Storm from the Shadows - SoS2

[Johnak]

Muhehehe!

[Muphrid]

Tak už je to tady!!!
David Weber začal s vydáváním snippetů k této knize, takže tu máme první kapitolu (mimochodem: kniha má vyjít až za 10 měsíců, tzn. že buď bude zatraceně rozsáhlá nebo budou snippety vycházet řídčeji než 3x týdně):

Chapter One

      "Talk to me, John!"

      Rear Admiral Michelle Henke's husky contralto came sharp and crisp as the information on her repeater tactical display shifted catastrophically.

      "It's still coming in from the Flag, Ma'am," Commander Oliver Manfredi, Battlecruiser Squadron Eighty-One's golden-haired chief of staff, replied for the squadron's operations officer, Lieutenant Commander John Stackpole. Manfredi was standing behind Stackpole, watching the ops section's more detailed displays, and he had considerably more attention to spare for updates at the moment than Stackpole did. "I'm not sure, but it looks --"

      Manfredi broke off, and his jaw clenched. Then his nostrils flared and he squeezed Stackpole's shoulder before he turned his head to look at his admiral.

      "It would appear the Peeps have taken Her Grace's lessons to heart, Ma'am," he said grimly. "They've arranged a Sidemore all their own for us."

      Michelle looked at him for a moment, and her expression tightened.

      "Oliver's right, Ma'am," Stackpole said, looking up from his own display as the changing light codes finally restabilized. "They've got us boxed."

      "How bad is it?" she asked.

      "They've sent in three separate groups," Stackpole replied. "One dead astern of us, one at polar north, and one at polar south. The Flag is designating the in-system force we already knew about as Bogey One. The task group to system north is Bogey Two; the one to system south is Bogey Three; and the one directly astern is Bogey Four. Our velocity relative to Bogey Four is just over twenty-two thousand kilometers per second, but range is less than thirty-one million klicks."

      "Understood."

      Michelle looked back at her own, smaller display. At the moment, it was configured to show the entire Solon System, which meant, by definition, that it was nowhere as detailed as Stackpole's. There wasn't room for that on a plot small enough to deploy from a command chair -- not when it was displaying the volume of something the size of a star system, at any rate. But it was more than detailed enough to confirm what Stackpole had just told her. The Peeps had just duplicated exactly what had happened to them at the Battle of Sidemore, and managed to do it on a more sophisticated scale, to boot. Unless something reduced Task Force Eighty-Two's rate of acceleration, none of the three forces which had just dropped out of hyper-space to ambush it could hope to overtake it. Unfortunately, they didn't need to physically overtake the task force in order to engage it -- not when current-generation Havenite multidrive missiles had a maximum powered range from rest of over sixty million kilometers.

      And, of course, there was always the possibility that there was yet another Havenite task group waiting in hyper, prepared to drop back into normal space right in their faces as they approached the system hyper limit . . . .

      No, she decided after a moment. If they had the hulls for a fourth force, it would have already translated in, as well. They'd really have us in a rat trap if they'd been able to box us from four directions. I suppose it's possible that they do have another force in reserve -- that they decided to double-think us and hold number four until they've had a chance to see which way we run. But that'd be a violation of the KISS principle, and this generation of Peeps doesn't go in much for that sort of thing, damn it.

      She grimaced at the thought, but it was certainly true.

      Honor's been warning us all that these Peeps aren't exactly stupid, she reflected. Not that any of us should've needed reminding after what they did to us in Thunderbolt! But I could wish that just this once she'd been wrong.

      Her lips twitched in a humorless smile, but she felt herself coming back on balance mentally, and her brain whirred as tactical possibilities and decision trees spilled through it. Not that the primary responsibility was hers. No, that weight rested on the shoulders of her best friend, and despite herself, Michelle was grateful that it wasn't hers . . . a fact which made her feel more than a little guilty.

