E. E. Doc Smith - D' Alembert 8 - Eclipsing Binaries

VIP免费

2024-12-23 0 0 271.51KB 136 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

ECLIPSING BINARIES

Volume eight of The classic Family d'Alembert series

By E.E. ‘Doc' Smith

With Stephen Goldin

Chapter 1

The War Against SOTE

Being summoned to Lady A's office was never a casual matter. Tanya Boros had

to pass

an ID and weapons checkpoint before she was even allowed into the elevator

tube taking

her down to the lowest basement level. There she passed a human-supervised

retina

scope check and a weapons detector scan. Then she had to walk alone down a

brightly

lit L-shaped corridor with camera eyes watching her every step of the way. The

walls

were gray and completely bare except for the innocuous-looking small

projections she

assumed were blaster barrels pointed directly at her.

As she turned right at the far end of the hallway, she came abruptly to the

heavy gray

magnisteel door that was the final barrier to Lady A's office. There were some

people-ones who had made serious mistakes on their assignments-who had gone

through this door and never been seen alive again, though admittedly such

cases were

rare. Lady A normally dealt with faulty subordinates in a more efficient

manner, letting

others on her staff do the dirty work. More often a visit to Lady A meant a

tongue-lashing

for some slipup, some operation that had gone less smoothly than planned even

if it was

ultimately successful. Most of Lady A's plans did go smoothly, but she was a

perfectionist and did not tolerate even minor faults in her hirelings.

Even at best, being called to this office merely meant another hard, demanding

job from

a taskmaster who was never satisfied. There was still much to do if the

conspiracy was

to topple the Stanley dynasty from the Imperial Throne, and Lady A could never

quite

understand why her inferiors did not measure up to her own impeccable

standards.

For all these reasons, Tanya Boros was understandably nervous as she stood

before the

ponderous gray door. As far as she knew she'd done nothing wrong-but innocence

was

not always an alibi in Lady A's court. The woman who ran this vast, galaxy-

wide

conspiracy had been in a foul mood for the last six months, ever since the

failure of

Operation Annihilate. All plans had been put into abeyance while the

conspiracy was

evaluated from top to bottom and its goals reassessed. Things were now

starting to

move again-but Tanya Boros didn't know what place she would fill in the new

organization, and that bothered her.

Nervously she inserted her comparison disc into the appropriate slot and put

her eyes to

the viewer so the retina scope could check her pattern. Even after all the

precautions, no one was permitted into Lady A's office without undergoing one

final

identity check; Lady A was too thorough for anyone to catch her unawares.

Boros's retinal patterns matched the ones on her identity card, which the door

returned

to her. Then the heavy security portal swung slowly outward and Lady A said,

"Come in,

Tanya. I've been expecting you." Tanya Boros obeyed.

The office was quite dim after the bright lighting of the corridor outside.

Three of the

walls were covered with cream-colored raw silk but were otherwise bare of

adornment.

The fourth wall, opposite the door, was one large triscreen bearing the image

of a

mist-shrouded stream tumbling between ancient eroding mountains.

The floor was hard and black, polished smooth as ice; it was difficult to walk

on it without

making noise, and impossible to move quickly without slipping. Two black

lacquered

chairs-neither very comfortable-and a black lacquered table between them were

the only

concessions to a visitor's comfort.

At the far end of the room near the left-hand corner stood a large, glowing

green egg.

Carved from solid jade, it pulsated slightly from internal illumination. As

the egg pivoted

slowly, Boros could see a computer terminal and keyboard built into the

interior, which

had been hollowed out to form a comfortable seat. The computer terminal, it

was

rumored, allowed instant access to all the conspiracy's files as well as a

direct telecom

link to the mysterious person known only as C. That immense jade egg

represented the

very heart of the conspiracy-and seated within this egg, back straight and

looking as

though she'd been born to rule the universe, was Lady A.

