Devil's Hand

by Jack McKinney

  “I want the Skull scrambled.”

  “Ghost Squadron is already out, sir,” Blake reported from his duty station.

  “What!”

  The threat board showed two clusters of blips moving toward each other. Rick slapped his hand down on the Situation Room com stud, demanding to know who ordered the Veritechs out.

  “General Edwards,” came the reply.

  “Edwards!” Rick seethed.

  Blake tapped in a rapid sequence of requests. “Sir. Ghost Squadron reports they’re moving in to engage.”

  Cabell was puzzled. It was not Zor’s ship after all, but some sort of facsimile. Worse, the Invid had sent its small fleet of troop carriers against it, and their Pincer Ships were already engaging mecha from the Zentraedi ship out near Fantoma’s rings. Initially, Cabell wanted to convince himself that the Zentraedi had for some reason, returned in Micronized form; but he now dismissed this as wishful thinking. It was more likely that the starship had been taken by force, and he was willing to guess just who these new invaders were. Presently, data from one of the network computers confirmed his guess.

  He had pulled up trans-signals received by the Masters shortly after the destruction of Reno’s fleet and the capture of the factory satellite. Among the debris that littered a vast area of space some eighty light-years out from Tirol were mecha almost identical to those the would-be Zentraedi had sent against the Invid. These invaders, then, would have to be the “Micronians” whose world the Masters had gone off to conquer, the same humanoids who had been the recipients of Zor’s fortress, and with it the Protoculture matrix.

  And while Invid and Terrans formed up to annihilate each other, a small ship was leaving Tirolspace unobserved. Watching the ship’s trail disappear on his monitor screen, Cabell smiled to himself. It was the Elders, fooled like himself perhaps, into believing that the Zentraedi had returned. For their skins! Cabell laughed to himself.

  So Tirol was suddenly Masterless. Cabell considered the battle raging out by the giant’s ringplane, and wondered aloud if Tirol was about to change hands yet again.

  In the Royal Hall Invid headquarters, Obsim was thinking along similar lines. These starship troopers were not Zentraedi, but some life-form similar in makeup and physiology to the population of Tirol or Praxis. And yet they were not Tirolians either. By monitoring the transmissions the invaders were radioing to their mecha pilots, the brain had discovered that the language was not that of the Masters.

  “Sample and analyze,” Obsim commanded.

  It was a primitive, strictly vocal tongue; and the computer easily mastered it in a matter of minutes, along with the simple combat code the invaders were using.

  Obsim studied the communications sphere with interest. The battle was not going well for his Pincer units; whatever the invaders lacked in the way of intellect and sophistication, they possessed powerful weapons and mecha more maneuverable than any Obsim had ever seen. A world of such beings would not have been conquered as readily as Spheris, Praxis, and Karbarra had. But firepower wasn’t war’s only prerequisite; there had to be a guiding intelligence. And of this the invaders were in short supply.

  “Computer,” said Obsim. “Send the mecha commanders new dictates in their own code.

  Order them to pursue our troops no matter what.”

  The starship itself was hiding inside Fantoma’s ringplane; but if it could be lured out for only a moment, the troop carriers might have a clear shot at it.

  Obsim turned to face the brain. “Computer. Locate the starship’s drives and relay relevant data to troopship commanders.” He contemplated this strategy for a moment, hands deep within the sleeves of his robe. “And prepare to advise the Regent of our situation.”

  The tac net was a symphony of voices, shrill and panicked, punctuated by bursts of sibilant static and the shortlived sound of muffled roars.

  “Talk to me, Ghost Leader,” a pilot said.

  “Contact, fifty right, medium range…”

  “Roger, got ‘im.”

  “Ghost Three, Ghost Three, bogie inbound, heading zero-seven-niner…”

  “Ghost Six, you’ve got half-a-dozen on your tail. Go to Battloid, Moonlighter!”

  “Can’t get-”

  Rick cursed and went on the com net. “Ghost Leader, do you require backup? Repeat, do you require backup? Over.”

  “Sir,” the pilot replied an instant later. “We’re holding our own out here, but it’s a world of shi-er, pain, sir!”

  “Can you ascertain enemy’s weapons systems? Over.”

