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

Lang watched as a series of esoteric holographic displays took shape on the screen. He studied them a moment and offered Cabell a restrained smile. "Now I understand."
A fold required an all-important interaction between Protoculture and the fuels that powered the Reflex drives themselves, an interaction his teams would never had guessed.
"But what you have here would call for a magnetic monopole ore, Cabell."
The Tiresian looked impatient. "Well, of course. How else could it be done?"
"But we haven't the equipment necessary to create this much material," Lang told him. "And even if we did, it would require more time-"
"Nonsense," Cabell said dismissively. "You have all the ore you need right there."
Lang and Exedore followed Cabell's finger out the viewport.
"Fantoma?"
"You don't remember a time when the Zentraedi were miners, Exedore?" Cabell asked.
Exedore seemed almost embarrassed by the question. "I do, Cabell. But we were never told what it was we were mining."
Cabell turned. to Lang. "The base may be difficult for you to utilize since it was sized to suit the Zentraedi; but the ore is still there for the taking."
Lang stepped to the viewport and looked long and hard at the giant planet's jade-colored crescent. Then, as his eyes found diminutive Tirol, he recalled a premonition he had had long before the SDF-3's departure from Earthspace. He thought of the SDF-3's sizing chamber, and of Breetai's small team of Micronized Battlepod warriors.
Exedore was standing alongside him now. "But will we have enough time, sir?"
Lang said, "We have nothing but time."

The lights in the sky are stars, Jonathan Wolff told himself short of the tunnel entrance. He had dismounted the Hovertank and was gazing up into Tirol's incomparable night. But there was at least one light up there that wasn't a star, and he made a wish on it.
Minmei was somewhere on that unblinking presence he identified as the SDF-3, and the wish was meant to ascend to her heart. Wolff had hardly been able to keep her from his thoughts these past two days; even in the midst of that first day's battle he would recall her face or the fragrance of her hair when she had come to the dropship hold to wish him luck, to embrace him. He wondered how he had allowed her to take hold of him like this, and considered for a moment that she might have witched herself into his mind. Because it was out of control all of a sudden, a flirtation he had played on the off-chance, never figuring she would respond. And what of Catherine? he asked himself. Was she, too, staring up into evening's light, her arm around the thin shoulder of their only son, and sending him a wish across the galaxy? While he had already forgotten, broken the pledge he had promised to stick to this time, so they could have the second chance their marriage so desperately needed.
Odd thoughts to be thinking on such a night, Wolff mused.
"All set, sir," the lieutenant's voice reported from behind him.
Wolff took a quick breath and swung around. "I want it to go by the numbers, Lieutenant," he warned. "Two teams, no surprises. Now, where's our voice?"
The lieutenant shouted, "Quist!" and a short, solid-looking ranger approached and snapped to.
"You stick to me like glue, Corporal," Wolff told him. "Every time I put my hand out I expect to find you on the end of it, got that?"
"Yes, sir."
Wolff gave Quist the once-over. "All right, let's hit it."
The lieutenant got the teams moving through the smoke toward the subterranean corridors. It hadn't taken a genius to locate the entry once they had gotten a clear fix on where the Beta from Skull had touched down. And that crazy kid, Baker, had a good memory if nothing else, Wolff had to concede; his recall of the ruined buildings in the area bordered on the uncanny.
Wolff signaled for everyone to hold up at the entrance. He peered down into the darkness, then took a look behind him, where four Hovertanks were guarding the rear. The corridor was tall and wide, but not big enough to accommodate a mecha. Stairways, secondary corridors, and some kind of huge lenslike medallions could be discerned from up here.
Wolff found himself thinking back to the journals his grandfather had kept during a minor Indo-Chinese war few people remembered. Back then, Jack Wolff and a handful of tunnel rats used to go into these things with flashlights and gunpowder handguns. Wolff checked the safety on his blaster and had to laugh: his grandfather wrote about the booby traps, the spiders and rats. Today it would be mindless feline robot drones and a host of other stuff they probably hadn't even seen yet. But all in all it was the same old thing: a sucker's tour of the unknown.
"Bring those Amblers in," Wolff ordered.
Two squat, bipedal Robosearchlights moved up to throw intense light into the hole.
Wolff and his Pack began to follow them down.


