Devil's Hand

by Jack McKinney

  At just a shade under seven feet, Grant was the only man aboard who could come close to filling Breetai’s shoes. He had brown skin and close-cropped tight curls, and a long face lent a certain nobility by his broad forehead and chiseled features. His dark eyes were bright and full of expression, and he was a man known to speak his mind, consequence be damned. Technically, he was Rick’s adjutant, a commander, but he was also attached to rapid deployment’s new all-terrain mobile base, the Ground Military Unit, or GMU. Grant had headed up a crackerjack Excaliber unit in New Macross, but Rick hadn’t really gotten to know him until after the death of his sister, Claudia.

  “Just wanted to see if you needed help with anything, sir,” Vince said, offering a casual salute.

  Rick turned a sullen face to the assortment of bags and boxes piled about. “Not unless you’re good at juggling.”

  “What, these?” Vince said uncertainly.

  “No, Vince, the past and future.”

  “Sir.”

  Rick waved dismissively. “Forget it. What’s on your mind, Vince?”

  Vince took a breath. “Edwards, sir.”

  “General Edwards?” Suspicion rose in Rick’s eyes, “What about him?

  “Would the general have any reason for acting against our best interests, sir? I mean, is there something I’m not privy to that might explain certain…proclivities?”

  “`Proclivities’?” said Rick. “Say what’s on your mind.”

  In a rush, Vince said, “It just seems to me that the man has some designs of his own. I’m not saying that it’s anything I can put my finger on, but for starters there’s his friendship with Leonard and that character Zand. You’ve been busy, sir, and preoccupied. You’re insulated from the scuttlebutt-”

  “If you have allegations,” Rick broke in, “you’d better be prepared to back them up with some hard facts. Now, do you have any-yes or no?”

  Tight-lipped all at once, Vince shook his head. “Only hearsay, sir.”

  Rick mulled it over after he dismissed Vince. The idea of going halfway across the galaxy with a divided crew was hardly a comforting thought. And in fact there was an underlying feeling of disunity that continued to plague the mission. Lang and Exedore on one side, Edwards and the political machine on the other, with the Southern Cross somewhere in between…Rick tried to put together what he knew of Edwards. Roy Fokker had often spoken of Edwards’s self-serving allegiances during the Global Civil War, his later alignment with Admiral Hayes, Lisa’s father, and the Grand Cannon project; but then, that was years ago, and a lot of good men had been lured over to the UEDC’s side. In the decade since, Edwards had become a force to be reckoned with in Monument City, and a respected officer in the RDF Presently, as leader of the infamous Ghost Squadron, he had what amounted to an unassailable power base.

  It was with all this on his mind that Rick went in search of Max and some objective input.

  But it was Lisa he found in the Sterlings’ quarters.

  She was standing behind the dummied gown he wasn’t meant to see until tomorrow.

  “Isn’t this supposed to be bad luck or something?” Rick asked, looking back and forth between Miriya and Lisa.

  “Don’t go getting superstitious on me, mister.” Lisa laughed. “Besides, I’m not in the dress.” She stepped out from behind the dressmaker’s dummy and saluted stiffly. “Now show some respect.”

  Rick played along, snapping to and apologizing.

  “Impending marriage is no excuse for relaxing discipline.”

  I’ll have to remember that, Rick thought as he approached Lisa and took her by the waist.

  “Hi,” he said softly.

  “I beg your pardon, Admiral, but aren’t you exceeding your authority?”

  Rick pulled her close. “I can’t help myself, ma’am. So take away my star, throw me in the brig. But please, not until the honeymoon’s over…”

  Miriya made a sour face and turned to Max, who had entered unobserved. “Sounds more like a court-martial than a marriage.”

  Max allowed the lovers a brief kiss before announcing himself, and five minutes later he and Rick were on their way to the factory’s combat-simulation staging area, where Max had a young ensign he wanted Rick to meet. En route they discussed Edwards, but Max didn’t have much to offer in the way of facts or advice. Lang was the one Rick needed to speak with, Sterling suggested, and until then the less said the better.

