Jack McKinney RoboTech 05 Force of Arms

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some more comfortable clothes and then take you to the captain. Have you
eaten?"
Exedore sorted that out, recalling the wedding transmissions and
dreading a lot of ceremonies stalling the beginning of the peace talks. "Ah,
yes; yes."
As they walked, ground-shaking impacts began on the deck behind them,
jostling them as they moved. They turned to see that the Zentraedi pilot had
naturally fallen in to follow his lord. The Battloids hadn't quite brought
their chain-gun muzzles back up.
Exedore was quick to see the problem and also to understand some of the
humans' apprehension.
Maistroff kept his composure. "Excuse me, Minister Exedore, but-could
you ask him to wait here on the hangar deck?"
"Oh!" It didn't take a genius of Exedore's caliber to see that those
little hatches wouldn't allow for much fullsize Zentraedi wandering. Clever!
He turned to look up at his pilot. "Stay here and guard the pod." It did
irritate him how much higher and less forceful the transformation had made his
voice.
The pilot pulled a brace, biting out, "Yes, sir!"
Maistroff turned and jerked a thumb at two aides. "You men find him
something to eat."
They saluted as one, "Yes, sir!" under the eyes of the Zentraedi
warrior, just as precise as he. Then they watched as Maistroff cordially aided
Exedore in boarding the staff car, just about as unlikely a sight as anything
yet in the war. Motorcycle outriders led the way, and the motorcade moved off.
The two staff officers relaxed, looked up at the Zentraedi, then looked
back at each other. "Something to eat?" the first one exclaimed. "He's got to
be kidding!"
"Maistroff never kids," his companion answered. They both had comrigs in
their jeeps, and the second staff officer reached over now to get a handset,
telling his friend, "You call ration distribution and break the bad news."
Then he turned to his own mission. "Hello, transportation control?
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Listen, I'm gonna need a coupla flatbeds..."
The thoroughfares of Macross City were as confusing to Exedore as they
had been to the spies. So much undisiplined, disorganized activity! So much
aimless milling about! There seemed to be no point to a lot of it-all this
gaping through display windows and strolling haphazardly. He wondered if it
was some deceptive show that had been mounted for his visit.
And, of course, he averted his eyes from the males and females wandering
the city holding hands or with arms around each other's waists. Of the
tiny-model Micronians, the noisy, poorly regimented smallscales that the human
called "children," Exedore could make neither head nor tail. Just seeing them
gave him a shuddery feeling.
But he had to admit the ship was in a good state of repair, especially
after two years of running battles with the warrior race. There would have
been no hiding the damage in a Zentraedi ship, no fixing it. Intelligence
reports had already indicated what Exedore saw evidence of all around him: The
Micronians knew how to rebuild-perhaps how to create. It was an awesome
advantage, a critical part of the war's equation.
Very few Micronians were in uniform; none of them appeared to be under
close supervision.
"Why, this is our shopping district," Maistroff explained when Exedore
asked.
"Ah, yes! I believe this is where you use something called money to
requisition goods."
Maistroff scratched his neck a bit. "Um. That's not too far off,
Minister."
They cruised along a broad boulevard, and Exedore suddenly broke out
into a cold sweat and began to shudder. Maistroff sat up straight, wondering
if something about the ship's life support was incompatible, but that was
impossible.
Then he saw that Exedore, teeth clenched, was staring up at a billboard.
The billboard advertised the Velvet Suntan Clinics, with a photo of the
languorous Miss Velvet, a voluptuous, browned, barely clad, supremely athletic
looking young woman whose poster popularity in Macross City was second only to
Minmei's.
"Ee, er, oh, th-that picture on the building over there," Exedore got
out at last, looking like he was having a malaria attack. "Would you mind
explaining it?" He forced his gaze to the floor of the staff car.
Maistroff reached up to the back of his cap and tilted the visor down
over his eyes to keep good form with the minister, coughing into his other
hand. "Well, actually, it's a little hard to explain."
Exedore crossed his skinny arms on his narrow chest and nodded wisely.
"Aha! A military secret, no doubt! Very clever! Indeed!"
Maistroff didn't even want to think about what damage he might have done
to interspecies relations-didn't want to complicate things.
He tilted his visor farther down. "Right, that's it. Classified."
The motorcade raced for the conference room.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
RUSSO: What are they doing up there, Alexei? Don't those RDF pantywaists of
yours even know how to fight?
ZUKAV: I believe that what we should worry about, Senator, is that they and
the aliens are teaching each other how not to.
Exchange believed to have taken place between Senator Russo and Marshal Zukav
of the UEDC
The SDF-1 and the flagship faced each other, unmoving across a narrow gap of
space, almost eyeball to eyeball.
Gloval left instructions with Claudia that she open fire with the main
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gun if there was any hostile action at all. A few minutes later he sat at a
judicial bench in the ship's biggest hearing chamber with Colonel Maistroff on
his right, an intelligence major to the left, zing down at Exedore. Except for
a few functionaries, the place was empty.
The misshapen little fellow fell far short of Gloval's mental image of a
ravaging alien warmonger, the captain had to admit to himself. If anything, he
seemed rather...prissy.
"At last we meet face to face, Captain," the alien said in a
not-uncordial voice, glancing at him from the distant witness stand.
"Yes," Gloval allowed.
An attractive young female ensign brought a tray and put a glass of
orange juice where Exedore could reach it. Gloval and the others watched
Exedore's reaction to the woman closely, but apparently he had gotten his
responses under control as he merely nodded his head in gratitude.
Exedore raised the glass and took a cautious sip. The flavor was
delightful, but the beverage had a certain savor, something he couldn't
define. It was something dizzying, almost electric.
"Mmm. This is very refreshing." He looked up at her. "What is it?"
She checked with Gloval by eye to make sure that it was all right to
answer. Gloval gave the barest nod, which Exedore in turn caught. "It's orange
juice, sir. From our own hydroponics orchards."
Exedore didn't quite understand for a moment. When he spoke, he tried to
keep the tremor from his voice. "You mean, you grow it?"
She looked a little confused. "We grow the fruit the juice comes from."
"Ah, yes; just so. That is what I meant." He downed the rest of the
orange juice to hide his amazement.
These creatures consumed food that had been alive! Who knew; perhaps
they consumed things that still were alive! He shuddered and reminded himself
that this was only the juice of a plant, but his self-control was tested
thoroughly.
Here was something those three imbecile spies hadn't mentioned, or had
perhaps omitted from their reports on purpose, or had even failed to realize.
Zentraedi food, of course, was synthesized from its chemical constituents;
that was as it had always been, by the decree of the Robotech Masters. To eat
living or once-living food was to risk the consumption of rudimentary energies
somewhat related to Protoculture. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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