"Jeff Kirvin - Unification Chronicles 1 - First Contact I" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kirvin Jeff)

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The Unification Chronicles #1
First Contact
Part 1 of 4


by Jeff Kirvin




Like most stars, it had countless satellites. Two rocky inner planets, one of those blue green
and teeming with life. Five gas giants of varying sizes. Several hundred comets. Billions of
asteroids ranging in size from small planetoids down to specks of sand. All of them moving in
regular ellipses unchanged for billions of years. Stellar clockwork.

The blue-green planet was the farther out of the two inner worlds, roughly ten light
seconds away from the star. It had one satellite of its own, an asteroid over five-hundred
kilometers wide captured by the planetary gravity eons before. Had the vector of the asteroid
been different by less than a degree, it would have hit the planet instead of being captured by
it. The impact would have been sufficient to kill everything on the world, wiping out the
planetтАЩs ability to support life.

One day, philosophers and theologians from other worlds would debate whether or not
that should have happened. The history of the Milky Way galaxy would have been different.

As it was, the planet had one moon. Then the very next moment, it had two.
 The newcomer was a featureless white sphere a mere kilometer in diameter. It fell into orbit
around the blue green world, with only its unnatural perfection and regularity betraying that it
didnтАЩt belong.


* * *


Jack Killian, Major of the Terran Republic Marine Corps, paused to straighten the tunic of
his dress uniform. He looked both ways down the long, curving corridor. With everything in