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

moment, only the fore-ways’Is were set, giving the ship just enough of a vector that she could maintain
way.

The image of Tommis Pardoe, Indeterminacy’s First Lieutenant, materialized to the right of Hazzard’s
viewpoint. “A good deployment, First,” he said. “The new hands shaped up well.” Indy had been on
blockade duty off Danibar, three months subjective pacing back and forth at near-c, which had translated
to almost two years of tau minus.

“Thank you, Captain.” He sounded worried.

“Problem, First?”

“Just wondering what the urgency is, sir. The dispatch calling us in to Tribaltren was still smoking when it
came across the comm station. ‘Report immediately,’ it said. Where’s the war?”

“All around us, Tom. We’ll find out in a few hours which particular part of the war is so urgent.”
“I suppose so, sir. But it’s not like they don’t have plenty of assets right here in port.”

His senior lieutenant had a point. Closer in to the mooring station roads, the ship traffic ahead resembled
a swarm of angry stingflies, everything from service bugs, LO coasters, and single-sailed planetary
luggers to huge three-decker first-rates.

An alert klaxon sounded through the shipnet. “Bridge, port lookout! We have a collision alert. Incoming
at port high at two-zero-three plus one nine!”

Hazzard spun his point of view, looking off Indy’s port beam. A ship moved athwart the blue-white
crescent of Tribaltren IV.

“Mass reading! Ninety-eight thousand tons, range 705 kilometers. It’s a first-rater… Goddess!”

That last exclamation accompanied the deployment of a dozen sails, spreading across the first-rater’s
yards. She was huge and blunt-prowed, a five-hundred-meter dagger shape carrying several square
kilometers of mesh sail, a Galactic Union ship of the line. On Indeterminacy‘s sensory feeds, she was
painted a patchwork red and black, with white trim highlighting the lines of sealed firing ports along her
three gundecks. The G.U. flag materialized across her foreways’ls as their surface displays altered. A
second emblem shimmered into visibility beneath the first, a family crest in red, gold, and black.

“She’s the Victor, Captain,” Lieutenant Pardoe observed. “One-oh-two. Captain First-Rank Arren
Sullivese, commanding. She’s flying Admiral Starlord cy-Dennever’s flag.”

“She’s closing, Captain,” the helm watch called. “Oblique approach at one point one kilometer per
second! Looks like she’s trying to cut us off at the moorings.”

“Damn it,” cy-Tomlin said, “we have right-of-way.”

Hazzard scowled, the expression safely hidden within the anonymity of the shipnet. Victor had been on
normal approach, her velocity a bit high for that approach corridor. As soon as her helm AIs had
identified a collision danger with the frigate Indeterminacy, though, Victor’s captain had crowded on
more sail, hoping to pass the Indy’s prow, rather than slowing in order to pass astern.