"Martin H. Greenberg & Larry Segriff - Guardsmen of tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenberg Martin H)

A SHOW OF FORCE

by William H. Keith, Jr.

William H. Keith is the author of over fifty novels, divided more or less equally between science fiction
and military technothrillers. While most of his SF is written under his own name, he writes the military
novels under a variety of pseudonyms. His most recent work is Europa Strike, third in a planned series
of military science fiction novels written under the pseudonym Ian Douglas.

Watch your helm, Mr. Sotheby,“ Captain Fifth-Rank Greydon Hazzard said quietly. ”Put a dent in that
thing up ahead and they’re going to be taking it out of your pay for the next ten thousand years
objective.“

“Aye, sir. We’re at fifty-three meters per second, in approach.”
Hazzard could sense the drift of the ship, the tug of gravity, the caress of the photon breeze, the shrill,
insistent drag of the interlocking magnetic fields of planet, star, and galaxy. The frigate Indeterminacy
was edging gently toward the orbital moorings, primary sails folded, her impetus coming now entirely
from way sails and jigs, her secondary drive barely ticking over.

Jacked into the virtual display of the shipnet, Hazzard was immersed in the data feed, with a crystalline,
all-round view of the approach, just as though he were perched out on the fifty-meter thrust of the ship’s
dorsal flying jib spar. The sprawl of Tribaltren Station spread across star-limned blackness dead ahead,
the nearest bastions and field guide towers now just ten kilometers distant, dark and monolithic against
the soft, liquid-light glow of the Milky Way.

The moorings about the station were crowded with other vessels, and there was heavy traffic in the
approach and departure lanes. The steady wink of IFF netbeacons and shipboard running lights crawling
across three dimensions would have been a bewildering tangle of confusion to any observer not equipped
with an AI that could make sense of the chaos and feed it in manageable chunks to the bridge.

“Approach Control signals we’re clear for Bay 12,” the comm officer of the watch announced. That
would be Midshipman cy-Tomlin. Bright kid. Steady, with a streak of laziness that watch-and-watch for
a few subjective months would cure. And of course, with the cy-enhancements, he was of the Chosen
and destined to go far in Union service.

“Very well. I see it.” Text and flickering symbols overlaid sections of Hazzard’s view of the sensory
feedscape around the vessel. He could see the steadily incoming trickle of navigational data both from
the Indy’s helm and from Tribaltren Station Approach Control, see the traffic sites of other ships in the
moorings, see the readouts for all departments and decks of his own ship. All of that information played
across his brain, instantly accessible, but his responsibility was the whole, not any given part. He held
back, aware of the rhythm of ship operations, giving orders when needed, but letting his people do their
jobs. Indy’s officer complement was a good one, well trained and experienced. Her crew, like most
crews in the fleet, was a melage of gutter sweepings, metplex gangers, and pressed c-men, but. by the
Goddess, they were his sweepings, gangers, and c-men, and he was proud of how they’d shaken out
over the past three months subjective.

He took a moment to check crew deployment on the

Indy’s starboard foremast, a constellation of golden stars, each light representing in netgraphic clarity the
position of a sailhandler maintaining the delicate set and trim of the 2,000-ton frigate’s spacesails. At the