Terrorism. Acts of Oppression. The threat of nuclear war. What if one madman aboard a vessel could end these fears forever?
Commander Rochelle "Rocky" Jackson is aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan when the "unsinkable" naval vessel and its entire fleet are attacked from the depths and sunk. As Rocky struggles to stay alive, a monstrous mechanical steel stingray surfaces, plowing the seas it now commands.
The Goliath: A nuclear submarine Rocky helped design almost a decade ago, a top secret DoD project canceled when the schematics were destroyed by her former fiancé and U.S. Army Ranger, Gunnar Wolfe. Powered by its five jet-pump propulsors and hydrodynamically shaped to be virtually undetectable under water, the sub has one more feature that separates it from all other vessels on the open seas: SORCERESS -its biochemical computer brain.
Washington D.C.: Rocky learns that the Goliath's plans were not destroyed but secretly sold to the Chinese. Having constructed the $8 billion dollar warship, the Chinese become victims themselves when the sub is hijacked by the project director, Simon Bela Covah, a computer genius who once served under Rocky's command at the Navy's Undersea Warfare Center. The attack on the carrier fleet indicates that Covah is hunting down warships in an attempt to arm himself with nuclear weapons. The president appoints Rocky's father, General Michael "Bear" Jackson, to locate and destroy the Goliath. Against Rocky's wishes, Bear decides they will need Gunnar Wolfe's help. Gunnar, who has served five years in Leavenworth for espionage, is not exactly thrilled to be rejoining the people who ruined his life.
Aboard the Goliath: Simon Covah and his crew share a common bond: They are all victims of violence and oppression. Covah, a Russian, witnessed his Chechan wife and daughters brutally murdered at the hands of his own people as he was tortured. Now the computer genius has one mission: to rid the world of oppressive governments while forcing humanity to disarm.
To accomplish this, he plans on giving the world a real lesson in Armageddon.
Armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy North America, Covah issues his Declaration of Humanity to the world. If his demands are not met, consequences will be paid.
f0
Could the threat of violence forge a lasting peace?
But there is another player in this life-and-death chess match. Unbeknownst to the Goliath crew, SORCERESS has become self-aware.
And the computer is developing its own agenda...
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
**
From Publishers Weekly
Bestseller Alten's (Meg; Domain; etc.) latest near-future techno-thriller opens with a riveting burst of action an attack on an American aircraft carrier and its escorts by a rogue U.S. super-sub called Goliath ("the equivalent of an underwater Stealth bomber big, fast, and near impossible to detect"), which has been commandeered by Russian-born Simon Covah, a brilliant computer scientist who's bent on saving humanity by destroying nuclear stockpiles everywhere. If this scenario sounds improbable, the author's suspenseful, information-laden style makes it otherwise. Covah and his fanatical crew soon start making threats with the nuclear weapons that they retrieve from the remains of the U.S. fleet sunk by Goliath. Complications ensue when a lightning bolt jolts the sub's immensely powerful bio-engineered computer, Sorceress, into self-awareness … la Frankenstein's monster. Luckily, a couple of good guys are aboard to oppose the Nemo-ish Covah and the HAL-like Sorceress: U.S. Army Capt. Gunnar Wolfe, who served time in prison for trying to sabotage Goliath's production, and Gunnar's onetime sweetheart, gutsy Navy commander Rochelle "Rocky" Jackson. Tom Clancy fans will lap up the endless, repetitive heroics seasoned with jargon and acronym-filled dialogue, while others will appreciate the many blatant borrowings from classic SF novels and films. More seriously, Alten offers readers, particularly young adults, much to think about, morally and politically, in a world haunted by weapons capable of universal destruction.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Description:
Terrorism. Acts of Oppression. The threat of nuclear war.
