"William H. Keith Jr. - Warstrider 03 - Jackers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Keith jr William H)

Nano-grown electronic traceries threaded through his
brain linked Captain Devis Cameron with the Eagle's AI,
giving him a clear view of the planet ahead, as though he
were dropping through empty space instead of sealed
away within a high-tech coffin on the destroyer's command
deck. Twin red dwarf suns glowed with ember-sullen light,
a double sunrise above an airless, burnt-cinder world of
rock and ice.
That star was DM+45┬░ 2505 A and B, an unremarkable
M3 double 29.14 light-years from New America, and 21
lights from Sol. Settlers from Rainbow had come here
once, several centuries before, and named the place
Athena. Too cold and small to be worth the expense of
terraforming, it had riches enough - in platinum, iridium,
and rare earths - to attract a Frontier mining consortium,
the same consortium that had founded Rainbow. Most of
the settlers hadn't even been full-human; genegineered
workers adapted to cramped quarters and cold, close
working conditions were happier, cheaper, and easier to
control.
Forty years ago, Athena had been bought out by
Imperial Nihon, who'd promptly constructed a major
shipbuilding facility in close orbit about the planet. The
world's name was changed to Daikoku, god of wealth and
happiness - also known as the Great Black One. The
orbital station was Daikokukichi, Daikoku Base.
Through his cephlink, Dev felt the swift-flowing currents
of data from Eagle's passive sensors, the tell-tale surge of
energy indicating that Daikoku's defenses were powering
up. Numbers scrolled down the right-hand side of his
awareness, listing speeds and angles of approach. Dev
absorbed the data, feeling it more than reading it, allowing
the ship's AI to interact directly with his cephlink,
calculating vectors, intercepts, and probabilities. He
sensed the tingling wash of low-energy laser light. They
were being scanned.
"That's it," Dev announced over the squadron's tactical
communications link. "They've got us spotted."
"We're past the abort point now anyway," Captain Lara
Anders, Eagle's senior shipjacker, replied. "We're
committed."
Pinpoints of light scattered across Dev's awareness,
concentrated like a swarm of luminous gnats about the
larger glow of the orbital station, and more were winking to
life with every passing second. Each marked the lifepulse
of a power plant. Daikoku was waking up.
The Confederation raiders were badly outnumbered.
They usually were. The civil war that was tearing apart
the Japanese Empire's puppet Hegemony had been going
on for well over a standard year now. More and more