Star Marines. Ian Douglas

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СКАЧАТЬ is the HELGA system, and I’ve already issued the necessary orders. All three weapons platforms have lines of sight on the incoming targets. They should be able to commence firing within two hours.”

      HELGA stood for High-Energy Laser Gun Array. The word “Gun” in that acronym was often challenged by purists as redundant, but the Navy retained the age-old distinction of a gun as a very large and long-ranged shipboard weapon, as artillery rather than, say, a rifle. There were three HELGA stations, all sharing a single orbit around the sun between the orbits of Earth and Venus and spaced 120 degrees apart. Solar collector panels nearly ten square kilometers in gleaming expanse captured sunlight—far brighter and more energetic than the stuff that reached Earth—and stored it in the enormous high-capacity, high-discharge batteries that made up much of each orbital station’s bulk.

      The HELGA stations, administered by the High Guard, had been designed with only one purpose in mind—to vaporize any asteroid or comet found to be on an intercept path with Earth. Since the twenty-first century, when an attempt had actually been made to destroy the United States through the deliberate manipulation of a ten-kilometer asteroid’s orbit, various Skyfall scenarios had remained the single biggest nightmare facing both military and civilian leaders. In the forty-seven years since the completion of Station One, they’d not once been necessary, though of course they’d been extensively tested against selected target asteroids in the Belt.

      “Well … those big laser cannons won’t have any trouble with one-kilometer rocks, will they?” People’s Representative Gardenez, of the North American Federal Republic asked.

      Castellaw sighed. “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t answer that yet. It takes time between each laser discharge to store up enough energy for the next shot. We’re also programming twelve XEL satellites to contribute their fire as well. Between the two systems … maybe …”

      “If the Hunters don’t put so many rocks into the stream,” General Dumont, the Marine Corps Commandant, added, “that neither the HELs or the XELs can handle them all.”

      XELs—pronounced “zels” and standing for X-ray Emission Lasers—were unmanned weapons positioned at strategic points throughout the inner Asteroid Belt. When triggered, a nuclear detonation provided an intense pulse of X-rays, which were focused into a very brief, but very powerful burst of coherent X-ray energy. For obvious reasons, they were single-shot weapons, but the energy each released in a fraction of a second, while substantially less than that of a three-second burst from a HELGA platform, could still vaporize large rocks.

      “All available fleet elements are being deployed toward the intruder,” Admiral Bennett said. “Unfortunately, it will take time to get there, and we run the risk of having them arrive piecemeal. What’s worse, the intruder appears capable of accelerating at incredible rates … possibly enough to reach the speed of light within moments.” He indicated the schematic, where the red star of the Hunter vessel suddenly winked out, to reappear tens of thousands of kilometers away. “We don’t know how the hell that could be possible, but he seems to be providing a demonstration, just for us.”

      “An application of inertialess technology, obviously,” Representative Logan, of the Federal Union observed. “Have we discussed this with the Oannans?”

      “There hasn’t been time yet, sir,” Bennett said. “We have a call in to their delegation on Earth. Not that it can do us any good now.”

      “Maybe they can tell us how to hit the enemy’s propulsive system. Cripple it, somehow.”

      “I doubt it, Senator,” Garroway put in. “Remember that the N’mah have been running and hiding from the Hunters for at least five thousand years. If they possessed any weapon or any tactic that could stop the Hunters, they would have done so by now.”

      “Well … what does the military plan to do?” Fortier demanded. “You can’t just allow them to walk right over us!”

      Garroway felt bitter amusement at her anger, but was textening with only half an ear. He had an idea, but it depended on coming up with some fresh IMAC pods. He opened a download of logistical data, checking the manifests of several military transports in the general vicinity of Mars. Yes … the Cunningham was in position to rendezvous with the Preble.

      “There is one possibility,” Garroway said, opening his own comm link to the conference and tagging his comments to a windowed playback of the relevant part of the conversation. They would hear his contribution in another seven minutes.

      He didn’t like making the suggestion, but every possibility had to be aired.

      “We have a Marine VBSS team on board the Preble, en route for the battlespace now,” he continued, speaking over the muted voices of the Earth-bound participants. VBSS stood for Vessel Boarding Search and Seizure, a boarding party, in other words. “They were carrying training load-outs, but I’ve already given orders to begin transferring live ammo from the Preble’s stores.

      “I see here on the manifest text that there is a section of IMACs on board the transport Cunningham. If Preble can rendezvous with Cunningham and effect an in-flight transfer of those assault pods, we might be able to board the Hunter ship.”

      He continued speaking, laying out the rudiments of an operational plan. The biggest single difficulty he could see was the fact that the Xul intruder spacecraft clearly possessed both a technology far in advance of anything humans possessed, and a mobility to match. Still, there was a way to at least attempt to overcome the second of those problems. Maybe. …

      Fourteen minutes later, the sounds and images Garroway, Jollett, and the other officers on board the Preble were experiencing suddenly reacted to Garroway’s suggestion.

      “You must be kidding!” Fortier said into the sudden mental silence that followed.

      “No, Madam Senator,” General Dumont said quietly. “I do not believe he is.”

      “How do you expect those assault pods to get anywhere close to the enemy?” Armitage asked. “An enemy this powerful …”

      “IMAC pods have quite an extensive bag of tricks for getting in close, sir,” Dumont replied. “It’s what they’re designed to do. I’m wondering, too, if we might not be able to divert some of the HEL and XEL firepower against the enemy ship at a tactically appropriate moment. That much energy, applied in a single burst … we might at least blind them, and we could get lucky.”

      Garroway smiled. Dumont, 131 million kilometers away, had immediately grasped the essence of Garroway’s plan, including his suggestion for—momentarily, at least—overcoming the intruder’s technological superiority.

      “Absolutely not!” Fortier said. “Those weapons are Earth’s only hope of stopping the asteroid attack!”

      “Madam Senator, we can either chase that damned intruder all over the Solar System, trying to play catch-up … or we can find a way to immobilize it. If we can immobilize it, we have a chance, a small one, of getting some Marines on board.”

      “And what would be the point of that?”

      “Madam Senator, the Marines would be armed with backpack K-94 nuclear devices. If just one of those goes off on board the Hunter vessel—or even if we can detonate it up against its hull—well, I doubt very much that even their technology could stand up to that kind of blast.”

      There was another СКАЧАТЬ