Conquerors' Pride (The Conquerors Saga, Band 1) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 3: The Conquerors Saga

Zahn, Timothy

 
9780553568929: Conquerors' Pride (The Conquerors Saga, Band 1)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0553568922 ISBN 13: 9780553568929
Verlag: Random House Worlds, 1994

Inhaltsangabe

Timothy Zahn, Hugo Award-winning author of The New York Times best-selling Star Wars trilogy, blazes a spectacular new path across the sky in an epic original novel of star-spanning action adventure, mystery and intrigue.  A long era of peace and prosperity in the interstellar Commonwealth has suddenly come to an end.  Four alien starships of unknown origin have attacked, without provocation, an eight-ship Peacemaker task force, utterly destroying it in six savage minutes.  The authorities claim there were no survivors.  But Lord Stewart Cavanaugh, a former member of Parliament, has learned through back channels that one man may have survived to be captured by the aliens:  his son, Commander Pheylan Cavanaugh.  A large-scale invasion appears imminent, and the strictest security measures are in effect . . . measures that Lord Cavanaugh has no choice but to defy.  He recruits Adam Quinn, who once flew with the elite Copperheads--fighter pilots whose minds are literally one with their machines--to rescue his son.  Quinn assembles a crack force of Copperheads to steal out of the Commonwealth security zone and snatch Pheylan Cavanaugh from the conquerors.  Depending on the outcome, Quinn and his men will retum home as heroes or as the galaxy's most despised traitors--if they come home at all.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Timothy Zahn is the author of more than forty novels, nearly ninety short stories and novellas, and four short-fiction collections. In 1984, he won the Hugo Award for Best Novella. Zahn is best known for his Star Wars novels (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, Specter of the Past, Vision of the Future, Survivor’s Quest, Outbound Flight, Allegiance, Choices of One, and Scoundrels), with more than four million copies of his books in print. Other books include the Cobra series, the Quadrail series, and the young adult Dragonback series. Zahn has a B.S. in physics from Michigan State University and an M.S. from the University of Illinois. He lives with his family on the Oregon coast.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Timothy Zahn, Hugo Award-winning author of "The New York Times best-selling "Star Wars trilogy, blazes a spectacular new path across the sky in an epic original novel of star-spanning action adventure, mystery and intrigue. A long era of peace and prosperity in the interstellar Commonwealth has suddenly come to an end. Four alien starships of unknown origin have attacked, without provocation, an eight-ship Peacemaker task force, utterly destroying it in six savage minutes. The authorities claim there were no survivors. But Lord Stewart Cavanaugh, a former member of Parliament, has learned through back channels that one man may have survived to be captured by the aliens: his son, Commander Pheylan Cavanaugh. A large-scale invasion appears imminent, and the strictest security measures are in effect . . . measures that Lord Cavanaugh has no choice but to defy. He recruits Adam Quinn, who once flew with the elite Copperheads--fighter pilots whose minds are literally one with their machines--to rescue his son. Quinn assembles a crack force of Copperheads to steal out of the Commonwealth security zone and snatch Pheylan Cavanaugh from the conquerors. Depending on the outcome, Quinn and his men will retum home as heroes or as the galaxy's most despised traitors--if they come home at all.

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1
 
They were there, all right, exactly where the tachyon wake-trail pickup on Dorcas had projected they would be: four ships, glittering faintly in the starlight of deep space, blazing with infrared as they dumped the heat that zero-point energy friction had generated during their trip. They were small ships, probably no bigger than Procyon-class; milky white in color, shaped like thick hexagonal slabs of random sizes attached to each other at random edges.
 
Alien as hell.
 
“Scan complete, Commodore,” the man at the Jutland’s sensor station reported briskly. “No other ships registering.”
 
“Acknowledged,” Commodore Trev Dyami said, flexing his shoulders beneath his stiffly starched uniform tunic and permitting himself a slight smile as he gazed at the main display. Alien ships. The first contact with a new self-starfaring race in a quarter of a century.
 
And it was his. All his. Trev Dyami and the Jutland would be the names listed in the Commonwealth’s news reports and, eventually, in its history books.
 
Warrior’s luck, indeed.
 
He turned to the tactics station, fully aware that everything he said and did from this point on would be part of that history-book listing. “What’s the threat assessment?” he asked.
 
“I estimate point one to point four, sir,” the tactics officer reported. “I don’t find any evidence of fighter ejection tubes or missile ports.”
 
“They’ve got lasers, though, Commodore,” the tactics second put in. “There are clusters of optical-discharge lenses on the leading edges of each ship.”
 
“Big enough to be weapons?” the exec asked from Dyami’s side.
 
