"Hamilton, Peter F - The Night's Dawn Trilogy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

The shipТs acceleration built smoothly, and he felt the nanonic membrane supplements in his body hardening, supporting his internal organs against the gee force, preventing them from being pushed through his spine, ensuring an undiminished blood supply to his brain, forestalling blackout. Beezling shuddered violently as its own volley of combat wasps launched. Acceleration reached eight gees, and carried on building.
In the BeezlingТs forward crew module, Dr Alkad Mzu had been reviewing the shipТs status as it flew towards their next jump coordinate at one and a half gees. Neural nanonics processed the raw data to provide a composite of the starshipТs external sensor images, along with flight vector projections. The picture unfurled behind her retinas, scintillating ghost shadows until she closed her eyelids. Chengho and Gombari showed as intense streaks of blue-white light, the glare from their drive exhausts overwhelming the background starfield.
It was a tight formation. Chengho was two thousand kilometres away, Gombari just over three thousand. Alkad knew it took superb astrogation for ships to emerge within five thousand kilometres of each other after a jump of ten light-years. Garissa had spent a lot of money on equipping its navy with the best hardware available.
Money which could have been better spent at the university, or on supporting the national medical service. Garissa wasnТt a particularly rich world. And as to where the Department of Defence had acquired such large amounts of antimatter, Alkad had studiously avoided asking.
УIt will be about thirty minutes before the next jump,Ф Peter Adul said.
Alkad cancelled the datavise. The sensor visualization of the ships faded from her perception, replaced by the spartan grey-green composite of the cabin walls. Peter was standing in the open oval hatch, wearing a dark turquoise ship-suit, padded on all the joints to protect him from bruising knocks in free fall. He smiled invitingly at her. She could see the worry behind the bright, lively eyes.
Peter was thirty-five, a metre eighty tall, with skin actually darker than her own deep ebony. He worked in the university mathematics department, and they had been engaged for eighteen months. Never the outgoing boisterous type, but quietly supportive. One person who genuinely didnТt seem to mind the fact that she was brighter than himЧand they were rare enough. Even the prospect of her being for ever damned as the AlchemistТs creator left him unperturbed. He had actually accompanied her to the ultra-secure navy asteroid base to help with the deviceТs mathematics.
УI thought we could spend them together,Ф he said.
She grinned back up at him and slipped out of the restraint net as he sat on the edge of her acceleration cushioning beside her. УThanks. Navy types donТt mind being cooped up by themselves during realignment. But it certainly gets to me.Ф Various hums and buzzes from the shipТs environmental systems invaded the cabin, crew-members talking softly at their stations, vague words echoing along the cramped companionways. Beezling had been assembled specifically to deploy the Alchemist device, its design concentrating on durability and performance; crew comforts had come a long way down the navyТs priority list.
Alkad swung her legs over the side of the cushioning ledge, feet pulled down to the decking by the strong gravity, and leaned against him, thankful for the warmth of the contact, his just being there.
His arm went round her shoulders. УWhat is it about the prospect of incipient mortality which gets the hormones flowing?Ф
She smiled and pressed harder into his side. УWhat is it in the male make-up that simply being awake gets your hormones going?Ф
УThatТs a no?Ф
УThatТs a no,Ф she said firmly. УThereТs no door, and weТd do ourselves an injury in this gravity. Besides, there will be plenty of time once we get back.Ф
УYes.Ф If we do. But he didnТt say that out loud.
That was when the acceleration warning sounded. Even then it took them a second to react, breaking through the initial moment of shock.
УGet back on the cushioning,Ф Peter yelled as the gee force leapt upwards. Alkad attempted to swing her legs back up on the ledge. They were made of uranium, impossibly heavy. Muscles and tendons grated horribly as she strained against the weight.
Come on. ItТs easy. ItТs only your legs. Dear Mother, how many times have you lifted your legs? Come on!
Neural-nanonic nerve-impulse overrides bullied her thigh muscles. She got one leg back on the cushioning. By that time the acceleration had reached seven gees. She was stuck with her left leg on the floor, foot slipping along the decking as the enormous weight of her thigh pushed down, forcing her knee joint open.
The two opposing swarms of combat wasps engaged; attacking and defending drones splitting open, each releasing a barrage of submunitions. Space seethed with directed energy beams. Electronic warfare pulses popped and burned up and down the electromagnetic spectrum, trying to deflect, goad, confuse, harass. A second later it was the turn of the missiles. Solid kinetic bullets bloomed like antique shotgun blasts. All it took was the slightest graze, at those closing velocities both projectile and target alike detonated into billowing plumes of plasma. Fusion explosions followed, intense flares of blue-white starfire flinging off violet coronae. Antimatter added its vehemence to the fray, producing even larger explosions amid the ionic maelstrom.
