"Jack McKinney - Robotech 02 - Battle cry" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

Long-range scopes had captured this image of the ship for his inspection and analysis. But
what those same scopes and scanners failed to reveal was the makeup of the creatures who possessed
it.

The bridge was an observation bubble overlooking the astrogational center of the flagship,
a vast gallery of screens, projecbeam fields, and holo-schematics that gave Breetai access to
information gathered by any cruiser or destroyer in his command. He could communicate with any of
his many officers or any of the numerous Cyclops recon ships. But none of these could furnish him
with the data he now desired-some explanation of Micronian behavior. For that, Breetai counted on
Exedore, his dwarfish adviser, who at the moment seemed equally at a loss.

"Commander," the misshapen man was saying, "I have analysed this most recent strategy from
every possible angle, and I still cannot understand why they found it necessary to change to this
format. A structural modification of this nature will most assuredly diminish, possibly even
negate, the effectiveness of the ship's gravity control centers."


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"And their weapons?"

"Fully operational. Unless they are diverting energy to one of the shield systems."

Breetai wondered whether he was being overly cautious. It was true that he had been caught
off guard by the Micronians' unpredictable tactics but unlikely that he had underestimated their
capabilities. That they had chosen to execute an intraatmospheric spacefold, heedless of the
effects of their island population center, was somewhat disturbing, as was their most recent use
of the powerful main gun of the SDF-1. But these were surely acts of desperation, those of an
enemy running scared, not one in full possession of the situation.

In any straightforward military exercise, this unpredictability would have posed no
threat. It had been Breetai's experience that superior firepower invariably won out over desperate
acts or clever tactics. And there were few in the known universe who could rival the Zentraedi in
firepower. But this operation called for a certain finesse. The Micronians would ultimately be
defeated; of this he was certain. Defeat, however, was of secondary importance. His prime
directive was to recapture Zor's ship undamaged, and given the Micronian penchant for self-
destruction, a successful outcome could not be guaranteed.

With this in mind Breetai had adopted a policy of watchful waiting. For more than two
months by Micronian reckoning, the Zentraedi fleet had followed the SDF-1 without launching an
attack. During that time, he and Exedore had monitored the ship's movements and audiovisual
transmissions; they had analyzed the changes and modifications Zor's ship had undergone; they had
screened trans-vids of their initial confrontations with the enemy. And most important, they had
studied the Zentraedi legends regarding Micronian societies. There were warnings in those legends-
warnings Breetai had chosen to ignore.

The SDF-1 was approaching an outer planet of this yellow-star system, a ringed world,
large and gaseous, with numerous small moons. A secondary screen on the flagship bridge showed it