"Richard Hatch - Battlestar Galactica 01 - Armageddon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hatch Richard)

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Armageddon by
Richard Hatch and
Christopher Golden
Chapter One
BLIP.

The Scarlet Viper's scanners had picked something up. Another ship, or
the system they sought? A second after the soft alert tone notified Apollo,
the scanner blossomed into a laser-constructed three-dimensional image
of their destination. Binary 13 was a dual-star system in which each sun
had several orbiting planets. The gravitational tides of the two stars
wreaked havoc upon many of those worlds.

"Starbuck, I have Binary 13 on scanners," Apollo observed.

No response.

"Starbuck?"

"Sorry," a scratchy voice grumbled over the commlink. "Caught me
during sleep period. We there?"

"I was wondering why you'd been so quiet," Apollo admitted. "Didn't
you have sleep period just before we launched?"

"Sure, but I spent two cycles playing pyramid at the chancery on the
Rising Star just before that. When I lose I drink grog. No problem there.
But I got lucky. I scored a perfect pyramid and used my winnings to buy
ambrosa. Now I feel like I've got crawlon webs in my brain," Starbuck
said.

"Serves you right," Apollo replied without rancor. "Now I'll pretend I
didn't hear that. I'd hate to have to report you for launching while
altered."

Starbuck didn't respond. He didn't need to. Apollo might shake
Starbuck's pogees a little, that was expected, but he also knew that there
was no way Starbuck would ever go out on any mission, or even patrol,
while intoxicated. Apollo was confident of his own abilities, but one on
one, in individual battle, there wasn't a better pilot in the fleet than
Captain Starbuck.