Читать онлайн «The Morcai Battalion»
Автор Palmer Diana
The Morcai Battalion
Susan Kyle
“A high-octane and gritty space adventure. ”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on The Morcai Battalion
The Morcai Battalion
The galaxy is on the brink of disaster, the long-awaited truce torn apart by an unprovoked attack. The colony whose residents represented more than a hundred planets has been destroyed, and the new vision for unity in the universe is at risk. Faced with a war that would mean destruction and chaos, one man has stepped forward to lead those fighting for their lives. Undeterred by insurmountable odds, his courage inspires a team—the Morcai Battalion—to battle for the cause of peace…and love.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Glossary
1
Children were crying all around the chief exobiologist of the SSC starship Bellatrix and the woman in her green Terravegan uniform wanted to cry with them. In ten years with the Tri-Fleet’s Strategic Space Command, Lieutenant Commander Madeline Ruszel had never seen such wanton slaughter.
Terramer had been a trial peace colony in the New Territory of the galaxy, populated by clones of races representing one hundred twenty federated planets. A Rojok squadron had managed to reduce it to a smoldering ball of dust in a matter of minutes. An unprovoked attack against a defenseless continent of colonists. A dream of peace gone black in the sleep of treachery. She glared at the turmoil around her. The legendary code of ethics of the Rojok field marshal, Chacon, had gone up in smoke, along with ten million colonists.
She finished the sutures in a quick cytoplasm job on a young Jebob national and gave him a reassuring smile while she checked his vital signs with the bionic mediscanner built into the creamy flesh of her wrist.
The scanner, standard SSC issue, contained its own diagnostic tools, medication synthesizer and modem. Her patient’s thin, blue-skinned face tried to return the smile, but even her strongest painkillers hadn’t assuaged the agony of the massive radiation burns on his young body.She stood up and eyed her medic teams. “Let’s speed it up!” she called to them, brushing a long strand of auburn hair away from her sweaty temple. “I want this group of pilgrims evacuated in ten minutes!”
She avoided the pressured glares of her team. “I know, I know,” she murmured, “what do you think we are, a bunch of bloody magicians?”
They were working against time trying to patch up what few survivors the shoot-and-strafe air attack had left. Human and alien children wept softly in a nightmare chorus, looking for parents they’d never see again. The children, she thought, were the worst. The radiation was most damaging to young flesh, and of a kind the Rojoks hadn’t used in the early days of the warfare. It was highly resistant to conventional treatment.
She joined Dr. Strick Hahnson at the prefab communications dome that the engineering squad had assembled in minutes, and leaned wearily against the transparent hyperglas.
