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

CHAPTER TWENTY

Can I have two more orders of egg foo yong and a milk shake, please?" the air crewman yelled over the din in the White Dragon.

"Milk shake?" Minmei shivered at the thought, but she put the order in anyway. Uncle Max didn't seem to mind in the least; he was happier than she'd ever seen him, doing the work of three men back in the kitchen, performing miracles with stove and wok.

And the place was packed; word had gotten around even faster than Minmei had hoped. The SDF-1 liaison officers were overjoyed at this solution to their food distribution headaches and provided incentive packages to get the whole population to resume as normal a life as was possible under the circumstances.

Minmei turned, then burst into a smile. "Oh, hi, Rick!"

But he gave no sign of having heard her, slouching toward the door with hands in pockets. Minmei watched him go, her brows knit, suddenly worried and confused.

The hangar bay was dark, quiet as a tomb. Very appropriate, Rick thought.

He pulled the bright red-and-white striped chute off the dashed remains of Mockingbird just enough to be able to gaze down at a flattened section of engine. The racer was wreckage and would never be anything else again. He still couldn't bring himself to accept that, and so he forced himself to stare, to acknowledge.

He shook his head. "Boy, what a mess."

"Hey, Rick!" It was Roy, stepping into the little circle of light. "Now, show me this junk pile."

Rick came to his feet, fists balled. "Listen, buddy, this is the racer I won eight international championships in. You call it junk? I oughta knock your block off, Roy!"

Roy kneeled to take a better look at Mockingbird's remains. "Actually, it's very nice junk. But-them's the breaks, kiddo."

Rick seemed about to explode.

"Hey, I've got an idea." Roy grinned. "Let's take a walk, okay?"

Rick looked startled. "I've never seen you so depressed in my life," Roy went on. "What you need is exercise!" He came over to put an arm around his friend's shoulders. "Try it! You'll like it!"

Roy's walk took them to the uppermost part of SDF-1 for an astonishing view.

From the lounge of the officers' club, Rick found himself looking down on the Daedalus. "Wow! An aircraft carrier connected to the Robotech ship?"

There was a long elbowlike housing holding the carrier fast. Rick could see that the ship had been patched and made airtight and was in service. All six bow and waist cats appeared to be in operation. As he watched, an elevator brought up two Veritechs for launch.

The Thor-class supercarrier, almost fifteen hundred feet long, had undergone a lot of other modifications. Most conspicuously, its "island"-the towerlike superstructure that had once dominated the flight deck and been the Daedalus's bridge-had been removed to leave the deck perfectly flat. All flight operations had been combined in the SDF-1's command center, and the salvaged materials and equipment had been used in the design changes.

The Veritechs spread their wings, not for the sake of aerodynamics but rather because the wider placement of thrusters gave them better control. The hookup men and cat crews, now spacesuited and still color-coded according to their jobs, went through the time-honored routine.

As Rick watched, a bow cat officer pointed to his "shooter," the man who actually gave the order to launch. The cat officer signalled the Veritech pilot with a wave of a flashlight, pointing toward the bow, dropping to one knee to avoid being accidentally hit by a wing.

The fighter was accelerated off the flatdeck's hurricane bow at almost 200 knots-not because airspeed was necessary in the airlessness of space but to get the Veritech launched and clear of the ship in a hurry, as it would have to be in combat, so as not to be a sitting duck for alien pilots.

The Veritech banked and soared away. Rick had to remind himself that it was flying in total vacuum; Robotech control systems made the operation of a fighter very much a matter of thought, and the Veritech pilots were used to thinking in terms of atmospheric flying. And so the Veritechs flew that way; it was wasteful of power, but power was something Robotech ships, with their reactor drives, had in great supply.

Rick watched longingly. "Terrific."

"How'd you like to fly one again?" Roy clapped Rick on the shoulder.

Rick spun on him. "What are you saying?"

"Join us, Rick. Become a Veritech pilot and stop all this moping around."

