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

"Ramming speed," he ordered. "We're going to push the Daedalus right down their throat!"
Members of the Skull Team who took part in Operation Blitzkrieg would later report on the spectacle they witnessed that day in Saturn space. How the SDF-1, gleaming blue, red, and white, engulfed in explosions and locked on a collision course with the enemy, had executed a backward body twist, followed by a full-forward thrust of its right arm that brought the bow of the Daedalus like a battering ram squarely into the forward section of the destroyer.
One can only imagine the scene from Commander Zeril's point of view: the impact; the sight of the front of his ship being splintered apart, cables and conduits rupturing as the destroyer impaled itself on the arm of the fortress; stressed metal groaning and giving way, crossties and girders ripped from their lodgings; the mad rush of precious air being sucked from the ship.
Perhaps Zeril and his second were alive long enough to see the forward ramp of the Daedalus drop open, revealing row after row of deadly Destroids, thick with guns, missile tubes, and cannons. Perhaps the two Zentraedi even saw the initial launch of the five thousand projectiles fired into the heart of the destroyer, the first series of explosions against the hull and bulkheads of the bridge.

Rick couldn't bring himself to waste the enemy soldier. His mind and trigger finger were paralyzed, not out of fear but forgiveness. This was no Battlepod he was face to face with in the airlock but a living, breathing creature, caught up just as Rick in the madness of war. Remember what they did to us at Macross Island, Roy had drilled into him. Remember! Remember!...humankind's war cry for how many millenia now? And when would it end-with this war? the next? the one after that?
Suddenly the soldier turned his head sharply to the right, as though he had heard something unreported by the Battloid's sensors. Rick saw the soldier's face drain of color, his eyes go wide with even greater fear.
In the next instant a conflagration swept through the corridor. The soldier was vaporized before Rick's eyes, and the Battloid was thrown back into the loading bay by the explosive force of the firestorm. The air lock was sealed, but the chamber walls were already beginning to melt.
Rick brought the Battloid's top-mounted lasers into action to melt through the overhead latch controls, and soon enough the semicircular hatch slid open. Foot thrusters blazing, the mecha rose from the floor and clambered out onto the destroyer's outer skin.
The ship was convulsing beneath Rick, disgorging a death rattle roar from its holds. Forward, he could see the SDF-1 propelling itself away from the crippled enemy, its pectoral boosters blowtorching and its Daedalus right arm flayed of metal and superstructure.
Rick returned the mecha to Guardian for his takeoff, then well into the launch he reconfigured to Fighter mode, kicking in the afterburners to carry him away from the destroyer.
A series of enormous blisters was forming along the outer shell of the ship as explosive fire launched by the Destroids was funneled front to stern. But the hull could contain it for only so long; the pustules began to burst, loosing coronas and prominences of radiant energy into the void. A violent interior explosion then blasted the destroyer's skin from its framework. At last there was nothing left but a self-consuming glowing cloud, a war of gases bent on mutual annihilation. The energy flourished wildly and dispersed, leaving in the end no trace of itself nor its brief struggle.


CHAPTER FOUR
Several historians of the Robotech Wars-Rawlins, Daily, Gordon, and Turno, to name but a few-have advanced the claim that it was Breetai's decision [to call up Khyron's troops as reinforcements] that placed the Zentraedi squarely on the road to defeat. Rawlins, in his two volume study, Zentraedi Triumvirate: Dolza, Breetai, Khyron, states: "It was more than a tactical blunder...Khyron's use of the dried leaves of the Invid Flower of Life had drastically affected his Zentraedi conditioning. Subsequent research clearly demonstrated that alkaloids present in the leaves had a direct effect on the limbic system of the brain. The Flower had the power to stimulate a resurgence of archaic patterns of behavior. In the case of the Zentraedi, ironically enough, those behavior patterns were the ones which most clearly defined the human condition...So in this sense it may be said that Khyron was the most human of them all."
History of the First Robotech War, Vol. XXXIV

