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John Ringo - Voyage 02 - Vorpal Blade (with Travis S. Taylor) (ARC) PDF

353 Pages·2016·1.25 MB·English
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Preview John Ringo - Voyage 02 - Vorpal Blade (with Travis S. Taylor) (ARC)

Vorpal Blade Advance Reader Copy Unproofed John Ringo &Travis S. Taylor JOIN THE INAUGURAL BALL Behold the Vorpal Blade: humanity's first FTL ship, cobbled together with alien technology and the kind of engineering intuition, grit and ingenuity that only humans can provide. Crewed by the best and brightest…warrior nerds. Commanded by smart-mouthing, gun-toting, swashbuckling…scientists. Given teeth with a special ops contingent that can simultaneously obliterate alien monstrosities and save extraterrestrial civilizations precisely because they can tell the difference between a fermion and a boson. Cover Art by Kurt Miller First printing, September 2007 ISBN-13: 978-A1-4165-2129-7 ISBN-10: A1-4165-2129-1 Copyright© 2007 CONTENTS Dedication 1 A Plate of XXXX@ vhysw a7msyulh kreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrku with a Side of Muons. Please 2 Welcome to the Space Marines, Please Keep Your Hands and Feet Away From the Monsters 3 Old Friends, Same Problems 4 Fear the Pink 5 The SSBN Blage 6 Rule Thirty-Two: Never Trust an Adar with Acronyms 7 Rule Thirty-Three: Never Let a Fighter Pilot Drive 8 Taste the Soprano 9 We're HOW FAR Off Course? 10 Interesting is a Word with So Many Connotations 11 Turn Right and Straight On . . 12 There's One In Every Unit 13 Semper Fi Ad Astra 14 Excursions and Alarums 15 Many MANY Connotations 16 Under Pressure 17 Is That Like Space Cadet? 18 You Don't Have To Be Faster Than the Lion 19 Never Talk About Romantic Plans 20 Gargala-WHAT? 21 It's NOT Two-Gun Mojo. It's NOT 22 Good Vibrations 23 A Voice as Stern as Conscience 24 "From the Forest Moon of 61 Cygni Alpha Five" Doesn't Scan 25 The Frumious Neenion 26 Define "Demon" 27 You Want Us to What? 28 The Lady She's a Mother 29 Now You Think of That 30 Okay, So Sometimes It Is Two-Gun Mojo 31 Could Be Worse, Could Have Been Us 32 Is This a Good Time to Panic? 33 We Got Bandits! 34 Beachhead 35 Stand My Ground Stand my ground, I won't give in no more denying, I've got to face it won't close my eyes and hide the truth inside if I don't make it, someone else will stand my ground. " Stand My Ground" Within Temptation 36 This One Time Off Cygnus Alpha . . Epilogue Heart of a Dragon Afterword On Writing Science Fiction On the Particle Physics in This Work of Fiction Fermions: Bosons: Dedication To Bob Heinlein, Andre Norton, Doc Smith, Isaac Asimov, AE van Vogt and all the rest of the greats who sparked a young man's imagination. And to Jim Baen, for giving us both the chance to pay it forward. Last As Always: For Captain Tamara Long, USAF Born: 12 May 1979 Died: 23 March 2003, Afghanistan You fly with the angels now. 1 A Plate of XXXX@ vhysw a7msyulh kreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrku with a Side of Muons. Please. "You think I should hit the order again?" Bill said, looking over at the kitchen. Service in Adar restaurants was proverbially slow but this was ridiculous. He and Sal had sent in their orders over thirty minutes ago and still they didn't even have their drinks. Lieutenant Commander William "Doc" Weaver, RN, Ph.D., wasn't really happy about the lunch anyway. He'd known Sal Weinstein back when they both worked for Columbia Defense so when Sal called and asked if he was doing anything for lunch, he'd thought it was just a social call. He should have guessed that Sal, whom he hadn't spoken to in two years, wasn't going to drive down to Norfolk to chat. "Won't work," Sal said, shrugging. "But go ahead if it makes you happy. Now, about the server . . ." Bill flipped open the menu and hit the entry for glangi with extra melaegl sauce. The thing didn't even flash. He'd already ordered with this menu. One menu, one order. No tickee, no laundry. "It's a damned Microsoft Vavala server with some code thrown on top," Bill replied, hitting the entry again. The restaurant wasn't particularly crowded and now he knew why. Some of the Adar had started to catch on that humans didn't take four hours for lunch. Clearly the family unit running this place were right out of the Glass. "We've got top Adar working on it," Sal argued. "Top Adar." "You've got Fazglim and Dulaul," Bill said, not looking up. "Who are the only Adar I've ever met who fall into the description of credit-whores. And neither one of them knows diddly maulk about server tech. Fazglim's a natural processes philo and Dulaul is a micro-actions philo. So you're telling me you've got the best server on the market because you happen to have a tame biologist and quantum physicist who are willing to sign off on it. It's an MS Vav, which is one of the buggiest one servers in the world, with code from Col-Gomo programming thrown on top. And that makes it buggier. Come on, Sal, don't try to snow me. I know Adar tech. I work with it every damned day." The problem was, since the opening of the Looking Glasses, the whole world, and especially Wall Street, had gone nuts over Adar. Adar tech was light years ahead of human, but it wasn't magic. And a lot of stuff that was sold as being "Adar technology" was anything but. The Adar had been a philosophical race when they encountered humans. Which meant they were about as resistant to marketing as Native Americans to disease. So more and more of them were emigrating to Earth where "everything was prettier." And, by and large, they could command immense salaries because if a company had an Adar, even if the male, female or transfer neuter was the training equivalent of a janitor, they could say they had an Adar working on their technology. Bill had fallen for that scam exactly once, an "Adar-tech" shampoo substitute. Basically, it was a comb you were supposed to use in the shower to wash your hair. Guaranteed to do miraculous things for your entire head region. He was still trying to grow the hair back. He had to admit that there was some great stuff out there that was derived from real Adar technology. Forget brushing your teeth, all you had to do was pop a Nanobrush ™ capsule, crunch it in your teeth and not only did your teeth turn lily-white but you didn't have to worry about halitosis for twelve hours. Then there was the entire electronic tech revolution. . . . "Wait, got a call," Sal said, holding up his hand to the back of his head. "Yeah, Joe, Sal . . . That's great man . . ." Implants, though . . . Jeeze. Back when they were the "killer app," Doc had thought BlackBerry was a pain in the ass. The only way you could tell the difference between a raving street-guy and a raving corporate attorney was the quality of clothing and that one had a flashing blue thing in his ear. But since implants had hit the market, people really did hear voices. Now you couldn't tell the difference at all. Of course, he was wearing a VeriNthal ear piece, which gave him pretty much the same look as an implant wearer. But you could at least see the damned earring. He hit the menu again and was amazed to see an Adar exit the door to the restaurant's kitchens, bearing a massive platter. That was the other thing about Adar cooking. The Adar approached their two daily meals with religious reverence. The most undertrained neuter home-cook had more passion for cuisine than a cordon bleu chef. Each meal had to be both satisfying and a work of art. They were worse than the Japanese about it. So while Bill would have been perfectly satisfied with a platter of glangi noodles, what he got instead was a half a dozen dishes. Condiments, sides, little

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