"Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle - Reflex UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

REFLEX
by
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle


Any damn fool can die for his country. General George S. Patton.

3017 AD
The Union Republic War Cruiser Defiant lay nearly motionless in space a half billion kilometers from Beta Hortensi. She turned slowly about her long axis.
Stars flowed endlessly upward with the spin of the ship, as if Defiant were falling through the universe. Captain Herb Colvin saw them as a battle map, infinitely dangerous. Defiant hung above him in the viewport, its enormous mass ready to fall on him and crush him, but after years in space he hardly noticed.
Hastily constructed and thrown into space, armed as an interstellar cruiser but without the bulky Alderson Effect engines which could send her between the stars, Defiant had been assigned to guard the approaches to New Chicago from raids by the Empire. The Republic's main fleet was on the other side of Beta Hortensi, awaiting an attack they were sure would come from that quarter. The path Defiant guarded sprang from a red dwarf star four-tenths of a light year distant. The tramline had never been plotted. Few within New Chicago's government believed the Empire had the capability to find it, and fewer thought they would try.
Colvin strode across his cabin to the polished steel cupboard. A tall man, nearly two meters in height, he was thin and wiry, with an aristocratic nose that many
Imperial lords would have envied. A shock of sandy hair never stayed combed, but he refused to cover it with a uniform cap unless he had to. A fringe of beard was beginning to take shape on his chin. Colvin had been clean-shaven when Defiant began its patrol twenty-four weeks ago. He had grown a beard, decided he didn't like it and shaved it off, then started another. Now he was glad he hadn't taken the annual depilation treatMents. Growing a beard was one of the few amusements available to men on a long and dreary blockade.
He opened the cupboard, detached a glass and bottle from their clamps, and took them back to his desk. Colvin poured expertly despite the Coriolis effect that could send carelessly poured liquids sloshing to the carpets. He set the glass down and turned toward the viewport.
There was nothing to see out there, of course. Even the heart of it all, New Chicago-Union! In keeping with the patriotic spirit of the Committee of Public Safety, New Chicago was now called Union. Captain Herb Colvin had trouble remembering that, and Political Officer'Gerry took enormous pleasure in correcting him every damned time. -Union was the point of it all, the boredom and the endless low-level fear; but Union was invisible from here. The sun blocked it even from telescopes. Even the red dwarf, so close that it had robbed Beta Hortensi of its cometary halo, showed only as a dim red spark. The first sign of attack would be on the bridge screens long before his eyes could find the black-on-black point that might be an Imperial warship.
For six months Defiant had waited, and the question had likewise sat waiting in the back of Colvin's head.
Was the Empire coming?

