Starstrike: Task Force Mars - Task Force Mars

Informationen zum Autor Kevin Dockery and Douglas Niles Klappentext An elite squadron of space commandos battles against the deadliest dangers the galaxy has to offer! in this second novel of an action-packed! military science fiction series. One: Weigh Out   Master Chief Petty Officer Rafael Ruiz was more than mildly irritated by the need to conduct another six-hour training regimen without even a break for a hot meal, let alone a catnap. After all, he had been outside the SATSTAR1 station for the last ten hours, enclosed in his suit, breathing bottled air and watching his men go through the paces of a weightless/vacuum survival drill. The six SEALS had passed with flying colors and were floating toward the mess hall and then their bunks, but the chief had to take one more man outside and check him off the list.   But verbal displays of selfish displeasure were for lesser mortals than master chiefs, and so Ruiz carefully replenished the air supply for his breather and the mobility jets on his suit again, double-checking all the connections for his life support pod. The Mark III Survival Suit/Vacuum/Military was a marvel of engineering, but it wasn’t exactly a pair of silk pajamas. It weighed more than a hundred pounds at 1 G—and though they were working in a weightless environment, the suit, like everything else up here, retained every ounce of mass when it came to moving it or stopping it from moving.   The suit was triple-lined with layers of rubber, plastic, and metal foil. Even so, it was thin and supple, riding close to the skin and not restrictive of movement. The gloves allowed the fingers an amazing degree of dexterity so that a man could flip a coin or—more to the point with SEALS training—operate the trigger and reload the magazine of a small handheld weapon without fumbling. A utility belt around the waist offered attachment points for a dozen tools and weapons, and the helmet was titanium around the back of the skull but had a full hemisphere of transparent Plexiglas at the front, allowing for complete peripheral vision.   The suit had plenty of high-tech augmentation, too. It had a self-contained breather, of course, with enough air for some twelve hours of sealed operation. Also, the air bottles could be changed easily without removing the suit; they could even be swapped out in a vacuum environment without danger to the wearer. There were several sensors built into the suit, including full life support readouts that provided the wearer’s blood pressure, heart rate, and other vital signs. It could detect external radiation, analyze air quality and pressure (or the lack thereof), and provide all the data on a heads-up display (HUD) that projected onto the interior of the visor for easy reading. The data also could be accessed by someone else and was reported on a small LED on the chest. A full-function computer was worn on the wrist, with a link to the HUD and a small screen and keyboard on the unit.   An additional and innovative feature of the suit was the individual mobility system, which allowed the wearer to move through a weightless environment. The IMS consisted of small adjustable nozzles at the hips, shoulders, and feet. By bleeding off a very small amount of the air supply, the wearer could use that released pressure as propulsion. If he began to drift away from his ship, for example, he theoretically could shoot himself right back with a few bursts of air. Of course, an inherent liability of that system was the fact that the more moving around a SEALS did with the IMS, the less air he had to breathe. All SEALS needed to check out with this controlled personal space suit, but Ruiz was not a big fan of the system. Several times during training it had resulted in dangerous leaks that had required a trainee to make a quick return to the station air lock before his emergency backup tank ran out of air. Ten minutes may sound like a lot of t...

Product details

• Authors: Kevin Dockery, Kevin/ Niles Dockery, Douglas Niles
• Publisher: Del Rey
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 29.05.2007
• EAN: 9780345490414
• ISBN: 978-0-345-49041-4
• No. of pages: 304
• Dimensions: 109 mm x 172 mm x 21 mm
• Series: Starstrike; Starstrike
• Subject: Fiction > Science fiction, fantasy