"David Weber - Fifth Imperium 02 - The Armageddon Inheritance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

once more.

"Carry on, ladies and gentlemen," he said, and stepped out the hatch,

"Supralight shutdown in two minutes," Dahak remarked calmly.

Colin took great pains to project a matching calm, but his own relaxation was all too artificial, and he saw
the same strain, hidden with greater or lesser success, in all of his bridge officers. Dahak was at battle
stations, and a matching team under Jiltanith named Command Two on the far side of the core hull. The
holographic images of Command Two's counterparts sat beside each of his officers, which made his
bridge seem a bit more crowded but meant everyone knew exactly what was happeningтАж and that he
got to sit beside JiltanithтАЩs image on duty.

A score of officers were physically present at their consoles on the starlit command deck. In an
emergency, Colin could have run the ship without any of them, something which would have been
impossible with the semi-aware Comp Cent of yore. But even though Dahak was now capable of
assessing intent and exercising discretion, there were limits to the details Coon's human brain could
handle. Each of his highly trained officers took his or her own portion of the burden off of him, and he
was devoutly thankful for their presence.

"Sublight in one minute," Dahak intoned, and Colin felt the beginnings of shutdown flowing through his
interface with ChernikovтАЩs engineering computers. The measured sequence of commands moved like
clockwork, and a tiny, almost imperceptible vibration shook Dahak's gargantuan bulk.

"SublightтАж now," Dahak reported, and the stars moving across the visual display were abruptly still.

A G3 star floated directly "ahead" of Colin in the projection. It was the brightest single object in view,
and it abruptly began to grow as Sarah Meir, his astrogator, engaged the sublight drive.

"Core tap shutdown," Dahak announced.

"Enhance image on the star system, Dahak," Colin requested, and the star swelled while a
three-dimensional schematic of the Sheskar System's planetary orbits flicked to life about it Only the
outermost planet was visible even to Dahak at their present range, but tiny circles on each orbit trace
indicated the position each planet should hold.

"Any artificial radiation?''

"Negative, Captain," Dahak replied, and Colin bit his lip. Sheskar wasтАФor had beenтАФthe Imperium's
forward bastion on the traditional Achuultani approach vector. Perimeter Security should have detected
and challenged them almost instantly.

"Captain," Dahak broke the silence which had fallen, "I have detected discrepancies in the system."

The visual display altered as he spoke. Oddly clumped necklaces of far smaller dots replaced the circles
representing Sheskars central trio of planets, ominously about the central star, and Colin swallowed.

Dahak had gone sublight at the closest possible safe distance from Sheskar, but that was still eleven
light-hours out Even at his maximum sublight velocity, it would have taken almost twenty-four hours to
reach the primary, yet it had become depressingly clear that there was no reason to travel that deep into