Safe House (2000) by Tom Clancy

Author:Tom Clancy [Clancy, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-03-17T20:24:16+00:00

"Seven for seven," Bob said. "Or nine, or ten. However many we are. Yeah?"

"Yeah!" they all shouted.

"Now let's go kick the Archon's big green butt," Shih Chin said, "and be back home in time for popcorn and a late movie."

Everyone headed hurriedly for their fighters. Shortly Maj and Laurent were back in their seats, and all around them the scream of Morgenroths coming up to speed was becoming deafening. "This planet," Laurent said, nearly shouting over the noise, "it is in this system?"

"Nope," Maj said. "Fourteen light-years away."

Laurent's eyes widened as the nine ships lifted up and away from the surface of Jorkas together, in formation. "And we are going to get there in ten minutes?"

"In about a second and a half, actually," Maj said, checking the readouts for the sizable part of the Arbalest's computer which managed the squeezefield synchronization. "If we had a jump gate, it would be even faster. But that uses a lot of power, and the gate structure is vulnerable at either end to sabotage. However, we have enough ships to do it the other way." She glanced around. The others were slowing down, preparing.

"What way?"

"Hang on," she said, and meant it. The first time it was always a surprise....

"Ready, Seven?" Bob's voice came down the ship's comm.

"Ready!" Maj said. Seven other voices said, "Ready!"

"Synch starts--now!"

The squeezefield sequence cut in. Maj watched the guidance laser jump from craft to craft, knitting them together in a many-times reflected webwork of light. The hypermass augmentation sequence started--

And then the stars streaked in to collapse around them, molded themselves flaming to the shapes of the ships, pushed the ships and their pilots unbearably inward on themselves in a wave of spatially compressed light and a deafening scream of sound--

Everything vanished. And then the stars blazed out again, leaping back out to their proper positions, and leaving the formation of Arbalests falling toward the surface of the planet Didion....

Laurent was gasping. "You--you--!"

"You can either poke holes in the universe to get where you're going," Maj said, "which some people suspect is bad for its structure...or you can wrap it around you like a coat, go where you're going, and then take the coat off again. It's all the same coat. Everything in it touches everything else...."

That was as much theory as Maj intended to get into at the moment, for there was a lot to do, a lot of instruments to check and double-check in the next minute or so. The cockpit was filling up with nervous background chatter from the others as they did what Maj was doing--made sure the weapons were hot and loose, the Morgenroths answering properly. Below them, streaks of fire and puffs of smoke and long streamers of contrail in the upper and middle atmosphere told them that the Battle of Didion was already in progress, and heating up.

"Ready?" Bob said from his Arbalest, taking squad leadership and point this time out. He had devised the strategy they would be using on the way in, and therefore he got to die first if anything went wrong.

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