"03 - Homecoming" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

Robotech: Homecoming
Book Three of the Robotech series
Copyright 1987 by Jack McKinney


CHAPTER ONE
The enemy armada, so vastly superior to us in numbers of fighting mecha and aggregate firepower, continues to harry and harass us. But time and again the Zentraedi stop short of all-out attack. They impede our long voyage back to Earth, but they cannot stop us. I am still uncertain as to what good fortune is working in the SDF-1's favor.
I do not point out any of this to the crew or refugees, however. It does no good to tell grieving friends and loved ones that casualties could have been far worse.
From the log of Captain Henry Gloval

Blue lines of enemy cannon fire streaked by Roy Fokker's cockpit, scorching one of his Veritech fighter's tail stabilizers, ranging in for a final volley.
"Flying sense" the aviators called it, jargon that came from the twentieth-century term "air sense": honed and superior high-speed piloting instincts. It was something a raw beginner took a while to develop, something that separated the novices from the vets.
And it was something Lieutenant Commander Roy Fokker, Skull Team leader and Veritech squadron commander, had in abundance, even in the airlessness of a deep-space dogfight.
Responding to his deft touch at the controls and his very will-passed along to it by Robotech sensors in his flight helmet-Roy's Veritech fighter did a wingover and veered onto a new vector with tooth-snapping force.
Thrusters blaring full-bore, the maneuver forces pressed him into his seat, just as the enemy was concentrating more on his aim than on his flying.
The Zentraedi in the Battlepod on Roy's tail, trying so diligently to kill him and destroy his Robotech fighter, was a good pilot, steady and cool like all of them, but he lacked Roy's flying abilities.
While the giant alien gaped, astounded, at his suddenly empty gunsight reticle, the Skull Team leader was already coming around behind the pod into the kill position.
Around that fragment of the battle, an enormous dogfight raged as Zentraedi pods and their Cyclops recon ships mixed it up ferociously with the grimly determined human defenders in their Veritechs. The bright spherical explosions characteristic of zero-g battle blossomed all around, dozens at a time. Blue Zentraedi radiation blasts were matched by the Veritechs' autocannons, which flung torrents of high-density armor-piercers at the enemy.
Roy was relieved to see that the SDF-1 was unharmed. Most of the fighting seemed to be going on at some distance from it, although it was clear that the enemy fleet had all the odds on its side. The Zentraedi armada easily numbered over a million warships.
Roy located his wingman, Captain Kramer, in the furious engagement; forming up for mutual security, he looked around again for the fantastic Zentraedi mecha that had done so much damage a few minutes before. It had flown rings around the Veritechs that had gone after it, taking Roy and the Skulls by surprise and smashing their formation after cutting a swath through Vermilion Team.
Whatever it was, it was unlike any Zentraedi weapon the humans had seen so far. Unlike the pods, which resembled towering metal ostriches bristling with guns, the newcomer was more human-shaped-a bigger, more hulking, and heavily armed and armored version of the Veritechs' own Battloid mode. And fast-frightfully fast and impossible to stop, eluding even the SDF-1's massive defensive barrages.
Roy had expected to see the battle fortress under intense attack; instead, the super dimensional fortress was cruising along unbothered and alone. Moreover, transmissions over the tac net indicated that the Zentraedi pods and Cyclopses were withdrawing. Roy couldn't figure that out.
He switched from the tac net to SDF-1's command net. There was word of the new Zentraedi mecha. The thing had made it as far as SDF-1-getting in beneath the fields of fire of most of the ship's batteries-then had suddenly withdrawn at blinding speed, outmaneuvering gunfire and outracing pursuit. The ship had suffered only minor damage, and the operations and intelligence people had concluded that the whole thing had been a probing attack of some kind, a test of a new machine and new tactics.
Roy didn't care as long as the battle fortress was still safe. He gathered the Veritechs, ready to head home.
"Enemy pod," Skull Five called over the tac net. "Bearing one-niner-four-seven."
Roy already had the computer reference on one of his situation screens. A pod, all right, but evidently damaged and drifting, none of its weapons firing; it was leaking atmosphere.
"Could be a trick," Skull Seven said. "What d' ya think, skipper? Do we blast it out of the sky?"
"Negative; somebody may still be alive in there, and a live captive is what the intelligence staff's been praying for." The incredible savagery of this deep-space war was such that few survived as casualties. Alien or human, a fighter almost always either triumphed or died, a simple formula. The humans had never recovered a living enemy.
Besides, for very personal reasons, Roy was especially eager to see a Zentraedi undergo interrogation.
"We're getting signals from it, nothing we can unscramble," a communications officer reported over the command net.
Whatever was going on, none of the Zentraedi forces seemed to be turning back for a rescue. Veritech fly-bys drew no fire; eyeball inspection and instruments indicated that the damaged pod's main power source had been knocked out but that some of its weapons were still functioning. Nevertheless, it passed up several opportunities to blast away at nearby VTs.
"This is too good an opportunity to pass up," Gloval finally announced over the main command net. "If there is a survivor aboard, we must get him into the SDF-1 immediately."
"That thing could be booby-trapped-or its occupant could be!" a security staff officer protested from one of Roy's display screens.
Gloval replied, "That is why we will push the pod closer to SDF-1-but not too close-and connect a boarding tube to it. An EVA team will make a thorough examination before we permit it any closer."
"But-" the officer began.
Roy cut in over the command net, "You heard the captain, so put a sock in it, mac!" Roy was elated with Gloval's decision; it was only a slim hope, but now there was hope of finding out what had happened to Roy's closest friend in the world, Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes and the others who'd disappeared on their desperate mission to guide the SDF-1 through danger.
Roy began swinging into place, shifting his ship to Battloid mode. "Okay, Skull Team; time to play a little bumper cars."
Two more Skulls went to Battloid, their Robotech ships transforming and reconfiguring. When the shift was complete, the war machines looked like enormous armored ultramech knights.
They joined Roy in pushing the inert pod back toward the battle fortress.

