"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 "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. |
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