"Simon Hawke - Time Wars 05 - The Nautilus Sanction" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

legs were long and shapely, but with mass and definition that a triathlete would have envied. Her breasts,
though small, appeared somewhat larger than they were due to her pectoral development. Her waist and
hips were narrow, without an ounce of surplus fat. She had the poise of complete self-assurance and the
animal sexuality that came with being in peak physical condition, though her deltoids had still not quite
recovered from the wound she received when a nysteel rappelling dart had been fired into her shoulder,
severing muscle and shattering bone. Their last mission had been a bad one. Lucas had been seriously
injured. Finn had also been hurt, nearly killed, when a thrown dagger struck him in the chest, coming
perilously close to his heart and pulmonary artery. Only the density of his muscle mass had saved him. All
three of them were walking wounded, but the army doctors had pronounced them fit enough to return to
active duty. Civilian doctors would have been a great deal more conservative in their decisions.
тАЬI heard something about a new battery of psych tests,тАЭ Andre said.
тАЬWho the hell knows?тАЭ Finn grumbled. тАЬI guess weтАЩll find out soon. Here comes the old man. Better
get the rabble in some sort of order, Major.тАЭ
Lucas turned to face the room. тАЬTen-hut!тАЭ
Several hundred boot heels cracked in unison as the soldiers of the First Division snapped to. Lucas
about-faced and climbed up the steps to the rostrum, saluting the old man smartly.
тАЬFirst Division all present or accounted for, sir!тАЭ
The craggy Colonel Forrester returned his salute. тАЬThank you, Major. You may step down. At ease,
people. Please be seated.тАЭ
He waited a moment for them to take their seats.
тАЬI am in receipt of a Priority One, Code Red directive from the Referee Corps,тАЭ he said without
preamble.
They all tensed. This wasnтАЩt mickey-mouse. A Priority One, Code Red meant very serious trouble. It
was an order for total mobilization.
тАЬAbout three weeks ago,тАЭ said Forrester, тАЬa portion of a shipment destined for the Temporal Army
P.O. was stolen from the warehouses of Amalgamated Techtronics, in spite of the most rigid security
precautions. In all, some five thousand temporal transponders, ranging in classification from P-1 to V-20,
were stolen by persons unknown.тАЭ
The reaction was instantaneous and tumultuous. тАЬAs you were!тАЭ shouted Lucas, surprised to hear his
own voice crack. Five thousand temporal transponders! It was a crime of unprecedented and
staggering proportions with consequences that could be cataclysmic.
The transponders, or warp discs in soldiersтАЩ parlance, were the most recent development in military
applications of Einstein-Rosen Bridge technology. Not all temporal units had them yet, but every
temporal army in the worldтАФand on other worldsтАФwas in the process of converting to them to supplant
the already obsolete chronoplates.
Originally, Einstein-Rosen Bridge technology had been developed in the latter half of the 26th
century, based on the theory developed by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen in 1935, in which they
postulated the existence of a тАЬcorridorтАЭ in space-time. It took the discovery of white holes, cosmic
gushers of pure energy exploding into the universe, and the technological advances of some seven
hundred years before their corridor in space-time, or тАЬworm hole,тАЭ became accepted as a reality. In
2645, Bell Laboratories developed the first working model of the Einstein-Rosen Generator at their
Bradbury facility on Mars. Using particle-level chips, the device was still of mammoth size, much like the
earliest computers. It was designed to tap into the energy field of an Einstein-Rosen Bridge between two
universes. The Einstein-Rosen Generator, or ERG, was in fact misnamed. It did not actually generate
power. Rather, it acted as a power dilator, in a manner similar to how a black hole тАЬdilatedтАЭ the universe
in the vicinity which it was located, with a gravitational field so great that not only could light waves not
escape from it, but the fabric of space-time itself was torn, disrupted in that region to open up into
another universe as a white hole. The purpose of the ERGs was to tap into that maelstrom of power and
then тАЬfeedтАЭ the energy to appropriate the transponders, in this way providing free energy for everything
from powering orbital colonies to turning on a light switch in a New York conapt.