  Static erased the pilot’s first few words. “…and some sort of plasma cannons, sir. It’s like they’re throwing…energy Frisbees or something! But the mecha are slow-ugly as sin, but slow.”

  Rick raised his eyes to the ceiling of the bridge. I should be out there with them! Breetai and Exedore had returned to their stations elsewhere in the ship; and by all rights Rick should have been back in the Tactical Information Center already, but everything was happening so damned fast he didn’t dare risk pulling himself away from a screen even for a minute. Lisa had ordered the SDF-3 to Fantoma’s brightside, where it was holding now.

  “Has anyone located General Edwards yet?” Rick shouted into a mike.

  “He’s on his way up to the Sit Room, sir,” someone replied.

  Rick shook his head, feeling a rage mount within him. Lisa turned to watch him. “Admiral, you better get going. We can manage up here.”

  Rick looked over at her, his lips tight, and nodded.

  “Sirs, enemy are in retreat.”’

  Rick watched the board. “Thank God-”

  “Ghost is in pursuit.”

  Rick blanched.

  “Contact them! Who ordered pursuit-Edwards?!”

  Blake busied himself at the console. “Negative, sir. We, we don’t know who gave the order, sir.”

  “Direct the Skull to go-now!” Rick raced from the bridge.

  Lisa regarded Fantoma’s ringplane and remembered a similar situation in Saturn’s rings.

  “Activate ECM,” she ordered a moment later. “We’re bringing the ship up. And, dammit, send someone out to rescue that EVA craft””

  Jonathan Wolff left the SDF-3 launch bay right behind the last of Max Sterling’s Skull Squadron fighters. He was in a Logan Veritech, a reconfigurable mecha that would one day become the mainstay of the Southern Cross’s Tactical Armored Space Corps. The Logan was often jokingly referred to as a “rowboat with wings” because of the bowshaped design of its radome and the mecha’s overall squatness. But if it was somewhat less orthodox-looking than the Alpha, the Logan was certainly as mean and maneuverable-and much more versatile-than the VT. In addition, the mecha’s upscaled cockpit could seat two, three in a pinch.

  Scanners had indicated there were two people aboard the hapless EVA craft that had been caught up in the SDF-3’s fold. And they were alive, though more than likely unconscious or worse. There had been no response to the fortress’s attempts to communicate with the craft.

  Empowering the fortress’s shields had made use of the tractor somewhat iffy, so Wolff had volunteered for the assignment, itching to get out there anyway, even if it meant on a rescue op. Now suddenly in the midst of it, he wasn’t so sure. Local space was lit up with spherical orange bursts and crisscrossed with blue laserfire and plasma discs of blinding light. Zentraedi Battlepods were one thing, but the ships the VTs found themselves up against looked like they had walked out of some ancient horror movie, and it was easy to believe that the crablike mecha actually were the XTs themselves. But Breetai and Exedore had said otherwise in their prelaunch briefings; inside each ship was a being that could prove swift and deadly in combat.

  And that was indeed the case, as evidenced by the slowmo dogfights in progress all around Wolff. Skull’s VTs were battling their way through the remnants of the Invid’s original strike force in an effort to catch up with the Ghost Squadron, who’d been ordered off in pursuit of the main group. Wolff wat
ched amazed as Battloids and Pincer Ships swapped volleys, blew one another to fiery bits, and sometimes wrestled hand-to-pincers, battering each other with depleted cannons. Wolff watched Captain Miriya Sterling’s red Veritech engage and destroy three Invid ships with perfectly placed Hammerhead missiles.

  Max, too, seemed to be having a field day; but the numbers were tipped in the enemy’s favor, and Wolff wondered how long Skull would be able to hold out.

  He was closing fast on the EVA craft now, and thought he could discern movement in the rear seat of the cockpit. But as the Logan drew nearer, he could see that both pilots were either unconscious or dead. Reconfiguring now, he imaged the Battloid to take hold of the small ship and propel it back toward Fantoma’s brightside and the SDF-3. But just then he received a command over the net to steer clear, and a moment later the fortress emerged from the ringplane and loomed into view. Inexplicably, the Skull Squadron was falling away toward Fantoma’s opaline surface, leaving the ship open to frontal assaults by the Pincer units, but in a moment those ships were a mere memory, disintegrated in a cone of fire spewed from the SDF-3’s main gun.