What if one madman aboard a vessel could end these fears forever? Commander Rochelle "Rocky" Jackson is aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan when the "unsinkable" naval vessel and its entire fleet are attacked from the depths and sunk. As Rocky struggles to stay alive, a monstrous mechanical steel stingray surfaces, plowing the seas it now commands. The Goliath: A nuclear submarine Rocky helped design almost a decade ago, a top secret DoD project canceled when the schematics were destroyed by her former fiancé and U.S. Army Ranger, Gunnar Wolfe. Powered by its five jet-pump propulsors and hydrodynamically shaped to be virtually undetectable under water, the sub has one more feature that separates it from all other vessels on the open seas: SORCERESS -its biochemical computer brain. Washington D.C.: Rocky learns that the Goliath's plans were not destroyed but secretly sold to the Chinese. Having constructed the $8 billion dollar warship, the Chinese become victims themselves when the sub is hijacked by the project director, Simon Bela Covah, a computer genius who once served under Rocky's command at the Navy's Undersea Warfare Center. The attack on the carrier fleet indicates that Covah is hunting down warships in an attempt to arm himself with nuclear weapons. The president appoints Rocky's father, General Michael "Bear" Jackson, to locate and destroy the Goliath. Against Rocky's wishes, Bear decides they will need Gunnar Wolfe's help. Gunnar, who has served five years in Leavenworth for espionage, is not exactly thrilled to be rejoining the people who ruined his life. Aboard the Goliath: Simon Covah and his crew share a common bond: They are all victims of violence and oppression. Covah, a Russian, witnessed his Chechan wife and daughters brutally murdered at the hands of his own people as he was tortured. Now the computer genius has one mission: to rid the world of oppressive governments while forcing humanity to disarm. To accomplish this, he plans on giving the world a real lesson in Armageddon.
Armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy North America, Covah issues his Declaration of Humanity to the world. If his demands are not met, consequences will be paid.
f0
Could the threat of violence forge a lasting peace?
But there is another player in this life-and-death chess match. Unbeknownst to the Goliath crew, SORCERESS has become self-aware. And the computer is developing its own agenda... At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied. **
From Publishers Weekly
Bestseller Alten's (Meg; Domain; etc.) latest near-future techno-thriller opens with a riveting burst of action an attack on an American aircraft carrier and its escorts by a rogue U.S. super-sub called Goliath ("the equivalent of an underwater Stealth bomber big, fast, and near impossible to detect"), which has been commandeered by Russian-born Simon Covah, a brilliant computer scientist who's bent on saving humanity by destroying nuclear stockpiles everywhere. If this scenario sounds improbable, the author's suspenseful, information-laden style makes it otherwise. Covah and his fanatical crew soon start making threats with the nuclear weapons that they retrieve from the remains of the U.S. fleet sunk by Goliath. Complications ensue when a lightning bolt jolts the sub's immensely powerful bio-engineered computer, Sorceress, into self-awareness … la Frankenstein's monster. Luckily, a couple of good guys are aboard to oppose the Nemo-ish Covah and the HAL-like Sorceress: U.S. Army Capt. Gunnar Wolfe, who served time in prison for trying to sabotage Goliath's production, and Gunnar's onetime sweetheart, gutsy Navy commander Rochelle "Rocky" Jackson. Tom Clancy fans will lap up the endless, repetitive heroics seasoned with jargon and acronym-filled dialogue, while others will appreciate the many blatant borrowings from classic SF novels and films. More seriously, Alten offers readers, particularly young adults, much to think about, morally and politically, in a world haunted by weapons capable of universal destruction.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Captain Nemo marries the Bride of Frankenstein in this knockoff of Jules Verne's classic adventure tale, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. In 1998, a Department of Defense secret project code-named Goliath, concerned with building a nuclear-powered stealth submarine with a biochemical brain, is sabotaged and its research stolen. Ten years later, a lone manta ray-shaped sub attacks the U.S. Navy's most powerful aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan , sending the supercarrier and all her escort ships to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. It's the Goliath , armed with nuclear weapons and under the control of a DNA-based computer named Sorceress, determined to destroy humanity and re-create it in her own image. A technothriller departure for Alten, whose earlier books featured rampaging prehistoric sharks ( Meg, 1997, and The Trench, 1999) and psychic alien invaders ( Domain, 2001), this book is full of exotic weapons systems, bloody gore, military acronyms, and scientific jargon that Tom Clancy fans will devour. A somewhat derivative "crazy computer" story that is, nevertheless, an exciting read. Michael Gannon
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