* * *

The Secession War that ended the first Empire of Man had split into a thousand little wars, and those had died into battles. Throughout human space there were planets with no civilization, and many more with too little to support space travel.
Even Sparta had been hurt. She had lost her fleets, but the dying ships had defended the Capital; and when Sparta began to recover, she recovered fast.
Across human space men had discovered the secrets of interstellar travel. The technology of the Langston Field was stored away in a score of Imperial libraries; and this was important because the Field was discovered in the first place through a series of improbable accidents to men in widely separated specialties. It would not have been developed again.
With Langston Field and Alderson Drive, the Second Empire rose from the ashes of the First. Every man in the new government knew that weakness in the First Empire had led to war-and that war must not happen again. This time all humanity must be united. There must be no worlds outside the Imperiuin, and none within it to challenge the power of Emperor and Senate. Mankind would have peace if worlds must die to bring it about.
The oath was sworn, and when other worlds built merchantmen, Sparta rebuilt the Fleet and sent it to space. Under the fanatical young men and women humanity would be united by force. The Empire spread around Crucis and once again reached behind the Coal Sack, persuading, cajoling, conquering and destroying where needed~.
New Chicago had been one of the first worlds reunited with the Empire of Man. The revolt must have come as a stunning surprise. Now Captain Herb Colvin of the United Republic waited on blockade patrol for the Empire's retaliation. He knew it would come, and could only hope that Defiant would be ready.
He sat in the enormous leather chair behind his desk, swirling his drink and letting his gaze alternate between his wife's picture and the viewport. The chair was a memento from the liberation of the Governor General's palace on New Chicago. (On Union!) It was made of imported leathers, worth a fortune if he could find the right buyer. The Committee of Public Safety hadn't realized its value.
Colvin looked from Grace's picture to a pinkish star drifting upward past the viewport, and thought of the Empire's warships. Would they come through here, when they came? Surely they were coming.
In principal Defiant was a better ship than she'd been when she left New Chicago. The engineers had auto-
mated all the routine spacekeeping tasks, and no United Republic spacer needed to do a job that a robot could perform. Like all of New Chicago's ships, and like few of the Imperial Navy's, Defiant was as automated as a merchantman.
Colvin wondered. Merchantmen do not fight battles. A merchant captain need not worry about random holes punched through his hull. He can ignore the risk that any given piece of equipment will be smashed at any instant. He will never have only minutes to keep his ship fighting or see her destroyed in an instant of blinding heat.
No robot could cope with the complexity of decisions damage control could generate, and if there were such a. robot it might easily be the first item destroyed in battle. Colvin had been a merchant captain and had seen no reason to object to the Republic's naval policies, but now that he had experience in warship command, he understood why the Imperials automated as little as possible and kept the crew in working routine tasks:
washing down corridors and changing air filters, scrubbiig pots and inspecting the hull. Imperial crews might grumble about the work, but they were never idle. After six months, Defiant was a better ship, but.. . she had lifted out from. . . Union with a crew of mission-oriented warriors. What were they nєw?
Colvin leaned back in his comfortable chair and looked around his cabin. It was too comfortable. Even the captain-especially the cсptain!-had little to do but putter with his personal surroundings, and Colvin had done all he could think of.
It was worse for the crew. They fought, distilled liquor in hidden places, gambled for stakes they couldn't afford, and were bored. It showed in their discipline. There wasn't any punishment duty either, nothing like cleaning heads or scrubbing pots, the duties an Imperial skipper might assign his crewmen. Aboard Defiant it would be make-work, and everyone would know it.
He was thinking about another drink when an alarm trilled.
"Captain here," Colvin said.
The face on the viewscreen was flushed. "A ship, sir,"
the Communications officer said. "Can't tell the size yet, but definitely a ship from the red star."
Colvin's tongue dried up in an instant. He'd been right all along, through all these months of waiting,-and the flavor of.being right was not pleasant. "Right. Sound battle stations. We'll intercept." He paused a moment as Lieutenant Susack motioned to other crew on the bridge. Alarms sounded through Defiant. "Make a signal to the fleet, Lieutenant."
"Aye aye, sir."
Horns were still blaring through the ship as Colvin left his cabin. Crewmen dove along the steel corridors, past grotesque shapes in combat armor. The ship was already losing her spin and orienting herself to give chase to the intruder. Gravity was peculiar and shifting. Colvin crawled along the handholds like a monkey.
The crew were waiting. "Captain's on the bridge," the duty NCO announced. Others helped himinto armor and dogged down his helmet. He had only just strapped himself into his command seat when the ship's speakers sounded.
"ALL SECURE FOR ACCELERATION. STAND BY FOR ACчEi~ERATION."
"Intercept," Colvin ordered. The computer recognized his voice and obeyed. The joitmeter swung hard over and acceleration crushed him to his chair. The joltmeter swung back to zero, leaving a steady three gravities.
The bridge was crowded. Colvin's comfortable acceleration couch dominated the spacious compartment. In front of him three helmsmen sat at inactive controls, ready to steer the ship if her main battle computer failed. ~They were flanked by two watch officers. Behind him were runners and talkers, ready to do the Captain's will when he had orders for them.
There was. one other. -
Beside him was a man who wasn't precisely under Colyin's command. Defiant belonged to Captain Colvin. So did the crew-but he shared that territory with Political Officer Gerry. The Political Officer's presence implied distrust in Colvin's loyalty to- the Republic. Gerry had denied this, and so had the Committee of Public Safety; but they hadn't convinced Herb Colvin.
"Are we prepared to engage the enemy, Captain?"
Gerry asked. His thin and usually smiling features were distorted by acceleration.