"Timothy Zahn - Blackcollar 2 - The Backlash Mission" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

Lepkowski snorted, a wry smile touching his lips. "Safe drop. I haven't heard that term in years.
Your tutors had a definite military bias."

"General Morris Kratochvil was one of them."

"Kratochvil." The age lines around Lepkowski's eyes seemed to deepen. "A good man... No, Caine,
the formula for Backlash wouldn't have been put in any safe drop. If it still exists, it'd have to be in
one of the Seven Sisters."

Caine frowned. He'd heard that term before.... "Those were the seven top command/defense bases,
weren't they? One per continent, roughly."

"Right." The general nodded. "Major secrets of all sorts would have been stored there.
Unfortunately... well, maybe there's a way to check." Leaning forward again, he began working his
keyboard. "We've got some orbital maps of Earth from our last flyby a few months back. Thirty
years is a long time, but the force necessary to destroy one of the Sisters ought to have left some
lingering scars."

Within a very few minutes that prediction was painfully borne out. Six of the seven spots Lepkowski
pointed to were in the middle of either slowly eroding blast craters or unnaturally defoliated
wildernesses. Or both.

The seventh...

"Almost completely untouched," Lepkowski murmured as he tried various image-enhancement
programs and topographical reconstructions. "Incredible. How could they have missed it?"

"Where is the base, exactly?" Caine asked.

Lepkowski did something to the keyboard and a topographic overlay appeared on the orbital photo.
"Here," he said, tapping a wide mountain peak. "Aegis Mountain, about thirty klicks west of Denver,
North America. Major highway passes north of it here; the entrance opens onto it about here."

Caine stared hard at the image. No defoliation; certainly no obvious crater. "What are those things
up there to the north?" he asked, pointing to a pair of slightly off-color patches.

"Uh..." Lepkowski tapped keys. "Neutron missile scars, I'd say. Probably from the warтАФthey don't

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Blackcollar: The Backlash Mission

look recent."

"Could that be how the base was neutralized? Saturation neutron bombing?"

"No, Aegis had better shielding than that. But you're rightтАФthe base was neutralized somehow. The
Ryqril surely wouldn't have left a fully manned and armed base sitting untouched on the doorstep of
a major metro area."