"Jack McKinney - Robotech 14 - Dark Powers" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinney Jack)

Way galaxy with the express hope of hearing the word they've just used:
friendship."
Permission to land was carried unanimously.
Exedore was less the frog-eyed, misshapen dwarf he had once been, thanks
to Human biosurgery and cosmetic treatments. It seemed to make people more at
ease in his presence, but other than that it meant little to him.
Now he pushed back his unruly mass of barn-red hair and squinted at the
readouts as his own data banks interfaced with those of the SDF-3 mainframes,
with input from the detectors tracking the newcomer battleship's descent. As
had happened so often in the past, he could feel great Breetai looming nearby.
Exedore, Breetai, and many of the star players of the REF were in the
Tactical Information Center. Techs, intel, and ops officers were scurrying
around the compartment, which was two hundred feet on a side and half as high,
crammed with screens and instrumentation. A main screen fifty feet square
dominated the place.
Exedore was matching disparate parts of the newcomer's hull features
with profiles in Zentraedi files. "You see? That portion toward the stern,
starboard-it's Praxian! A-and the section there just forward of midship's
starboard: is that not a Perytonian silhouette, I ask you?"
Nobody there was about to argue with him, but nobody understood what it
meant-and neither did Exedore. "It's as if these Sentinels slapped together a
variety of space vessels and united them with a central structure-you see?-to
form, oh, I don't know-a sort of aggregate. Certainly, it's not a design well
suited to atmospheric entry."
Exedore was correct. The assemblage ship, asymmetrical and unbalanced in
gravity and atmosphere, was already being battered as it fought its way down
toward Tirol's surface.
But by some miracle the lumbering vessel held together. Rick Hunter
found himself rooting for the Sentinels, whoever they were. He felt emotions
he hadn't felt in years-buried exaltation from his days in his father's air
circus.
"Our analyses of their power systems don't make any sense," a female
tech officer reported to the bridge. "Some indications are consistent with
Protoculture, but other readings are totally incompatible. We're even picking
up systemry that appears to be-well, like something from the steam age,
Captain."
"Thank you, Colonel," Lisa said, and the woman's image disappeared from
the bridge's main screen.
She turned to Exedore and Breetai. "Gentlemen-friends-can you tell me
what we've encountered?"
Breetai drew a breath, expanding his massive chest, then crossed his
tree limb arms across it. "It is galling to us, Lisa, and so we were slow to
bring it up, but many of the memories of the Zentraedi are false-constructs of
the Robotech Masters, implanted when they-"
For once she saw Breetai's head, as huge and indomitable as a buffalo's,
hang in dejection. Lisa could feel immense grief and loss coming from him.
"They deceived us; made a mockery of our loyalty, our valor, our
sacrifices..."
Exedore hastened to fill the ensuing silence. "We know less of this
local star group than we do of far-distant ones; the Zentraedi were expanding