"John Ringo - The Legacy of the Aldenata 5 - The Hero" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

embarrass him, 'I'm thore too!' "
Dagger said nothing. He didn't need to. Thor said nothing, trying to make them pick something else
by being boring.
Ferret made a single comment and shut up. "You better be able to shoot better against the Blobs
than against Dagger," which let the conversation segue into a discussion of what the next mission might
be. There was no question that the next mission would be against the Blobs. There were few other
threats currently, and none that required the special skills of DRTs. The question was whether it would
be a raid, a recon, another casualty-racking attempt at a snatch or some new vac-brained plan from the
whiz kids on the Strategic Staff.
The so-called Blobs, the Tslek, were a recent enemy to the loose federation of planets that made
up the Islendian Confederation. They were dark, soft creatures with no fixed form, that extended
pseudopods for manipulation. So far, not many humans had seen a Tslek up close. At least not to report
back afterwards. Several remote colonies had been lost, their administrative centers smashed into
incandescent vapor by what were reported as kinetic weapons but seemed to pack more energy than
simple rock falls. As with nukes and antimatter weapons, such devices were forbidden among the
civilized races, especially among humans. The shock of the attacks had rippled through space with the
first reports. Reconnaissance and special operations craft had been sent out to determine the nature of
the threat. Some had come back.
The Tslek occupied an undetermined number of planetary systems near the fringe of human
exploration. So far the humans had only found one planet that had a Blob "civilian" presence. Or at least
a moderately large presence, because it was difficult to tell the difference between Blobs that were
military and civilian. The human task force commander had dropped a series of kinetic strikes in
retaliation and retreated. At the moment the situation was something like a "phony war" with both sides
probing forward. One could get just as dead in a phony war as a real one, though. The front was
insubstantial and shifting, but very real.
So far the Blobs had gotten the best of it; the frontiers in that direction had been hammered with
millions of dead colonists as a result. If, or more accurately, when a Blob raiding force got through to the
more heavily populated worlds the civilian casualties would be enormous; on the order of billions.
There were indications from scouting ships that the Blobs were planning on attacking towards the
Core worlds with a large fleet. The humans were grudgingly willing to accept the casualties that came
with this; the normal technique was to let a group attack then slash in behind them with light forces and
sever their supply lines. But the line of advance was the question. While Earth and the Core might not
care, the Islendian Republic didn't wish to be the route used.
The Blobs apparently had the same needs as humans: hydrogen to refuel their ships, spare parts,
oxygen and water and fresh food. They also used the same drive systems as humans, the low energy
"valley drive" that would take ships from system to system along "valleys" between stars called transit
lanes and the "tunnel drive," originally introduced to the humans and their allies by the enemy Posleen,
which at enormous energy cost could "tunnel" at hyperluminal speed through any region of space. This
meant that from time to time they had to resupply with hydrogen for their valley drives and antimatter for
their tunnel drives, besides taking on other consumables. Some of that could be brought forward by
resupply ships. But some of it, fuel especially, was more efficiently gathered along the way. It still made
more sense to have ships resupply on food rather than "grow their own"; plants took up space that could
be used for ammo and "legs" and weren't as efficient at cleaning the air as recycling systems.
For all these reasons the Blobs were going to need an advanced base on their line of march. It
would have certain requirements: it would have to have more than one good transit lane, it would need a
Jovian-type planet for fuel and it would probably possess a terrestrial planet with signs of Blob
agriculture.
The Blobs didn't strictly need a system with an Earth-like class planet, but that was the way to bet.
Not only did it permit areas to grow and process food without the expense of domes and other
necessities on moons but it permitted crew rest in decent conditions. The biosphere also was a