  Cadets underwent actual mecha and weapons training in the factory’s null-gee core, and out on Moon Base, but it was during sim-time that a cadet faced combat scenarios, and psychological profiles were established and evaluated. Robotechnicians took a good deal of pride in what they had created in the staging area, with projecbeam and holographic effects of such intensity that even veterans were sometimes overwhelmed. The object was not, however, to score bull’s-eyes or dazzle the audience with space combat maneuvers, but to demonstrate that one could keep cool under fire and make prudent, often split-second decisions.

  Jack Baker was the ensign Max had in mind. Rick watched him being run through one of the advanced scenarios, designed to place the trainee in a position where he or she would have to decide between adherence to command dictates or altruistic heroics. Rick had little fondness for the scenario, because it happened to feature him-a holo-likeness of Rick, at any rate-as the downed pilot, awash in a 3-D sea. For want of an actual enemy, cadets found themselves up against stylized ersatz Zentraedi Battlepods.

  Baker’s scores were well above average throughout the first portion of the scenario, but ultimately they dropped to standard after the ensign opted to go after his downed wingman, instead of following orders to reengage.

  “Not the smoothest performance,” Max commented, “but you have to admit he’s got something.”

  “Yeah,” Rick nodded. “But I’m not sure it’s something I like.”

  Baker was ordered up to the control booth, and joined Rick and Max there a few minutes later. He was a slight but energetic youth, with thick, unruly carrot-colored hair and bushy eyebrows. Blue-eyed, pale, and freckled, he impressed Rick as something of a discipline problem. At the same time, though, Baker was forceful and determined; a seat-of-the-pants pilot, a natural.

  “Sir, I know my performance wasn’t perfect,” Baker started right in. “But that test wasn’t a fair demonstration of my abilities.”

  Rick wagged a gloved finger in the ensign’s face. “In the first place, you went off auto-pilot, contrary to orders. Second, by doing so you endangered the rest of the team. And third, you didn’t even manage to rescue me.”

  “Yes, but-”

  “Dismissed, Ensign.”

  “But, sir, I-”

  “You heard the admiral,” Max chimed in.

  Baker closed his mouth and saluted. “I appreciate the admiral’s input, sir,” he managed before he left.

  “Funny, but he reminds me of someone,” Max said, watching Baker walk away. “Flyboy by the name of Hunter, if memory serves.”

  “I guess he does have a certain reckless sense of style about him.”

  “And I suppose that’s why you were so hard on him, huh?”

  “Just trying to improve him as a team player, Max. Besides,” Rick added with a laugh, “the look on his face was priceless.”

  Max accompanied Rick back to his quarters after they had watched a few more cadets and officers run through the simulator. Rick was in a reminiscent mood, so they talked about the first time they had set foot in the factory after liberating it from Commander Reno, and about baby Dana’s part in that op. Max wanted to talk about leaving Dana behind now, but Rick didn’t seem to want to surrender his train of thought.

  The factory was buzzing with activity; shuttles were arriving every few hours with supplies and personnel, and boarding of the SDF-3 was under way, with techs lined up for last minute briefings, assignments, and med-scans from Jean Grant’s extensive med staff. In another area of the satellite, maintenance crews, carpenters, and cate
rers were setting up for the wedding.

  “And it’s not just the wedding,” Rick was saying when they entered his quarters. “I keep thinking about the enormity and importance of this mission. Maybe…maybe we’ve taken on too much this time.”

  “I hope you’re not going to start in about how you’re the youngest admiral in the force, and how undeserving you are.”

  “The best and the brightest,” Rick said to his reflection in the viewport. “That’s me.”

  Just then the door tone sounded and T. R. Edwards strode in on Rick’s welcome.

  “Hope I’m not disturbing you, Admiral.”

  “What’s on your mind, General?”

  “Why, I just wanted to wish you good luck, Hunter.”

  Rick noted that Edwards’s faceplate made it difficult to tell whether he was sincere. And it was just as difficult for Rick to put Vince Grant’s suspicions from his mind.

