"02 - Battle Cry" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

"Blast it, this waiting is irritating me! Drive those droids harder, Gerao, or I'll leave you buried on this godforsaken world. You have my word on it!"
Gerao's emphatic salute signaled that he understood Khyron's threat completely. He signed off. Khyron began to drum his fingers on the console. Zor's ship, he thought to himself. Why was Commander in Chief Dolza wasting his time with this one when there were countless worlds left to conquer? Since when were the Zentraedi errand boys? If the Robotech Masters were so desperate about getting Zor's Protoculture matrix back, they could go retrieve it themselves. What did Khyron care about Protoculture? It was the Invid Flowers that were important to him...He picked up one of the dried petals and regarded it lovingly: Here was the true power.
As Khyron was placing the petal in his mouth, the face of one of his troops surfaced on the Officer's Pod commo screen.
"We've waited long enough, Commander," the soldier said. "I'm going in now. Any longer and we will jeopardize our mission."
To Khyron's amazement, the soldier's Battlepod fired its thrusters and began to lift off from the chasm floor. Was he seeing things or had this fool actually decided to use his own initiative? Khyron was as fond of insolence as anyone, but this was pushing things too far. He allowed the pod to climb almost to the rim of the chasm before bringing up one of the cannon arms of his mecha and firing. The Battlepod took a direct hit, turned end over end, and plummeted and crashed on the chasm floor.
The pilots of two other pods hopped their crafts over to their fallen comrade and checked his status.
"He's still alive, my lord."
"So much the worse for him, then," yelled Khyron. "If I can wait here patiently, so can the rest of you. The next one who disobeys my orders will meet a worse fate. I promise you that!"
Khyron was imagining his underlings stiffening into postures of salute inside the pods when the voice of Gerao entered the headset.
"My lord, I fear that use of the cannon may have compromised our position. The Micronian recon plane is circling back in this direction."
"The recon plane! Gerao, are you ready with the mines?"
"Just ten percent more to go."
Khyron slapped his hands down on the pod console. "Ninety percent will have to be good enough. You have my permission to attack!"

Claudia was worried: There had been no word from Lisa for almost an hour now. The incoming data from the base had terminated, but the seismic sensors were picking up something new. Captain Gloval and Vanessa were trying to make sense of the readings.
"Nearby in the mountains, I think-a disturbance or explosion," said Vanessa.
"A landslide, perhaps."
"No, there's too much sonic attached to it. It must have been an explosion."
Gloval turned to Claudia. "Instruct the Cat's-Eye to make another pass over the eleven o'clock zone at the fifteen-kilometer perimeter. And see to it that recon readings are patched into the main screen here."
Claudia contacted the Cat's-Eye, and within minutes new data was filling the screen: The sensors indicated hundreds of individual mecha units moving in from the cavernous mountains that surrounded Sara Base.
"Battlepods!" said Gloval. He ordered Claudia to sound general quarters. "Recall all transport vehicles immediately and scramble the Veritech fighters! They won't catch us napping this time!" Gloval paced the bridge, then threw himself into the command chair. "Activate the gravity control system and prepare the ship for takeoff."
Claudia swung around from her terminal. "But Captain, Lisa's still out there. She'll never make it back in time."
Gloval waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. "I told her I didn't want her to enter that base. Now she'll have to come up in one of the VTs."
Claudia hid a look of concern from Gloval and carried out her orders. But something was wrong: The ship wasn't lifting off. The gravity control system wasn't damaged, there were correct readings on all the sensors, but the SDF-1 would not rise. It bellowed and shuddered like some captured beast.
"Captain," Vanessa managed to shout above the noise, "the seismic sensor indicates an intense gravity field underlying the base!"
Gloval leaped from his seat to study the threat board.
"Gravity mines! So this is what the enemy has in mind-they mean to pin us down like a trapped insect. Shut down all engines before she comes apart at the seams!"
"Battlepods!" said Claudia.
Gloval and the bridge crew turned to face the front bays: The Martian sky was filled with enemy mecha.


CHAPTER SIX
It's become my routine these past two months to wander over to the observation dome and spend hours at the scope watching our beautiful blue and white world transit the Martian night. How bright, how incredibly alive and tranquil, Earth appears from afar! And how misleading that impression is...I often think about our last night together. It was more difficult for me to leave you than to leave our planet, the global madness, the small minds at work who have robbed us of our dreams. But I don't want to get started on all this again; I want to talk about this place, and how happy I know you will be here. The stars seem close enough to touch, our distant sun no less warm, and even these incessant winds do not disturb...Base Sara is a new experiment in peace, a new experiment in the future...
Karl Riber, Collected Letters

The battlepods and carapace fighters of the Botoru Seventh left the cover of the mountain chasms and descended on Sara Base. Khyron led the assault, screaming into his communicator, "Kill them, kill them all!"
The Robotech forces threw everything they had into the Martian sky. Battloids and Spartan defenders took up positions on the base, while squadrons of Veritechs went up to meet the enemy one on one. The main batteries and CIWS Phalanx guns of the grounded space fortress rotated into position and filled the thin air with orange tracers, armor-piercing discarding sabot rounds, and deadly thunder.
In an attempt to cut off the supply line to the SDF-1, Khyron and his forces went after the transports first. The pods fell from the Martian sky unleashing a torrent of energy bolts and missiles. The all-terrain trucks bounded off the gravel highway to evade fire, but scarcely a dozen made it to the fortress intact. Explosions tossed the vehicles off the ground like toys, and soon there was only a pathway of fire where the vehicles had once traveled.
The Destroids were next on Khyron's list; then he turned his attention to the Battleloids and Guardians.
The Battloids of the Skull Team were positioned along the SDF-1's defensive perimeter when they received launch orders. Roy and Rick transformed their mecha to Guardian mode and lifted off from blasting carpets to engage the enemy.
Rick retracted the legs and threw the fighter into a long vertical climb, exchanging fire with three pods on the way up. The three gave chase while he banked at the crest of his ascent and dropped off into a fusillade fall, weapons blazing as he came back down on them. Heatseekers ripped from his mecha, scoring hits against two pods.
Rick and the remaining enemy raced above the rough terrain, trading shots. At the foot of the mountains they split apart, only to encounter each other at the craggy summits. It was a game of aerial chicken, pod and fighter on a collision course, Zentraedi and Terran pilots emptying their guns.
Rick yo-yoed and took the fight deeper into the mountains. The enemy pursued him, launching rockets which Rick's mecha successfully evaded with breaks and jinks and high barrel rolls.
Skull twenty-three banked sharply now and fell away into a narrow valley, luring its opponent toward a forest of wind-eroded rock spires. Rick used two of his rockets to blast an opening for himself and dove in. The pod stayed with him but was having trouble negotiating the forest's tight groupings of columns. Too late, the enemy pilot attempted to pull out; one of the pod's clawlike legs snagged on a spire, and the pod suddenly became a highspeed pinball, careening from tower to tower. Flames and debris from the resounding explosion tore past Rick's mecha as he climbed from the canyon.
This was more like it, he told himself, rejoining his battle group on the Martian plain. Sky above, ground below. Sound and light, explosions of finality. No clouds for cover, but it seemed as though you could see forever through the thin air.
Just then Roy's face appeared on the left screen of his cockpit.
"What d' ya think, Little Brother? It's a little like the old days, isn't it?"
"The `old' days, yeah, four months ago!"
Roy laughed. "Let's get 'em, tiger!"
Rick watched his friend's fighter face down two of the pods and dispatch both of them. He quickly scanned the busy sky: If each Veritech could take out two pods, the enemy would only have them outnumbered four to one.