"Scott Westerfeld - Succession 1 - The Risen Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westerfeld Scott)

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ISBN 0-765-30555-0.
First Edition: March 2003.
Printed in the United States of America.
0987654321
 TO SLK


for years of summer--
 A Note on Imperial Measures--
One of the many advantages of life under the Imperial Apparatus is the easy
imposition of consistent standards of infrastructure, communication, and law. For fifteen
hundred years, the measures of the Eighty Worlds have followed an enviably
straightforward scheme.
There are 100 seconds in each minute, 100 minutes in an hour, and ten hours in a day.

• One second is defined as 1/100,000 of a solar day on Home.
• One meter is defined as 1/300,000,000 of a light-second.
• One gravity is defined as 10 meters per second squared acceleration.

The Emperor has decreed that the speed of light shall remain as nature has provided.
 1


HOSTAGE SITUATION

There is no greater tactical disadvantage than the presence of precious
noncombatants. Civilians, historical treasures, hostages: treat them as already lost.
—ANONYMOUS 167
 PILOT

The five small craft passed from shadow, emerging with the suddenness of coins
thrown into sunlight. The disks of their rotary wings shimmered in the air like heat,
momentary rainbows flexing across prisms of motion. Master Pilot Jocim Marx noted
with pleasure the precision of his squadron's formation. The other pilots' Intelligencer
craft perfectly formed a square centered upon his own.
"Don't we look pretty?" Marx said.
"Pretty obvious, sir," Hendrik answered. She was the squadron's second pilot, and it
was her job to worry.
"A little light won't hurt us," Marx said flatly. "The Rix haven't had time to build
anything with eyes."
He said it not to remind Hendrik, who knew damn well, but to reassure their
squadron-mates. The other three pilots were nervous; Marx could hear it in their silence.
None of them had ever flown a mission of this importance before.
But then, who had?
Marx's own nerves were beginning to play on him. His squadron of Intelligencers had
covered half the distance from dropsite to objective without meeting any resistance. The
Rix were obviously ill-equipped, improvising against far greater force, relying on their