"Genesis" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

CHAPTER TEN

For the next few minutes Roy repaired Rick's downed machine while he briefed his friend on the secrets of operating Robotechnology.

"These Battloids are classified top secret," he finished, as he made the last reconnection. "And you've gotta trust me on this one: There is a reason for it." All the repair tackle had neatly withdrawn itself into the skull Battloid's huge body.

"There, that oughta do it," Roy said. "Now switch on energy and depress those foot pedals slowly, like I told you."

Rick did, and thought his way through the maneuver as Roy had instructed. He focused his mind's eye on the act of getting back to his feet; something at the other end of the helmet's pickups sensed and understood.

Carefully, Rick Hunter's red-trimmed Battloid levered itself up, gaining its feet to stand shoulder to shoulder with Roy's.

"That's it," Roy said. "See how easy it is?"

More than easy; it was exaltation. It felt as if there was a feedback or reciprocation mechanism in the control system; Rick felt as if he were the Battloid.

Several stories tall. Indestructible. Armed with the most advanced weapons the human race had developed. With the power of flight in a way that did indeed make the Mockingbird seem primitive, and metalshod fists capable of punching their way through a small mountain.

Rick drew a deep breath, dizzy with the feeling.

"That's it!" Roy encouraged. "See how easy it is?"

"Wow, you learn fast, don't you?" said a voice from street level over the battloid's external pickups.

Rick looked down at Minmei and Jason. He automatically guided the Robotech machine so that it leaned down toward the girl. "Thanks."

A voice from the distance-Minmei's Aunt Lena-called, "Minmei! Jason! Come on!"

Minmei waved up at Rick. "See you later! We're being evacuated!" She trotted off with Jason in tow, long, slim legs moving with unconscious grace.

Off the shore of Macross Island the breakers came in, crashed, and sent up high fountains of foam, and the waters pulled back to regroup yet again for their eternal assault on the beach.

But the next breaker brought a different kind of assault.

Zentraedi Battlepods launched straight up out of the water on their thrusters: scout versions, officer versions, and the standard models configured to carry a variety of heavy weapons and equipment.

Their biped design, the legs articulated backward, resembled that of an ostrich. They landed on the shore and began advancing in long leaps like monstrous kangaroos, sensors swinging for information, weapons ready for the kill. They arranged themselves in skirmish formation and covered miles in seconds.

Soon they loomed across a ridgeline, looking down on Macross City.

At Breetai's command post, the report was patched through. "The recon and Battlepods have landed, Commander. We're ready to attack."

Exedore's protruding, pinpoint-pupiled eyes swung to regard his lord. Breetai leaned to a communications pickup.

"Attention all gunnery crews! Prepare to give covering fire to the recon assault group."

The command "Ready All Guns" and subsidiary orders rang through the armada. The long muzzles were run out and ranged in. In their sights was Macross City.

"We better get moving, Rick," Roy told his friend. "We still have a war to fight."

"I'm still pretty unsure of myself with all these robot controls! I'm not ready for combat."

"Not robot; Robotech!" Roy corrected automatically. "Look, pull the control marked G, and we'll switch to Guardian configuration."

Rick complied, muttering, "What the heck is a Guardian? Here goes!"

As the Veritech shifted and mechamorphosed, converting to a bird of prey/war machine, Roy explained. "The Guardian controls operate almost exactly like those of the fighter plane. You can fly it without any problems."

"I've heard that before," Rick reminded him.

On a hill overlooking the city, the crowds waited to be admitted to the underground shelter system. Because of the dangerous nature of research and experimentation going on in the city and the fact that Macross would be a primary military target for any aggressor, the shelters had always had a high priority in the island's construction projects.

Minmei and her relatives were waiting fretfully with the thousands upon thousands of others. The emergency personnel were working as fast as they could, but moving the huge population underground was time-consuming at best.

The job facing the civil defense crews was overwhelming, and to top it off, many people had stopped in the foothills to try to find friends or relatives before moving below.

But that wasn't what made Minmei halt in midstep.

