"John Ringo - The Legacy of the Aldenata 3 - When the Devil D" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

 "They learn, honey," he whispered. "But we never do."
They hadn't learned in the unexpected skirmishes before the war officially started,
when they lost Fredericksburg and almost lost Washington. When lightly armed "fast
frigates" had been thrown willy-nilly at battleglobes.
The battleglobes were constructed of layer upon layer of combat ships. A direct hit
by an antimatter warhead would strip a layer off a section of the exterior but the inner
ships would simply blow the damage off and reengage. Thus the theory of using a
massive punch to break them up and then engaging the scattered ships with
"secondaries." But that required not only fleets of secondary ships, fighters, frigates and
destroyers, but a massive central capital ship.
However, rather than wait until the Fleet was fully prepared the Galactic command
had thrown more and more ships, practically right out of the shipyards, into the battle.
Pissing them away in dribs and drabs not only in Terran space but over Barwhon and
Irmansul. The loss of the ships, the secondaries that were vital to the overall plan, was
bad enough, but the loss of trained personnel had been devastating.
The invasion of Earth had practically cut it off from space and none of the other
races of the Galactic Federation could fight. To provide the planned crews for the Fleet,
Earth had been stripped of likely candidates and they were put through months and years
of simulator training in preparation for when they would venture forth to triumph in
space. Instead, they had been thrown away in skirmish after skirmish, none of them doing
any noticeable damage to the Posleen. Thus, the limited number of off-planet forces had
been bled white before the first capital ship was completed.
The second invasion wave was fully in swing before the first "superdreadnought"
was launched. This massive ship, nearly four kilometers long, was designed to use its
spinal hypercannon to break up the globes. And it worked with remarkable facility.
Coming in at high velocity from Titan Base the Lexington smashed two of the globes
headed for Terra. And then it was swarmed.
Thousands of smaller ships, the skyscraper shaped Lampreys and C-Dec command
ships, surrounded the beleaguered superdreadnought and pounded it to scrap. Despite the
heavy anti-ship defenses along the sides and despite the massive armor it was stripped to
a hulk by repeated antimatter strikes. Finally, when no further fire was forthcoming, the
wreckage was left to drift. So durable was the ship the generators at its core were never
touched and it was eventually salvaged and rebuilt. But that took more years, years that
the Earth didn't have.
Mike wondered how many other wives and husbands, mothers and fathers were
pissed away by the goddamned Fleet. By "admirals" who couldn't pour piss out of a boot
with the instructions on the heel. By a high command that kowtowed to the damned
Darhel. By senior commanders who had never seen a Posleen, much less killed one.
And he wondered when it was going to be his turn.
He watched the ghost of his wife's smile as the cold autumn rains dripped off his
shaved head and the artillery hammered the advancing centaurs. And flicked the safety of
his pistol on and off.
***
Jack Horner stood arms akimbo smiling at the blank plasteel helmet in front of him.
"Where in the hell is O'Neal?"
 Inside his armor Lieutenant Stewart winced. He knew damned well where the major
was. And so did the Continental Army Commander. What neither one of them knew was
why O'Neal wasn't responding to their calls.
"General Horner, all I can say is where he is not, which is here." The battalion
intelligence officer gave an invisible shrug inside the powered battle armor. "I'm sure