Rick's expression hardened. "I don't want to be a fighter pilot."

"Oh? You'd rather drag yourself around the SDF-1 like a lovesick idiot? Well?"

Rick broke loose of Roy's hand, turning away. "Roy?" he said over his shoulder.

"Yeah?"

"Roy, I think I'm-I mean, do you think it's possible for girls to change overnight? Completely?"

"How's that again?"

"Can a girl simply change from what she was the day before?"

"I don't think you have to worry about that. Minmei thought you were depressed, and it was her idea for me to bring you up here and have a tittle chat."

Roy slapped him on the back, knocking a little of the breath from him. "So just cheer up and go back to Minmei, kid; she's waiting for you."

He walked off, chuckling to himself, but paused to call back, "Oh, one more thing: Girls like her can be sort of flighty sometimes, know what I mean? You better be careful some guy in uniform doesn't catch her eye. See ya."

Across the solar system, maintaining position relative to Earth's nearby moon, the Zentraedi armada hung like a seaful of bloodthirsty fish.

Breetai returned to his command post in response to Exedore's request. "Trans-vid records of the aliens, you say?"

Exedore kowtowed to his lord. "Yes, they were just recovered from a disabled scout pod. And they confirm absolutely the eyewitness accounts of our warriors. If you would care to study them, Commander…"

A projecbeam drew an image in midair. The recorder's point of view was a fast-moving, almost bewildering sweep through the carnage and fury of the battle in the streets of Macross City. Explosions and fire were everywhere, but now and again there were split-second glimpses of the aliens, mostly fleeing or falling.

"I believe you'll find this intriguing," Exedore said. Then suddenly a pod loomed close by one of the inhabitants of the planet, and for the first time Breetai got a feeling of scale.

His voice reverberated in shock and anger, a guttural to shake the bulkheads. "So! It's true! Micronians!"

The trans-vid record cut to another shot that left no doubt: a human figure falling to its death from a high building, knocked off along with debris by the enormous foot of a pod.

"Precisely," Exedore said delicately.

"So the inhabitants here are Micronians, eh?" Breetai scowled. The conflicting emotions held by the Zentraedi toward normal-size humanoids-'Micronians, as the giant warriors contemptuously referred to them-welled up in him. There was disdain and hatred but also something strangely close to fear.

"I brought the trans-vids to you as soon as I saw them," Exedore said. "They present us with a very unpleasant new situation. During my researches into the origins of the Micronians in our most ancient records, I encountered a decree from our dimmest histories.

"It directs us to shun contact with any unknown Micronian planet-and threatens disaster if we do not heed it."

Breetai's face looked like a graven image. "So I'm to keep my hands off this Earth, eh? Bah!"

"It is my considered opinion, m'lord," Exedore insisted, "that we must cease hostilities with this planet immediately. We now have a fix on the battle fortress; I consider it prudent counsel that we make its capture our priority." The pinpoint pupils bored into Breetai, unblinking.

Breetai knew that Exedore would drop his usual deference only for a matter of vital importance. Breetai, like all Zentraedi, had absorbed his race's legends and superstitions along with its lore and warrior code. Like them all, he felt a twinge of apprehension at the thought of defying his heritage.

It was in his mind to object-to say that Exedore's stricture came from the days when the Zentraedi's numbers were fewer, their ships less mighty, their weapons not as powerful. But he considered Exedore: the repository of most of the lore and learning of the Zentraedi race. In a way, the diminutive, physically weak Exedore embodied his people. And Exedore seemed to have no doubts about the correct course in this instance.

"Very well, then. We will execute a spacefold, immediately and pursue the dimensional fortress."

Exedore bowed. "It shall be done."

"And see to it that an appropriate reconnaissance vessel is sent out at once upon completion of the fold maneuver."

Exedore knew what «appropriate» meant; they had discussed Breetai's strategy for dealing with the SDF-1. Exedore bowed again. "Yes, m'lord."

