The Rising by James Doohan & S.M. Stirling

Author:James Doohan & S.M. Stirling
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science fiction
ISBN: 0671877585
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises
Published: 2000-12-07T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

"Our mission, ladies and gentlemen, is taking us to the XHO-67 System," Captain Knott said, looking around the conference table at his heads of staff. "Which means the whole system is an uncolonizable nightmare."

Places the Grand Survey team left nameless generally were. Even the totality of Earth's mythology and history didn't provide enough names for every star.

He touched a few keys and the holographic display in the center of the table came to life. Before them spun a planet with eight moons and a thin equatorial ring composed of chunks of rocks or ice, some of which were as large as the independent moons.

The planet was a gas giant, larger by far than Jupiter. Actually, it was a borderline protostar, awash with lurid scarlet and orange clouds with an occasional cobalt blue storm center fading to electric blue at its outer edges.

The pizza that time forgot, Raeder thought.

"This system is located between Commonwealth and Mollie space. It's a little closer to us, actually. We've known for some time that it's an advanced listening post, and frankly we've fed them some ripe pieces of misinformation through it."

The captain's voice showed a deep and amused appreciation of Commonwealth Intelligence's successes in this. Space Command had been winning the outright battles so far in this war, but in the shadow war of the spooks honors were more nearly even.

"But, as ever, all good things must come to an end. They've been sneaking agents into our space on the damned blockade runners. Worse yet, there's strong evidence that the independent raiders harrying our supply convoys are based there." He looked around the table. "You can imagine how happy that arrangement makes the blockade runners."

Yeah, Raeder thought, it must save them a huge number of Transit jumps. And each jump avoided represented a commerce-protection cruiser avoided. Not that there are that many out there anymore. Just enough to keep the enemy guessing. Customs had never had a huge budget, and the Commonwealth Congress had cut deeply what they did have at the start of the war. The idea being that short-term austerity would bring long-term peace all the quicker.

"This is the moon we're interested in," Knott said and one of the giant's moons was picked out by the computer and expanded in size while the rest of the display shrank. A short paragraph of information about it appeared below, stating its size, gravity, and rough composition, indicating a thin nitrogen and hydrogen cyanide atmosphere.

Frozen piece of dirt about the size of Mars, Raeder thought.

"Naturally, all of our information is extreme long distance," he explained. "Basically we've been able to pinpoint the location of the Mollie base." A light flashed on the dun-colored surface of the moon. "But that's about it. We've documented her traffic, which has become considerable over the last few months. But since we haven't interfered with it in any way we don't know what's going in, or out, or what's staying put."

He folded his hands and looked around the table again, his eyes skipping over Raeder.

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