The nebula which blazed between the Beezling and her attackers was roughly lenticular, and over three hundred kilometres broad, choked with dense cyclonic concentrations, spewing tremendous cataracts of fire from its edges. No sensor in existence could penetrate such chaos.
Beezling lurched round violently, drive deflector coils working at maximum pitch, taking advantage of the momentary blind spot to change course. A second volley of combat wasps shot out of their bays around the attack cruiserТs lower hull, just in time to meet a new salvo fired from the blackhawks.
Peter had barely managed to roll off the acceleration couch where he was sitting, landing hard on the floor of AlkadТs cabin, when the terrible acceleration began. He watched helplessly as AlkadТs left leg slowly gave way under the crushing gee force; her whimpering filling him with futile guilt. The composite deck was trying to ram its way up through his back. His neck was agony. Half of the stars he could see were pain spots, the rest were a datavised nonsense. The flight computer had reduced the external combat arena to neat ordered graphics which buffeted against priority metabolic warnings. He couldnТt even focus his thoughts on them. There were more important things to worry about, like how the hell was he going to force his chest up so he could breathe again?
Suddenly the gravity field shifted. He left the decking behind, and slammed into the cabin wall. His teeth were punched clean through his lip; he heard his nose break with an ugly crunch. Hot blood squirted into his mouth, frightening him. No wound could possibly heal in this environment. He would very probably bleed to death if this went on much longer.
Then gravity righted again, squeezing him back against the decking. He screamed in shock and pain. The datavised visualization from the flight computer had collapsed into an eerily calm moire pattern of red, green, and blue lines. Darkness was encroaching around the edges.
The second clash of combat wasps took place over a wider front. Sensors and processors on both sides were overloaded and confused by the vivid nebula and its wild energy efflux. New explosions were splattered against the background of destruction. Some of the attacking combat wasps pierced the defensive cordon. A third volley of defenders left the Beezling.
Six thousand kilometres away, another nuclear-fuelled nebula burst into existence as the Chengho fought off its solitary hunterТs swarm of combat wasps. The Gombari wasnТt so fortunate. Its antimatter-confinement chambers were shattered by the incoming weapons. BeezlingТs sensor filters engaged instantly as an ephemeral star ignited. Kyle Prager lost his datavised visualization across half of the universe. He never saw the blackhawk which attacked the frigate wrenching open a wormhole interstice and vanish within, fleeing the lethal sleet of radiation its attack had liberated.
The combat wasp closing on Beezling at forty-six gees analysed the formation of the robot defenders approaching it. Missiles and ECM pods raced away, fighting a fluid battle of evasion and deception for over a tenth of a second. Then the attacker was through, a single defender left between it and the starship, moving to intercept, but slowly, the defender had only just left its launch cradle, accelerating at barely twenty gees.
Situation displays flipped into Kyle PragerТs mind. The blackhawksТ positions, their trajectories. Combat wasp performance. Likely reserves. He reviewed them, mind augmented by the tactics program, and made his decision, committing half of his remaining combat wasps to offensive duties.
Beezling rang like a bell as they launched.
At a hundred and fifty kilometres from its prey, the incoming combat waspТs guidance processors computed it wouldnТt quite reach the starship before it was intercepted. It ran through the available options, making its choice.
At a hundred and twenty kilometres away it loaded a deactivation sequence into the hardware of the seven antimatter-confine chambers it was carrying.
At ninety-five kilometres away the magnetic field of the first confinement chamber snapped off. Forty-six gravities took over. The frozen pellet of antimatter was smashed into the rear wall. Long before contact was actually made the magnetic field of the second confinement chamber was switched off. All seven shut down over a period of a hundred picoseconds, producing a specifically shaped blast wave.
At eighty-eight kilometres away, the antimatter pellets had annihilated an equal mass of matter, resulting in a titanic energy release. The spear of plasma which formed was a thousand times hotter than the core of a star, hurtling towards the Beezling at relativistic velocities.
Sensor clusters and thermo-dump panels vaporized immediately as the stream of disassociated ions slammed into the Beezling. Molecular-binding force generators laboured to maintain the silicon hullТs integrity, a struggle they were always destined to lose against such ferocity. Breakthrough occurred in a dozen different places at once. Plasma surged in, playing over the complex, delicate systems like a blowtorch over snow crystals.
The luckless Beezling suffered a further blow from fate. One of the plasma streams hit a deuterium tank, searing its way through the foam insulation and titanium shell. The cryogenic liquid reverted to its natural gaseous state under immense pressure, ripping the tank open, and blasting fragments in every direction. An eight-metre section of the hull buckled upwards, and a volcanic geyser of deuterium haemorrhaged out towards the stars past shredded fingers of silicon.