"Oh, you're back, Rick! Anything special on your mind?"

Rick paused with his knuckles poised to rap on Minmei's door. It was a red door she'd chosen to decorate with a whimsical pink rabbit's head bearing her name. He'd wavered quite a bit before finally drawing a deep breath and preparing to knock on it.

Only to find her standing in the hall behind him. "Uh, nothing, Minmei-really…"

She burst into one of those captivating laughs, eyes crinkling. "I'm sure! C'mon in, Rick." She opened the door and led the way. "Make yourself at home."

It was a bright little room, painted in shades of blue and yellow, easy on the eyes and not overfurnished. Bed, lamps, bookshelf, and a handmade throw rug; a few flowers very beautifully arranged-thoughtfully arranged-in a small antique vase. There were stuffed toys, too, and a favorite purse. It was a room of seeming clashes that somehow gave the impression of oneness-like its occupant.

Minmei sat on the bed. "Oh, could you open the window?"

"Right; glad to."

He slid the window aside, not that the air in the rest of the ship was very much different from that in Minmei's room. But here over the restaurant it was a little warmer than outside, and with the window opened more of the slight, never-ending breeze from the SDF-1's circulation system could be felt. It was as much like getting "fresh air" as people in the dimensional fortress could expect.

Minmei folded one leg under her. "So, what happened?"

"Not much. But it's nice to be back here." He looked around her place to avoid meeting her gaze and to give himself time to build up courage to say what he had to say.

His eyes lit on an envelope lying on her dresser. "Hey, don't tell me you got mail!" He picked it up and looked it over.

"That's what I went back for," she said, watching him. "That and my diary-when you rescued me." She shivered, remembering the concussions of the pod's titanic feet crashing down, nearer and nearer, behind her.

It had plainly been reread over and over. "A love letter, hmm?" The thought made him so depressed that he ignored the warmth in what she'd just said.

"Don't be silly! You can take a look at it if you like."

He did. It took him a minute to figure out what he was looking at. "What's this all ab- A singing audition? It says you, um, got to the preliminaries."

Her eyes were dancing. "That's right! I can hardly believe it!"

He read on. "This says you were accepted for the Miss Macross competition. Miss Macross?"

He wondered for a moment why she'd never told him about that in the long imprisonment they'd shared down in SDF-1's sealed nether regions. But then, he realized there were things he'd never shared with her, either.

"Uh huh!" Minmei was giggling.

Rick put the letter down slowly. "Well, I guess it's no surprise. Minmei, you really sing well."

"Thank you, Rick." But the joy abruptly changed to a faraway look, a sadness. She rose from the bed and went to the window to look out on Macross and the bulkheads and overheads that hung in the distance like the end of the world.

"But this isn't the Earth, and people there have forgotten about this contest, so it's all kind of pointless, isn't it? Who cares if I'm a star here?"

It was the first time he'd seen her great thirst to be famous and successful; in their imprisonment it had seemed such a distant, implausible thing. But now it was clear that it was what she lived for.

He looked at the letter again. "Minmei, don't be sad. You can always audition again when we get back to Earth."

"If we get back to Earth."

He had no ready comeback for that. They both knew how desperate the situation was, how terrible the enemy. As they gazed at each other a skycrane went by the window, floating a prefab condo module toward its destination. The illusion of home all around them only made them that much more homesick.

"Rick? Do you ever dream?"

He was surprised, answering hesitantly. "I used to have a dream. Now it's a pile of junk in a hangar bay up on the flight deck levels."

"Mockingbird."

"Yeah." And I won't let my father down! I'm not going to be part of this war or any war! So-I guess I might as well get used to being a passenger.

"I'm never gonna have another dream again, Minmei. They hurt too much when they die."

She hung her head. "Oh, Rick."

He wondered if it had occurred to her that he wasn't just talking about Mockingbird, wondered if she ever remembered that one kiss…