The Complete Inheritance Trilogy: Star Strike, Galactic Corps, Semper Human. Ian Douglas

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СКАЧАТЬ “Almost up to the big jump-off?”

      The link was via conventional lasercom relays, so there was a speed-of-light time lag of about three seconds between the moment he spoke, and the moment he heard her reply.

      “Yeah. But I do hate leaving you behind.”

      “I hate it, too. But … you’ll be back. And I’ll be here waiting for you.”

      They’d talked about that aspect of things a lot during the weeks before this. Normally, Skybase was home not only to nearly eight hundred Marines and naval personnel, but also to some five hundred civilians. Most of them were ex-military, or the children of military families, or the spouses of military personnel serving on Skybase. Most worked a variety of jobs on the base, ranging from administration and clerical duties to specialized technical services to drivers and equipment operators in the docking bay.

      In fact, they represented the way the Marine Corps, in particular, had over the centuries evolved its own microculture. The retired Marine staff sergeant or colonel, the spouse of a Marine pilot, the child of Marine parents both stationed at Skybase, all shared the same cultural background, language, and worldview that made them a single, very large and extended family.

      But Skybase was about to take part in an operation utterly unlike anything tried in the past. This time, the MIEF’s headquarters would be traveling with the expeditionary force. It would be the target of enemy assaults, and it would likely be gone for many years.

      Active duty Marines at Skybase had been given their orders. The civilians, however, had been given a choice—a choice to be worked out by both civilian and military members of each family. Many civilians had preferred to stay behind at Earthring, though the decisions of many had been swayed by the military members of those families, who’d wanted loved ones to be safe.

      According to the final muster roster, two hundred five civilians were accompanying the Marines and naval personnel to the stars on board Skybase. Among them were the research team from the Arean Advanced Physics Institute, crucial members of the technician cadre, and a number of civilian family members who’d refused to be separated from loved ones.

      Tabbie, though, was staying at Earthring. She had family there … and though she’d not wanted to stay at first, Alexander had finally convinced her that she would be better off making a home for herself there, rather than enduring the hardships—and the danger—of life aboard the base during this new deployment.

      “I still don’t entirely agree with your reasoning,” she told him after a moment.

      “You mean about Earth not being safe?”

      “You’ve said it often enough yourself,” she replied after the three-second delay. “If the Xul come to Earth again, when they come, there won’t be any behind-the-lines. Everybody will be taking the same risks.”

      In fact, the original rationale behind giving Skybase its paraspace capability was to ensure that the MIEF headquarters would survive if the Xul did manage to find and slag the Earth. It would be a terrible irony, Alexander thought, if Skybase survived the coming campaign … and Tabbie and the other civilians left at Earthring were killed.

      “Yeah, well, there’s a big difference between the Xul coming to Earth again, and us going out hunting for the bastards,” he told her. “We’ll be out there looking for trouble, and we’re going to find it. And if we’re successful, we’ll shake the Xulies up enough that they won’t come to Earth.”

      “I know, I know. But I don’t have to like it.”

      “One minute,” a voice said in his head.

      “Okay, Kitten,” he told her. “I just got the one-minute alert. If everything goes as planned, I’ll be back in a few hours for the next set of ships.”

      “I love you, Marty.”

      “I love you.” He hesitated, then added, “I’ll be back before you know it.”

      He could feel the hard and familiar knot of anticipation tightening in his gut. He wished this next translation was the one taking them to the Xul. He wanted to get it over with … but unfortunately Operation Lafayette had to come first. Secure the jump-off system—and get those captured Marines back—and then it would be time to deal with the much vaster threat of the Xul.

      “Thirty seconds.”

      What perverse insanity emanating from the gods of battle demanded that humans first tear and kill one another, when the Xul were the real threat, the most terrible and terrifying threat the human species had ever encountered?

      “Ten seconds.”

      “Five … four … three … two … one … systems engaged. …”

      The mental window through which Alexander was watching the scene suddenly turned to white snow and crashing static. Damn! He hadn’t even considered the self-evident fact that once Skybase translated, the camera on board the Aldebaran would suddenly be left far behind, and the abrupt loss of signal had jarred him. He switched to a different input channel, one connected to a camera feed from Skybase’s outer hull.

      For just an instant, Skybase would have dropped through the blue-lit haze of paraspace, but Alexander had missed it. What he saw now was a view of deep space, star-strewn and empty, the constellations unrecognizable. Two hundred eighty-three light-years was far enough to distort the familiar patterns of stars in the sky into strangeness.

      In fact, there was nothing much to see. Other downloads from Skybase’s command center, however, began providing a more complete picture of their surroundings as the base’s sensitive scanners began sampling the background of ambient electromagnetic and neutrino radiation. The star gate, as expected, was about 10 light-seconds in one direction, the tiny red spark of the local sun in another, the star marking Puller 659’s solitary gas giant just to one side of the star, and thirty light-minutes away.

      Seconds after translation, Skybase began releasing her first riders—sixteen F/A-4140 Stardragons of VMA-980, the Sharpshooters, one of three fighter squadrons in 1MIEF’s aerospace wing. Sleek, black-hulled, and deadly, the fighters dispersed around Skybase in a globular formation, the base protectively at its center. They continued to move outward at a steady drift of nearly 4 kilometers per second relative to the Skybase, flight and combat systems shut down, drawing energy solely from their on-board batteries, watching for a sign, any sign, that the enemy knew they were there.

      Skybase, too, continued sampling ambient space, building up a detailed picture of its new surroundings. One by one, PanEuropean ships were picked up by their electromagnetic signatures despite their being submerged within the hash of charged particles enveloping the Puller gas giant. In all, seven enemy vessels were picked up and identified, just over half of the expected twelve. Those five missing PE ships were a minor worry; most likely, they were simply too well masked by the gas giant’s radiation belts, or they might be hidden by the bulk of the planet itself, on the far sides of their orbits. They might even have departed the system … but it was also possible that they were closer at hand, well-shielded and effectively invisible.

      If so, the fighter screen would sniff them out soon enough. Skybase’s sensors, meanwhile, scoured the surrounding sky, searching.

      There were no ships close by the stargate. The tiny planetoid housing the Marine listening post, however, was spotted and identified after a few moments. A small СКАЧАТЬ