      One thing was painfully evident. Eighth Fleet's entire operational strategy for the last three and a half months had been dedicated to convincing the numerically superior navy of the Republic of Haven to redeploy, adopt a more defensive stance while the desperately off-balance Manticoran Alliance got its own feet back under it. Judging by the ambush into which the task force had sailed, that strategy was obviously succeeding. In fact, it looked like it was succeeding entirely too well.

      It was so much easier when we could keep their command teams pruned back . . . or count on State Security to do it for us. Unfortunately, Saint-Just's not around anymore to shoot any admiral whose initiative might make her dangerous to the régime, is he? the relief with which Manticore's pundits, as well as the woman in the street, had greeted the news of the Committee of Public Safety's final overthrow. Maybe we were just a little premature about that, she thought, since it means that this time around, we don't have anywhere near the same edge in operational experience, and it shows. This batch of Peeps actually knows what it's doing. Damn it.

      "Course change from the Flag, Ma'am," Lieutenant Commander Braga, her staff astrogator announced. "Two-niner-three, zero-zero-five, six-point-zero-one KPS squared."

      "Understood," Michelle repeated, and nodded approvingly as the new vector projection stretched itself across her plot and she recognized Honor's intention. The task force was breaking to system south at its maximum acceleration on a course that would take it as far away from Bogey Two as possible while maintaining at least the current separation from Bogey Four. Their new course would still take them deep into the missile envelope of Bogey One, the detachment covering the planet Arthur, whose orbital infrastructure had been the task force's original target. But Bogey One consisted of only two superdreadnoughts and seven battlecruisers, supported by less than two hundred LACs, and from their emissions signatures and maneuvers, Bogey One's wallers were pre-pod designs. Compared to the six obviously modern superdreadnoughts and two LAC carriers in each of the three ambush forces, Bogey One's threat was minimal. Even if all nine of its hyper-capable combatants had heavy pod loads on tow, its older ships would lack the fire control to pose a significant threat to Task Force Eighty-Two's missile defenses. Under the circumstances, it was the same option Michelle would have chosen if she'd been in Honor's shoes.

      I wonder if they've been able to ID her flagship? Michelle wondered. It wouldn't have been all that hard, given the news coverage and her "negotiations" in Hera.

      That, too, of course, had been part of the strategy. Putting Admiral Lady Dame Honor Harrington, Duchess and Steadholder Harrington, in command of Eighth Fleet had been a carefully calculated decision on the Admiralty's part. In Michelle's opinion, Honor was obviously the best person for the command anyway, but the appointment had been made in a glare of publicity for the express purpose of letting the Republic of Haven know that "the Salamander" was the person who'd been chosen to systematically demolish its rear-area industry.

      One way to make sure they honored the threat, Michelle thought wryly as the task force came to its new heading in obedience to the commands emanating from HMS Imperator, Honor's SD(P) flagship. After all, she's been their personal nightmare ever since Basilisk station! But I wonder if they got a fingerprint on Imperator at Hera or Augusta? Probably -- they knew which ship she was aboard at Hera, at least. Which probably means they know who it is they've just mousetrapped, too.

      Michelle grimaced at the thought. It was unlikely any Havenite flag officer would have required extra incentive to trash the task force if she could, especially after Eighth Fleet's unbroken string of victories. But knowing whose command they were about to hammer certainly wasn't going to make them any less eager to drive home their attack.

      "Missile defense Plan Romeo, Ma'am," Stackpole said. "Formation Charlie."

      "Defense only?" Michelle asked. "No orders to roll pods?"

      "No, Ma'am. Not yet."

      "Thank you."

Mám k vám dotaz a zkusím zde vytvořit anketu - chcete, abych já (nebo někdo) popisoval obsah každého snippetu v češtině tak jak to dělám u knihy By Schism Rent Asunder? V prvním příspěvku tohoto threadu nicméně budu vždy vystavovat aktuální texťák se všemi prozatím vydanými snippety - tak jako u BSRA.

edit: anketa vytvořena - je na začátku této stránky.

