"David Weber & Steve White - Starfire 3 - In Death Ground" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

had stumbled into over the centuries to share the cheerful contempt many Survey officers exuded for the
"gunslingers" the Admiralty insisted on assigning to even routine missions, he really would have preferred
Ursula Elswick or Roddy Chirac of the Ute in Cheltwyn's slot. Both of them were Survey veterans,
specialists like Braun himself, with whom he'd felt an immediate rapport.
Yet any reservations about Cheltwyn had faded quickly. Alex wasn't Survey, but he was sharp,
and, despite Braun's seniority, he was also a far better tactician. Of course, a Battle Fleet officer ought to
be a better warrior than someone who'd spent his entire career in Survey, but Alex had gone to some
lengths to pretend he didn't know he was. Braun wouldn't have minded if he hadn't bothered, but that
didn't keep the commodore from appreciating his tact. And, truth to tell, Braun was delighted to have
someone with Cheltwyn's competence commanding the warships escorting his six exploration cruisers.
Traditionally, Survey crews found boredom a far greater threat than hostile aliens, but it was comforting to
know helpтАФand especially competent helpтАФwas available at need.
The commodore blinked back from his thoughts as TFNS Argive edged into the fringes of a
featureless dot in space, visible only to her sensors, and her plotting officer studied his readouts.
"Grav eddies building," Lieutenant Channing reported. "Right on the profile for a Type Eight.
Estimate transit in twenty-five seconds."
Braun sipped more coffee and nodded. Survey Command had known the warp point was a Type
Eight ever since the old Arapaho first plotted it during the Indra System's initial survey forty years back,
but Survey considered itself a corps d'elite. Channing was simply doing his job as he always didтАФwith
utter competenceтАФand the fact that he might be using that competence to hide a certain nervousness was
beside the point . . . mostly.
Braun chuckled at the thought. He'd literally lost count of the first transits he'd made, yet that
didn't keep him from feeling a bit ofтАФWell, call it nervous anticipation. R&D had promised delivery of
warp-capable robotic probes for years now, but Braun would believe in them when he saw them. Until he
did, the only way to discover what lay beyond a warp point remained what it had always been: to send a
ship through to see . . . which could sometimes be a bit rough on the ship in question. The vast majority of
first transits turned out to be purest routine, but there was always a chance they wouldn't, and everyone
had heard stories of ships that emerged from transit too close to a starтАФor perhaps a black holeтАФand were
never heard of again. That was one reason some Survey officers wanted to rewrite SOP to use pinnaces for
first transits instead of starships. Unlike most small craft, pinnaces were big and tough enough to make
transit on their own, yet they required only six-man crews, and the logic of risking just half a dozen lives
instead of the three hundred men and women who crewed a Hun-class cruiser like Argive was persuasive.
Yet HQ had so far rejected the notion. Survey Command lost more ships to accidents in normal
space than on exploration duties. Statistically speaking, a man had a better chance of being struck by
lightning on dirt-side liberty than of being killed on a first transit, and that, coupled with the enormous
difference in capability between a forty-thousand-tonne cruiser like Argive and a pinnace, was more than
enough to explain HQ's resistance to changing its operational doctrine.
A pinnace had no shields, no weapons, and no ECM. Because a Hun-class CL did have shields, it
could survive a transit which would dump a pinnace within fatal proximity to a star. It could also defend
itself if it turned out unfriendly individuals awaited itтАФsomething which might have happened rarely but,
as Commander Cheltwyn's presence reflected, could never be entirely ruled out. And while its emissions
signature was detectable over a far greater range than a pinnace's, it also mounted third-generation ECM.
Unless someone was looking exactly the right way to spot it in the instant it made transit, it could
disappear into cloak, which no pinnace could, and, last but not least, its sensor suite had enormously more
reach than any small craft could boast. All in all, Braun had to come down on HQ's side. Things that could
eat a "light" cruiser the size of many heavy cruisers were far rarer than things that could eat a pinnace.
"TransitтАФnow!" Channing reported, and Braun's stomach heaved, just as it always did, as the
surge of warp transit wrenched at his inner ear. He saw other people try to hide matching grimaces of
discomfort, and his mouth quirked in familiar amusement. He'd met a few people over the years who
claimed transit didn't bother them at all, and he made it a firm policy never to lend such mendacious souls