"Jack McKinney - Robotech 03 - Homecoming" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

Robotech: Homecoming
Book Three of the Robotech series
Copyright 1987 by Jack McKinney


CHAPTER ONE
The enemy armada, so vastly superior to us in numbers of fighting mecha and
aggregate firepower, continues to harry and harass us. But time and again the
Zentraedi stop short of all-out attack. They impede our long voyage back to
Earth, but they cannot stop us. I am still uncertain as to what good fortune is
working in the SDF-1's favor.
I do not point out any of this to the crew or refugees, however. It does no good
to tell grieving friends and loved ones that casualties could have been far
worse.
From the log of Captain Henry Gloval

Blue lines of enemy cannon fire streaked by Roy Fokker's cockpit, scorching one
of his Veritech fighter's tail stabilizers, ranging in for a final volley.
 "Flying sense" the aviators called it, jargon that came from the
twentieth-century term "air sense": honed and superior high-speed piloting
instincts. It was something a raw beginner took a while to develop, something
that separated the novices from the vets.
And it was something Lieutenant Commander Roy Fokker, Skull Team leader
and Veritech squadron commander, had in abundance, even in the airlessness of a
deep-space dogfight.
Responding to his deft touch at the controls and his very will-passed
along to it by Robotech sensors in his flight helmet-Roy's Veritech fighter did
a wingover and veered onto a new vector with tooth-snapping force.
Thrusters blaring full-bore, the maneuver forces pressed him into his
seat, just as the enemy was concentrating more on his aim than on his flying.
The Zentraedi in the Battlepod on Roy's tail, trying so diligently to kill
him and destroy his Robotech fighter, was a good pilot, steady and cool like all
of them, but he lacked Roy's flying abilities.
While the giant alien gaped, astounded, at his suddenly empty gunsight
reticle, the Skull Team leader was already coming around behind the pod into the
kill position.
Around that fragment of the battle, an enormous dogfight raged as
Zentraedi pods and their Cyclops recon ships mixed it up ferociously with the
grimly determined human defenders in their Veritechs. The bright spherical
explosions characteristic of zero-g battle blossomed all around, dozens at a
time. Blue Zentraedi radiation blasts were matched by the Veritechs'
autocannons, which flung torrents of high-density armor-piercers at the enemy.
Roy was relieved to see that the SDF-1 was unharmed. Most of the fighting
seemed to be going on at some distance from it, although it was clear that the
enemy fleet had all the odds on its side. The Zentraedi armada easily numbered
over a million warships.
Roy located his wingman, Captain Kramer, in the furious engagement;
forming up for mutual security, he looked around again for the fantastic
Zentraedi mecha that had done so much damage a few minutes before. It had flown
rings around the Veritechs that had gone after it, taking Roy and the Skulls by