"Jack McKinney - Robotech 09 - The Final Nightmare" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

Robotech: The Final Nightmare
Book Nine of the Robotech Series
Copyright 1987 by Jack McKinney


CHAPTER ONE
Many women were often in the thick of the fighting during the First Robotech
War. They served splendidly and gallantly. But they were usually restricted to
what the military insisted on calling "non-combat roles," despite the great
numbers of them killed as a direct result of enemy action.
By the time of the Second Robotech War, with the Earth's resources depleted
and its population drastically reduced by the First, sheer necessity and
common sense had overcome the lingering sexism that had kept willing,
qualified women off the front lines.
Nevertheless, the Robotech Masters' onslaught quickly had Earth on the ropes.
It is instructive to consider what the outcome would have been if the Army of
the Southern Cross had faced the planet's second invasion without half its
fighting strength.
Fortunately for us all, that is not what happened.
Betty Greer, Post-Feminism and the Robotech Wars

Lieutenant Marie Crystal made a willful effort to face the camera now as she
had faced enemy guns yesterday.
She drove back her bone-deep exhaustion, the pain of battle injuries,
and the despair of a desperate situation that even the light lunar gravity
couldn't alleviate. She intended to finish her report with the clarity and
precision expected of a Tactical Armored Space Corps fighter ace and the
leader of the TASC's vaunted Black Lions...
And maybe, after that, she could collapse and get a few minutes' sleep.
It seemed now that she never wanted anything but sleep.
In the wake of the disastrous all-out attempt to destroy the Robotech
Masters' invasion fleet, Marie had to shoulder even more responsibility. The
chain of command had been shot all to hell along with the Earth strikeforce
itself.
Admiral Burke was dead-diced into bloody stew by an exploding power
junction housing when the blue Bioroids cut the strikeforce flagship to
ribbons. General Lacey, next in line, lay with ninety percent of the skin
seared off his body, teetering between life and death.
The senior officer, a staff one-star, was still functional, but he had
virtually no combat command experience. The scuttlebutt was that he was being
pressured to let somebody else run the show. An implausibly successful Bioroid
sortie and the resultant hangar deck explosion on board the now defunct
flagship resulted in Marie being named the new flight group commander.
She went on with her after-action report to Southern Cross military
headquarters on Earth.
"Our remaining spacecraft number: one battlecruiser, two destroyer
escorts, and one logistical support ship, all of which have suffered heavy
damage," she said, looking squarely into the optical pickup. "Along with
twenty-three Veritech fighters, twelve A-JACs combat mecha, and assorted small
scout and surveillance ships. At last report we have one thousand, one hundred