CHAPTER THIRTEEN
If Exedore had an Invid counterpart, it would have to be the scientist [sic], Tesla, for no other of the Regis's children was possessed of such a wide-ranging intellect and personality. It is interesting to note, however, that although fashioned by the Regis, Tesla had much more of the Regent in his makeup. One has to wonder if the Regis, taking Zor as her only model, mistakenly assigned certain characteristics to males, and others to females. Marlene, Sera, and Corg-her human child-immediately come to mind. Was she, then, in some sense culpable for fostering the Regent's devolved behavior?
Bloom Nesterfig, The Social Organization of the Invid

It was Tesla who told the Regis about the trouble on Tirol. He was one of the Regent's "scientists"-how she laughed at this notion!-and currently the commander of the Karbarran starship that was transporting life-forms back to the Regent's zoo on Optera. Tesla had been something of a favorite child, but the Regis had become suspicious of his ostensibly metaphysical strivings, and had nothing but distrust for him now that he had allied himself with her estranged husband. Tesla reminded her of the Regent; there was the same burning intensity in his black eyes, the same distention and blush to his feelers. He had no details about the situation on Tirol, other than to note that the Regent had dispatched two additional warships from Optera to see to some new emergency.
"So he's gotten himself into another fix," the Regis sneered.
"A possible entanglement, Your Highness," Tesla replied, offering her a somewhat obligatory and half-hearted salute. "A complication, perhaps. But hardly a `fix.'"
The two were on Praxis, where a shuttle from the Karbarran ship had put down to take on supplies and specimens. The starship itself, a medley of modular drives and transport units from a dozen worlds, was in orbit near the Praxian moon; it was crewed by slaves, ursine creatures native to Karbarra, a world rich in the Protoculture Peat that fueled the ship.
A sentry announced that one of Tesla's lieutenants wished to speak with him. The Regis granted permission, and the lieutenant entered a moment later. Two Praxians, cuffed at wrist and ankle, followed. They were ravishing creatures, the Regis thought, appraising the duo Tesla had handpicked for the Regent's zoo. Tall, Tiresioid females with thick, lustrous pelts and strategic swaths of primitive costume to offset their smooth nakedness. The Regis confessed to a special fondness for the Praxians and their forested, fertile planet; but Praxis held even greater charms in its volcanic depths. Tesla, however, was unaware of the Genesis Pits she had fashioned here-her underground experiments-in creative evolution.
"Shall I take these two to the ship?" Tesla's lieutenant asked.
As Tesla approached the females to look them over more closely, the taller of the two began to spit and curse at him, straining wildly against the cuffs that bound her. The Enforcer turned to silence her and took a bite on the hand. Ravishing, the Regis told herself, but warriors to the last.
Ultimately the lieutenant brought a weapon to bear on the pair; stunned, they collapsed to their knees and whimpered.
Tesla nodded and adopted the folded-arm posture characteristic of his group. "Yes, they'll do fine," he told his soldier. "And see that they're well caged."
The Regis made a scoffing sound when the females had been led out. "My husband's need for pets. Instead of furthering his own evolution, he chooses to surround himself with captives-to bask in his self-deluded superiority." She glared at Tesla, finding his form repugnant, in so many ways inferior to the very beings his ship carried like so much stock. "So what are you bringing him this time, servant?"
Testa ignored the slur. "Feel free to inspect our cargo, Your Highness. We have choice samples from Karbarra, Spheris, Garuda, Peryton, and now Praxis. A brief stopover on Haydon IV, and our cages will be full."
The Regis whirled on the scientist. "Haydon IV?" There was a sudden note of concern in her voice. "Have you given clear thought to the possible consequences of such an action?"
Tesla shrugged his massive shoulders. "What could go wrong, Your Highness? Haydon IV is our world now, is it not?"
Haydon IV belongs to no one, the Regis kept to herself. Captives aside, Tesla would be lucky to leave that world alive.