  “What d’you mean by that, Edwards?” Rick said defensively.

  Edwards showed a surprised look and turned an uncertain glance to Max. “Well, the wedding, of course. What else would I mean?”

  “Oh, oh of course,” Rick said, getting to his feet. He extended his hand. “Thanks, Edwards.”

  “Admiral Hayes’s daughter,” Edwards mused while they shook hands. “Imagine that…The irony of it, I mean. No love lost between you and him back then, was there?”

  Rick stared into Edwards’s eye.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Admiral. I guess you don’t like to remember those days.” Edwards relaxed his grip and walked to the door. “Just wanted to say good luck. To you, too, Sterling.”

  Rick and Max exchanged baffled looks as the door hissed shut.

  Cabell and Rem had managed to get the Hellcat back to the lab undetected; it was no easy task, but a little muscle power and an abandoned Hovercar did the trick. Cabell had the Inorganic on one of the scanner tables now. He had rendered it harmless by removing a transponder from the machine’s flank. Having witnessed Bioroids blowing Hellcats to bits-literally-it came as no surprise to find that the thing was hollow, its entire circuitry contained in its thick skin. But if Cabell had discovered how it worked, the source of its power remained a mystery-one he hoped to solve by analyzing the transponder.

  On the other side of the room, Rem was up to his ears in Pollinators. Explosions had loosed them from their cage and they were all over him, now, screeching up a storm, attaching themselves to his arms, legs, and neck, and trying desperately to bury themselves in-the folds of his long cloak. They might have passed for small white, mop-head dogs, except for their muffinlike paws and knob-ended horns. For a long while Zor had kept their secret from the Tirolian elite, but eventually the Masters had discovered the crucial part they played in spreading the Flower of Life. So Zor went a step further and hid most of the creatures, naming Cabell as their guardian.

  “What’s happening to these things!” Rem shouted in a muffled voice, pulling one from his face. “They’re going crazy!”

  “They have a biogenetic link to the Flower,” the old man answered calmly, hefting the Hellcat’s transponder. “The presence of the Invid is disturbing to them.”

  “And to me,” Rem started to say, when something truly monstrous appeared on one of the viewscreens. It was an enormous ship, he decided at once-because nothing so ghastly green and hideous could live in the real world. Its central head and torso resembled a kind of armored, humpbacked slug with two mandibularly-horned lizard heads on segmented necks arising Siamese-like from where arms might have been. There were three tails, two of which were tapered with stinger ends, and eight legs protruding from a suckered belly more appropriate for a sea creature than a terrestrial behemoth.

  Cabell narrowed his eyes at the screen and grunted. “Their Enforcer transport. It’s meant to frighten us into submission. It’s captives they want now, my boy.”

  His thoughts fumed briefly to the three Elders, who had secreted themselves somewhere in Tiresia’s labyrinthine underground. What the Invid Regent would give for their fey hides, Cabell thought. He began to consider using them as a bargaining chip for the release of Tirol’s surviving populace if it came to that, but judged it best to let that decision rest until the moment came. Safety for himself and the boy was all that concerned him just now.

  “Cabell, we’ve got to abandon the lab,” Rem said, as renewed fighting shook the city. “We can’t allow your research to fall into their hands.”

  “I’ve got what I need,” Cabell told him, indicating the transponder. He began to gather up data cards and chips; then, as he activated a bank of switches above the main console, two floor panels slid open, revealing a stairway that lead to the labyrinth beneath the Royal Hall. In times prior to the Great Transition, the labyrinth had been used for religious rituals.

  “What about the Pollinators?”

  “Take them. We’ll need them if we’re ever to duplicate Zor’s experiments.”

  Rem suppressed a curse as the Pollinators he had pried from his uniform reattached themselves, screeching their mad songs all the while. He hesitated at the top of the dark staircase.

  “Do we stay down here until the Invid leave?”

  Cabell laughed from the blackness deeper in. “Till they leave? You’re an optimist, my boy.”

