"01 - GenesisTXT" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

Around and between the forward booms, tongues of orange starflame were shooting and whirling and arcing back and forth. The fantastic energy cascade began sluicing up the booms toward their tips, sparks snapping, seemingly eager to be set free.
And still Lisa could think of nothing she could do.
Just then the hatch opened and Gloval hurried in so quickly that he bumped his head on the frame. He didn't spare time or his usual swearing at the people who'd refitted the largest machine ever known for not providing a little more headroom.
"Captain, the main guns are preparing to fire!"
Gloval assessed the situation in seconds, but Lisa could see from his expression that he was as much at a loss as she.
"I can't control them!" Claudia told Gloval. "What'll we do?"
Lisa absorbed a terrible lesson in that moment. Despite what they might teach in the Academy and the War College and Advanced Leadership School, sometimes there was nothing you could do.
The energy storm around the booms had built to an Earth-shaking pitch, a noise like a million shrieking demons. Then huge eruptions of destructive energy streaked off the booms.
The bolts streamed off into the distance, thickening into a howling torrent of annihilation, a river of starflame as high and wide as SDF-1 itself, shooting out across the city.
Lisa expected to see everything in the volley's path consumed, including the gathered populace.
But that didn't happen. The superbolt went straight out over the cliffs and over the ocean, turning water to vapor and roiling the swells, raising clouds of steam that wouldn't settle for hours. The shot was direct, the curve of the Earth falling away beneath it as it lanced out into space.
And just as Lisa Hayes was registering the fact that the city still remained, intact and unharmed-that her father was down there somewhere, still alive-new information began pouring in on scopes and monitors.

The Zentraedi heavy cruisers, closing in on the unsuspecting Earth, barely had time to realize that they were about to die. By some unimaginable level of control, the blinding shaft of energy split in two.
The twinned beams holed each heavy cruiser through and through, along their long axes. Armor and weapons and hull, superstructure, and the rest were vaporized as the beams hit, skewering them. They expanded like overheated gas bags, skins peeling off, debris exploding outward, only to disappear, blown to nothingness, an instant later in globes of bright mass-energy conversions.
From his command station, Breetai watched impassively, arms folded across his great chest, as the projecbeam displayed the death of the two heavy cruisers.
"Now we know for sure: The ship is on that planet!" This time he didn't bother soliciting Exedore's advice. "All ships advance, but exercise extreme caution!"
The Zentraedi armada took up proper formation, ships-of-the-line moving to the fore, and closed on the target world.

Clouds of superheated air blew out across the ocean; gulls cried in the aftermath of the SDF-1's single volley.
Gloval was at the bridge's protective bowl-its "windshield"-his face all but pressed against it, scanning through the steam and fog. He breathed a prayer of thanks that the city was unharmed.
"Some sort of magnetic bottling," Sammie reported, focused on her work. "All the force was channeled directly out into space, except for some very marginal eddy currents."
"We have control over all systems again, sir," Claudia announced calmly. "What happened, sir?"
Gloval suddenly felt old-older than the ship, the island, the sea. He wasn't about to speculate aloud, not even to his trusted bridge gang, but he was just about certain he knew. And if he was right, it put the weight of a planet on his shoulders.


CHAPTER SIX
While Captain Gloval gets admittedly deserved credit for his handling of the disaster that day, male historians frequently gloss over Gloval's straightforward statement that if it weren't for the women on SDF-1's bridge, their nerve and gallantry and professionalism, the Robotech War would have been over before it had fairly begun.
Betty Greer, Post-Feminism and the Global War

The ground had stopped shaking, and the sky was clearing. The Veritech fighter stopped its trembling dance, and Rick Hunter caught his breath. The air seemed a little hotter in his lungs, but not terribly so.
He called back to Roy in a subdued voice, "Wow. What were all those fireworks about?"
Fireworks! Roy thought. 'Fraid not! Aloud, he said, "I dunno. I better go check. Wait here; I'll see what's goin' on."
He put aside his flight helmet-the "thinking cap," as Rick had called it-and hiked himself up out of the fighter cockpit. If what Roy feared the most had come to pass, Rick would be as safe where he was as anywhere else. And he'd also understand why some people could spend their lives preparing for war.

"The space monitor report's coming in," Sammie sang out. "It shows what our gun was firing at."
"I have it here, Sammie," Lisa cut in, studying her monitors. "Two large objects, probably spacecraft, origin unknown, on Earth-approach vector, approx two hundred miles out."
Gloval was nodding to himself without realizing it. The ship could be raised or lowered, the booms traversed for-what, a few insignificant minutes of arc? And the SDF-1 hadn't been moved, except to lift it onto the keel blocks, since it crashed. The range was incredibly long, making for a greater field of fire; but still, such a shot, such a series of events, could only come about with some forewarning, or intuition, or-we forgot that whoever built this vessel had to some extent mastered time; could, perhaps, see through it. Could see this very moment?
"Both objects were struck dead center by the beam and were destroyed-disintegrated," Claudia said. "Orbital combat task forces are deploying for defense, with Armor One and Armor Ten-sir? Captain Gloval?"
Sammie, Vanessa, Kim-they exchanged looks with one another as Lisa and Claudia traded facial signals. Gloval was laughing, a deep belly laugh, his shoulders shaking. Claudia and Lisa saw that they were both thinking the same thing: If Gloval, their source of strength and calm, had lost his grip, all was lost.
"Captain, what is it?" Lisa ventured. "What are you laughing about?"
Gloval stopped laughing, crashing his fist against the observation-bowl ledge. "It was so obvious! We should have known! A booby trap, of course!"
Claudia and Lisa said it at the same time, "Booby trap, sir?"
"Yes, it's one of the oldest tricks in military history! A retreating enemy leaves behind hidden explosives and such."
He clamped his cold pipe between his teeth. "The automatic firing of the main guns means that enemies have approached close enough to be a threat to us." He drew his tobacco bag out of the breast pocket of his uniform jacket.
"Captain Gloval!" Sammie was up out of her chair. Everyone turned to her, wondering what the new alarm was.
"No smoking on the bridge, sir!" Sammie said. "Strictly against regulations!"
Claudia groaned and clapped a hand to her forehead. Lisa reflected, Nothing throws Sammie.
"I was just holding it; I wasn't going to light it," Gloval said defensively. The unreality of the situation retreated with Sammie's interruption. There were both good things and bad things about having one's bridge crew be like family.
But doubts were past now. Gloval barked, "Hot-scramble all fighters and sound general quarters! I'm declaring a red alert!"