Read Online First Strike by Christopher Nuttall - Free Book Online

Barbara – “call me Barbie” – Greenhorn had been assigned to Adrienne shortly after she’d arrived at Armstrong City and had been escorted to Naval HQ. Barbie looked blonde, so blonde it was easy to believe that she was dumb, and yet the Navy would hardly have assigned an idiot to chaperone a reporter. Adrienne had to keep reminding herself that Barbie was almost certainly nowhere near as dumb as she looked. “Do you know how long she is?”
    Adrienne shook her head. It was difficult for her to tell sizes in space. “Over two kilometres long,” Barbie informed her, with an air of someone imparting a valuable piece of knowledge. “Each of them can carry an entire reinforced Marine brigade – that’s over four thousand troops – and land them on any planet the Navy desired within minutes. At crash-launch, they can put over two hundred shuttles into space...”
    She grinned at Adrienne, who smiled back. “Everything has to work like clockwork on one of those machines,” Barbie added. “We have to be careful not to get in the way.”
    Wellington   grew until Adrienne could see nothing, but the darkened ship’s hull. The shuttle altered course slightly and headed down towards one of the launch tubes, leading right into the hangar bay. There was a brief fizz of energy around the shuttle as it passed through the force field keeping the atmosphere inside the bay, before settling down on the deck. Outside, Adrienne could see hundreds of men in brightly-coloured uniforms moving pallets of supplies and weapons around the bay. It was a massive compartment, but tiny compared to the entire ship. The briefing she’d read – carefully edited to ensure that no useful details leaked to the enemy – had said that each assault carrier had no less than eight hangar bays.
    She stepped out of the shuttle and tasted the ship’s air, scented with engine oil and the familiar smell of a starship crammed with living breathing humans. It was almost like walking on one of the aircraft carriers supporting operations in the Middle East, carriers that would be blown out of the water in seconds if someone hostile took the high orbitals away from the human race. They’d never be built again in human shipyards, something she was inclined to regret. They had been amazing ships.
    “Stay inside the marked walkways,” Barbie said, pointing to the yellow lines on the deck. “No one is supposed to go outside the walkways without permission from the crew chief – even an Admiral would have to ask permission before entering. It’s a safety precaution to prevent accidents.”
    “Of course,” Adrienne murmured. “Do you have many accidents?”
    “Something always goes wrong when we prepare ships for departure in a hurry,” Barbie admitted. “It’s a good idea to take as many precautions as possible, particularly when live weapons are being moved from deck to deck.” She nodded towards one of the small groups of crewmen, who were pushing a pallet across the deck. “Hellfire missiles, designed for launch to suppress enemy air-space defences. Also can be fired at enemy aircraft, but they’re not ideal for such missions.”
    Adrienne looked up at her. “Why can't you build missiles that can accomplish anything you wanted?”
    Barbie smiled, launching into what was clearly a pre-prepared lecture. “Each specific task requires the missile to be different for optimum results,” she said. “There are limits to how far we can reprogram them for different operations. A missile configured for deployment against a starship would be massive overkill if deployed on a planetary surface. Even the warheads are different depending on the missile type.”
    She led the way out of the hangar bay and up through a network of corridors, crammed with crewmen working desperately on tasks Adrienne couldn't understand. “I should remind you,” Barbie added, “that anywhere outside your quarters is restricted unless you have me with you. The crew doesn't