  Harsh static crackled through Wolff’s helmet pickups as he turned his face from the brilliance of the blast. But when he looked again, two clam-shaped transports had materialized out of nowhere in the fortress’s wake.

  Reflexively, Wolff went on the com net to shout a warning to the bridge. Secondary batteries commenced firing while the fortress struggled to bring itself around, but by then it was too late. Wolff saw the SDF-3 sustain half-a-dozen solid hits, before return fire sanitized the field.

  A score of lifeless men and women lay sprawled across the floor of the fortress’s engineering hold. Damage-control crews were rushing about, slipping in puddles of blood and cooling fluids, trying to bring dozens of electrical fires under control. A portion of the ruptured hull had already self-sealed, but other areas ruined beyond repair had to be evacuated and closed off by pocket bulkheads.

  Lang and Exedore ran through smoke and chaos toward the fold-generator chamber, arriving in time to see one of the ruptured mechanisms vanish into thin air.

  Lang tried to shout something to his team members above the roar of exhaust fans, but everyone had been nearly deafened by the initial blasts.

  Just then a second explosion threw Lang and Exedore to the floor, as some sort of black, wraithlike images formed from smoke and fire and took shape in the hold, only to disappear from view an instant later.

  Lang’s nostrils stung from the smoke of insulation fires and molten metals. He got to his feet and raced back into the chamber, throwing switches and crossovers at each station.

  By the time Exedore got to him, Lang was a quivering, burned, and bloodied mess.

  “They knew j-just where to h-hit us,” he stammered, pupilless irises aflame. “We’re stranded, we’re stranded here!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I’m of the opinion that in this instance Lang (with regard to Janice) was emulating the Masters-or more accurately perhaps, serving Protoculture’s darker side. Zand, and anyone else who conspired to control, was serving this purpose as well. Protoculture’s bright side had yet to reveal itself, for what had it wrought so far but conquest, war, and death? Indeed, it could be argued that Protoculture’s only bright moment came at the end, when the Regis wed herself to it and was transformed.

  Mingtao, Protoculture: Journey Beyond Mecha

  Obsim was pensive as he regarded the communicator sphere; four troop carriers and countless Pincer Ships had been lost, but he had achieved a good portion of his purpose: the invaders’ starship was crippled if not destroyed. It had come into full view now from Fantoma’s brightside, and was holding in orbit near the giant’s outer rings. ECM had foiled Obsim’s attempt to reach the Regent, but a messenger ship had since been dispatched and reinforcements were assured.

  But what now? the Invid scientist asked himself. Surely the outsiders recognized that Tirol would soon be entering Fantoma’s shadow. Would they then move the ship into orbit, risk some sort of landing perhaps? Well, no matter, Obsim decided. The command ships would be there to greet them.

  On the fortress, meanwhile, a mood of apprehension prevailed while the RDF licked its wounds and counted the dead. Unprovoked attack was one of many scenarios the crew had prepared for, but the Invid hadn’t been seriously considered. Lang, for one, had thought that the Zentraedi had all but eliminated the race; and while he remembered the image of an Invid ship included in Zor’s SDF-1 “greetings message,” neither Exedore nor Breetai had been forthcoming in supplying him with any additional information. Moreover, the arrival of the “Visitor,” and the subsequent Robotech War, had left the Earth Forces with the mistaken notion that humankind dominated the galaxy. Although the Zentraedi were giant, biogenetic clones, they were still in some way understandable and acceptable.

  But not so this new enemy wave. There had of course been prelaunch briefings that addressed the alien issue, but the Zentraedi’s descriptions of the Invid, the Karbarrans, the Spherisians, might as well have been campfire ghost stories or horror movie tribute-War With the Newts! So as rumors began to spread through the ship, everyone was left asking themselves why the mission had once seemed a sensible idea. And Lang had yet to tell everyone the really bad news.

  In an effort to curtail some of the loose talk, Rick called for a immediate debriefing following the return of Ghost and Skull squadrons. Everything would have to be kept secret until all the facts were known.

