The energy blasts skewed all around him. "Last chance," he transmitted over the Zentraedi tac frequency. "Cease fire and lay down your arms."
If they had, they would have been the first of the malcontents to do so.
But instead, like all the rest, they fired that much more furiously.
He wondered what he would have felt like if their positions had been reversed. The human race was lost and struggling in its own ashes, but how much more so the Zentraedi defectors?
He wondered only for an instant, though; lives were at stake.
Skull Leader came in behind a sustained burst from its autocannon, the
tracers lighting the night, blowing one pod leg to metallic splinters. As the pod collapsed, Rick banked and came to ground behind an upcropping of rock, going to Battloid mode.
He reared up from behind the rock, an armored ultratech warrior sixty feet tall with a belt-fed autocannon gripped in his fist. "For the last time, I order you to drop your weapons!"
He saw the plastron cannon muzzles swinging at him, and hit the dirt behind the rock. Energy bolts blazed through the air where he had been standing.
When the volley was over, he came up again shooting. The high-density slugs blew another pod leg in half at its rear-articulated knee, toppling it. The third one ran, zigzagging, evading his fire. Suddenly there was only the drumming of the rain on the field of battle.
The Zentraedi malcontents emerged from their disabled mecha slowly. He could see that they carried no personal weapons and knew that the New Portland police and militia would be able to deal with them. The rest of Skull Team went to mop up and make sure the armored Zentraedi on foot were taken prisoner. The malcontents would pay with their lives for the lives they'd taken.
Tonight we won. What about tomorrow?
He was the last one to deplane; Ransom, Bobby, and Greer were already far from the hangars and revetments when Rick dragged himself from his VT, feeling dogtired. How could peace be so terrible? Peace was all he or Roy or any of the rest had ever wanted. He wondered if there would ever be an end to the fighting.
Then he saw Lisa standing by the fighter ops door. No peace in my lifetime, he decided. Look at that warcloud.
"Why do I feel like I should ask for a blindfold and a last cigarette, Commander?"
"Not very funny, Rick."
"No, I suppose not." He groped for a way to tell her all the things he
had thought and been through in the last few days.
But she was saying, "You're ordered to report to Captain Gloval at once."
He considered that, brows knit, turning toward the SDF-1. "Wonder what he wants."
She couldn't hold back what she was thinking. "How was your visit with Minmei?" she called after him.
He stopped. "I enjoyed her broadcast from Granite City yesterday," she said softly.
He drew a breath, let it out, looked down at the hardtop beneath his feet. "Well, I didn't actually visit with Minmei."
He started off again. She caught up, walking right behind. She made it sound as spiteful as she could, hating herself for it the whole time. "Was that because she was so surrounded by adoring fans that you couldn't get close to her, Rick?"
"No."
"Anything happen?" Why am I putting us both through this? she wondered, and the answer came back at once: Because I love him!
"What could happen?" he growled.
"I don't know!" She raced to catch up with him, taking a pale blue envelope from her uniform pocket. She dashed around in front of him, bringing him up short, pressing it into the palm of one flightsuit glove. She turned and walked away from him.
"Lisa, what is this?"
"Just something to remember me by," she threw back over her shoulder, not trusting herself to look at his face once more. Her heels clicked away across the hardtop.
The envelope held photographs-Lisa with a niece, on a vacation; Lisa as an adorable teenager with a kitten perched on her head; Lisa on the day of her graduation from the Academy.
"What on Earth?" he mumbled, but he knew. The album, all the rest of it: What had happened came to him in a flash. He had left New Portland
feeling like there was some good that he could do in the world, feeling that no matter how bad things looked, there was always hope, and feeling that he was on the side of the angels.
But now, holding the photographs at his side and watching her disappear among the parked combat mecha, he tried to ride out a tide of regret that threatened to wash him away, and he was suddenly sorry he had ever been born.
"Commander Hunter reporting as ordered, sir."
Gloval sat looking out the sweeping forward viewport of the SDF-1, at a blue sky flecked with white clouds. "Please come in, Rick," he said without turning.
"Thank you, sir." Rick came in warily; Gloval did not often use his subordinates' first names.
"I'll get right to the point." Gloval swung around to face him and came to his feet. "The aliens among us are reverting to their former ways."
Rick considered that. He had friends among the Zentraedi-Rico, Bron, and Konda; Karita and others. "The New Portland rebels won't give us any more trouble, sir."
"That incident was only a symptom, Lieutenant Commander." There was something about the way Gloval pronounced your rank that let you know you were a part of a thing greater than yourself.
"We cannot afford to have this occur again," Gloval went on, "or we'll be risking complete social breakdown. I've decided to have some of the aliens reassigned to new locations where we can keep an eye on them."
None of the importance of that was lost on Rick. We promised them freedom! It was all coming apart, everything that had seemed so bright two years before.
The rest didn't really have to be said. Gloval was counting on Rick to enforce his directives and letting him know what he would be in for.
Rick Hunter looked at the old man who'd been through so much for Earth, and for the Zentraedi, too, in truth. The younger man snapped off a
brisk salute. "Whatever you decide, you have my support; you know that, sir. And you have the support of everyone on the SDF-1."
"Thank you, Lieutenant." Gloval acknowledged the salute precisely but rather tiredly. He didn't look like he had gotten any real sleep in a long time.
They met each other's gaze. "I understand," Rick said.
Minmei shivered under her jacket, leaning against a pylon of Zentraedi wreckage and staring into the sky as night came on Granite City.
So much desolation. And so much bitterness, even between people who should have learned to love one another a long time ago!
She looked to the few lights of the town. Kyle had gone off that way, and she had no idea whether he intended to stop or keep on going, had no idea whether she would ever see him again and no clear conviction as to whether she wanted to or not.
She looked up as the stars appeared. Oh, Rick. Where are you?
End RTUCN.COM
Force of Arms Page 20