"My diary!" She had been keeping it since she was old enough to hold a pen, xeroreducing her writing so that each page held weeks of entries in a single, thick little volume. In it were all her thoughts, ideas, memories, stories, the lyrics for her songs, her poetry and secret longings, and the most important letter she'd ever received in her life-Minmei's diary was her life.

"I have to go back for it!"

"Don't be foolish, child!" Lena cried. "There is no going back." Jason watched wide-eyed; he was too young to have known Minmei before she'd come to live on Macross Island, but he already adored her.

Minmei ducked away from her aunt's restraining hands and avoided Uncle Max's effort to stop her. Older people just didn't understand!

"It won't take me a minute to get it, don't worry!" Then Minmei was off, gamine legs flying.

"Come back!" Aunt Lena moved to follow, but two CD workers, too late to restrain Minmei, blocked her way. Uncle Max and Jason and the others stood watching as Minmei's fleet figure disappeared down into the city. Over all loomed the fallen SDF-1, blocking the sun.

Breetai studied the fire-mission computer models. He gave a grudging nod of satisfaction.

"All guns standing by for bombardment, Commander Breetai," a tech reported.

"Good. Level everything in the path of the assault forces but be careful not to damage that battle fortress. I want to take it intact!" Once the Battlepods had established a beachhead, his plan could be implemented, and Zor's masterpiece would belong to the Zentraedi.

Then let the Robotech Masters beware! Breetai thought.

Lead elements of the armada opened fire; those farther back in the dense cloud of warships couldn't fire without the risk of hitting another Zentraedi vessel.

A torrent of alien bolts rained down like a hellish spring storm, in a kill-zone that encircled the dimensional fortress. Buildings seemed to melt like candles in a blast furnace, riddled by thousands of narrow, high-intensity beams, collapsing in clouds of plaster and concrete dust.

Death was everywhere among the CD teams, emergency personnel, antilooting squads, and others who'd bravely remained behind. Dying screams and the shrieks of the wounded rose on the bolt-splashed heat waves. Zentraedi Battlepods watched it all impassively from their vantage point: wingless, headless armored ostriches bristling with sensors and heavy weapons. The shelters and the masses waiting to enter them were noted, but those were of no importance; Breetai was only interested in the SDF-1.

"They're invading the city!" Rick yelled from his Guardian's cockpit. It was only by accident, he realized, that he'd crash-landed outside the kill-zone.

"Yeah; it looks like it was evacuated just in time," Roy said, surveying the blasted landscape from his higher vantage point in the Battloid.

He also had updates on the refugee situation and the various assembly points. "If you're worried about your girlfriend, we could go check on her."

Roy shifted to Guardian mode and showed Rick how it was done; the two Guardians skimmed away like jet-powered skaters, foot thrusters riding them on a blasting carpet mere inches off the ground, safe from most of the enemy fire.

"Do we have a fix on where that bombardment is coming from?" Gloval snapped.

"A fleet of spaceships, numbers uncertain but very, very high. In lunar orbit," Vanessa told him promptly.

Gloval rubbed his jaw. "Beyond the range of our missiles."

Lisa looked up from her monitors. "Captain, an alien assault force is approaching from the east, range eight miles."

It was her job and her prerogative, so she added, "We need air support, sir."

Gloval gave a quick nod that shook his cap a little. "Call for it."

The Zentraedi Battlepods leapt from the cliffs around the city and began their fast assault. They moved with the high speed and precision of advanced Robotechnology, hopping nimbly or skating quickly at ground level on their foot thrusters.

At the outskirts of the city they opened weapons ports and missile rack cover plates, then opened fire. Missiles left scorching, corkscrewing trails in the air, converging on SDF-1. Pulsed laser beams strobed and flicked at targets of opportunity.

The initial barrage met with strong defenses. Most of the missiles were jammed by ECM techs or intercepted by countermissiles; the beams were either repulsed by SDF-1's highly reflective surface or failed to do more than warm the great ship's armor at that range and in those atmospheric conditions. Still, the situation was about to get grim if Gloval couldn't change the tactical equations.

