Bright Light. Ian Douglas

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СКАЧАТЬ Koenig to request that we be included in Project Cygni. A copy of Nikolai, working with a copy of your Konstantin, offers, we believe, our best hope of establishing peaceful contact and technological help. It is unlikely that organic humans will be able to communicate in a meaningful way with such an advanced civilization.”

      “But human oversight of the expedition is necessary,” Vasilyeva told him. “And when we learned that President Koenig was considering you as the expedition commander, we knew that there was hope.”

      “Why?” Gray asked, genuinely baffled.

      “Captain … we know too well that you can win battles, even wars. But what interests us is your ability to win peace.”

       Chapter Two

       31 January 2426

       VFA-96, Black Demons

       SupraQuito Yards

       Earth Synchorbit

       1018 hours, TFT

      Through the vista opened by his fighter’s AI in his mind, Lieutenant Donald Gregory stared out into the tangle of orbital structures spread out before him. The SupraQuito Synchorbital was the largest of the human facilities in orbit over Earth, consisting of some hundreds of major stations and facilities strung together in a long, brilliantly lit arc.

      The collection of structures was balanced on the Quito space elevator at an altitude of 37,786 kilometers, and a single orbit of the Earth took precisely twenty-four hours, which meant that the complex kept pace with the same spot on the turning Earth. From there, a slender tower reached down to its anchor point atop a mountain on Earth’s equator, and up into the black of space to the tethered asteroid that kept the whole assembly in dynamic tension. Four centuries earlier, synchorbit had been the parking zone for a swarm of unmanned communications satellites. Now it was one of three major communities in Earth orbit, with a permanent population of over sixty thousand and some thousands more each day traveling up or down the “E,” or arriving or departing on fleets of both interplanetary and interstellar ships.

      The local sky, Gregory saw, was crowded with activity. The two badly damaged star carriers, Lexington and his own—or what used to be his own—America had been towed into position off the Navy yard, along with a couple of small asteroids. The two battered carriers were now almost obscured by swarming nanorepair ’bots busily eating away at the damaged hull surfaces, while simultaneously stripping the asteroids of raw material and bringing it across to the ships in steady streams.

      We can rebuild our ships on the fly, Gregory thought. We can give them new life with this tech. But we can’t do anything for my squad mates.

      Like Meg …

      Lieutenant Meg Connor had been killed at Invictus, a frigid, ice-clad world out beyond the rim of the galaxy and 12 million years in the future. Gregory had lost his legs in that action. They’d grown those back for him … but nothing could bring back Megan.

      Or Cynthia DeHaviland, killed in the hellfire of Kapteyn’s Star just a month ago.

      “Tighten up, Demon Four!” the squadron’s CO snapped at him. “Belay the rubbernecking.” Commander Mackey sounded stressed.

      What the hell do you have to be worried about? he thought, a bit petulantly, but he bit down on the words. “Copy,” was all he said. A moment’s inattention had let his Starblade fighter drift almost imperceptibly within the seven-ship formation, and with a thought he brought himself back into line. The spacelanes above and around the SupraQuito orbital facility were indeed crowded with ships large and small, construction tugs, intrastation transports, ship’s gigs, liberty boats, space-suited personnel on EVA, mobile repair shacks, and provisioning vessels. Theoretically, a lane had been cleared for the fighter squadron, but there was near-infinite opportunity here for a mistake.

      And in space any mistake was likely to be expensive, fatal, or both.

      At least Don Gregory was no longer suicidal. For a time after Invictus he’d been thinking about that a lot. The depression, at times, was overwhelming. His own in-head circuitry had urged him more than once to seek help, but he’d managed to put it off … and to avoid a mandatory checkup with the psych department. A down-grudge on his mental health would ground him … and might even get him kicked out of the Navy.

      And now he thought he might see a better answer.

      The seven fighters were moving at only eighty meters per second, a crawl against the scale of the titanic structures around them. They’d launched moments before from the America, followed a twisting route to stay clear of the nanoswarms and the small asteroid providing raw materials for the carrier’s repairs, and dropped into a long, slow approach to the main naval base dead ahead.

      “There she is,” Lieutenant Gerald Ruxton called over the squadron channel. “Our new home!”

      USNA CVL Republic was six hundred meters long, just over half the length of their former ship. Like America, though, she looked like an open umbrella, with a long, slender spine behind a dome-shaped shieldcap filled with water. In the shieldcap’s shadow, two modules rotated about the central keel, providing artificial gravity for the crew. A CVL, or light carrier, she had facilities to carry three combat squadrons of twelve fighters each, plus a number of auxiliary vessels, including a search-and-rescue squadron. VFA-90, a strike squadron called the Star Reapers, was also being transferred from America to the smaller carrier. In addition to VFA-96, the fresh-minted VFA-198, the Hellfuries, would be coming up from Earth later in the day.

      After Kapteyn’s Star, the Black Demons could only muster seven fighters. They were supposed to be getting replacements up from Oceana, on Earth, but frankly, Gregory would believe that when he sat down with them in the ready room. Fighter losses during the past six months had been ungodly heavy, and they were having trouble recruiting and training replacements planetside fast enough to keep up with demand.

      “VFA-96, this is Republic Primary Flight Control. You are cleared for final on Bay One, six-zero mps on approach.”

      “Copy, Republic PriFly,” Commander Luther Mackey replied. “Bay One, sixty mps.”

      Slowing sharply, the Starblade fighters fell into line ahead, moving in on the Republic from dead astern. Gregory was second in line, behind Bruce Caswell. He let his fighter’s AI cut his velocity and adjust his angle of approach; the landing bays on a star carrier were moving targets, rotating about the ship’s spine to create the illusion of gravity. Docking required more-than-human precision, and a slight upward bump of the thrusters just as the Starblade swept across the bay’s threshold. A feeling of gravity surged through Gregory’s body as the bay’s magnetic capture fields snagged his ship and brought him to a relative halt at the end of the deck.

      “Demon Four,” a voice said in his head. “Trap complete. Welcome aboard, Lieutenant.”

      Automated machinery grappled with his fighter, lifting it smoothly up through the overhead, making room for the next fighter in line behind him. The deck matrix molded about his Starblade for a moment, maintaining the vacuum in the landing bay as his fighter transitioned into pressure and the orchestrated bustle of deck personnel tending the incoming Starblades. Gregory’s cockpit melted open СКАЧАТЬ