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The Fleet #2
Counter Attack
MAKING THE GALAXY SAFE FOR THE ALLIANCE AND MANKIND ... ONE WORLD AT A TIME
The second in the great military SF action series, with stories by the editors and other SF greats:
Piers Anthony
Mike Resnick
Christopher Stasheff
Janet Morris
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Janny Wurts
Jody Lynn Nye
Shariann Lewitt
Judith R. Conly
They're Pledged to Protect Us All
The soldiers of the Alliance come from different worlds, different cultures. But they share a common mission: to reclaim occupied space from the savage Khalian invaders. The ruthless aliens, armed with lasers and plasma cannon, have overrun our colonies with their warships, spies and slavers.
Now mankind is fighting back, searching for allies in lost human colonies, and for a shot at taking out the Khalian home world itself.
It’s a desperate mission of galactic seek-and-destroy. And even across a thousand light years, the best defense is still . . . THE FLEET!
Excerpt from "When the Devil Drives" by David Drake
Only a handful of Marines from each platoon was clear of the hampering trucks, but their fire converged on the Khalian vehicle from four directions. Tracers and sparks from bullet impacts flecked the target like a festival display —
Until Sienkiewicz’s second plasma bolt turned it into a fluorescent bubble collapsing in on itself.
One of the weasels was still alive. Maybe it’d been in the cab and shielded when the bolt struck the back of the van. Whatever the cause, the weasel was still able to charge toward Security headquarters, firing wild bursts from its machine pistol.
You expected the little bastards to be tough, but this one was something special. Kowacs himself put four rounds into the Khalian’s chest, but it had to be shot to doll rags by the concentrated fire of a dozen rifles before what was left finally collapsed . . .
The second in the great military SF action series, with stories by the editors and other SF greats:
Piers Anthony
Mike Resnick
Christopher Stasheff
Janet Morris
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Janny Wurts
Jody Lynn Nye
Shariann Lewitt
Judith R. Conly
They're Pledged to Protect Us All
The soldiers of the Alliance come from different worlds, different cultures. But they share a common mission: to reclaim occupied space from the savage Khalian invaders. The ruthless aliens, armed with lasers and plasma cannon, have overrun our colonies with their warships, spies and slavers.
Now mankind is fighting back, searching for allies in lost human colonies, and for a shot at taking out the Khalian home world itself.
It’s a desperate mission of galactic seek-and-destroy. And even across a thousand light years, the best defense is still . . . THE FLEET!
Excerpt from "When the Devil Drives" by David Drake
Only a handful of Marines from each platoon was clear of the hampering trucks, but their fire converged on the Khalian vehicle from four directions. Tracers and sparks from bullet impacts flecked the target like a festival display —
Until Sienkiewicz’s second plasma bolt turned it into a fluorescent bubble collapsing in on itself.
One of the weasels was still alive. Maybe it’d been in the cab and shielded when the bolt struck the back of the van. Whatever the cause, the weasel was still able to charge toward Security headquarters, firing wild bursts from its machine pistol.
You expected the little bastards to be tough, but this one was something special. Kowacs himself put four rounds into the Khalian’s chest, but it had to be shot to doll rags by the concentrated fire of a dozen rifles before what was left finally collapsed . . .
311 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1988
7 people are currently reading
175 people want to read
About the author
David Drake
306 books886 followersDavid Drake is an American author of science fiction and fantasy literature. A Vietnam War veteran who has worked as a lawyer, he is now one of the major authors of the military science fiction genre.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 24, 2022
Tome 2 de la série The fleet
Lu en anglais.
La série The fleet (6 tomes) est une anthologie de science-fiction militaire pilotée par David Drake et Bill Fawcett, comportant des nouvelles, de différents auteurs, et portant sur les affrontements entre L'alliance, une confédération de planètes, et les Khalians, des espèces de belettes hypertrophiées de 4 pieds (1 m 30). L'Alliance est en proie à des attaques, du piratage et de la prise d'esclaves, et ces attaques prennent de plus en plus d'ampleur jusqu'à menacer la flotte et l'Alliance toute entière. Plus on en apprend, plus on fait des découvertes qui ne semble pas coller; les Khalians en étant à l'ère pré-industrielle jusqu'à récemment et ont une connaissance très rudimentaire de la science et de la technologie; d'où vient donc leur flotte ? De plus, ils se battent avec une sauvagerie sans nom, jusqu'à combattre littéralement avec dents et griffes et ne se rendent jamais.
Les nouvelles varient de niveau en fonction de l'histoire et de l'auteur. On y trouve des batailles de marines en armure de combat, des prisonniers de guerre, des traitres, des chefs incompétents, des colonies retournées à la barbarie, des batailles spatiales, des ennemis qui se respectent, des humains dont l'apparence a bifurqué avec les millénaires (et la génétique), etc.
Cela donne un ensemble assez plaisant, même s'il est quelquefois inconsistant. Rien de super, mais une lecture tout de même agréable.
En conclusion, j'ai aimé.
Lu en anglais.
La série The fleet (6 tomes) est une anthologie de science-fiction militaire pilotée par David Drake et Bill Fawcett, comportant des nouvelles, de différents auteurs, et portant sur les affrontements entre L'alliance, une confédération de planètes, et les Khalians, des espèces de belettes hypertrophiées de 4 pieds (1 m 30). L'Alliance est en proie à des attaques, du piratage et de la prise d'esclaves, et ces attaques prennent de plus en plus d'ampleur jusqu'à menacer la flotte et l'Alliance toute entière. Plus on en apprend, plus on fait des découvertes qui ne semble pas coller; les Khalians en étant à l'ère pré-industrielle jusqu'à récemment et ont une connaissance très rudimentaire de la science et de la technologie; d'où vient donc leur flotte ? De plus, ils se battent avec une sauvagerie sans nom, jusqu'à combattre littéralement avec dents et griffes et ne se rendent jamais.
Les nouvelles varient de niveau en fonction de l'histoire et de l'auteur. On y trouve des batailles de marines en armure de combat, des prisonniers de guerre, des traitres, des chefs incompétents, des colonies retournées à la barbarie, des batailles spatiales, des ennemis qui se respectent, des humains dont l'apparence a bifurqué avec les millénaires (et la génétique), etc.
Cela donne un ensemble assez plaisant, même s'il est quelquefois inconsistant. Rien de super, mais une lecture tout de même agréable.
En conclusion, j'ai aimé.
December 12, 2023
An interesting installment of the shared-universe, military sci-fi series in that I didn't walk away thinking much about the primary conflict. The Khalians are around and are central to a couple of stories, but the stories that stand out to me: "King of the Blue Planet," "Soft Like a Woman," and "Durga Hajit" are scarcely concerned with them. Maybe that's just a combination of coincidence and personal preference, but I am always interested in how authors deal with the pressure not to expand on the primary through line too much when they're sharing storytelling responsibilities. Do they take it easy on the Khalian storylines so as not to overstep. I'm not exactly blazing through this series, but I'll try to keep this theory in mind when I get to the subsequent anthologies.
March 6, 2014
picked this up for free. quirky little set of space-marines-fight-aliens stories. Quite good actually. Haven't yet managed to track down it's predecessor or sequel, though. The NY Library seems to have lost their copy of the first one... and it wasn't quite good enough to send me out to the central queens library to hunt up another possible copy.
February 5, 2016
Interesting shared world storyline. Nice SiFi background universe. Good selection of stories and writers. Recommended
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews