"Anderson, K.J. - Sky Captin and the World of Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Kevin J)

Ducking from the crashing battle that continued in the skies above the Flying Legion base, Dex strained to listen to the chatter from Sky Captain's radio. He could hear the shouts, the chase, the gunfire in the background.
With charts strewn all over the table, he marked point after point on the world map as the signals came in. His oscilloscope displayed converging patterns. Dex unwrapped another wad of bubble gum and nervously popped it into his mouth, just to calm himself.
"Tell me you got something, Dex!" Sky Captain's ragged voice came over the loudspeaker. "We're getting clobbered up here."
Meanwhile, the attacking batlike Wings bombarded the base's power station, and a surge of electricity shot out from the oscilloscope's control panel. Sparks flew, but Dex shunted circuits, trying to get the signal back. Muffled explosions and high-caliber gunfire rattled the main hangar. Gaps of smoke-stained sky shone through holes in the corrugated roof.
"It's no picnic down here either, Cap," he shouted into the microphone. "Hang in there. We've almost got it."

* * *

Sky Captain and Polly continued down the one-way street after the primary Wing, desperate not to lose its tracking signal. The three pursuing Wings closed in behind the P-40, only a few plane lengths to the rear.
Unexpectedly, the primary Wing backflapped its metal wings and plunged toward the street, intentionally stalled in the air. Sky Captain's Warhawk swept past, narrowly missing it. "Awww, a kid pilot's trick and I fell for it!"
Its feint successful, the primary Wing gathered itself and climbed back up, shooting furiously at the Warhawk's tail. Now four of the attacking craft hammered away at Sky Captain.
"At least we don't have to worry about losing the primary Wing now," Polly said. "He's right on our tail."
Sky Captain yelled into his microphone. "Dex!"
"Thirty seconds, Cap. That's all I need."
"Thirty seconds?" How could the young man sound so calm?
"Plus or minus..."
Polly leaned over Sky Captain's shoulder and grabbed the microphone out of his hand. Bullets pinged into the plane, sparking off the rudder and the fuselage. She clicked the transmit button. "Dex hon?"
"Yeah, Polly?" Dex answered, his voice bright.
"Hurry!"
Sky Captain snatched the microphone from her hand. "I'm going to lead them out over the water to try and buy us some time." He turned back to Polly, who looked breathless and overwhelmed in the back of the cockpit. "I tried to warn you. Still glad you came?"
Sky Captain pulled back on his flight stick as he rocketed through Times Square. The Warhawk shook and groaned as it shot high into the clouds, away from the streets of Manhattan.
Still firing, the Flying Wings closed in.

