[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
fail& but either way they d done everything possible.
And Alexander remained convinced that Gorgon was the only means available to
keep the Xul from finally devouring the worlds of Humankind.
And they would be making the Stargate transit with a solid victory under their
belts. Yesterday, shortly after they d arrived in orbit around Anneau, a PE
shuttle had flown up and out of the gas giant s gravity well and approached
the Skybase. On board was Major George Tomanaga, Lieutenants Fitzpatrick and
Lee, and the other Marine personnel captured when the PanEuropeans had
discovered and taken over the listening post. Lee had been in a medical stasis
tube, still undergoing treatment from her radiation exposure in the Starwall
system. She was on board the medical support ship Barton now, and the doctors
and med AIs all promised a rapid recovery. Evidently, she d already, and with
some vehemence, volunteered to join the MIEF s aerospace wing.
She would be welcome. The final butcher s bill, the irrecoverables, for the
Puller system engagement had not been bad, considering the scope of the
victory 76 naval personnel on board the Thor and the
Morrigan, and 92 Marines most of those last picked off during their approach
to the Rommel. Fifteen
Marines, though, had been aerospace fighter pilots killed in the engagement
against Rommel and her fighters, and 1MIEF would be entering the next phase of
operations with a serious weakness in her complement of ASF flight officers.
Damn, but that fight had been a near-run thing. If the Marine boarding parties
had not been able to take down the Rommel, the monitor would have pounded the
Commonwealth ships into scrap, and the
PanEuropeans would have been sitting there waiting when Skybase had reemerged
from paraspace. The warships she carried couldn t fight from inside the base s
hangar bay, and Skybase would have been helpless under Rommel s powerful,
long-range accelerator guns.
But Rommel had surrendered, though her ownership still had to be determined by
negotiation. The
PanEuropeans, naturally enough, wanted the monitor back. The MIEF had returned
her crew as part of the general post-battle exchange of POWs, but, frankly,
Alexander was hoping to be able to incorporate the Rommel into the
expeditionary force. Certainly, there was plenty of historical precedent in
naval history regarding the incorporation of captured warships into the
victor s fleet. According to his last report from Earth, however, the
politicians were going at it hot and heavy now, arguing the fine points of the
battle, and trying to hammer out a peace before the situation could
deteriorate any further.
Alexander didn t really care what the outcome was, so long as 1MIEF had free
access through the Puller
659 system to the Stargate.
He could see much of that fleet now, from his vantage point on the Skybase
observation deck. For three days after the battle, Skybase had been shuttling
back and forth between the carefully measured metrics of Assembly Point Yankee
and the equally precisely measured volume of space at the Earth-Moon L-3
point. In threes and in fours and in fives, depending on the masses of the
vessels involved, Skybase had taken on board the ships of 1MIEF and brought
them across the light-years to this system, eighty ships, ranging from sleek
corvettes to massive assault carriers, attack transports, and the three
centerpieces of the MIEF naval task force, the 80,000-ton planet-class
battlecruisers, Mars, Ishtar, and Chiron.
The largest ship in the fleet, of course with the word ship used somewhat
advisedly was Skybase itself. Four Atlas-class fleet tugs had been solidly
anchored to the structure s hull; their gravitic drives would provide a small
measure of maneuverability for the huge space-going base. Unofficially, at
least, Skybase had been tagged with a new name that had tended to transform
the MIEF headquarters from an
Page 145
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
it to a her, from a military orbital base to an active warship.
The name was Hermes, and it had no doubt originally been proposed, Alexander
thought, with tongue firmly in cheek. Hermes had been the swift messenger god
of the ancient Greeks, to be sure. With its no, her ability to translate back
into Solar space, the UCS Hermes would certainly fit the role of messenger in
this coming campaign, but the huge structure was anything but swift.
