"Jack McKinney - Robotech 10 - Invid Invasion" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

Commander."
Scott gave a start as bay doors throughout the carrier retracted. The cloud-studded deep-
blue oceans of Earth filled his entire field of vision. The sight elicited a sense of vertigo he
had never experienced before; it was difficult for him to comprehend a planet with so much water,
a liquid world that offered so little surface...but Scott was quick to catch himself.
"Mars Division attack wing," he said over the net, "let's do it!"
The Veritech lurched somewhat as the bin conveyers began to move the fighters toward the
forward bay. Scott saw that the grappler pylons that would convey the mecha from belt to vacuum
had already attached themselves. He readied himself at the controls, urging his body to relax, his
mind to meld with the VT systems. In a moment he felt the grapplers release, the fighter drifting
weightlessly, before he engaged the thrusters that bore it away from the transport carrier.
"All right, look alive," Scott said as his wingmen came alongside to signal their
readiness. "Once we join up with the main formation, I want eyes open and hands on the trigger."
Earthspace was filled with mecha now, some two thousand Veritechs in a slow descent over a silent
world. Scott heard Commander Gardner's voice over the com net.
"All wing commanders maintain loose battle formation...prepare to break off for individual
combat at the first sign of enemy hostility. It shouldn't be long in coming..."
It is unlikely that many of the men and women who made up the Mars Division (so named by
Dr. Lang to convey a sense of attachment to Earth and its brethren worlds) recognized the
uniqueness of their position: Their invasion represented humankind's first deliberate offensive
against an XT force. Up to that point Earth had always been on the defensive, counterstriking
first the Zentraedi, then those giants' Tirolian Masters, and lastly (and unsuccessfully) the
Invid themselves. In this sense the day was a red-letter event, if not the turning point Hunter
and numerous others had all hoped it would be...
Scott was one of the first to see the enemy ship; it was below him at nine o'clock,
surfacing through Earth's atmosphere at an alarming rate. An Invid troop carrier, one of the so-
called Mollusk Carriers.
"Here they are," Scott said to his wingmen, gesturing with his hand at the same time. The
clamshell-shaped fortress was yawning now, revealing an arena array of Invid Shock Trooper mecha.
"Fall in on my signal."
When Scott looked again a split second later, an Invid column launched itself and was
locked in on an ascent to engage, the ships' crablike hulls and pincer arms a gleaming golden-
brown in Sol's intense light. "Yeah, I think we're gonna see signs of hostility," Scott muttered
to himself as his squadron dropped in to meet the enemy at the edge of space.
At Scott's command the pilots of the Twenty-first thumbed off flocks of heat-seeker
missiles, which streaked into the ascending column. Short-lived explosions of violent fight
blossomed against Earth's blue and white backdrop. The VTs continued their silent descents,
loosing second and third salvos of red-tipped demons against that horde which had overwhelmed
their world. And countless Invid mecha flamed out and fried, but not enough to matter. For every
one taken out there were three that survived, and those which broke through the line of fire began
to strike back. Scott knew there were creatures inside each of those ships-huge bipedal mockeries
of the Human form, with massive arms and heads that resembled elongated snouts.
Unlike the enemy forces of the First and Second Robotech Wars, the Invid relied on numbers
rather than firepower. True, the Zentraedi had a seemingly endless supply of Battlepods and an


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armada of ships four million strong, but by and large the war was fought in conventional terms. Up