The woman who ran the greatest conspiracy in human history was of average

height-but

that was the only thing average about her. Tanya Boros, never modest and

renowned for

her own attractiveness, always felt plain in the presence of this magnificent

woman. Her

figure and face were of classic beauty, mature but unwrinkled, and there was

something

inhumanly cold about them. She wore a tight-fitting dress of jade green silk

one shade

darker than the egg about her, with gold and silver phoenixes embroidered on

the

shoulders and sleeves. Her jet black hair, tightly braided, was draped

casually across her

left shoulder, and her green eyes peered out from beneath those arching black

brows

with painful intensity.

As the door closed behind her, Tanya Boros stood in this regal presence not

knowing

what to say. Even though she'd been raised in the upper echelons of galactic

nobility,

she'd never met anyone else who was as awe-inspiring as Lady A.

"Don't just stand there, child," Lady A said. "Have a seat." She gestured with

a perfectly

manicured hand at one of the two black lacquered chairs.

"Thank you," Boros said, taking the indicated seat. The two women sat in

silence for a

long moment. Boros grew increasingly uncomfortable at the appraising scrutiny

she was

being given. It felt as though Lady A were weighing her very soul and finding

it a feather's

weight this side of perfection.

"We haven't had much chance to talk recently, have we?" Lady A said at last,

breaking

the unbearable silence. "No, ma'am."

"Not since Gastonia, really."

Boros's eyes widened a little. "That really wasn't my fault. I did everything

expected of

me. . . ."

Lady A raised a hand to silence her. "No one's blaming you for anything. Don't

start

looking for excuses where none are due; it's bad form. No, everything on

Gastonia itself

went as scheduled. You performed admirably. The reason for failure lay

elsewhere."

She settled back in the glowing egg, but her body never fully relaxed. "To be

candid, I

suppose I should admit the fault was mine."

"Oh no," Boros said quickly. "It was purely accidental . . . "

"No." Lady A slammed her left fist on the side of the egg with a force that

echoed

through the quiet room. "If I won't accept that excuse from my inferiors, I

have no right to

lean on it myself. There are no accidents; there's only sloppy planning or

inadequate

execution."

Unexpectedly she stood up and walked a few paces from her egg, staring out at

the

triscreen with her back to Boros. "We've spent the last six months analyzing

the failure,

both from our side and from the reports we've seen in the Empire's records. If

I needed

an excuse, I could blame it on that robot who's now so conveniently destroyed,

for its

failure to make certain Commander Fortier was dead before proceeding with its

plans.

That was the pivotal factor.

"But to be honest, I must look beyond that to the errors in planning that made

such a

mistake not only possible, but fatal to our plans. The fact is, the operation

was over

planned. In trying to be so clever, we outfoxed ourselves. We had the force

and the

resources to make the attack work. If we'd just gone ahead and bulled our way

through,

it would have worked. Instead, we tried too hard for finesse, and it threw us

just enough

off balance to let the Imperial forces recover. We lost a great deal in that

disaster, more

than just the seventy-five percent of our fleet. But it's a mistake that will

not happen

again-I swear it by the throne I intend to take."

Tanya Boros felt distinctly uneasy. Lady A was not known for being

particularly

introspective, or for admitting weaknesses or imperfections in front of her

subordinates.

Why was she behaving so uncharacteristically in front of Boros'? What had

caused her to

reveal this unexpected side of her nature'?

The mask of perfection was suddenly back in place as though it had never been

awry.

Lady A turned abruptly away from the triscreen and returned to the jade egg to

face

Boros.

"All this, of course," she said, "is of only peripheral interest to you. You

need not concern

yourself, at present, with matters of policy. That will come later, if you

develop as well as

I hope. In the meantime, I have to know whether you are prepared to begin

assuming

responsibility for your proper role in this conspiracy."