At the Legion's besieged base, searchlights scanned the heavens while shells exploded all around. The entire landing field and most of the hangars were ablaze as more batlike machines descended. The Flying Legion could barely hold its own as their planes circled and charged, guns blazing, in a desperate dogfight over their own turf.
With all the chaos, Dex had a hard time concentrating on his charts as technicians shouted out coordinates. "Thirty degrees, bearing zero zero five!"
Dex continued to mark lines on the map with a compass, pressing the point into the paper, sketching careful arcs. With each new coordinate, he drew the circle closer and closer to the vital position of the controlling signal.
Suddenly, a soot-stained Legion officer raced in, glancing from side to side until his gaze settled on Dex. "We can't hold them off any longer. We have to evacuate the base."
Dex stood his ground even as the building began to collapse around him. With a groan, a large chunk of the roof bent inward, dangling by a few ragged strips of metal. "Not yet. I'm almost there."
"There's no time, Dex! We have to go now!"
"Go ahead without me. I'm right behind you, but I don't intend to let Cap down."
Some of the technicians fled, while two remained at their stations, shouting out one more coordinate and then another, until Dex had isolated a tiny spot on the map. He drew an X through mountainous, barely charted terrain. "Got you!" Then he shouted into his microphone, "Joe, I found him! Joe!"
Dex's grin was short-lived as a massive explosion rocked the control room, a direct hit from one of the attacking Wings. He grabbed for the map, crinkling the paper in his fingers as he went flying. Everything spun, tumbled, crashed. He struck the cement floor hard, wincing as his ribs and shoulder absorbed the shock.
Shaking his head, Dex looked down to see that he still clutched a small piece of map he'd torn from the larger chart as he fell. At least it was the section with the X drawn on it.
As he listened to the roar of flames and collapsing debris all around him, Dex tried to move, but looked down to see that his leg was pinned under a pile of fallen concrete and steel. He pulled at his leg, but to no avail. Although the pain hadn't kicked in yet, he knew it would probably be a screamer. If only he'd finished building that antigravity generator...
With a deliberate scraping sound, something large and powerful tore a wider opening in the hangar wall. From outside, a smoky haze obscured details, but Dex could see the ominous shapes form as they strode closer. Unable to run, he propped himself up, staring.
The trim figure of a dark-robed woman wearing large opaque glasses stepped imperiously over the rubble. She looked around, her impenetrable lenses seeming to scan the hangar's smoky interior. Flanking her were two seven-foot-tall walking robots. Each had a bullet-shaped head, a wasp-thin waist, and a pair of steel tentacles for arms. The tentacle arms twitched and thrashed, throwing off sparks as they touched the fallen debris.
Though pinned under the collapsed wall, Dex searched the rubble for any way to defend himself. His eyes widened when he spied his new prototype ray gun lying only a few feet away. If the sonic atomizer could melt a hole through a thick plate of steel, he knew it would make short work of those mechanical men.
The mysterious woman saw him, then strode toward him.
Caught in the rubble, Dex strained to reach the ray gun, but his fingers only grazed it. Finally hooking a knuckle around one of the decorative fins, he drew the futuristic weapon closer. At last he scooped it into his hand, turned the emission nozzle toward the nearest of the two tentacled robots, and fired a volley of concentric shimmering energy rings.
The beam from the sonic atomizer slammed into the robot's midsection, and the metal armor of its torso glowed white-hot. Its tentacles flailed, throwing off wild sparks, and the walking robot slumped forward, dropping to the piles of rubble on the hangar floor, as dead as a machine could be.
"One down!" Dex turned to fire at the second walking robot, but it was too quick for him. Serpentine coils lashed out, wrapping around Dex's wrist, and a flash of pain made him drop the ray gun. Another steel-cable tentacle easily swept the heavy rubble aside, freeing Dex's leg. Then the robot wrapped a tentacle around his waist and lifted him into the air like a doll.
Dex struggled in vain, unable to wrest himself from the robot's grasp. The tentacles tightened. He looked at the torn map fragment in his hand, desperate. Wheels were turning in his head.

As he rocketed away from the city and out over the metal gray Atlantic, Sky Captain dodged another volley of machine gun fire. By now the flames from the damaged fuel line had gained strength, engulfing the plane's wing.
Swallowing hard, Polly looked out the back of the cockpit, then turned forward again. She scribbled furiously on her reporter's pad, mouthing the words out loud as she wrote them. "Six Flying Wings on... our... tail. Escape seemed... impossible. Outmanned. Outgunned. Hopeless..."
"Do you always have to write out loud?" Sky Captain yelled. "It's already hard enough to think around here!" The Warhawk took another hit and shuddered violently. Any other airplane would have been sky wreckage long before this; however, even with its specially installed systems, the P-40 could not endure such a pounding. "I can't outrun them much longer."
The Flying Wings continued to bombard their victim, and fire blanketed the entire left wing. Black smoke poured from the exhaust manifold, causing the plane to sputter, choke, and stall. Below, there was no way to escape, no place to land except the deep ocean.
"Hold on! They'll never expect this." Sky Captain unexpectedly shoved down on his flight stick, sending the Warhawk straight toward the choppy Atlantic. With one engine stalled, he had very little control left.
"Joe! What are you doing?" Polly peered through the windshield to see the ocean coming fast at them. "We're heading straight down. You'll kill us."