Combat wasp explosions were still flooding surrounding space with torrents of light and elementary particles. But the Beezling was an inert hulk at the centre of a dissipating halo, her hull fissured, reaction drive off, spinning like a broken bird.
The three attacking blackhawk captains observed the last volley of BeezlingТs combat wasps lock on to their own ships and race vengefully across the gulf. Thousands of kilometres away, their colleague scored a debilitating strike on the Chengho. And the BeezlingТs combat wasps had halved the separation distance.
Energy patterning cells applied a terrible stress against the fabric of space, and the blackhawks slipped into the gaping wormholes which opened, contracting the interstices behind them. The BeezlingТs combat wasps lost track of their targets; on-board processors began to scan round and round in an increasingly futile attempt to re-acquire the missing signatures as the drones rushed further and further away from the disabled warship.
________________________________________
The return of consciousness wasnТt quite as welcome as it should have been, even though it meant that Dr Alkad Mzu was still alive. Her left leg was a source of nauseous pain. She could remember hearing the bones snapping as her knee hinged fully open. Then came the twists of a shifting gravity field, far more effective than any torturer. Her neural nanonics had damped down the worst of the pain, but the BeezlingТs final convulsion had brought a blessed oblivion.
How in Mother MaryТs name did we survive that?
She thought she had been prepared for the inherent risk of the mission failing, for death to claim her. Her work at the university back on Garissa made her all too aware of the energy levels required to push a starship through a ZTT jump, and what would happen should an instability occur in the patterning nodes. It never seemed to bother the navy crew, or rather they were better at hiding it. She knew also that there was a small chance they would be intercepted by Omutan naval craft once the Beezling emerged above their target star. But even that wouldnТt be so bad, the end should a combat wasp break through BeezlingТs defensive shield would probably be instantaneous. She even acknowledged that the Alchemist might malfunction. But this . . . Hunted down out here, unprepared physically or mentally, and then to survive, however tenuously. How could the good Mother Mary be so callous? Unless perhaps even She feared the Alchemist?
Residual graphics seemed to swirl obstinately among the ailing thoughts of her consciousness. Vector lines intersected their original jump coordinate thirty-seven thousand kilometres ahead. Omuta was a small, unremarkable star directly in front of the coordinate. Two more jumps, and they would have been in the systemТs Oort cloud, the sparse halo of ice-dust clouds and slumbering comets which marked the boundary of interstellar space. They were approaching from galactic north, well outside the plane of the ecliptic, trying to avoid detection.
She had helped plan the mission profile, offering her comments to a room full of senior navy staff who were visibly nervous in her presence. It was a syndrome which had affected more and more people in the secret military station as her work progressed.
Alkad had given the Confederation something new to fear, something which surpassed even the destructive power of antimatter. A star slayer. And that prospect was as humbling as it was terrifying. She had resigned herself that after the war billions of planet dwellers would look up at the naked stars, waiting for the twinkling light which had been Omuta to vanish from the night sky. Then they would remember her name, and curse her to hell.
All because I was too stupid to learn from past mistakes. Just like all the other dreaming fools throughout history, wrapped up with seductive, clean equations, their simplistic, isolated elegance, giving no thought to the messy, bloody, physical application that was their ultimate reality. As if we didnТt have enough weapons already. But thatТs human nature, weТve always got to go one better, to increase the terror another notch. And for what?
Three hundred and eighty-seven Dorados: large asteroids with a nearly pure metal content. They were orbiting a red-dwarf sun twenty light-years away from Garissa, twenty-nine light-years from Omuta. Scoutships from both inhabited systems had stumbled across them virtually simultaneously. Who had actually been first would never now be known. Both governments had claimed them: the wealth contained in the lonely metal chunks would be a heady boost for the planet whose companies could mine and refine such plentiful ore.
At first it had been a squabble, a collection of incidents. Prospecting and survey ships dispatched to the Dorados had been attacked by Уpirates.Ф And, as always, the conflict had escalated. It ceased to be the ships, and started to become their home asteroid ports. Then nearby industrial stations had proved tempting targets. The Confederation AssemblyТs attempt to mediate had come to nothing.
Both sides had called in their registered naval reserves, and started to hire the independent traders, with their fast, well-equipped ships capable of deploying combat wasps. Finally, last month, Omuta had used an antimatter bomb against an industrial asteroid settlement in the Garissa system. Fifty-six thousand people had been killed when the biosphere chamber ruptured, spewing them out into space. Those who survived, another eighteen thousand with their mashed fluid-clogged lungs, decompressed capillaries, and dissevered skin, had strained the planetТs medical facilities close to breaking point. Over seven hundred had been sent to the universityТs medical school, which had beds for three hundred. Alkad had witnessed the chaos and pain first hand, heard the gurgling screams that never ended.