A Night Without Stars Read Online Free
Author: Peter F. Hamilton
manage. She knew if she showed any weakness in front of these people, everything would be lost. They were all depending on her to save them. “Can someone get me confirmation on the second fleet?”
“Estimated atmosphere entry over Tothland in twenty-eight minutes,” another of the officers announced.
“Okay. Chief Air Marshal, are you ready?”
“Our squadrons are over Fanrith, ma’am,” the marshal said, her face grim. “We won’t let you down.”
Laura gave her a quick nod, fighting to prevent tears from forming. They’d deployed just over four hundred IA-505 air-interceptor planes to the uninhabited Fanrith continent—two-thirds of the planet’s entire Air Force. The IA-505s were her own design, cobbled together out of her storage lacuna’s basic encyclopedia files of the Second World War: terribly flimsy things made from an alloy monocoque structure, with the skin riveted on. The V12 engines powering the props were just supercharged pistons; she hadn’t gotten around to introducing turbines yet. Control surfaces moved when the pilot pulled on a joystick, which tugged wires connected to hydraulics. The planes were armed with four powerful pneumatic Gatling guns in the fore and aft turrets. And the crews, seven to a plane, were all proud and eager kids, fiercely loyal to their world, and determined to protect it no matter what. They were delighted with their radical flying war machines, smiling gamely when she went to meet squadrons at their aerodromes, promising her they’d do her proud when they took to the air to blast the Faller eggs apart with their guns.
And now she’d sent them into battle against interplanetary spaceships, crewed by the vilest aliens humans had ever encountered. She’d told Slvasta and the Air Force regiment marshals it was almost certain suicide, but they’d ordered the squadrons into the air anyway. If they hadn’t, all Bienvenido would be lost.
Laura blamed herself for that.
It was a mere six months ago when she’d gotten the wormhole functioning again. After the utterly hellish time she’d endured since arriving on Bienvenido—desperately upgrading its primitive military technology to cope with the Fallers, struggling against a paranoid Slvasta’s authoritarian regime—she had finally found the time to repair it. Her hope was that, by exploring the other planets that shared this terrible exile with them, she might find an ally against the Fallers. And for those brief months it looked as if the dream had come true.
She’d opened the wormhole five hundred kilometers above Aqueous—the most promising-looking of the nine other planets in orbit around this lonely sun. A beautiful oceanic world of deep turquoise scuffed by long white clouds, and possessing a standard oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. If it weren’t for the complete absence of any landmass, it could have been another Earth. It was only when the wormhole opened just above the atmosphere that they saw the green and pink dots of tiny coral islands, not one of which was more than a hundred meters in diameter.
They’d made contact with the Vatni, who lived on and around the islands—a semi-aquatic species who, for all their willingness to be allies, didn’t have any technological ability. However, thanks to the finite number of islands, they did have a considerable population pressure problem, which gave Slvasta’s diplomatic team an easy time during negotiations. It was agreed that Vatni families could come and live on Lamaran’s coastline in exchange for dealing with any marine threat posed by the Fallers in a way humans never could.
After a month during which thousands of eager Vatni came across to Bienvenido, Laura had switched the wormhole terminus to the second most viable planet: Ursell. The Vatni had told her that a thousand years earlier they’d seen spaceships flying from Ursell to explore every planet. After that, Ursell had undergone some kind of war, which had lasted for years. The flashes
“Estimated atmosphere entry over Tothland in twenty-eight minutes,” another of the officers announced.
“Okay. Chief Air Marshal, are you ready?”
“Our squadrons are over Fanrith, ma’am,” the marshal said, her face grim. “We won’t let you down.”
Laura gave her a quick nod, fighting to prevent tears from forming. They’d deployed just over four hundred IA-505 air-interceptor planes to the uninhabited Fanrith continent—two-thirds of the planet’s entire Air Force. The IA-505s were her own design, cobbled together out of her storage lacuna’s basic encyclopedia files of the Second World War: terribly flimsy things made from an alloy monocoque structure, with the skin riveted on. The V12 engines powering the props were just supercharged pistons; she hadn’t gotten around to introducing turbines yet. Control surfaces moved when the pilot pulled on a joystick, which tugged wires connected to hydraulics. The planes were armed with four powerful pneumatic Gatling guns in the fore and aft turrets. And the crews, seven to a plane, were all proud and eager kids, fiercely loyal to their world, and determined to protect it no matter what. They were delighted with their radical flying war machines, smiling gamely when she went to meet squadrons at their aerodromes, promising her they’d do her proud when they took to the air to blast the Faller eggs apart with their guns.
And now she’d sent them into battle against interplanetary spaceships, crewed by the vilest aliens humans had ever encountered. She’d told Slvasta and the Air Force regiment marshals it was almost certain suicide, but they’d ordered the squadrons into the air anyway. If they hadn’t, all Bienvenido would be lost.
Laura blamed herself for that.
It was a mere six months ago when she’d gotten the wormhole functioning again. After the utterly hellish time she’d endured since arriving on Bienvenido—desperately upgrading its primitive military technology to cope with the Fallers, struggling against a paranoid Slvasta’s authoritarian regime—she had finally found the time to repair it. Her hope was that, by exploring the other planets that shared this terrible exile with them, she might find an ally against the Fallers. And for those brief months it looked as if the dream had come true.
She’d opened the wormhole five hundred kilometers above Aqueous—the most promising-looking of the nine other planets in orbit around this lonely sun. A beautiful oceanic world of deep turquoise scuffed by long white clouds, and possessing a standard oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. If it weren’t for the complete absence of any landmass, it could have been another Earth. It was only when the wormhole opened just above the atmosphere that they saw the green and pink dots of tiny coral islands, not one of which was more than a hundred meters in diameter.
They’d made contact with the Vatni, who lived on and around the islands—a semi-aquatic species who, for all their willingness to be allies, didn’t have any technological ability. However, thanks to the finite number of islands, they did have a considerable population pressure problem, which gave Slvasta’s diplomatic team an easy time during negotiations. It was agreed that Vatni families could come and live on Lamaran’s coastline in exchange for dealing with any marine threat posed by the Fallers in a way humans never could.
After a month during which thousands of eager Vatni came across to Bienvenido, Laura had switched the wormhole terminus to the second most viable planet: Ursell. The Vatni had told her that a thousand years earlier they’d seen spaceships flying from Ursell to explore every planet. After that, Ursell had undergone some kind of war, which had lasted for years. The flashes
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