"My proper role?" Boros was puzzled. "I don't understand. I've always taken

your orders,

since you first contacted me on Gastonia. I didn't like being forced to stay

there, but, as

you said, it was out of the way and no one noticed me. What do you consider my

`proper

role' to be?'

Lady A gave her a long, frowning stare. "Have you forgotten your heritage this

easily-you, the only child of Emperor Stanley Nine's oldest son? You have a

better claim

to the throne than the silly little snip who sits there now!"

A trace of Boros's old haughtiness returned. Straightening her back, she said,

"Of course

I haven't forgotten. But it didn't seem to matter to anyone else."

"It matters to me," Lady A said with conviction. "This revolution is dedicated

to restoring

the proper order of things. "

"Am I to be made Empress, then?" No matter how sincere the woman's voice was,

Boros could not bring herself to believe Lady A was going to all this trouble

purely for her

benefit.

A tiny hint of a smile touched the corners of Lady A's lips. "Well, perhaps

not yet. I was

reserving that for myself. But you will receive a position commensurate with

your

heritage. I have special plans for you, my dear, that you can't even begin to

guess."

"And what does C say to all this?"

The smile broadened on Lady A's face. "To show you how much I trust you, I'll

let you in

on the best-kept secret in the Galaxy: There is no one named C. He is purely a

myth

created to confuse our enemies into thinking the conspiracy is more complex

than it really

is. All orders from C are my orders relayed through a special switchboard to

appear as

though they're coming from elsewhere. No such human being exists. You're now

only the

second person in the universe to know that."

Again Boros felt uneasiness creep over her. Lady A was being far too open, and

that

was suspicious. "Why are you telling me all this?" she asked.

Lady A's mood shifted instantly to anger. "I open my heart to you and receive

distrust."

She stood again, and in three long strides she was before Boros's chair.

Lifting the

younger woman effortlessly by the front of her tunic collar, Lady A held her a

few

centimeters off the ground and said with crystalline enunciation, "You now

have two

choices, my dear. You either pledge me your unswerving, undivided loyalty and

love, or

I'll crush your skull until your brains trickle down your neck. You do not

leave this room

alive until I am assured the information you have is safe. You betrayed your

father with a

few inadvertent words; I'll not have you do the same to me. Do I make myself

clear?"

For a long moment, Tanya Boros was too frightened to say anything. She knew

her life

was dangling by a very slender thread, and the wrong word-or even the right

word with

the wrong inflection-would give that thread a sudden snap. She considered her

words very carefully.

"Yes, ma'am," she said slowly. "I am completely loyal to you. No one can doubt

that. I've

obeyed you completely from the first moment I met you on Gastonia. It's just

... I didn't

expect ... I ... I was surprised . . . I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

Another eternity passed as those intense green eyes pierced all the way to her

soul.

Then slowly Lady A lowered the younger woman to the floor and loosened her

grip on

the front of the tunic. Boros was shaken. She had not known her superior was

that

strong. Even now, looking at the other woman's slender frame, she found it

difficult to

believe.

"You must never question me or my motives again," Lady A said in calm tones as

she

resumed her place in the glowing egg. "I have reasons for everything I do and

say. It's

not your place to understand them, merely to obey commands. If you do, you'll

be richer

for it; if you don't, you'll be dead. That should be reason enough."

"Yes, Gospozha."

The traces of a smile returned to Lady A's lips. "That's much better. Always

respect your

elders, child. Now that I've made my point, I will explain some of my thinking

not because

you asked, but because I think it's better if you know something of what's

going on.

"As I was saying, the failure of Operation Annihilate hurt our cause badly. We

are not

strong enough to make another frontal attack on the Empire for quite some

time. We're

far from defeat-the Empire still does not realize how thoroughly we have

infiltrated and

undermined their structure-but we'll have to return to more guerilla-style

tactics for a

while.

"What we need primarily is time to build up our strength again. We were able

to do that

the first time because SOTE spent so much time chasing your father we could

work in

virtual obscurity. Given those conditions, we could rebuild our forces in just

a short while.