  He was pacing back and forth in one of the ship’s conference rooms now, while the general staff and squadron commanders seated themselves at the U-shaped arrangement of tables. Livid, he turned to Edwards first, calling for an explanation of the man’s motives in superseding command’s orders regarding engagement. Edwards listened attentively while Rick laid it out, allowing a pregnant silence to fill the room before responding.

  “The SDF-3 was under attack, Admiral. It was simply a matter of protecting the ship.”

  Rick narrowed his eyes. “And suppose those ships had come in peace, General-what then?”

  Edwards snorted, in no mood to be censured. “They didn’t come in peace.”

  “You risked the lives of your men. We had no idea what we were going to face out there.”

  Edwards looked across the table to the Ghost Squadron commanders. “My men did their job. The enemy was destroyed.”

  Rick made a gesture of annoyance, and turned to the VT pilots. “I want to know why your teams gave pursuit. Who gave those orders?”

  Max stood up. “Admiral, we received orders to pursue.”

  “With the proper authentication codes?”

  “Affirmative, sir,” half-a-dozen voices murmured at once.

  Rick knew that he could do little more than demand a report, because Edwards could only be censured by the Council itself. Where Rick and Lisa would ordinarily have had complete run of the ship, the dictates of the Plenipotentiary Council had forced them to share their command with Edwards and other representatives of the Army of the Southern Cross apparat. This was the arrangement that had been made to satisfy the demands of Field Marshal Anatole Leonard’s burgeoning power base in Monument City. Edwards’s presence, in fact, was an accommodation of sorts, an appeasement undertaken to keep the RDF and Southern Cross from further rivalries-the Expeditionary Mission’s peace treaty with itself. The last thing anyone wanted was to have the SDF-3 return to a factioned and feudal Earth. Moreover, Edwards was the xenophobic voice of those Council members (Senators Longchamps and Stinson, chiefly, the old guard of the UEDC) who still felt that Captain Gloval and the SDF-1 command had been too soft with the Zentraedi during the Robotech war-granting asylum for the enemy’s Micronized spies and suing for peace with Commander Breetai. And as long as Edwards continued to enjoy support with the Council, Rick’s hands were tied. It had been like this between generals and governments throughout history, he reminded himself, and it remained one of the key factors that contributed
to his growing discontent.

  Rick glanced at Edwards. “I want full reports on my desk by fourteen-hundred hours. Is that understood?”

  Again, Rick received eager nods, and talk switched to the issue of secrecy. Rick was listening to descriptions of the mecha the VTs had confronted, when a lieutenant jg entered with a personal message. It was from Lang: the EVA craft had been taken aboard and its passengers moved to sick bay.

  Rick went pale as he read the names.

  It was a terrible dream: there she was on stage all set to perform, and the lyrics just wouldn’t come. And it seemed the hall was in space with moons and planets visible in the darkness where an audience should have been sitting. Then Rick was, what?-God! he was coming down the aisle with Lisa on his arm…

  Minmei’s eyes focused on Rick’s face as she came around. She was in bed and he was leaning over her with a concerned look. She gave him a weak smile and hooked her arms around his neck.

  “Oh, Rick, what a dream I had-”

  “Minmei, are you all right?” He had unfastened her embrace and was holding her hands.

  “Well, yeah,” she began. “Except for that…” Then it hit her like a brilliant flash.

  Rick saw the shock of recognition in her eyes and tried to calm her. “You’re aboard the SDF-3. You’re safe, now, and the doctors say you’ll be fine.”

  “Where’s Janice, Rick!”

  “She’s right next door.” Rick motioned. “And she’s okay. Dr. Lang is with her.”

  Minmei buried her face in her hands and cried, Rick’s hand caressing her back. “Why did you do it, Minmei?” he asked after a moment.

  She looked up and wiped the tears away. “Rick, I just couldn’t let everyone leave. You’re all so important to me. Do you understand?”

  “You could have been killed, do you understand that?”

  She nodded. “Thank you for saving me.”

  Rick cleared his throat. “Well, actually you’ll have to thank Colonel Wolff for that. But listen, you better get some rest now. There’s a lot I have to tell you, but it’ll keep.”