"This is SDF-1," Lisa transmitted calmly. "Attention all strike elements: We are under attack and need immediate assistance. Incoming Veritechs, switch to Battloid mode." The tac nets were silent; the situation seemed hopeless. Lisa considered the fact that, in spite of all the beliefs she'd embraced, perhaps humans weren't destined to rule Earth. Just then, Gloval played his hole card.

Through a sky crowded with spherical missile explosions, the Veritechs swooped with supreme confidence, dodging the intense ordnance eruptions all around them.

More VTs formed up on the lead formation. In seconds it was a gathering of vengeful eagles. "Roger, SDF-1," Captain Kramer drawled. "We're comin' in. All Veritechs switch to Guardian mode."

Below, the round-bodied, hopping Zentraedi war machines were laying waste Macross City, shooting indiscriminately and ravaging for the love of it. Kramer disliked net discipline as much as Roy did. So he said:

"Skull Team, area four-one. Vermilion Team, area four-four." Kramer gave the other ground-strike assignments, just as Roy would have done. The two had been wingmates long enough for Kramer to know it by heart.

And long enough for Kramer to know how to send the Veritechs on their way: "Awright, boys; let's get on down there an' wrassle 'em around some."

The ships dived in tight formations; the pilots only talked imprecisely.

So used to having their own way, the Zentraedi Battlepods, didn't seem to understand that with the arrival of the Veritechs, the odds had changed.

In moments, the Veritechs found, fixed, and fought the enemy, and the aliens began to get an unwelcome message.

Zentraedi Battlepods, headless and ominous, were being blown away right and left by Robotech ships in Battloid mode. The giant mechanical infantrymen had all the skill their human pilots had absorbed; if their close-in weapons were somewhat inferior to the Zentraedi's, it mattered very little in the street-to-street, house-to-house, often eye-to-eye close quarters of urban combat.

Alien Battlepods stalked and stomped through Macross city, cannon muzzles angling and firing at will, rockets twist-trailing everywhere, leaving an inferno behind them.

An elite Zentraedi strike squad had encountered nothing that could impede it. Its members didn't know that a computer-assisted gunsight was zeroing in on the squad leader-until it was too late.

A powered Gatling gun opened up, a thousand times louder than a buzz saw, shell casings flying up in a steady stream. The high-density depleted transuranic slugs used in Terran Robotech bullets were very heavy and delivered devastating amounts of kinetic energy on impact. A generation before, 30-mm autocannon had been capable of blowing tanks apart. A lot of improvements had been made since then.

The Battlepods found that they'd dropped into a very angry wasps' nest and that the stings were deadly. Then the squad leader disappeared in a high-density barrage.

A pod swung its upper and lower plastron cannon muzzles, its operator deciding where to direct his fire next. All at once a Battloid broke through the building next to it, bringing up the muzzle of its Gatling to knock the pod back off balance. The pod was twice the defender's size, three times its mass. But the stroke sent the offworld vehicle reeling back.

The pod staggered, legs flailing, ending up against a metal utility pole, bending it. The Battloid leveled its Gatling and opened fire with a sound like ripping cloth amplified to the point where it was deafening.

The Zentraedi pod abruptly became an expanding sphere of flame, gas, and debris. The Battloid whirled, gun held at high port, looking for more enemies.

All across the city it was the same; as wave after wave of pods descended or leaped ashore, the Battloids engaged and overcame them using tactics distilled from SWAT teams and infantry rifle outfits. The battloids handled themselves like grunt fireteams in fantastic enlargement.

And the Zentraedi learned that the price of Earth, foot for square foot, promised to be very high indeed.

Rick skimmed along behind Roy, twisting and dodging through the war-torn maze that was Macross City. SDF-1's bow was hanging like a threatening hammer above them as tracers drew lines of light through the air, missiles exploded, and alien blasterbolts hyphened all through the combat zone around the dimensional fortress.

The side of an apartment building was blown loose and collapsed in pieces. Rick zigzagged around it, his Veritech still skating along in Guardian mode as he tried to put together in his mind why that girl Minmei was suddenly so important to him that he'd go through this for her.