever we get permission. I want one of the crew to take a remote flyer over every square centimeter of that sail, and I want computer backup, so that no little package stuck out in some rigging tens of kilometers from here is missed."
"The communications operator has established contact with the Russian ship, General," the Captain said. "Do you wish to talk to them yourself?"
"If you don't mind," said Jinjur. "I think I know the Captain."
The call was transferred to her console and the face of a handsome middle-aged Russian filled the screen.
"I thought it was you, Petrov," she said. "I compliment you on your sail deployment. You're going to be a formidable opponent at the next Space Olympics in the light-sail races."
"Jost practice, Jinjur," said Captain Petrov. "I hear from our UN friends that you will be paying us a visit."
"Yes. I apologize for having to bother you, but it's part of the job."
"I understand," he said. "But with you coming it will be a pleasure instead of a bother. I look forward to seeing you again. It has been almost three years since we worked on the Space Weapons panel for the last disarmament talks."
"See you soon," said Jinjur, turning off the console and heading for the locker that held her personal space-suit.
* * * *
Within an hour, the small boarding crew was floating on tethers outside the Interceptor. Captain Roma kept his sail trimmed to match the speed of his light-weight Interceptor with the larger tug. Both ships were still accelerating in the sunlight, however, so they all held on to keep from drifting away. A small jet scooter was unlashed from the rigging. It had a number of handholds along the side, and soon, looking like a cluster of white grapes, the scooter and boarding party jetted the few kilometers that separated the two tiny payload capsules.
Jinjur, being just a visiting General, kept out of the way as the boarding party searched the outside of the cargo ship. There were a few unusual cylinders found, but a flash x-ray and a scan with a Forward Mass Detector showed that they only contained the usual emergency gear in a new package shape. They boarded, and while the crew proceeded with their hours-long methodical inspection, Jinjur met with Petrov in his cabin.
"This is certainly a lot nicer than an Interceptor," said Jinjur as she admired the view of her distant ship out the large glass port.
"Running a cargo ship does have its amenities," replied Petrov. "By the way. While you were removing your suit, we received a call from your ship requesting to speak with you."
Jinjur looked puzzled, then asked, "May I use your console?"
Petrov padded over to the console, pushed a few buttons, then backed off to let her use it. Captain Roma was on the screen.
"You have a message from the Marine Commandant," he said. "It's encoded and marked 'Personal'"
"It'll have to wait till I get back," she said. "We can't be discussing codes over the air."