"Bud Sparhawk - Bright Red Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sparhawk Bud)

Bright Red Star
BUD SPARHAWK
From Hartwell, David - Year's Best SF 11 (2006)

Bud Sparhawk (sff.net/people/bud_sparhawk) lives with his wife in Annapolis, Maryland "and is a
frequent sailor on the Chesapeake Bay." He is a writer of mostly "hard" science fiction. He
started writing in 1975, with sales to Analog. Thirteen years later he returned to writing, and his
stories have been appearing regularly in Analog and other magazines, and in anthologies. He has
been a Nebula finalist three times for his novellas.

"Bright Red Star" was published in Asimov's. It is a very tightly constructed military SF horror
story about the sacrifice of innocents, in the hard SF tradition of "The Cold Equations."
Sparhawk says "It was written as the events of 9-11 evolved. I tried, in this piece, to address the
motivations of those who could allow themselves to commit such heinous atrocities." But it is not
directly about current events at all, which makes it we think more effective.

Our boat floated silent as owls' wings and settled softly as an autumn snowflake. There was no doubt that
the enemy had spotted us—the stealth could only minimize signs of our presence. We'd done everything
we could to reduce de-tectability: hardened plastics, ceramics, charged ice, and hardly any metal. All that
did was create doubt, and, possibly, delay. Or so we hoped.

We tumbled quickly from the boat as grounding automatically discharged the ship charge, without which
the boat's ice frame would quickly melt. In a matter of minutes, the only remaining trace of our craft
would be a puddle of impure water and the gossamer-thin spider-web of the stealth shield—and that
would dissipate at the first hint of a breeze.

We deployed in pincer and arrowhead formation, sending two troops to the north to parallel our
advance, two likewise to the south, and two to the point. Hunter and I followed in column.

We moved quickly, carefully, ever wary. That the Shardies would eventually find us was not in doubt,
neither was the certainty of our death when they did so. They did not use humans well; however, I
doubted they'd find much use for us.

Tactical estimates gave us an hour to save the recalcitrant settlers' souls. They were some sort of
colony—religious or otherwise, it made no difference—only that they had foolishly chosen to remain
where others fled.

There was a slight probability we'd have less than an hour and an even smaller possibility of having more,
so we moved quickly. I'd estimated twenty minutes to reach their position and ten to twenty to ensure
we'd located everyone. That left us five minutes for action and ten as margin for contingencies.

I knew we'd fail if we used more than fifty-five minutes.

"… shards," one of the last observers managed to croak out before Jeaux II fell silent. That word was the
only description of the aliens we'd ever heard, so it stuck.

The Shardies had hit hard when we first made contact with their kind, which could hardly be called
contact at all since they attacked first and without provocation. When our ships backed off, their ship
followed, attacking again and again with unbelievable ferocity. When its missiles ran out, they tried to ram
the thick plate of our exploratory ship. It smashed into tiny ceramic fragments on impact, leaving a cloud