L. E. Modesitt - Parafaith 01 by The Parafaith War

Author:The Parafaith War
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-09T09:25:45+00:00

Prologue

39

“Prepare for power changeover.” “Standing by for changeover.”

Trystin tensed slightly as the lights flickered and the gravity dropped to point five, but over the years his guts had learned to flip around a lot less with the switch from station normal gravity to ship grav.

The humming hiss of the ventilators stopped, then picked up, and Trystin proceeded with the checklist, running down the mental screens called up through the implant, only occasionally crosschecking the manual screens before him to ensure that the manual controls still worked-or that his implant wasn’t malfunctioning. “Ready to separate, ser,”

Trystin added. “Stet.”

“Outer Control, demagnetizing this time.” James flashed Trystin the boyish grin after reporting to station control.

“Iron Mace two, understand demagnetizing. Cleared for separation this time. Maintain low thrust for three.”

“Iron Mace two, separating this time. Will maintain low thrust for three.” Sweat still beaded up on the captain’s forehead.

The representational screen depicted the separation as the amber point that was the Willis began to move away from the red square of the station. “You have the con.

Lieutenant.” “I have it, ser.” Trystin monitored the power flows, trying to check the new accumulators while phasing in power from the fusactor. The sooner the accumulators were carrying a full load the happier he’d be. “Steady on zero one five, red,” ordered James.

“Stet.”

Neither spoke as Trystin eased the Willis away from already distant Parvati and toward the pulsing blue globe on the representational screen. “Weapons, loader status?”

“The new loaders and fixes seem to be holding. Captain.”

Trystin nodded to himself. Once again, contacts helped.

James had managed to get the new high-speed loaders installed on the Willis. That just might have been because they were Sasaki loaders. Now they had the first upgrades, since the initial version had had a tendency toward jamming-not exactly wonderful in combat.

“Let’s hope so.” James’s voice was calm, as if testing new systems in combat were expected of him.

Trystin pursed his lips. For James, such tests were-part of the parashinto honor concept. Trystin was still discovering how complicated the man was. “Sledge team, this is Sledge Control. Datadump follows.” After the net picked up the data burst and arrayed it, both Trystin and James sat silently, using their implants to scan and digest the information and the plans sent from the Tokugawa and Marshal Guteyama. “Too complex,” James finally announced. Trystin nodded, and the Willis accelerated toward the orbit of Krishna.

“This is deadly… and boring,” reflected James into the near silence of the cockpit.

“Boring?” How could anything that could kill you be boring?

“The revs send a troid and scouts. The scouts and troid want to destroy our defenses and take over the system so they can raise more little revs to take over other systems.

We go out and kill them, and they kill some of us, and we destroy the troid. Then we build more ships and train more people, and they send another troid, and we do it again. For us, it’s even more predictable. A few hours of stress and excitement and then more days or months of waiting.

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