Assault Line
Описание книги
Former Brigadier General Dean, who is now Captain Igor Lavroff, is still far from completing his main task, but the most pressing problems seem to have been solved. The attack from the outside has been repulsed, all charges dropped, and the new high office opens up great prospects. But as we know, if you think everything’s okay, then you just don’t know everything…
During a deep raid on the rear of the quargs, Igor Lavroff makes two unpleasant discoveries at once.
One, six months from now, the Earthlings will have to repel attacks of dozens of Titan-class battleships, which means the enemy can neutralize the defenses of any star system controlled by humanity.
And two, the war with the quargs has entered a moderate phase not because the enemy has weakened, but because he is fighting on two fronts. Somewhere in the depths of space, the quargs face a force capable of destroying cruisers with a powerful weapon that burns through armor. Yet Lavroff feels that even such a powerful potential ally of humans in the war against the quargs is being defeated.
Which means that very soon the Earth Federation will have to repel a particularly massive attack by the sworn enemy.
Does humanity have time to prepare for a decisive battle? Or is it too late?..
Отрывок из книги
As soon as we reached the nearest hyper-beacon, the information packet went through a chain of relays to the Federation capital. I took advantage of my position and sent it directly to the Minister of Defence, so, by the time we arrived, the entire leadership of the Ministry, together with the General Staff and personally the Commander-in-Chief, were on the verge and really excited about this. In fact, we couldn’t add anything new to the information, but as it turned out, the follow-up meeting to the intelligence raid was postponed until I arrived, which surprised me.
A ministerial fly-car with a colonel as its escort, in violation of all rules, flopped on the landing strip right in front of the recon ship that just landed on the tarmac. Ten minutes later, I was walking into the conference room on the top floor of the Ministry of Defence building. I took Yoon Gao with me just in case, after all, the personal observations and comments of the professional space recon officer may have helped not to overlook important details. But the commander of our ship was not allowed in the hall, with a polite reference to the closed list of participants in the meeting, and he was asked to wait in the break room for a summons to the hall, if any.
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After my appointment as Chairman of the Commission of the Ministry of Defense, the Chief of the Academy O’Sullivan had to allow me to attend classes freely and a partial correspondence course. He didn’t like the decision at all, but the General knew there was no other option. And I needed the Academy like air. Without it, there could be no further military career. So I was quite grateful to the old Irishman. That’s the second time he’s helped me out, and I’m trying not to forget that.
My depression didn’t last long. I called Inga, and we went for a walk in Central Park. Inga, in her elegant uniform, that fitted her perfectly, with the senior lieutenant’s shoulder straps, the Iron Cross on the chest and and the qualification tab with green long bands of combat experience looked irresistible in every sense. Early graduation from the Planetary Commando Academy and my personal relationship with the director of the Academy let me lay my impudent hands on her career. Inga received an extraordinary rank and the Iron Cross for boarding the enemy flagship in the Barnard’s system. Any commander would gladly accept an officer with such combat experience, but my request didn’t give them a chance, and Inga was placed at my disposal as commander of the Land Weapons Test Company together with Lieutenant Fulton and Lieutenant Jaswinder and a dozen other former General Schiller’s cadets.
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