The men and women of the EVA-Extra Vehicular Activity-crews were efficient and careful. They're also gutsy as hell, Roy reflected, his Battloid towering over them in the boarding tube lock. But of course, everybody knew and honored the legendary dedication and tenacity of the EVA crews.
Crowded into the boarding tube lock with two other Battloids behind him, Roy watched expectantly. The huge lock, extending from the SDF-1 at the end of nearly a mile of large-diameter tube, was a yawning dome on a heavy base, equipped with every sort of contingency gear imaginable. The captured pod and EVA crew and Roy's security detail took up only a small part of its floor space.
"Not beat up too bad," the EVA crew chief observed over the com net. "But I dunno how much air it lost. What d' ya say, Fokker? Do we open 'er up?" She was holding a thermotorch ready. She'd turned to gaze up at Roy's cockpit.
As ranking officer on the scene, Lt. Comdr. Roy Fokker had the responsibility of advising Gloval. Tampering with the pod was very risky; they could trigger some kind of booby trap humans couldn't even imagine, destroying everyone there and perhaps even damaging the SDF-1.
But we can't go on fighting war this way! Roy thought. Knowing next to nothing about these creatures we're up against or even why we're fighting-we can't go on like this much longer!
"Cap'n Gloval, sir, I say we take a shot."
"Very well. Good luck to you," Gloval answered. "Proceed."
Roy reached down and put a giant hand in front of the EVA crew chief, blocking her way as she approached the enemy mecha. "Sorry, Pietra; this is my party."
His Battloid stood upright again and walked to the pod, shouldering its autocannon, its footsteps shaking the deck. "Cover me," he told his teammates, and they fanned out, muzzles leveled, for clear fields of fire. The Battloid's forearms extruded metal tentacles, complicated waldos and manipulators, and thermotorches.
"Just try not to break anything unnecessarily," Pietra warned, and led her crew to the shelter of a blast shield.