Prozatím vydané snippety (1 kousků poskládaných do jednoho txt-souboru): stáhnout

[mota]

Co sem zahlid nekde na baru tak by tenhle dil mel mit asi 295 000 slov.

[Muphrid]

Co sem zahlid nekde na baru tak by tenhle dil mel mit asi 295 000 slov.

Nechme se překvapit - doufám, že pozitivně .

[Johnak]

Mam dojem, ze SoS 2 opet zacne snem. Pokud se nemylim, tak tohle je presnej ustrizek s Henkeove bitvy v At All Costs. Mam dojem, ze za par stranek se s jekotem probudi, tak jako se probudil v jednicce Terechov.

[Muphrid]

Mam dojem, ze SoS 2 opet zacne snem. Pokud se nemylim, tak tohle je presnej ustrizek s Henkeove bitvy v At All Costs. Mam dojem, ze za par stranek se s jekotem probudi, tak jako se probudil v jednicce Terechov.

Přesně tak, bitva u Solonu byla v AAC a tohle je vskutku nejspíš sen...

[Johnak]

Zajimalo by me, jestli komander-porucik John Stackpole byl nejak inspirovan SF spisovatelem Michaelem A. Stackpolem... :-)

[Muphrid]

Zajimalo by me, jestli komander-porucik John Stackpole byl nejak inspirovan SF spisovatelem Michaelem A. Stackpolem... :-)

Vida, zajímavý postřeh . No je to možné, ale skutečnost zná asi jen MWW... Možná by to stálo za otázku na Baenu - poslední dobou je tam Mistr dost aktivní .

Jo - lidi, zkuste hodit hlas do té ankety nahoře, ať mám trošku přehled...

[Muphrid]

Subject: Re: question about StFtS
Group: Honorverse
Author: davidweber
Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 10:59:01 GMT
Local: Tue, 27 May 2008 06:59:01 -0400

The release month is indeed March 2009. Eric will begin snippeting . . . shortly.

[Johnak]

Vyyyborne. :-)

[Muphrid]

Takže už vyšly dva oficiální snippety - tady můžete odchytávat další

[Johnak]

On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 05:14:45 GMT Drak Bibliophile wrote:

STORM FROM THE SHADOWS - Snippet 03:

 

 

          The Havenite commander didn't wait for the task force's fire to reach him. In fact, he fired at almost the same instant Honor's first salvo launched against him, and whereas Task force Eighty-Two had fired just under three hundred missiles at him, he fired the next best thing to eleven thousand in reply.

 

          "Damn," Commander Manfredi said almost mildly as the enemy returned more than thirty-six missiles for each one TF 82 had just fired at him, then shook his head and glanced at Michelle. "Under normal circumstances, Ma'am, it's reassuring to work for a boss who's good at reading the other side's mind. Just this once, though, I really wish you'd been wrong."

 

          "You and I, both," Michelle replied. She studied the data sidebars for several seconds, then turned her command chair to face Stackpole.

 

          "Is it my imagination, John, or does their fire control seem just a bit better than it ought to be?"

 

          "I'm afraid you're not imagining things, Ma'am," Stackpole replied grimly. "It's a single salvo, all right, and it's going to come in as a single wave. But they've divided it into several 'clumps,' and the clumps appear to be under tighter control than I would have anticipated out of them. If I had to guess, I'd say they've spread them to clear their telemetry paths to each clump and they're using rotating control links, jumping back and forth between each group."

 

          "They'd need a lot more bandwidth than they've shown so far," Manfredi said. It wasn't a disagreement with Stackpole, only thoughtful, and Michelle shrugged.

 

          "Probably," she said. "But maybe not, too. We don't know enough about what they're doing to decide that."

 

          "Without it, they're going to be running the risk of completely dropping control linkages in mid-flight," Manfredi pointed out.