"Unfortunately, we no longer have such an effective smokescreen. The Service

of the

Empire now knows we exist, and they won't stand idly by and let us re-arm

ourselves.

We have the power to cause such chaos that SOTE would be too busy fighting a

thousand different small fires to pay much attention to us-but that would tip

our hand

prematurely. That is something we will not do; we must preserve a few secrets

until the

final confrontation is assured.

"Therefore we must declare war on SOTE itself. So far the Service has been but

annoying pest, but it distracted us just enough from our true goal that we

miscalculated.

The time has come to rid ourselves of the peskier elements within that

organization. You

will play a key part in that campaign. We have a command post called Battle

station G-6.

. . . "

"That's one of the automated ones. isn't it?" Boros blurted.Lady A stopped and

looked

hard at the younger woman. "I can see," she said after a moment, "that our

internal

security needs tightening. That was supposed to be secret. Don't worry, the

fault is not

yours," she added as Boros began to quiver again. "You can't help what you

overhear.

It's the people who did the talking who are in trouble." Her fingers moved

quickly over the

keyboard in the side of the egg as she entered into the computer a reminder to

deal with

the problem.

"But returning to your question, yes, G-6 is almost entirely automated. You

will be the

only person aboard. I want a live person there to supervise the activities."

To say that Tanya Boros was disappointed with her assignment would have been a

vast

understatement. She was a social creature who liked to have other people

around

her-particularly men. Even among Earth's decadent elite, she had been

notorious as one

of the more promiscuous members. Gastonia had been a hardship for her. Even

though

Lady A had arranged for her to stay at the command house rather than in the

village with

the other condemned traitors and Boros still could not understand why she'd

been so

favored-there had been no men except the guards, and they were an

unimaginative

group at best. Occasionally she had kidnaped men from the village for her

pleasure. Of

course, since only a few people in the village were allowed to know about the

house's

existence, she couldn't let the kidnaped men return, and had been forced to

have them

killed after a while. Still, Gastonia had provided her with some of life's

simple pleasures.

But now she was being sent to an automated battle station; with no

companionship

except robots and computers. It seemed she was merely trading one exile for

another.

She was quite careful, though, not to let her disappointment show on her face.

She'd

already experienced Lady A's anger once, and she wasn't about to risk it a

second time.

She merely said, in as neutral a voice as she could muster, "What's my

assignment?"

"Your orders will be waiting for you there when you arrive; that way, if

anything should

happen to you en route you can't give away the plan. You'll travel in a

special ship that

will allow you to dock with the battle station. That is the only ship the

station will allow to

approach it; any others will be before they can get close. The station can

defend itself

automatically; you'll be perfectly safe once you get there."

Tanya Boros left Lady A's office feeling scarcely better than when she'd

entered.

Weeks later, many parsecs away on the planet Arcta in Sector Twenty-Nine, a

call came

into SOTE's planetary headquarters. Its priority coding was Class Six,

"critical," so it

received instant attention from Colonel Patrick Hein, the officer in charge.

Even if it had

been coded as Class One, however, Hein would have paid attention-for the call

came

from two agents who identified themselves only as Wombat and Periwinkle.

Those two codenames commanded instant respect within the Service of the

Empire, for

it was known they were the organization's best undercover agents. Only a

handful of

people in the upper echelons knew their true identities, but everyone in the

Service knew

those two agents were to be obeyed. Their investigations were key to the

security of the

Empire, and they had to have utmost cooperation at the local levels if they

were to be

efficient.

The call came in via an official Service scrambler, so Hein got on the vidicom

and spoke

directly. "What can I do for you'?" he asked.

There was no visual image coming from the sender, but that was only to be

expected;

these agents would want to keep their identities hidden. "How many people do

you have

here on Arcta?" a man's voice asked.