  From his quarters on the Invid flagship, the Regent watched the descent of the Menace with obvious delight. In a moment the hydra-ship was bellowing its arrival, three sets of jaws opening to belch forth squadrons of Enforcer troops, the invasion group’s mop-up crew and police force. They rode one-pilot strike ships, golden-colored tubularshaped crafts with hooded, open-air cockpits and globular propulsion systems. They picked up where the command ships left off, dispatching what remained of Tiresia’s pitiful defenses.

  As scenes of death and destruction played across the viewscreen, the Regent urged his troops on, mouth approximating a smile, sensor antennae suffused with color. But follow-up transmissions from the moon’s surface were enough to erase that momentary blush.

  “Scanners continue to register negative on all fronts, my lord.”

  The ground troops had completed their sweep of Tiresia, but the Regent still wasn’t convinced. “You’re certain there’s nowhere else the Robotech Masters might have concealed the Flowers?”

  “Yes, my lord. We would have detected even the slightest trace.”

  The Regent leaned back in the control couch. “Very well,” he said after a brief silence. “I wash my hands of this wretched world. Do what you will, my legions.”

  He had expected an immediate response, an affirmation of his command, but instead the lieutenant risked a suggestion. “Pardon me, my lord, but shouldn’t we delay the extermination until they’ve told us everything they know?”

  “Good point,” the Regent replied after he had gotten over the soldier’s audacity. “Have your units round up any survivors at once, and prepare them for questioning. We shall see if we can’t persuade them to tell us where their Masters have taken the Flowers of Life. I shall conduct the inquisition myself. Inform me when you have secured the city.”

  “It is done, my lord.” The soldier signed off.

  The city’s temples became prisons. Those Tiresians who survived the enforcers’ roundup, who survived the plasma hell they poured into the breached shelters, were packed shoulder to shoulder in improvised holding zones. They were a sorry lot, these bruised and battered sackcloth-clad humanoids; but even greater indignities awaited them. Some knew this and envied the clones, all dead now. For the first time in generations no clones walked Fantoma’s moon. Save one, that is…

  “Are they bringing more in?” a man asked his fellow prisoners as the temple’s massive door was opened, admitting light into their midst. “These monsters mean to smother us alive.”

  “Quiet, they’ll hear you,” someone nearby said.

  But the man saw no reason to remain still. “Invader, what do you want from us?” he shouted when the Regent’s huge form appeared in
the doorway.

  The Invid looked down at them, his antennae throbbing and hood puffed up. “You know very well what I want-the Flower of Life.” He reached out and plucked the man from the crowd, his fourfingered hand fully encompassing the man’s head. “Tell me where it is.”

  “Never-”

  “You fool,” the Regent rasped as he lifted the man to shoulder height, applying pressure as he dangled him over the screaming prisoners. The man’s hands flailed wildly against the Regent’s grip. “Where are the Flowers?”

  The Tiresian’s responses were muffled, panicked. “We don’t know-”

  “Tell me, you insignificant little worm!” the Regent said, and crushed the man’s skull.

  “We know nothing;” someone in the crowd shouted. “The Masters never told us of such things!”

  “My friend, I believe you,” the Regent said after a moment. He released the now lifeless body. “Enforcer,” he added, turning aside, “reward these creatures for their honesty.”

  The lieutenant stiffened. “At once, my lord.” While the Regent exited the hall, the enforcer armed a spherical device and tossed it over his shoulder before the doors shut, sealing the prisoners inside.

  An old man caught the device and sadly regarded its flashing lights. “What does it mean?”

  someone asked in a horror-stricken voice.

  The old man forced himself to swallow. “It means our doom,” he said softly.

  The explosion took most of the temple with it.

  Returned to his flagship, the Regent met with his scientists. They were barefoot beings much like himself, although no taller than the soldiers, dressed in unadorned white trousers and sashed jackets suggestive of oriental robes. In the presence of their king, they kept their arms folded across their chests, hands tucked inside jacket cuffs.

  “Tell me what you know,” the Regent asked them, despondent after this brief visit to Tirol’s surface. “Is this moon as worthless as it seems?”