Alexander was still questioning his own decision to include Skybase Hermes on
the fleet roster. She was so damned slow that she would be of very little help
in a major fleet action, and by providing the enemy with an easy target, she
might even prove to be a serious liability. What had tipped the scales in so
far as making the decision was the fact that including Hermes did have some
important positives. Hermes could maintain instant communication with Earth no
matter where in the Galaxy she ended up, and she was big enough to carry the
gravitometric measuring gear necessary for establishing new translation points
elsewhere. With that facility, Hermes could slip back to Earth and pick up
reinforcements personnel, ships, and supplies no matter where among the stars
the MIEF might find itself.
But there was more. Hermes had also been a trickster god, the god of thieves,
the god of travelers, and the god of cunning, all traits that the MIEF was
going to need when it came up against the Xul. In myth, Hermes had been the
god who d lulled Argus, Hera s hundred-eyed guardian monster, to sleep in
order to free the captive maiden Io.
Alexander knew enough cultural anthropology, however, to know something else
about Hermes the god.
He d been a psychopomp a kind of divine escort who guided the souls of the
dead down to the underworld.
And that association was just a little too close to the mark to bear thinking
about. A lot of Marines and naval personnel were going to end up passing to
whatever afterlife there might be within the next months and years, and it had
been the UCS Hermes that had brought them here to the stargate to make that
possible.
Senior commanders, Alexander thought wryly, should not be permitted such
thoughts. The perils of too damned much education&
General Alexander? Cara s voice cut in.
Yes?
A message incoming from Major Tomanaga on the LP conventional lasercom. Would
you care to see
it?
Please.
A communications window opened in his mind. After a momentary burst of
radiation-induced snow, the face of Major Tomanaga appeared, making his
report. The major had asked that he be allowed to again take command of the
LP, as soon as his debriefing on board the Hermes had been complete.
Status report, Tomanaga said, Operation Gorgon, at oh-nine-thirty hours
GMT, day oh-four, month twelve. Expected time delay thirty-one minutes, twelve [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl aikidobyd.xlx.pl
fail& but either way they d done everything possible.
And Alexander remained convinced that Gorgon was the only means available to
keep the Xul from finally devouring the worlds of Humankind.
And they would be making the Stargate transit with a solid victory under their
belts. Yesterday, shortly after they d arrived in orbit around Anneau, a PE
shuttle had flown up and out of the gas giant s gravity well and approached
the Skybase. On board was Major George Tomanaga, Lieutenants Fitzpatrick and
Lee, and the other Marine personnel captured when the PanEuropeans had
discovered and taken over the listening post. Lee had been in a medical stasis
tube, still undergoing treatment from her radiation exposure in the Starwall
system. She was on board the medical support ship Barton now, and the doctors
and med AIs all promised a rapid recovery. Evidently, she d already, and with
some vehemence, volunteered to join the MIEF s aerospace wing.
She would be welcome. The final butcher s bill, the irrecoverables, for the
Puller system engagement had not been bad, considering the scope of the
victory 76 naval personnel on board the Thor and the
Morrigan, and 92 Marines most of those last picked off during their approach
to the Rommel. Fifteen
Marines, though, had been aerospace fighter pilots killed in the engagement
against Rommel and her fighters, and 1MIEF would be entering the next phase of
operations with a serious weakness in her complement of ASF flight officers.
Damn, but that fight had been a near-run thing. If the Marine boarding parties
had not been able to take down the Rommel, the monitor would have pounded the
Commonwealth ships into scrap, and the
PanEuropeans would have been sitting there waiting when Skybase had reemerged
from paraspace. The warships she carried couldn t fight from inside the base s
hangar bay, and Skybase would have been helpless under Rommel s powerful,
long-range accelerator guns.
