"13 Sentinels 01 - The Devils Hand" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

Footnote in Fulcrum: Commentaries on the Second Robotech War by Major Alice Harper Argus (ret.)

Rick watched the Earth as it swung into view feeling a little like he imagined the starchild did in that old science fiction classic. He knew it was stretching things a bit to feel that way, but in a very real sense the future of the planet was in the hands of a council of ordinary men and women. Human beings, not superheroes or protectors, or starchildren who had already crossed over.
Earth looked unchanged from up here, its recent scars and still-open wounds concealed by a mantle of white swirls and dense fronts. But Rick had walked Earth's scorched surface for six years and knew the truth: his world would never be the same. And it took a new kind of strength to accept this fact, to overcome the inertia of age and surrender a host of childhood dreams.
"Penny for your thoughts," Lisa said from behind him.
He hadn't heard her enter, and swung around from the viewport with a guilty look on his face.
"Am I interrupting something?"
He smiled at her and shook his head. "A penny, huh...Is that all they're worth?"
"A nickel, then."
She came over to kiss him, and immediately sensed his remoteness. He turned back to the view as she released him. Sunlight touched the wingtips of dozens of shuttles ferrying guests up to the satellite for the wedding.
"`The stars my destination,'" he mused. "I can't help wondering if we've made the right choice. It's like a crazy dream."
Lisa pursed her lips and nodded; Max had prepared her for Rick's mood, and she wanted him to understand that her shoulder was the softest around. Still, she didn't like his waffling and sudden indecisiveness. "It's not a crazy dream," she told him. "If we succeed, we'll be insuring a future for ourselves."
"I know, I know," he said dismissively. "I'm not as mixed up as I sound. It's just coming down so fast all of a sudden. The mission, our wedding..."
"We've had six years to think about this, Rick."
Rick took her in his arms; she linked her hands behind his neck. "I'm an idiot."
"Only if you're having doubts about us, Rick."
"Not now," he said, collecting on the kiss Max had interrupted earlier.

In his small cabinspace aboard the SDF-3, Jack Baker was softly thumping his head against a computer console. There was just too much to learn. Not only did you have to prove yourself in air combat maneuvers, you had to know all this extra stuff! Ordnance specifications, drill procedures, TO&E nonsense, Zentraedi! for crying out loud...If he'd known that mecha piloting was going to involve all this, he would have just gone to college or something!
The computer sounded a tone, urging him to enter his response to the question it had flashed on the screen.
"Plot a course from A to B," Jack read, "taking into consideration vector variants listed above..." Jack scanned the tables hopelessly and bellowed a curse at the ceiling.
At the same moment, the cabin door hissed open and a VT lieutenant walked in. He took a long analytical look at Jack, then glanced at the monitor screen.
"Troubles, Baker?" he said, barely suppressing a grin.
Jack reached over and switched off the monitor. "No, no troubles."
The pilot sniggered. "Here, this oughta cheer you up."
Jack took the envelope and opened it: inside was a handwritten note from Admiral Hunter inviting him to the wedding reception. "`I hope you can make it,'" Jack read aloud three times, trying to convince himself that the note was on the level.
"From Richard A. Hunter," Jack said to the pilot, gloating. "My buddy, the admiral."

The hold chosen for the wedding was on the factory's upper level, where a massive overhead viewport had recently been installed expressly for the event. The space could accommodate several thousand, but by three o'clock on the afternoon of the big day every seat was filled. Rick and Lisa had demanded a simple ceremony nonetheless, and in keeping with their wishes the hold was minimally outfitted. Two tiered banks of chairs had been set up to face a raised platform, behind which rose a screen adorned with a large stylized cross. The stage was carpeted and matched by a five-hundred-foot-long red runner that covered the center aisle. Large floral arrangements had been placed along the aisle and perimeter of the stage, and in the hold beyond sat two rows of gleaming Alpha Veritechs, red on the right, blue on the left.
The front rows had been reserved for close friends and VIPs, who sat there now in their finest gowns, pleated uniforms, service ribbons, and golden-epauletted dress blues. The hold was humming with hundreds of individual conversations, and organ music was wafting from a dozen theater speakers. Bowie and Dana, who were supposed to be waiting with the wedding party, were playing a game of tag among the rows, and Jean Grant was chasing both of them, asking her son if was too much to request that he behave himself just this once.
"Can't you act like a grown-up!" she screamed, at the end of her rope.
"But I can't, Mom," the youngster returned to the amusement of everyone within earshot, "I've got the mind of a seven-year-old!"
Seating hadn't been prearranged along any "familial" lines, but a curious breakdown had begun from the start. On one side sat Field Marshal Anatole Leonard and most of the Southern Cross apparat-T. R. Edwards, Dr. Lazlo Zand, Senator Wyatt Moran, and dozens of lesser officers and dignitaries-and on the other, the RDF contingent: Vince and Jean Grant, Miriya Sterling, Drs. Lang and Penn and the rest of the Plenipotentiary Council, Jonathan Wolff, the Emersons, and others. In a tight-knit group behind the council members sat Exedore, and Dana Sterling's three deathly-ill Zentraedi godfathers, Rico, Konda, and Bron. Breetai's micronized troops were farther back, along with some of the Wolff Pack, the Skull and Ghost Squadrons.
Up front, on the sunny side, were Lynn-Minmei and her singing partner, Janice Em. Lisa's response to Minmei's offer that day in the gown shop had been straightforward: she had asked her to sing at the wedding.
Janice Em was something of an enigma to the media. Word had it that she was Dr. Lang's niece, but rumor linked her to the wizard of Robotechnology in more intimate terms. In any case, she seemed to have appeared on the scene out of nowhere two years earlier, only to become Lynn-Minmei's much needed tenor and constant companion. She was a few inches taller than Minmei, with large blue eyes set in a somewhat pale but attractive face. Her hair color changed every few months, but today it was a delicate lavender, pulled back in a rose clasp behind one ear. She had chosen a yellow spaghetti-strapped gown to complement Minmei's blue halter and offset it with a necklace of ancient Egyptian turquoise.
"Did I ever tell you about the time Rick and I got married?" Minmei was saying just now.
Janice heard the sadness in Minmei's voice, but chose to react to the statement. "Maybe you should be telling Lisa," she suggested. "Or are you saving it for when the chaplain asks if anyone can show `just cause'?"
Minmei reacted as though she had been slapped; then she let out her breath and laughed. It was so typically Janice to say something like that. When the press grilled her for the scoop on Janice and Dr. Lang, Minmei would often reply," Well, if she's not related to him, she's certainly got his sense of humor."
"It was a fantasy wedding, Janice," Minmei explained. "When we were trapped together in a hold in the SDF-1."
"And here you are trapped with him in another hold."
Minmei ignored it. "I just can't stop myself from thinking about what might have been."
"`The saddest are: it might have been,"' Janice quoted. "But forget it, Lynn. The past is only an arrangement of photons receding at lightspeed."
"That's very romantic, Janice."
"Romance is for storytellers."
"And what about our songs-you don't call them romantic?"
Janice turned to her straight-faced. "Our songs are weapons."

Above the would-be chapel, on an observation balcony Max had christened the "ready-reaction room," Rick stood in front of a mirror trying to tie a knot. His tux was white with sky-blue lapels.
"The balloon's about to go up," Max enthused, bursting in on him.
"I can't do it, Max. You're going to have to do it for me."