"There are nine currently available, myself included." "I'm not talking about

`currently

available.' I mean total, if you pull everyone off current duty for a special

assignment.

How many?"

Hein barely hesitated. "Fourteen, but some of them are on pretty important

missions . . ."

"That might just be enough. Periwinkle and I have pretty important missions,

too. We'll

need everyone you've got. We've got a gang of traitors trapped in their

hideout, but we'll

need help prying them out." He gave the location and continued, "Can you get

all your

people there within three hours?"

"If you want them, you've got them." Pulling some of his people out of their

present

assignments was a big sacrifice and months of work would be lost-but assisting

Wombat

and Periwinkle always took top priority. By helping them he could hope to win

some good

words in the official report of their mission.

Without further word of explanation, Agent Wombat cut the circuit. Colonel

Hein didn't

consider it rude; agents in the field didn't always have time for the

niceties. Within a few

minutes he was arranging calls to all his own agents, giving them the

rendezvous

coordinates. Once that was done, he had to arrange for weapons and

transportation.

Wombat hadn't told him how large a mob he'd be facing, so he picked armament

with

maximum firepower and versatility.

The last thing he did before leaving his office was to enter a record of the

call in his

official daily report. This sounded like a dangerous job; if he didn't come

back, there had

to be some record so Headquarters on Tellus would know what had been going on.

Arcta was a cold world, circling its red dwarf star near the outer limits of

the zone of

habitability. Its north polar ice cap was a barren stretch of glacial ridges

and valleys,

almost totally uninhabited. Here, in the midst of a howling gale, was the spot

where

Wombat had asked to rendezvous on the top of a bluff overlooking a narrow

valley

carved out by a river that was currently frozen. By the side of the frozen

river was a

two-story prefab building, presumably the hideout Wombat had mentioned.

Hein and his agents were gathered on the bluff within the time allotted. It

hadn't been

easy, and some of the agents had been forced to come here ill-prepared for the

freezing

weather. Most of them sat in their copters with the heaters on, awaiting

further

instructions. Hein looked around for some sign of the two agents who'd

summoned them

all here.

A copter appeared hovering overhead and the vidicom in Hein's vehicle came to

life.

"Have you got them all?" the voice of Wombat asked.

"All present and accounted for," Hein said proudly. "Good. The gang we're

after is holed

up in there, as you may have guessed. There are somewhere between fifteen and

twenty of them-a bit too many for us to tackle ourselves. We want your people

to go in

and get them.

Take as many alive as possible-we hope to get some good information out of

them."

"What about you?" Hein asked.

"Periwinkle and I have decided it's best not to show our faces just yet. We'll

hover up

here and keep the area covered in case any of them escape and get past you."

"Smooth," the colonel nodded. He looked over the valley with a practiced eye

and then

gave the deployment order to his shivering troops. Within minutes, the team

from SOTE

had moved out and down the sides of the bluff in an attack on the criminal

headquarters.

Going down the face of the bluff was the most dangerous part of the assault,

for the

agents were easy targets against the cliff. They drew no enemy fire, however,

and Hein

prayed his luck would continue. Maybe the enemy had no long-range weapons, or

maybe

they just wanted to save themselves for the closer battle. In any case, he

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

ECLIPSINGBINARIESVolumeeightofTheclassicFamilyd'AlembertseriesByE.E.‘Doc'SmithWithStephenGoldinChapter1TheWarAgainstSOTEBeingsummonedtoLadyA'sofficewasneveracasualmatter.TanyaBoroshadtopassanIDandweaponscheckpointbeforeshewasevenallowedintotheelevatortubetakingherdowntothelowestbasementlevel.Theresh...

展开>> 收起<<

E. E. Doc Smith - D' Alembert 8 - Eclipsing Binaries.pdf

共136页,预览28页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

E. E. Doc Smith - D' Alembert 8 - Eclipsing Binaries

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: