"Gordon, Steve - Insectoid 02 - Escape from the Insectoids" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gordon Steve)

erase
Escape From The Insectoids
Forward
By Steve Gordon. All rights reserved. From the Log of War Admiral Norman
North, 3 months after Vitalics:
We were caught with our guard down, and humanity paid a terrible price for
it. We had battled the Insectoids, a race of sentient seven foot tall
insects, to a standstill in twenty years of terrible combat. We had taken
losses, but our worlds were secure, and most of our people were safe.
And then the politicians, lured by a gullible desire to believe the
overtures of chief negotiator with the Insectoids, the traitor Mitterand,
agreed to an armistice at Vitalics. There they ambushed and destroyed
almost all of our entire fleet.
Almost all. The small fleet under my command, combined with a task force
from our junior Alliance partner, the June Directorate, survived, but was
forced to flee vastly superior numbers of Insectoid battlecruisers and
battleships. Nothing stopped the Insectoids from moving in, occupying all
our worlds and enslaving our people, putting them to work producing
material for their war machine.
But the Insectoids were smart enough to realize that as long as any of us
were free that we were still a threat to them, that someday we would come
back and reclaim what was rightfully ours. They sent many fleets to hunt
us down, even as we've fled Alliance space into the unknown. We've had two
brief battles since we left Orotis, on the edge of Alliance space, and
those two battles have cost us three warships (and a badly damaged fourth
that had to be scuttled), as well as two of our precious merchantmen.
Our efforts to escape are not merely a mindless route; we are moving with
a purpose, even if our crews do not fully understand or agree with it. For
we are going to search out the technology of the Chent, the ancient
civilization who may hold the key to helping us defeat the Insectoids. But
the Insectoids are bent on making sure we don't survive long enough to
make any discoveries, and our most immediate task right now is simple:
escape from the Insectoids.

Chapter 1: The Insectoids Make A Dangerous Enemy
"David!" said a pleasing but insistent voice.
A serious looking dark haired man continued to hack away at the soil with
a hoe, listening to the birds chirp on... what was the name of the planet?
Just beyond the edges of Alliance space, it only had a numerical
designation, but the man had been giving some thought to giving it a name.
All in good time; with Amy, there was always time.
"David!" came Amy's voice, from the house he had built.
The man dropped the hoe, sighing. He really didn't like leaving things
undone. But he never had been able to resist that voice.
He made his way back to the house, admiring the trees as he listened to
the birdsong. This planet was almost perfect, and probably, given it's
location just a dozen lightyears out from the frontier world of Orotis,
would eventually start to attract settlers in 20 or 30 years. Well, 20 or
30 years was a long time, and even then it was a big planet; He and Amy
would have it to themselves for a long, long time.