“Hard to tell, sir,” the other said. “The lenses themselves are pretty small, but that by itself doesn’t mean much.”
 
“What about power output?” Dyami asked.
 
“I don’t know, sir,” the sensor officer said slowly. “I’m not getting any leakage.”
 
“None?”
 
“None that I can pick up.”
 
Dyami exchanged glances with the exec. “Superconducting cables,” the exec hazarded. “Or else just very well shielded.”
 
“One or the other,” Dyami agreed, looking back at the silent shapes floating in the middle of the main display. Not only a self-starfaring race, but one with a technology possibly beyond even humanity’s. That history-book listing was getting longer and more impressive by the minute.
 
The exec cleared his throat. “Are we going to open communications, sir?” he prodded.
 
“It’s that or just sit here staring at each other,” Dyami said dryly, throwing a quick look at the tactical board. The rest of the Jutland’s eight-ship task force was deployed in his designated combat formation, their crews at full battle stations. The two skitter-sized watchships were also in position, hanging well back where they would be out of danger if this meeting stopped being peaceful. The Jutland’s own Dragonfly defense fighters were primed in their launch tubes, ready to be catapulted into battle at an instant’s notice.
 
Everything was by-the-book ready…and it was time to make history. “Lieutenant Adigun, pull up the first-contact comm package,” Dyami ordered the comm officer. “Get it ready to run. And alert all ships to stand by.”
 
--
 
“Signal from the Jutland, Captain,” Ensign Hauver reported from the Kinshasa’s bridge comm station. “They’re getting ready to transmit the first-contact package across to our bogies.”
 
Commander Pheylan Cavanagh nodded, his eyes on the linked-hexagon ships in the bridge display. “How long will it take?”
 
“Oh, they can run the first chunk through in anywhere from five to twenty minutes,” Hauver said. “The whole package can take up to a week to transmit. Not counting breaks for the other side to try to figure out what we’re talking about.”
 
Pheylan nodded. “Let’s hope they’re not too alien to understand it.”
 
“Mathematics are supposed to be universal,” Hauver pointed out.
 
“It’s that ‘supposed to be’ I always wonder about,” Pheylan said. “Meyers, you got anything more on the ships themselves?”
 
“No, sir.” The sensor officer shook his head. “And to be honest, sir, I really don’t like this. I’ve run the infrared spectrum six ways from April, and it just won’t resolve. Either those hulls are made of something the computer and I have never heard of before, or else they’re deliberately skewing the emissions somehow.”
 
“Maybe they’re just shy,” Rico said. “What about those optical-discharge lenses?”
 
“I can’t get anything on those, either,” Meyers said. “They could be half-kilowatt comm lasers, half-gigawatt missile frosters, or anything in between. Without power-flux readings, there’s no way to tell.”
 
“That part bothers me more than the hull,” Rico said to Pheylan, his dark face troubled as he stared at the display. “Putting that kind of massive shielding on their power lines tells me that they’re trying to hide something.”
 
“Maybe they’re just very efficient,” Meyers suggested.
 
“Yeah,” Rico growled. “Maybe.”
 
“There it goes,” Hauver spoke up. “Jutland’s running the pilot search signal. They’ve got a resonance—fuzzy, but it’s there.” He peered at his board. “Odd frequency, too. Must be using some really weird equipment.”
 
“We’ll get you a tour of their comm room when this is all over,” Pheylan said.
 
“I hope so. Okay; there goes the first part of the package.”
 
“Lead bogie’s moving,” Meyers added. “Yawing a few degrees to port—”
 
And without warning a brilliant double flash of light lanced out from the lead alien ship, cutting across the Jutland’s bow. There was a burst of more diffuse secondary light as hull metal vaporized under the assault—
 
And the Kinshasa’s Klaxons blared with an all-force combat alert. “All ships!” Commodore Dyami’s voice snapped over the radio scrambler. “We’re under attack. Kinshasa, Badger, pull out to sideline flanking positions. All other ships, hold station. Fire pattern gamma-six.”
 
“Acknowledge, Hauver,” Pheylan ordered, staring at the display in disbelief. The aliens had opened fire. Unprovoked, unthreatened, they’d simply opened fire. “Chen Ki, pull us out to sideline position. Ready starboard missile tubes for firing.”
 
“How do we key them?” Rico asked, his fingers skating across his tactical setup board. “Proximity or radar?”
 
“Heat-seeking,” Pheylan told him, acceleration pressing him back into his chair as the Kinshasa began to move forward to its prescribed flanking position.
 
“We’re too close to the other ships,” Rico objected. “We might hit one of them instead of the bogies.”
 
...

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Verlag
Random House Worlds
Erscheinungsdatum
1994
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553568922
ISBN 13 
9780553568929
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
416
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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