"Keith Laumer - Bolos 9 - Bolo Strike" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

began unfolding . . . in just another few hours.
From his command chair high up within the cavernous recesses of
the Combat Command Center on board the task force flagship Denever,
he could gaze down on the trivid tanks and plot boards of the invasion
planning team; with a touch of the controls in the arms of his seat, he
could be there, immersed in the lights and symbols of each simulation
through the consciousness data relay links in his VR helmet. So far, only
the fleet tacsit tanks were active, displaying the cone-shaped formation of
the task force as it approached the objective, now less than five
astronomical units ahead. Local resistance, he was pleased to note, was
almost nil, far less than the best simulations had predicted. Perhaps
they'd caught the damned Trixies and their human Janissaries with their
shorts around their ankles after all. K-fighters and photon interceptors,
most of them robots and teleops, snapped and flashed at the task force's
flanks, but so far none had been able to penetrate the outer picket
screen of destroyers and light escorts. The dreaded Aetryx carriers, so
much on the planning staff's collective mind for the past months, were
nowhere in evidence. The diversion at Draelano must have worked.
Yes! . . .
If General Moberly was not a foolish man, neither was he a patient
one. Opening Channel 12 in his helmet CDR link, he summoned forth
the image of Colonel Garrity, his Fleet Liaison Officer, her hard features
projected by the helmet interface directly onto his retinas. "More speed,"
he told her. "Tell Admiral Hathaway that we need more speed. I want to
brush past these pickets and enter approach orbit within three hours."
Her pale green eyes met his through the VR interface. A wisp of dark
red hair fell across her eyes and she impatiently brushed it aside. "I'll tell
him, General, but you may get an argument. We're pushing the e-mass-c
barrier now, and he's bitching about how we should have started
deceleration as soon as we dropped out of hyper."
"Remind the good Admiral who's in charge, Colonel. Or shall I talk to
him personally?"
"I'll pass the word, General."
"Do it. I have to fire off the final briefing. Let me know if there's any
problem."
"Yes, sir."
Garrity's face faded from his view as he electronically dismissed her.
He'd expected opposition from Hathaway, a conservative and somewhat
stodgy old-Navy type with limited imagination and drive. The e-mass-c
barrier was always trouble. The closer a ship in normal space crowded c,
the speed of light, the more relativistic mass it possessed, and the more
energy per kilogram of rest mass it took to accelerate it . . . or to slow it
down. Hathaway was husbanding the task force's limited energy reserves
in case they needed to do some hard maneuvering later on.
But if the Aetryx carriers and other fleet heavies were gone, combat
maneuvers wouldn't be necessary, and the fleet could refuel from Dis,
the system's inner gas giant, once absolute space superiority had been
achieved.
Which wouldn't be long at all, now.
A tone chimed in his ear. "Final briefing," an AI voice said in dulcet