Star Corps by Ian Douglas

Author:Ian Douglas
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Onbekend
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-04-01T11:49:26+00:00

14

INTERLUDE

16 OCTOBER 2138 TO

24 JUNE 2148

IST Derna

En route to Llalande 21185 IID

Launch…

The trio of starships, IST Derna and the two cargo ships ISC Regulus and ISC Algol, drifted at L-4 well clear of the building docks and the Vesuvius AM complex. Because AM-enhanced fusion torch exhaust consisted of very high-energy particles, their torches would not be lit until they were well clear of heavily trafficked regions of the inner Solar system. Instead, each was attached to one of the new Cerberus-class tugs, massive, blocky-looking nuclear-chemical workhorses with fifty million kilograms of thrust apiece.

Derna’s centrifuge rotation had already been stopped and her three hab modules folded back against her spine as loading work continued in microgravity. The last of Derna’s passengers arrived on board already in cybernetic hibernation and were transferred with the last few hundreds of tons of equipment and supplies. Meanwhile, cybehibe techs on board processed the last of the MIEU’s waking personnel—Colonel Ramsey and members of the unit’s command constellation—and hooked them into the ship’s nanocybernetic suspension system.

Algol and Regulus, unmanned vessels both, were already cleared for launch.

Across the world a half million kilometers away, humankind seemed to watch with an indrawn psychic breath. Manned expeditions to the stars had been boosting out-system for fifty years but always on missions strictly limited to science and diplomacy. The Smithsonian archeological expeditions to Chiron at Alpha Centauri and Volos at Barnard’s Star, the diplomatic and science legation at Ishtar, and the science missions at Thor and Kali had all been deployed to the stars on strictly peaceful missions. Now, for the first time, humankind was going to the stars armed and armored for war.

Derna’s complement of 145 naval personnel remained awake, monitoring the prefire and launch systems, but the launch itself was handled entirely by the onboard AI, unofficially known as “Bruce.” The countdown, which had been running now for days, trickled down at last to zero, and the main engines of the three Cerberus tugs flared white-hot.

Fifty thousand tons of thrust seemed barely to nudge the giant starships, but the acceleration, which lasted for all of five minutes, was enough to nudge the trio off-station and start them in a long half-million-kilometer fall toward the Earth.

In Washington, D.C., President LaSalle delivered a speech proclaiming the need to safeguard human life and interests at Ishtar, emphasizing that Operation Spirit of Humankind was not a mission of vengeance or retaliation but one of rescue and recovery.

Elsewhere, riots flared into what amounted to open warfare, as devotees of the An-creator gods battled with the legions of Earth First and traditional religious forces. The Catholic world, already sundered a generation earlier by the election of the Papessa Mary to the seat of St. Peter at the Holy See, was shattered by pitched battles in Asuncion and Ciudad de Mejico, in Madrid and Paris, in Roma, Manila, and even in the suburbs of Boston. The Papessa, in the Vatican, called for a holy crusade to free the human Sag-ura slaves held on Ishtar and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.