"18 - The End of the Circle" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

"What's weird is that I was just thinking about you," Rand resumed. "I was reading in my notes about the day you and I met. The time I saved your ass from three blues."
Scott almost spewed his beer across the room. "You saved my-" He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, deciding it didn't merit an argument. "Right, I remember now."
"Yeah, those were the days," Rand mused, shaking his shaggy mop of red hair. "Foraging; surviving on the road . . ." He looked up at Scott. "I'm going to call the book Notes on the Run."
"Your baby, is that it?"
Rand's thick eyebrows bobbed. "So Rook told you. She also give you that intuition crap about her being sure it's a girl?"
"Maria, I think she said."
"Yeah, well, don't put scrip on it." Rand sipped his grog. "Either way it goes, though, I'm going to make sure the kid is raised to appreciate books and movies and learning in general." He gestured to the writing desk. "Maybe she'll even end up a writer like her old man."
"You said `she,' Rand," Scott pointed out.
They both laughed, but it was not long before an uncomfortable pause crept into their conversation. When Scott mentioned Marlene, Rand's smile collapsed entirely.
"What do want from her, Scott?" Rand asked.
"I just need to talk to her. That's all I can tell you right now. "
"And I don't suppose you can tell me anything about why most of the Cyclones have stopped working either. Lot of unemployed 'Culture hounds wandering around out there all of a sudden, amigo."
"Sorry, Rand," Scott told him. "We're all in the same dark."
Rand smirked. "Same ol' soldier. What is it-your REF people want to debrief her?"
Scott shot to his feet. "Hey, you think this is easy for me? You think I want it? I look at her and I see the Marlene I loved. I look at her and I think about what the Invid did to us."
Rand rolled his eyes. "Oh, for chrissakes."
"The Regis planned to exterminate us, Rand," Scott snarled. "You don't remember that? The Flowers had hit their goddamned trigger point. If the fleet hadn't returned, we'd all be dead."
Rand stood up. "Yeah, and if the Regis hadn't decided to leave when she did, your precious fleet-" He pointed toward the ceiling. "-your precious fleet would have irradiated the lot of us!"
"You'd rather let the Invid have this planet?"
"I'd rather none of this happened, Scott. But I don't see how dragging Marlene back into it's going to serve any purpose now. She's living a normal life, Scott. Let her be."
"Where is she; Rand?" Scott pressed. "It's possible she knows where my friends are."
Rand regarded him. "The SDF-3? How do you figure?"
Scott forced out his breath. "The ship didn't emerge from hyperspace. Relatively speaking, it vanished at the same moment the Invid left Earth."
"So you figure what?"
"That they may have ended up in the same place." Scott held Rand's gaze. "It's possible Marlene is still in rapport with the Regis. That's why I need to talk to her, Rand."
The smaller man shook his head. "You're putting me between the proverbial rock and the hard place, mano."
"Just tell me where she is, Rand."
Rand took a long pull from his mug. "She's with Lunk and Annie. They're in Roca Negra."
Scott tried to place it.
"Remember the book Lunk tried to deliver to Alfred Nader?"
"Of course," Scott said in sudden realization. "That's where you'll find them."
"Thanks, Rand. "
Reluctantly, Rand accepted the proffered hand. "One thing, Scott," he said when they were seated again. "Lunk's not going to be as easy on you as I was."


CHAPTER FIVE
TO: NILES OBSTAT EYES ONLY
FROM: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DIRECTORATE RE: PROJECT STARCHILD
DNA ANALYSIS OF BLOOD AND TISSUE SAMPLES TAKEN FROM INVID SIMULAGENT (A.K.A "MARLENE," "ARIEL") PROVE UNEQUIVOCAL MATCH TO ON-FILE DNA PROFILES OF MARS DIVISION E.R. TECH MARLENE RUSH (SEE APPENDED NOTES). SUGGEST THAT REGIS EXTRACTED RUSH TISSUE FROM WRECKAGE OF MARS GROUP AND USED FIND AS TEMPLATE FOR HER HUMANOID CREATIONS. IT IS YET TO BE LEARNED WHETHER USE OF RUSH TEMPLATE WAS DELIBERATE OR COINCIDENTAL. QUERY: IS COLONEL BERNARD TO BE INFORMED? SUGGESTION: WITHHOLD ALL KNOWLEDGE OF CLONING UNTIL FULL DISCLOSURE IS WARRANTED OR DEEMED ADVISABLE.
G2 dispatch, quoted in, Sara Lemole's Improper Council: An Analysis of the Plenipotentiary Council

"She's got the right dynamic for the New Frontier."
Twentieth-century song lyric

Under Reflex power, the Ark Angel left geosynch and inserted itself into orbit where the Robotech factory satellite had once played the role of Earth's inner moon. The departure point for the trial jump to Luna's far side was the very same spatial coordinates the SDF-3 had used in its fold to Fantomaspace.
Vince had been elsewhere when the SDF-1 had jumped from Macross, but he was well acquainted with the accounts of that fateful day logged by Henry Gloval, Emil Lang, and countless others. The far side had been targeted for the position jump, but the fortress had missed the mark by what amounted to the radius of the solar system. Gloval had given the command, but Lang had borne the burden of the blame. Inexperience, pilot error ... An official inquiry was never performed. Years later, though, while Breetai's ship was undergoing its face-lift in the factory satellite's null-g core, the then-micronized Zentraedi commander had shown Lang where he had gone wrong. Yet in spite of that, the feeling remained that Lang was innocent of any technical oversight or wrongdoing. Human control was considered a moot point where Protoculture was involved.
So, cinched into the Ark Angel's command chair-a wellнpadded motorized affair similar to the one he had had designed for the GMU a lifetime ago-Vince Grant had to ask himself just what Protoculture might have in mind for the day's fold.
Seated at duty stations to the left and right of him, techs and bridge officers were running through a final series of system checks as the ship counted down from double digits. Jean, steadfast in her refusal to remain planetside for the test, was with her med group elsewhere in the ship. Vince was on file as insisting on a skeleton crew for the test, but he was secretly thankful that the Plenipotentiary Council members had overruled him. When it came right down to it, no one wanted to be left behind.
Even if the Protoculture had a surprise destination already picked out.
In truth, the Ark Angel's drives were Sekiton-fueled-a peat derived from Karbarra's abundant Ur-Flower crop. Vince supposed the distinction was a minor one, but that belief was not shared by the half dozen Karbarrans who headed up the ship's engineering section. Protoculture, the ursinoids were fond of pointing out, could be handled by almost anyone, but Sekiton responded to Karbarrans only, a condition Haydon the Enigmatic had been responsible for, or so Vince had been given to understand.