"Richard Hatch - Battlestar Galactica 01 - Armageddon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hatch Richard)

had pulled hundreds of times. Every Warrior in the fleet had flown these
missions; they usually came up empty. But you never knew.

"We've still got ten or fifteen centari before we reach Ochoa," Starbuck
noted. "It might as well be a parsec, for all the readings I'm getting on the
planet. You faring any better with your new toy?"

Apollo was slightly chagrined. His Scarlet-class vessel didn't seem to be
getting any more precise readings than Starbuck's antique. In fact, the
scanners showed almost nothing at all. No mineral readings, no lifeforms
of any kind, on a planet that they knew from long range scans was
habitable. And certainly, they were close enough now for more specific
readings. It was almost as if…
"Starbuck," Apollo snapped as suspicion grew, "I think we're being
jammed."

"Oh, come on, Apollo, we're in the middle of nowhere," Starbuck
groaned. "You just haven't had a good solid dose of paranoia for a couple
of yahren, and it's getting to you. If there were any advanced sentient
races, never mind space-faring civilizations, in the Binary 13 system, we
would have picked up their communications on long-range scan from the
fleet."

"Not if those communications are being purposely shielded," Apollo
said. "Computer, scan the atmosphere of Ochoa, then a system-wide scan
of Binary 13 for non-stellar interference."

"Don't jar my chips, Apollo," Starbuck warned. "This mission was
supposed to be like walking the daggit. And there isn't any stellar
interference, because the Vipers would have screened the stars' own
natural radiation before it became a problem."

"I know that, Captain," Apollo snapped. "But unless Ochoa has become
a dead planet in the last few centons, someone or something is blinding
our scanners. I want to know who, and why."

Apollo gripped the navi-hilt and tilted it slightly forward. He felt the
weight of the additional thrust, and the engines hummed behind and
beneath him. Their vibration was never a distraction, more a comfortable,
lulling resonance. When a pilot was on edge, that buzz offered a
confirmation of the power at his or her disposal, both in the engines and
in the turbolasers.

"I've got Ochoa in my starfield," Starbuck reported.

Apollo looked up from the Viper's flatscreen and he could see the
planet, green and brown, at the center of the starfield ahead. Space, as
seen from a Viper's cabin, was only the starfield visible through the
canopy.