Singularity. Ian Douglas

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      The rest …

      The trouble was that the term “general vicinity of Sol” was misleading, at least from the human perspective. Until Koenig had taken CBG-18 beyond the boundaries of human space, no human, no human ship, had ever ventured farther than sixty-some light years from Earth.

      And one of the places listed in the recovered directory was almost certainly the Lagoon Nebula … some five thousand light years away.

      Five thousand light years. A battle fleet leaving Earth at the best possible interstellar velocity would take more than seven years to get there. DuPont shook his head. If Noyer and the other Conciliationists were unhappy at the problems of command and control of a fleet at Alphekka, a mere seventy-two light years out, how would they deal with a distance seventy times greater?

      Such inconceivable gulfs of space.

      That, DuPont thought, was what he disliked most about this place, this simulation of nearby interstellar space in a presentation guaranteed to put Humankind in its place. The Terran Confederation was a wood chip adrift on the galactic sea … a few hundred populated worlds against … how many within the Sh’daar alliance? A million? A hundred million?

      No one knew. What was known was that the Sh’daar dominated such a vast swath of the galaxy, that they controlled so many technic civilizations, that the Terran Confederation’s chance of victory in this lopsided war were exactly zero. For the past decade there’d been pervasive rumors that human states not yet members of the Confederation—the Chinese or the Islamic Theocracy in particular—might be hoping to cut a separate peace with the Sh’daar.

      Hence the political grouping within the Confederation Senate unofficially known as the Conciliationists. Defeat by the Sh’daar Empire and its allies meant utter destruction, quite possibly extinction for the human species. If a face-saving means could be found to agree to Sh’daar demands, Earth would be saved and, quite possibly, the power structure of the Terran Senate could be saved as well, with those states that weren’t full members folded into the Confederation with a minimum of popular unrest.

      That, at least, was Noyer’s hope, and the hope of the senators who routinely voted with her. The problem with the Conciliationist program, though, was a few of the old democracies—the United States of North America in particular, with its outdated traditions of independence and individual liberty.

      And Koenig and the heart of his battlegroup were USNA. No wonder Koenig was mistrusted, even feared, by Noyer and her followers. The North American Union had never been comfortable with its role as one of the founders of the Confederation; too many of its citizens still longed for their old glory days … as independent Canadians, Mexicans, Guatemalans, or as citizens of the United States of America.

      He wondered what had happened to Giraurd. Had he followed Koenig into deep space? Had there been a fight between loyalist and mutinous fleet elements?

      DuPont didn’t think Koenig was capable of actually killing the man in order to avoid relinquishing his command … but he had once thrown a Senate political liaison off his bridge. He was a superb military leader … and a very poor subordinate.

      “I’ll sign the order,” DuPont said. “But … you’re going to have to find the man to pass them on, and I have a feeling that you’re going to have some trouble there. There are a lot of stars out there, and he has a very long head start.”

      “We will find him,” Noyer said. There was bitterness behind the words. “We will find Koenig if we have to mobilize half of the remaining fleet to do so! He will be brought to heel!”

      The myriad stars scattered across the interior of the planetarium dome seemed to mock them all.

      TC/USNA CVS America

       Kuiper Belt, HD 157950

       98 light years from Earth

       1320 hours, TFT

      The star carrier America dropped out of the grav-twisted dimensions of Alcubierre space in a characteristically intense burst of photons, a dazzling flash of energy crawling outward in all directions at the speed of light. If there were technically accomplished residents of this star system, they would soon know of the arrival of the fleet.

      In fact, it was unlikely that anyone else was here. Koenig and his advisors had chosen the system carefully. They weren’t looking for combat, but for a chance to refuel.

      The star was a close double, the brighter member of the pair a yellow-white F3V sun listed in the star catalogues as HD 157950. From Earth, it had a visual magnitude of 4.5—a faint and unremarkable star in the constellation of Ophiuchus. It possessed a planetary system that was young and still chaotic; a gas giant the size of Neptune circled in close, a so-called hot Jupiter, with a plume like the tail of a comet streaming out behind it away from the sun. Farther out, chunks of ice drifted in an extended, ragged disk, invisible to the naked eye, but glowing faintly at infrared wavelengths.

      “Fifteen other ships have emerged so far, Admiral,” Commander Benton Sinclair, America’s tactical officer, told him. “Now sixteen. The Abraham Lincoln just came through.”

      “Very well.”

      The wait this time was particularly agonizing. How many more would be coming through?

      The original battlegroup, CBG-18, had lost five of its thirty-one capital ships at the Battle of Alphekka, plus two more so badly damaged that they’d been left behind to await the arrival of support and repair ships from Earth. Shortly after the battle, forty-one more warships had arrived, reinforcements dispatched by the Confederation’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. Of those forty-one, twelve were USNA ships, a battlegroup formed around the star carrier Abraham Lincoln. Nine were Chinese, the Eastern Dawn expeditionary force, led by the carrier Zheng He.

      The remaining twenty vessels were a Pan-European task force commanded by Grand Admiral Francois Giraurd on board the star carrier Jeanne d’Arc.

      Technically, all of the ships except for the Chinese vessels were Confederation Navy, but … there was a problem, a big problem. Koenig wasn’t sure yet how it was going to play out.

      “The Cheng Hua and the Haiping have both just materialized,” Sinclair announced. “Range twelve light minutes. And there’s the Zheng He. …”

      He’d been expecting the Chinese and the North Americans to follow the battlegroup into the Abyss. The question remained: What would the Pan-Europeans do?

      After the Battle of Alphekka, CBG-18 had remained in the system, refitting, re-arming, and consolidating. Grand Admiral Giraurd had brought his flagship alongside the America and told Koenig that he was taking command of the entire fleet, and that the fleet would be returning to Earth.

      And Koenig had refused the order.

      Giraurd had threatened to open fire as the fleet elements loyal to Koenig had begun accelerating out-system, and for a nerve-wracking few hours, the Pan-Europeans had pursued the rest of the battlegroup. They’d never quite pulled into range, however, and, once the rest of the battlegroup had begun dropping into Alcubierre Drive, there was a good chance that Giraurd had ordered his contingent to break off the pursuit.

      But Giraurd knew Koenig’s plan, knew the coordinates where they СКАЧАТЬ