Force of Arms

by Jack McKinney

  I like Lisa; maybe I even-

  He tossed on his bunk, head on top of his pillow now, staring out at space through his cabin's viewports. Next door there was still silence.

  In a few moments he was blinking tiredly before he could sort out just what it was he felt.

  I'm so beat. I feel like just-

  He fell asleep with Lisa's face before him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Khyron was always different from the rest of us, and the ways of the Micronians held some dark fascination for him, however much he fought it.

  But the Micronians are mad! Is it any wonder this drove him over the brink, so that as he perceived it his only relief was to liquidate them all?

  Grel

  "Alien vessel, battleship class, sir." Vanessa said tightly from her monitoring station on the bridge.

  This time Gloval was ready. "Prepare to fire main cannon! Lock all tracking systems to target!"

  In the respite that had followed the last attack, engineers had completed retrofitting and new installation. At long last, the SDF-1 had been brought into Attack mode without major damage to Macross City and accompanying loss of life.

  The ship could use its fearsome main gun in this configuration, standing like a monumental armored gladiator in space with the two tremendous supercarriers held out like menacing forearms.

  "All systems go; booms now moving into position;" Claudia said in clipped tones. The booms had stood like hours above the fortress; now, brute servomotors swung them down so that they pointed out straight from both of the ship's huge, bulky shoulder structures.

  "Main gun standing by to fire on your command, Captain," the message was patched in from engineering. Claudia couldn't help but wish Lisa were back (on the bridge. The Terrible Trio and the other techs were good and were doing the best they could, but nobody except perhaps Dr. Lang knew as much about the ship as Lisa.

  Sammie watched the preparations, wide-eyed. "I bet this is a trick or something," she declared in her young, breathless voice. "A Trojan horse!"

  Kim spared a moment from her own problems to gaze at Sammie

  dubiously. "Trojan horse? They know we'd never fall for that! Where on Earth would you get an idea like that from?"

  "The Trojan War! Besides, that's the way it always happens in the movies."

  For two years now, they've been trying to wipe us out, and she still thinks about movies! Kim groaned to herself and went back to her job, resolving to slug Sammie later.

  Sammie said with high acrimony, "Okay, if you've got a better theory, let's hear it!"

  Vanessa cut through the squabble.

  "Captain," Vanessa said, "I have a message coming in in cleartext from the alien ship."

  Gloval came halfway out of the command chair. "What?" He tried not to let himself hope too much.

  "They're asking permission to approach the SDF-1. Shall I put it up on the monitor, Captain?"

  Gloval grunted approval, and Vanessa complied. Suddenly, Sammie's flight of fantasy didn't sound so zany.

  "I say again: We are sending an unarmed ship to dock with your battle fortress. We request a cessation of hostilities. Please hold your fire."

  The enemy flagship drew near at dead-slow speed, straight into the line of fire of the main gun. The battleship might be nine solid miles of supertech mayhem, but surely by now the Zentraedi knew that it would be as defenseless as a helium blimp before the holocaust blast those massive booms could generate.

  "Let them come," Gloval told Claudia. "But stand ready to fire."

  Claudia flipped up the red safety cover with her thumb, exposing the trigger of the main gun. Sweating, she watched the battlewagon close in, ready to fire the instant Gloval gave the order but forcing herself to be calm. She was unaware that everyone else there, captain and enlisted ratings alike, was glad that Claudia-whom they saw as a tower of strength-was trigger man that day.

  Gloval let the flagship come at him, come at him. Sammie's Trojan horse remark was much in his mind. He wondered about this Breetai, whom Lisa and Rick had described to him. The three Zentraedi spies and the deserters who had come after them had contributed more, as had Miriya. Gloval wondered and hoped the vagaries of war would let him meet Breetai face to face; he suspected that the alien commander felt the same.

  The flagship slowed to a stop, a sitting duck of a target, reassuring him. But abruptly there were dozens of streamers of light swirling from behind it, bearing in on the fortress at high speed. Gloval didn't have to look at the computer displays; he had seen these performance profiles before.

  Vanessa yelled, "Picking up large strike force of tri-thruster pursuit ships, closing rapidly!"

  The tri-thrusters were right in the line of fire; Claudia's forefinger hovered by the trigger.

  What are they up to now? Gloval thought with dismay. Peace had seemed so suddenly, tantalizingly close. But what could this be except betrayal?

  The tri's were out in front of the flagship, closing in on the SDF-1, their drives leaving bright swirling ribbons of light behind them. The command to fire was on Gloval's lips.

  But all at once a hundred batteries in the enemy flagship's forward section opened up, and the tri-thrusters were blown into fragments, dozens disappearing per second in ballooning clouds of total annihilation. The bluewhite lines of energy from the enemy dreadnought, thread-fine against its enormous bulk, redirected immediately upon destruction of a target, to the next. In moments, the massive sortie fell apart and space was full of briefly flaming junk.

  Gloval swallowed. "Secure the trigger but stand by," he said.

