Guard, he’d grabbed at the opportunity, passed the tests and officer’s training, and been assigned to a ship, the Guard corvette Epsilon Lyrae.
Two years and one promotion later, he’d ended up… here, on a shipbuilding yard on the backside of nowhere, booted off-line by officious Imperials, watching unknown forces swoop down on his station.
Still at a level-one link, he felt something happening. Querying the base AI, he learned that Tanemura was busily purging data files. Reluctantly, he drew his hand away, breaking the link. His eyes met Cynthia Collins’s. “What is it?” she asked. “Who’s attacking us?”
“Must be rebels,” he replied, grinning wryly as he said it. Damn, either the rebels had picked up one hell of a lot of delta-V, lately, or the government had been lying to them all about how good the rebels were. They’d snuck on Daikoku out of nowhere, launched a sharp, short, professional attack, and crippled the station in the space of seconds.
Through the dome, the destroyer loomed above the station, terrifying in its size, its scale made evident as a second ship passed slowly between the destroyer and the Yards. The newcomer looked like a K-T drive freighter, considerably modified; there were laser turrets attached to its long, square-angled body, but they had the look of improvisation about them… as well as haste.
Thrusters flared briefly, outshone by the pulse of anticollision strobes. The freighter was drawing closer to the control center’s external lock.
Lloyd squared his shoulders. “I guess we’d better square away to receive visitors.”
As if to prove his words, a hollow clang sounded from the main airlock beneath the control deck.
Chapter 5
In all the military works it is written: To train samurai to be loyal, separate them when young, or treat them according to their character. But it is no use to train them according to any fixed plan. They must be educated by benevolence. If the superior loves benevolence, then the inferior will love his duty.
—Tokugawa Ieyasu
early seventeenth century
Resistance had ceased throughout the Daikoku orbital base, a victory more sudden and more complete than Dev could possibly have hoped for. With Vindemiatrix docked directly with the station’s main airlock, New American troops were storming aboard, armed with laser rifles and slug pistols and wearing combat armor instead of their accustomed warstriders.
Dev remained aboard Eagle, surveying the prize through electronic senses. Though he was linked to the tactical channel being used by the boarding party, his attention was on the take. Eighteen warships, including three Yari-class destroyers. He felt a thrill there. His father had been put in command of an Imperial Yari destroyer, the Hatakaze, the ship with which he’d saved the refugees over Lung Chi.
They’d done it! He’d done it, and with only four casualties out of his strike force, and seven warflyers damaged.
It was too bad, he thought, that there wasn’t some way to take over this entire facility. New America and a few other worlds in the Confederation had shipyards, but they weren’t as large or as well equipped as this one.
In theory, it would one day be possible to grow an entire starship, complete right down to the brightwork and the loaded AI programming, by turning appropriately instructed nano loose on a lump of asteroidal iron and assorted, raw trace elements. In practice, the sheer size and complexity of even a small starship required each vessel to be grown in sections, which were extracted from the nanovats and assembled like enormous three-dimensional puzzles by swarms of remotes, workpods and constructors, or even genegineered workers. The assembled hulls were then repeatedly bathed in a nano flux that added their durasheathing, layer upon layer of diamond, monomolecular duralloy, and ceramics, together with the microscopic superconducting grid that afforded protection from charged particle radiation in
Two years and one promotion later, he’d ended up… here, on a shipbuilding yard on the backside of nowhere, booted off-line by officious Imperials, watching unknown forces swoop down on his station.
Still at a level-one link, he felt something happening. Querying the base AI, he learned that Tanemura was busily purging data files. Reluctantly, he drew his hand away, breaking the link. His eyes met Cynthia Collins’s. “What is it?” she asked. “Who’s attacking us?”
“Must be rebels,” he replied, grinning wryly as he said it. Damn, either the rebels had picked up one hell of a lot of delta-V, lately, or the government had been lying to them all about how good the rebels were. They’d snuck on Daikoku out of nowhere, launched a sharp, short, professional attack, and crippled the station in the space of seconds.
Through the dome, the destroyer loomed above the station, terrifying in its size, its scale made evident as a second ship passed slowly between the destroyer and the Yards. The newcomer looked like a K-T drive freighter, considerably modified; there were laser turrets attached to its long, square-angled body, but they had the look of improvisation about them… as well as haste.
Thrusters flared briefly, outshone by the pulse of anticollision strobes. The freighter was drawing closer to the control center’s external lock.
Lloyd squared his shoulders. “I guess we’d better square away to receive visitors.”
As if to prove his words, a hollow clang sounded from the main airlock beneath the control deck.
Chapter 5
In all the military works it is written: To train samurai to be loyal, separate them when young, or treat them according to their character. But it is no use to train them according to any fixed plan. They must be educated by benevolence. If the superior loves benevolence, then the inferior will love his duty.
—Tokugawa Ieyasu
early seventeenth century
Resistance had ceased throughout the Daikoku orbital base, a victory more sudden and more complete than Dev could possibly have hoped for. With Vindemiatrix docked directly with the station’s main airlock, New American troops were storming aboard, armed with laser rifles and slug pistols and wearing combat armor instead of their accustomed warstriders.
Dev remained aboard Eagle, surveying the prize through electronic senses. Though he was linked to the tactical channel being used by the boarding party, his attention was on the take. Eighteen warships, including three Yari-class destroyers. He felt a thrill there. His father had been put in command of an Imperial Yari destroyer, the Hatakaze, the ship with which he’d saved the refugees over Lung Chi.
They’d done it! He’d done it, and with only four casualties out of his strike force, and seven warflyers damaged.
It was too bad, he thought, that there wasn’t some way to take over this entire facility. New America and a few other worlds in the Confederation had shipyards, but they weren’t as large or as well equipped as this one.
In theory, it would one day be possible to grow an entire starship, complete right down to the brightwork and the loaded AI programming, by turning appropriately instructed nano loose on a lump of asteroidal iron and assorted, raw trace elements. In practice, the sheer size and complexity of even a small starship required each vessel to be grown in sections, which were extracted from the nanovats and assembled like enormous three-dimensional puzzles by swarms of remotes, workpods and constructors, or even genegineered workers. The assembled hulls were then repeatedly bathed in a nano flux that added their durasheathing, layer upon layer of diamond, monomolecular duralloy, and ceramics, together with the microscopic superconducting grid that afforded protection from charged particle radiation in
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