Breetai was now beginning to enjoy this micronian battle game.
"`Cat and mouse' did you call it?"
"Yes, my lord. Apparently it refers to a game the stronger animal plays with the weaker before the final kill."
"Excellent. You must teach me their language, Exedore."
"Of course, sir. It is most primitive, easy to absorb.
Our three operatives from surveillance are making rapid progress."
"Yes...I may want to talk to these Micronians soon."
The flagship and several of the fleet's scout and recon ships had made a hyperspace jump along the projected course of the SDF-1. Breetai had left behind several cruisers and destroyers, along with plenty of Battlepods, to keep the Micronians busy while he plotted his next move in the game.
The Zentraedi commander smiled wryly as he viewed the traps-vids of Zeril's destruction. Enhanced-motion playback had captured the giant ship's final few moments splendidly. He had to credit the Micronians for the unorthodox nature of their counterattack. Instead of further depleting their power by firing the main gun, they had used one of their oceangoing vessels to ram Zeril's destroyer headlong. Once inside, a sufficient amount of firepower must have been unleashed to destroy it. The ship blistered, glowed, became a veritable tunnel of trapped photon energy, and exploded.
Yes, Breetai was amused by the challenge of illogical behavior; it forced him to step outside his own conditioning and search for novel approaches to destruction.
His thoughts were now interrupted by a communiquщ from astrogation. Exedore relayed the message.
"Sir, emerging from hyperspace-fold."
The composite projecbeam disassembled itself. Exedore called for an exterior view of local space. Cameras panned across the unbroken blackness and locked on a small red planet, arid and angry-looking. For Breetai it brought to mind memories of Fantoma, and the mining worlds he had worked and patrolled long ago. A schematic appeared on one of the side screens of the command bowl showing the planetary system of this yellow star the Micronians referred to as their "sun."
"Mars," said Exedore, "the fourth planet."
Breetai turned to his adviser.
"Has the recon vessel been deployed?"
"As you ordered, sir. The Cyclops transmissions are coming in now."
The projecbeam revealed an abandoned Micronian base that showed signs of an earlier battle: craters from explosions covered with the fine red swirling dust of the planet's deserts, a shuttlecraft disabled and still in its launch bay, the shells of buildings and fractured domes.
"Our scanners reveal no life readings, no energy levels of any form save minimal low-level background radiation, Commander."
Breetai put his massive hand to his head and unconsciously stroked the metal plate there. The plate concealed scar tissue that had overgrown the wounds received while protecting Zor from the Invid; now, it seemed, each time he came close to fulfilling his imperative-to capture the fortress-the original pain returned.
"It would appear that the Earth people abandoned this installation."
Exedore studied the data screen. "Long-range surface scanners indicate that a military conflict took place here and at a neighboring installation. Nevertheless, the Micronians' reflex power furnaces are still operative, and we've managed to tap into their computer banks and access some of the information. It seems that most of the inhabitants, sir, were destroyed in a battle with their allied forces, and the few that survived were unable to escape the harshness of the planet itself."
Breetai continued to stroke his faceplate. "Hmmm...see to it that one of the computers is activated and the contents of its memory transmitted on a hailing frequency."
One of Exedore's eyebrow's arched. "Certainly, my lord, but why?"
"Because this abandoned post will make a perfect trap. I have ordered the Seventh Mechanized Division of the Botoru Battalion to assemble here immediately."
The Seventh had a reputation for ground-based savagery and more.
"Impossible," said Exedore with alarm. "Surely, sir, this cannot be; you haven't ordered up Khyron's division?"
Breetai smiled bemusedly at his companion. "Indeed I have, and why not?"
"You're familiar with his battle record, his reputation."
"What of it?"
"During the Mona Operation, he was intoxicated and ended up killing some of his own men." Exedore pressed his point. "And in the Isyris battle zone he almost wiped out two divisions of friendly forces-"
"While successfully destroying the enemy."