But Rommel had surrendered, though her ownership still had to be determined by
negotiation. The
PanEuropeans, naturally enough, wanted the monitor back. The MIEF had returned
her crew as part of the general post-battle exchange of POWs, but, frankly,
Alexander was hoping to be able to incorporate the Rommel into the
expeditionary force. Certainly, there was plenty of historical precedent in
naval history regarding the incorporation of captured warships into the
victor s fleet. According to his last report from Earth, however, the
politicians were going at it hot and heavy now, arguing the fine points of the
battle, and trying to hammer out a peace before the situation could
deteriorate any further.
Alexander didn t really care what the outcome was, so long as 1MIEF had free
access through the Puller
659 system to the Stargate.
He could see much of that fleet now, from his vantage point on the Skybase
observation deck. For three days after the battle, Skybase had been shuttling
back and forth between the carefully measured metrics of Assembly Point Yankee
and the equally precisely measured volume of space at the Earth-Moon L-3
point. In threes and in fours and in fives, depending on the masses of the
vessels involved, Skybase had taken on board the ships of 1MIEF and brought
them across the light-years to this system, eighty ships, ranging from sleek
corvettes to massive assault carriers, attack transports, and the three
centerpieces of the MIEF naval task force, the 80,000-ton planet-class
battlecruisers, Mars, Ishtar, and Chiron.
The largest ship in the fleet, of course with the word ship used somewhat
advisedly was Skybase itself. Four Atlas-class fleet tugs had been solidly
anchored to the structure s hull; their gravitic drives would provide a small
measure of maneuverability for the huge space-going base. Unofficially, at
least, Skybase had been tagged with a new name that had tended to transform
the MIEF headquarters from an
Page 145
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
it to a her, from a military orbital base to an active warship.
The name was Hermes, and it had no doubt originally been proposed, Alexander
thought, with tongue firmly in cheek. Hermes had been the swift messenger god
of the ancient Greeks, to be sure. With its no, her ability to translate back
into Solar space, the UCS Hermes would certainly fit the role of messenger in
this coming campaign, but the huge structure was anything but swift.
Alexander was still questioning his own decision to include Skybase Hermes on
the fleet roster. She was so damned slow that she would be of very little help
in a major fleet action, and by providing the enemy with an easy target, she
might even prove to be a serious liability. What had tipped the scales in so
far as making the decision was the fact that including Hermes did have some
important positives. Hermes could maintain instant communication with Earth no
matter where in the Galaxy she ended up, and she was big enough to carry the
gravitometric measuring gear necessary for establishing new translation points
elsewhere. With that facility, Hermes could slip back to Earth and pick up
reinforcements personnel, ships, and supplies no matter where among the stars
the MIEF might find itself.
But there was more. Hermes had also been a trickster god, the god of thieves,
the god of travelers, and the god of cunning, all traits that the MIEF was
going to need when it came up against the Xul. In myth, Hermes had been the
god who d lulled Argus, Hera s hundred-eyed guardian monster, to sleep in
order to free the captive maiden Io.
Alexander knew enough cultural anthropology, however, to know something else
about Hermes the god.
He d been a psychopomp a kind of divine escort who guided the souls of the
dead down to the underworld.
And that association was just a little too close to the mark to bear thinking
about. A lot of Marines and naval personnel were going to end up passing to
whatever afterlife there might be within the next months and years, and it had
been the UCS Hermes that had brought them here to the stargate to make that
possible.
Senior commanders, Alexander thought wryly, should not be permitted such
thoughts. The perils of too damned much education&
General Alexander? Cara s voice cut in.
Yes?
A message incoming from Major Tomanaga on the LP conventional lasercom. Would
you care to see
it?
Please.
A communications window opened in his mind. After a momentary burst of
radiation-induced snow, the face of Major Tomanaga appeared, making his
report. The major had asked that he be allowed to again take command of the
LP, as soon as his debriefing on board the Hermes had been complete.
Status report, Tomanaga said, Operation Gorgon, at oh-nine-thirty hours
GMT, day oh-four, month twelve. Expected time delay thirty-one minutes, twelve [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]