 

          "Probably," Michelle repeated. This was no time, she decided, to mention certain recent missile fire control developments Sonja Hemphill and BuWeaps were pursuing. Besides, Manfredi was right. "On the other hand," she continued, "this salvo is ten times the size of anything they've tried before, isn't it? Even if they dropped twenty-five or thirty percent of them, it would still be a hell of a lot heavier weight of fire."

 

          "Yes, Ma'am," Manfredi agreed, and smiled crookedly. "More of those bad solutions you were talking about before."

 

          "Exactly," Michelle said grimly as the oncoming torrent of Havenite missiles swept into the outermost counter-missile zone.

 

          "It looks like they've decided to target us this time, too, Ma'am," Stackpole said, and she nodded.

 

* * * * * * * * * *

 

          TF 82's opening missile salvo reached its target first.

 

          Unlike the Havenites, Duchess Harrington had opted to concentrate all of her fire on a single target, and Bogey Four's missile defenses opened fire as the Manticoran MDMs swept towards it. The Manticoran electronic warfare platforms scattered among the attack missiles carried far more effective penetration aids than anything the Republic of Haven had, but Haven's defenses had improved even more radically than Manticore's since the last war. They remained substantially inferior to the Star Kingdom's in absolute terms, but the relative improvement was still enormous, and the gap between TF 82's performance and what they could achieve was far narrower than it once would have been. Shannon Foraker's "layered defense" couldn't count on the same sort of accuracy and technological sophistication Manticore could produce, so it depended on sheer weight of fire, instead. And an incredible storm front of counter-missiles raced to meet the threat, fired from the starships' escorting LACs, as well as from the superdreadnoughts themselves. There was so much wedge interference that anything resembling precise control of all that defensive fire was impossible, but with so many counter-missiles in space simultaneously, some of them simply had to hit something.

 

          They did. In fact, they hit quite a few "somethings." Of the two hundred and eighty-eight MDMs Intolerant and Imperator had fired at RHNS Conquete, the counter-missiles killed a hundred and thirty-two, and then it was the laser clusters' turn. Each of those clusters had time for only a single shot each, given the missiles' closing speed. At sixty-two percent of light-speed, it took barely half a second from the instant they entered the laser clusters' range for the Manticoran laser heads to reach their own attack range of Conquete. But there were literally thousands of those clusters aboard the superdreadnoughts and their escorting Cimeterre-class light attack craft.

 

          Despite everything the superior Manticoran EW could do, Shannon Foraker's defensive doctrine worked. Only eight of TF 82's missiles survived to attack their target. Two of them detonated late, wasting their power on the roof of Conquetee's impenetrable impeller wedge. The other six detonated between fifteen and twenty thousand kilometers off the ship's port bow, and massive bomb-pumped lasers punched brutally through her sidewall.

 

          Alarms screamed aboard the Havenite ship as armor shattered, weapons -- and the men and women who manned them -- were wiped out of existence, and atmosphere streamed from Conquetee's lacerated flanks. But superdreadnoughts were designed to survive precisely that kind of damage, and the big ship didn't even falter. She maintained her position in Bogey Four's defensive formation, and her counter-missile launchers were already firing against TF 82's second salvo.

 

* * * * * * * * * *

 

          "It looks like we got at least a few through, Ma'am," Stackpole reported, his eyes intent as the studied the reports coming back from the FTL Ghost Rider reconnaissance platforms.

 

          "Good," Michelle replied. Of course, "a few" hits probably hadn't done a lot more than scratch their target's paint, but she could always hope, and some damage was a hell of a lot better than no damage at all. Unfortunately . . . .

 

          "And here comes their reply," Manfredi muttered. Which, Michelle thought, was something of an . . . understatement.

 

          Six hundred of the Havenite MDMs had simply become lost and wandered away, demonstrating the validity of Manfredi's prediction about dropped control links. But that was less than six percent of the total . . . which demonstrated the accuracy of Michelle's counterpoint.

