The Shattered Sphere by Roger MacBride Allen

Author:Roger MacBride Allen [Allen, Roger MacBride]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: American Science Fiction And Fantasy, Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Science Fiction - General, Fiction - Science Fiction, Space colonies - Fiction, Space colonies
ISBN: 9780312857349
Publisher: New York : TOR, 1994.
Published: 1994-06-20T06:00:00+00:00

“We have a green board. Launch in twenty seconds.” There was a pause, and then—“We have a green board. Launch in ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Zero.”

With a shuddering, towering roar, the booster leaped into the sky. Sianna was shoved down into the padding beneath her, and a brutal fist slammed down into her gut. The crushing load shocked her, amazed her. How could anything be so heavy? How could she be so heavy? The air was squeezing its way out of her lungs, she could feel her heart straining to move her blood. And then—and then—

And then she could feel unconsciousness coming near, offering her a release from all the terrors and fears. She reached for it, and took it, and knew no more.

Joanne Beadle stared at the ops screen and tried to remember what sleep, real sleep, felt like. She had grabbed a catnap here and there over the last few days, but not real sleep, head on a pillow, body on a bed and no one to bother you for eight solid hours.

She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and yawned. Watch the screens. Watch the screens. Ignore Wolf Bernhardt hovering behind her. He had been there ever since that Colette person had boosted away, long hours ago. But pretend he’s not there. Watch the screens and pray, and wonder when to do the very little she could do. For the most part the COREs moved far too fast, maneuvered far too violently, for there to be any hope of a human-built spacecraft avoiding them. But for this all-out effort, at least some countermeasures were available. Ground-based radars were ready to throw powerful jamming signals into the sky, and cargo carriers full of decoy targets were ready to send the enemy chasing after dozens or hundreds of targets—but no one was ready to use those just yet. Not when that might give the enemy time to react.

Which left Joanne with just two questions. When would they use their countermeasures? And, would any of them work?

The Mind of the Sphere— or at least that fraction of itself not presently dedicated to other tasks— looked out over its domain, and knew that all was not well. True, its Captive Suns still plied their steady orbits, and the Captive Worlds remained green and fertile, ready to serve as fit nurseries for the Great Breeding that was soon to come. But what good were healthy Captive Worlds to a Sphere robbed of all its energy sources and cut off from its communications? What breeding could happen on a cold, dead world, sundered from its sun when the stabilizing beams of gravitic potential could no longer hold the system together?

The Sphere had received warning enough to know how grave was the danger, not only to itself, but to all the systems of its clan, all those to whom it was root or branch. If the Adversary succeeded in conquering this system, it would regain entry into all the myriad ways of the Consortium of Spheres.

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