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

"Mr. Colton, start your count," Lisa ordered, hands tight on the command chair's armrests.
"T-minus-ten and counting," Colton shouted above the roar and shudder.
"Nine..."
"Admiral!" Blake said suddenly. "I'm showing an unidentified radar blip well inside the fold zone!"
"Five, four..."
Lisa craned her neck around. "What is it?!"
"Ship, sir-EVA craft!"
"Two, one..."
"Too late!"
"Zero."
"Execute!" Lisa shouted.
And the mile-long ship jumped.


CHAPTER SEVEN
While the life expectancy of a standard Zentraedi mecha pilot had been determined by the Robotech Masters at three years, the life expectancy of a comparable Invid pilot was never even addressed. In effect, all Invid troops (save the sexually-differentiated scientists) could be activated and deactivated at a moment's notice-initially by the Regis only, and later by the living computers the Queen Mother helped create to satisfy her husband's wounded pride (after the "affair" with Zor)...A self-generated variety of Protoculture was essential to mecha operation, in the form of a viscous green fluid that filled the cockpit space. It was through this nutrient bath (liquefied fruits from the mature Optera plants) that the living computers, or "brains," communicated with the ranks.
Selig Kahler, The Tirolian Campaign

"Yes, my boy, I've been meaning to show you this place for quite a long time," Cabell confessed, gesturing to the wonders of the subterranean chamber. The scientist and his apprentice were deep in the labyrinth beneath Tiresia's pyramidal Royal Hall. "A pity it has to be under these circumstances."
It was a laboratory and monitoring facility the likes of which Rem had never seen. There were wall-to-wall consoles and screens, networktops piled high with data cards and ancient print documents, and dozens of unidentifiable tools and devices. In the glow of the room's archaic illumination panels, the place had a dusty, unused look.
"And this was really his study?" Rem said in disbelief.
Cabell nodded absently, his thoughts on the Pollinators and what could be done with them now. The shaggy creatures had become quiet and docile all of a sudden, huddling together in a tight group in one corner of the room. It was as if they had instinctively located some sort of power spot. Cabell heard Rem gasp; the youth was staring transfixed at a holo-image of Zor he had managed to conjure up from one of the networks, the only such image left on Tirol.
"But...but this is impossible," Rem exclaimed. "We're identical!"
Cabell swallowed and found his voice. "Well, there's some resemblance, perhaps," he said, downplaying the likeness. "Something about the eyes and mouth...But switch that thing off, boy, we've got work to do."
Mystified, Rem did so, and began to clear a workspace on one of the countertops, while Cabell went around the room activating terminals and bringing some of the screens to life. The old man knew that he could communicate directly with the Elders from here, but there was no need for that yet. Instead, he set about busying himself with the transponder, and within an hour he had the data he needed to pinpoint the source of its power.
"As I thought," Cabell mused, as schematics scrolled across a screen. "They are almost directly above us in the Royal Hall. Apparently they've brought some sort of command center down from the fleet ships. Strange, though...the emanations are closer to organic than computer-generated."
"What does it mean?" Rem asked over Cabell's shoulder.
"That we now know where we must direct our strike." He had more to add, but autoactivation sounds had suddenly begun to fill the lab, drawing his attention to a screen off to his left, linked, Cabell realized, to one of Tirol's few remaining orbital scanners. And shortly, as a deepspace image formed on the screen, it was Cabell's turn to gasp.
"Oh, my boy, tell me I'm not seeing things!"
"It's a starship," Rem said, peering at the screen. "But it's not Invid, is it?"
Cabell had his palms pressed to his face in amazement. "Far from it, Rem, far from it...Don't you see?-it's his ship, Zor's!"
"But how, Cabell?"
Cabell shot to his feet. "The Zentraedi! They've recaptured it and returned." He put his hands on Rem's shoulders. "We're saved, my boy. Tirol is saved!"

But the moon's orbital watchdogs weren't the only scanners to have picked up on the ship. Inside the Royal Hall-converted by Enforcer units to an Invid headquarters-the slice of brain Obsim had transported to Tirol's surface began to speak.
"Intruder alert," the synthesized voice announced matter-of-factly. "An unidentified ship has just entered the Valivarre system on a course heading for Tirol. Estimated arrival time: one period."
The cerebral scion approximated the appearance of the Regent's living computer, and floated in a tall, clear fluid bubble chamber that was set into an hourglass-shaped base.
"Identify and advise," Obsim ordered.
"Searching..."
The Invid scientist turned his attention to a spherical, geodesiclike communicator, waiting for an image to form.
"Insufficient data for unequivocal identification."
"Compare and approximate."
"Quiltra Quelamitzs," the computer responded a moment later. A deepspace view of the approaching ship appeared in the sphere, and alongside it the various memory profiles the brain had employed in its search.
"Identify."
"Zentraedi battlecruiser."
Obsim's snout sensors twitched and blanched. The Zentraedi, he thought, after all these generations, returned to their home system. He could only hope they were an advance group for the Masters themselves, for that would mean a return of the Flower, the return of hope...
He instructed the computer to alert all troopship commanders immediately. "Stand by to assault."

Much as spacefold was a warping of the continuum, it was a mind-bending experience as well. The world was filled with a thousand voices speaking at once, and dreamtime images of externalized selves loosed to live out an array of parallel moments, each as real and tangible as the next, each receding as swiftly as it was given birth. The stars would shimmer, fade, and emerge reassembled. Light and shadow reversed. Space was an argent sea or sky shot through with an infinite number of black holes, smeared with smoky nebulae.
This marked Lisa's sixth jump, but familiarity did nothing to lessen the impact of hyperspace travel, the SDF-3's tunnel in the sky. It felt as though she had awakened not on the other side of the galaxy but on the other side of a dream, somehow exchanged places with her nighttime self, so that it was her doppelganger who sat in the command chair now. Voices from the bridge crew surfaced slowly, muffled and unreal, as if from a great depth.