"Jack McKinney - Robotech 06 - Doomsday" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

"Farewell, Zor," Dolza had said when the lifeless body of the scientist was sent on its
way to Tirol. "May you serve the Masters better in death than you did in life. "
And indeed, the Robotech Masters had labored to make that so, having their way with Zor's
remains, extracting from his still-functional neural reservoir an image of the blue-white world he
had selected to inherit Robotechnology. But beyond that Zor's mind had proved as impenetrable in
death as it had been in life. So while Dolza's Zentraedi scoured the quadrant in search of this
"Earth," the Masters had little to do but hold fast to the mushroom-shaped sensor units that had
come to represent their link to the real world. Desperately, they tried to knit together the
unraveling threads of their once-great empire.
For ten long years by Earth reckoning they waited for some encouraging news from Dolza. It
was the blink of an eye to the massive Zentraedi, but for the Robotech Masters, who were
essentially human in spite of their psychically evolved state, time moved with sometimes agonizing
leadenness. Those ten years saw the further decline of their civilization, weakened as it was by
internal decadence, the continual attacks by the Protoculture-hungry Invid, a growing rebellion at
the fringes of their empire, and heightened disaffection among the ranks of the Zentraedi, who
were beginning to recognize the Masters for the fallible beings they were.
Robotechnology's inheritors had been located-"Zor's descendants," as they were being
called-but two more years would pass before Dolza's armada made a decisive move to recapture the
dimensional fortress and its much needed Protoculture matrix. There was growing concern,
especially among the Elder Masters, that Dolza could no longer be trusted. From the start he
seemed to harbor some plan of his own, reluctant to return Zor's body twelve years ago and now
incommunicado while he moved against the possessors of Zor's fortress. With his armada of more
than four million Robotech ships, the Zentraedi commander in chief stood to gain the most by
securing the Protoculture matrix for himself.
There was added reason for concern when it was learned that "Zor's descendants" were
humanoid like the Masters themselves. The warrior race literally looked down on anything smaller
than itself and had come to think of normally proportioned humanoids as "Micronians"-ironic, given
the fact that the Masters could have "sized" the Zentraedi to any dimension they wished. Their
present size was in fact an illusion of sorts: Beating inside those goliath frames were hearts
made from the same genetic stuff as the so-called Micronians they so despised. Because of that
basic genetic similarity, the Robotech Masters had been careful to write warnings into the
Zentraedi's pseudo-historical records to avoid prolonged contact with any Micronian societies.
Rightly so: It was feared that such exposure to emotive life might very well rekindle real
memories of the Zentraedi's bio-genetic past and the true stuff of their existence.
According to reports received from Commander Reno (who had overseen the return of Zor's
body to Tirol and whose fleet still patrolled the central region of the empire), some of the
elements under Breetai's command had mutinied. Dolza, if Reno's report was to be believed, had
subsequently elected to fold the entire armada to Earthspace, with designs to annihilate the
planet before emotive contagion was spread to the remainder of the fleet.
The Zentraedi might learn to emote, but were they capable of learning to utilize the full
powers of Robotechnology?
This was the question the Robotech Masters had put to themselves.
It was soon, however, to become a moot point.
Hyperspace sensor probes attached to a Robotech fortress some seventy-five light-years
away from Tirol had detected a massive release of Protoculture matrix in the Fourth Quadrant-an
amount capable of empowering over four million ships.


CHAPTER TWO
Throughout the territories we traveled (the southwest portion of what was once the United States