Jack McKinney Robotech Sentientals 4 World Killers

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friend and mentor. Gnea held one of the naginatalike Praxian halberds, a
polearm with a curved, glittering head and a wicked spike set at the opposite
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end. Jack had seen the two use their weapons in combat, and had learned the
foolishness of underestimating primitive arms.
He checked his inertial locator; there was no use going back, and so
Glike was their only hope now. But then he noticed Janice, standing to one
side, distracted. She looked as if she were listening to some distant siren
song to which the rest of them were deaf.
"It's near," she whispered. "Somewhere close, and it's aware of us."
Burak, horned like an auroch, who had ridden with her, looked at her
strangely.
"What is?" Crysta asked. She was pumping up the globlar reservoir of her long
Karbarran pneumatic rifle with its hinged forestock lever. "Janice, what is it
you perceive?"
"Haydon IV the artificial world has a mind, an Awareness," Janice said,
as if in a dream. "And the seat of that Awareness, its nexus, is not far
away."
She knew it was true, but couldn't understand how the knowledge had been given
to her. She turned to them. "We must go to it!"
"Huh-uh." Jack was shrugging into his packstraps. "They'll be waiting for us
up there in Glike, remember? Admiral Hunter, and Karen and the rest?
People we're supposed to rescue? I admit things haven't exactly been beer and
skittles so far, but we're not gonna let 'em down. We stick to the plan."
Janice Em found that she couldn't answer. She felt like a double image on a
monitor screen, ghostly twins standing side by side. The whirlpool of thoughts
and sensory impulses that spun within her had stolen her voice, immobilized
her. Vast forces were vying within her.
She had a sudden sense of Lang-not of the Robotech genius's physical presence,
but rather of his voice, his intellect. Intentionally submerged memories had
surfaced in this moment of crisis. Changes were triggered in the being the REF
and the Sentinels-and even Minmei-knew as Janice Em.
As she transformed her companions drew away from her.
CHAPTER SIX
Anybody who says million-to-one odds are unbeatable never had Breetai standing
on their side of the scales at the weigh-in.
Lisa Hayes Hunter, Recollections
There was no reality, no orderly flow of time, no ground underfoot or
substantial object that she could touch. She was in a void, without form, as
she had been for so long.
Then things began to impinge upon her. It came to her that her name was
Karen Penn. Other facts and memories and realizations coalesced.
She was a member of the Sentinels by way of the Robotech Expeditionary
Force. Her mother had died in childbirth, and her father held that against
Karen to this day. There was another young officer, Jack Baker, whom she-
She blocked that thought out. But there were more-the memory of how she had
been poisoned by the atmosphere of Garuda, swept up in the hallucinatory
expanded mind-state the Garudans called hin, a state for which the human mind
had never been intended. Then there were the nightmares, the visions, the
visitations of the endless mindstorm of the hin. Some had been horrible, some
of terrible beauty, but all had strained her grip on her sanity and the very
functions of her autonomic nervous system.
The flickering spark of her life had been all but out when without warning
something seemed to be fanning it, encouraging it to glow and grow brighter.
Then there was an almost physical feeling, as if she were being flushed out
with snowmelt water from a mountain river-as if she were wired up with
electrodes.
And a chorus of somehow silent voices, singing words she never quite
understood, drew her up and up from the verge of death.
Over the preceding weeks, Karen had dreamed or hallucinated many times.
Now she had finally awakened. This time, what she saw made her sob a bit, with
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relief.
Lieutenant Commander Miriya Sterling sat at her bedside, holding Karen's hand.
Once the battle queen of the Zentraedi's feared Quadrono Battalion, now wife
to Max Sterling, leader of the Skull Squadron, Miriya had fought for the
Human race and the Sentinels as hard as she had ever fought for the Robotech
Masters-or even harder; love had shown her the way.
Miriya gave Karen a tender smile that seemed out of character with the
ferocity of a Quadrono. She smoothed a lock of Karen's hair. "Welcome back."
Karen tried to speak, not even sure what she would say, but Miriya hushed her.
"You'll still be weak for a little while; the rest of us were, too. Just
rest."
Miriya turned and spoke softly over her shoulder. "Dr. Grant? She's
awake."
Another face came into view over Miriya's shoulder, a heart-shaped face with
big black eyes and skin the color of dark honey. "Take it slow," Dr. Jean
Grant said. "You're gonna be just fine, Karen."
Karen concluded that she wasn't in a Sentinels' sick bay; that much was
apparent from what she could see of her surroundings. The apparatus all around
her-what she took to be med equipment-had the look of geometrical sculptures
in crystal and precious metals, and abstract shapes of neon and laser light.
She recalled seeing the same design technology in the Haydonites' module of
the starship Farrago. She reached an understandable conclusion.
"Haydon IV?" Jean and Miriya both nodded their heads slowly. "Then, we've done
it? We've liberated another planet from the Invid?"
"No, Lieutenant." Lisa Hayes Hunter stepped into Karen's line of sight, Rick
following a step behind.
"Garuda was freed," Lisa went on, "but several of us were stricken by the
planet's biosphere. Our only chance was Haydonite science, so Vince and
Jean and several others brought us here, under a flag of surrender."
"Not surrender," Rick rasped. "I never surrendered to the Invid, and neither
did you! Besides, they don't rule Haydon IV, at least not officially, so a
surrender's null and void."
Karen was startled to see how hateful his expression was, not just in [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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