 

          The task force's counter-missiles killed almost nine thousand of the missiles which didn't get lost, and the last-ditch fire of the task force's laser clusters and the Katana-class LACs killed nine hundred more.

 

          Which left "only" three hundred and seventy-two.

 

          Five of them attacked Ajax.

 

          Captain Diego Mikhailovic rolled ship, twisting his command further over onto her side relative to the incoming fire, fighting to interpose the defensive barrier of his wedge, and the sensor reach of his Keyhole platforms gave him a marked maneuver advantage, as well as improving his fire control. He could see threats more clearly and from a greater range, which gave him more time to react to them, and most of the incoming X-ray lasers wasted themselves against the floor of his wedge. One of the attacking missiles managed to avoid that fate, however. It swept past Ajax and detonated less than five thousand kilometers from her port sidewall.

 

          The battlecruiser twitched as two of the missile's lasers blasted through that sidewall. By the nature of things, battlecruiser armor was far thinner than superdreadnoughts could carry, and Havenite laser heads were heavier than matching Manticoran weapons as a deliberate compensation for their lower base accuracy. Battle steel shattered and alarms howled. Patches of ominous crimson appeared on the damage control schematics, yet given the original size of that mighty salvo, Ajax's actual damage was remarkably light.

 

          "Two hits, Ma'am," Stackpole announced. "We've lost Graser Five and a couple of point defense clusters, and Medical reports seven wounded."

 

          Michelle nodded. She hoped none of those seven crewmen were badly wounded. No one ever liked to take casualties, but at the same time, only seven -- none of them fatal, so far at least -- was an almost incredibly light loss rate.

 

          "The rest of the squadron?" she asked sharply.

 

          "Not a scratch, Ma'am!" Manfredi replied jubilantly from his own command station, and Michelle felt herself beginning to smile. But then --

 

          "Multiple hits on both SDs," Stackpole reported in a much grimmer voice, and Michelle's smile died stillborn. "Imperator's lost two or three grazers, but she's essentially intact."

 

          "And Intolerant?" Michelle demanded harshly when the ops officer paused.

 

          "Not good," Manfredi replied as the information scrolled across his display from the task force data net. "She must have taken two or three dozen hits . . . and at least one of them blew straight into the missile core. She's got heavy casualties, Ma'am, including Admiral Morowitz and most of his staff. And it looks like all of her pod rails are down."

 

          "The Flag is terminating the missile engagement, Ma'am," Stackpole said quietly.

 

          He looked up from his display to meet her eyes, and she nodded in bitter understanding. The task force's sustainable long-range firepower had just been cut in half. Not even Manticoran fire control was going to accomplish much at the next best thing to two light-minutes with salvoes the size a single SD(P) could throw, and Honor wasn't going to waste ammunition trying to do the impossible.

 

          Which, unfortunately, leaves the question of just what we are going to do wide open, doesn't it? she thought.

[Fox]

Tak jsem zase jednou zabloudil na bar a zjistil, SoS2 ma uz snipety do c. 10, ale hlavne je k nahledu i obalka.

[Johnak]

Ano, ja usilovne premyslel, jak ji sem postnout, ale neuspel jsem. :-)

Jinak, premyslim, ze sem budu kopirovat ty snippety, ale potreboval bych vedet, jestli to ma cenu. Protoze ti, co neumej anglicky stejne jeste necetli SoS a AAC, takze jim snippet (a treba jeho cesky popis) moc nerekne a ti co anglicky umej, tak si ten snippet muzou najit na strankach Erica Flinta. http://www.ericflint.net/

Co byste radi?

[Dalin]

No mě by se docela líbil český popis snipetu. Tak bych mohl elegantě zkontrolovat, zda jsem správně pochopil originál. Já se vždycky u snipetu k BSRA pobavím dvakrát, poprvé u originálu a podruhé když zjišťuju, že si Muf vymyslel něco navíc než v něm bylo .

Jinak už od pátku přemýšlím, jestli na té obálce je můstek solariánské lodi.