  Claudia closed her eyes for a moment, breathing a prayer, thumbing the safety cover over the trigger. But as he had ordered, her thumb rested on it still.

  Breetai stood at his command station, hands clasped at the small of his back. As he expected, Khyron the Backstabber didn't take long to appear by projecbeam image.

  "Breetai, have you gone mad?"

  Breetai studied him coldly. "Your ships were interfering with a diplomatic mission, as you well know. And so I disposed of them. Henceforth you will address me by my proper rank."

  Khyron fought a fierce internal battle, then managed, "Commander, what happens now? I refuse to spare the Micronians! We all know Dolza's orders!"

  "You know nothing, Khyron! And I will hear no further word from you on the subject. Just consider yourself lucky you didn't choose to lead your troops this day!"

  "Ridiculous!"

  Breetai swung his command chair away from the screen, cutting the communications circuit, muttering, "Hardly."

  Like some immense killer whale, the flagship came to a stop directly in front of the SDF-1's most powerful weapon.

  "They're just sitting out there, Captain; I guess they're waiting for us to make a move." Claudia's thumbnail stood under the edge of the trigger's cover.

  If they don't want peace, why would they destroy their own fighters?

  Why would they not overwhelm us, as they so easily could?

  "They wish to send an emissary. Very well," he decided. "So be it."

  The Veritechs flew forth accompanied by other mecha, like the cat's-eye intel ships, detector-loaded and studying everything about the emissary pod.

  The pod was standard except that it mounted only auxiliary commo gear: no weapons. The cat's-eyes and other emissions-intelligence detectors

  said that it wasn't the Trojan horse of Sammie's nightmares.

  Rick Hunter quieted his Skull Team, telling them he knew it was weird and getting weirder all the time but reminding them the team hadn't suffered any casualties in a while.

  That strangest of all convoys came to rest in an SDF-1 bay, the VTs now in Battloid mode with their chain-guns leveled at the pod.

  Things moved quickly to the hangar deck, while PA voices went on about the normal checklist procedures and the extraordinary precautions surrounding the emissary's arrival. No one wanted to take any chances on a double-cross or, perhaps worse, on a vengeful
human's violent act robbing the SDF-1 of this chance for peace. Security was-in some ways literally-airtight.

  The enemy mecha knelt, its prow touching the deck as the rear-articulated legs folded back. A rear hatch swung open; a Brobdingnagian enemy trooper stomped forth to glare around.

  "Aren't you forgetting something?" called a reedy, highly miffed voice from within the pod.

  The mountainous trooper was immediately contrite, almost afraid. "Oh, please forgive me, your Eminence! My humblest apologies!"

  The trooper reached carefully into the pod and came out with a small figure, which he set down with exaggerated, painstaking care. It had been explained exactly what would happen to him if he allowed his micronized passenger to come to any harm.

  Exedore, dressed in the blue sackcloth robe that was all the Zentraedi had to give their micronized warriors, stepped off the warrior's armored palm.

  His toes clenched, and his arches arched a bit higher against the cold deck. "Hmph! How do these Micronians survive with such frail little bodies?"

  He turned to regard the huge flight deck, but it made little impression because its size would have been imposing for human or Zentraedi.

  Exedore's pilot was another matter, staring eye to eye with a

  chain-gun-wielding Battloid. "Rather an imposing sight, aren't we, hah?" he said, rubbing his jaw.

  Still, he was one among the Zentraedi to know that size didn't count for everything-counted for nothing, in some cases.

  "Ten-HUT!" the PA said as a line of military vehicles came screeching up. The Battloids snapped to presentarms, and to Exedore's great pride, the Zentraedi pilot stood at perfect attention. Exedore abruptly noticed that there were Micronian personnel, ground crew and whatnot, scattered around the compartment as they, too, came to attention.

  Men leapt from the cars to form ranks smartly, and a man in a uniform not so different from the Zentraedi's own came toward Exedore, hand extended.

  "Colonel Maistroff, Robotech Defense Forces, sir. I bring you greetings from the super dimensional fortress commander, Captain Gloval."

  Exedore sighed a bit to see that Maistroff was taller than he, to see that all of them were. Perhaps there was something in the micronization process that dictated that, or perhaps it was just something about destiny.

  Anyway, Maistroff's open hand was out to him. Exedore blinked at it in bewilderment. "This is how we greet friends," the human said.

  Ah, yes! The barbarian custom of showing that there was no weapon! Exedore put his dark mauve hand into the other's pale pink one, trading the grip of friendship.

  "I am Exedore, Minister of Affairs."

  Maistroff, a former martinet and xenophobe who had been salted and wisened up a bit in the course of the Robotech War, looked him over. "That sounds rather important, sir."

  Exedore shrugged blithely. "Not really." He smiled, and Maistroff found himself smiling back.

  The colonel indicated his staff car. "If you're ready, we'll get you 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?

  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 Sena
tor 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 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