Metal Fire

by Jack McKinney

  "The Triumvirate!" he interrupted her. "It's starting to come back to me again..."

  A chamber filled with a swirling nebulous mixture of liquids and gases, a shape taking form amidst it all-gigantic, inhuman, devoid of all that life was meant to be...And now a triad of such chambers, but smaller, Human-sized, and within each, beings who shared a common face...

  "The Triumvirate..." he groaned, almost losing his balance. "Something to do with acting in groups of three."

  Dana seemed almost disinterested in his distress; but in fact, she was beside herself with excitement. Zor had to be making reference to the same triplicate clones she, Bowie, and Louie had seen in the fortress. She was determined to keep Zor unaware of this; and just as determined to prove to

  Nova that she could handle the subject's unconscious as well as any Dr. Zeitgeist could. From now on it was going to be the kid glove treatment for Zor.

  "Well, I have no idea what all that means," she said with elaborate innocence. "But it sounds just screwy enough to turn out to be important. I guess I'll let High Command know about it-even though they're going to think we're both crazy," she hastened to add.

  At Fokker Field, Lieutenant Marie Crystal, already suited up in gladiatorial, tactical air combat armor, directed her TASC team to one of the score of massive battlecruisers that were positioned about the field in launch mode. Marie checked off names on the list she carried in her mind, as the flyboys rushed by her. Elevators carried them down to the field itself, where Hovertransports were waiting to ferry them to their destinations. In the distance, men and mecha were transferring themselves from transports to cruisers.

  Over the PA the voice of a controller issued last minute instructions: "Final loading of AJACs in assembly bay nineteen. Transport commanders, signal when AJACs are in place...T minus ten minutes to attack launch...All pilots to standby alert... "

  Marie checked her suit chronometer against the controller's mark anal began to hurry her team along. "Come on," she told them, with a broad sweep of her arm. "Keep it moving! They're not going to wait for us!"

  She leaned over the balcony railing to glance at the transports and happened to notice Captain Nordoff's Hoverjeep below. He looked up, spying her and waving his hand.

  "We expect to see those AJACs put through their paces up there!" he yelled.

  Marie threw him an okay-sign and told him not to worry about a thing. "I only hope we don't get lost in the shuffle up there-I've never seen so many ships!"

  "Just pray we've got enough, Lieutenant!" he said, and hovered off.

  Marie straightened up from the rail and turned to find Sean alongside her, displaying his well-known roguish grin.

  "Hello, Private," Marie said disdainfully. "Hey, don't get personal," Sean laughed.

  She turned her back to him. "What are you doing here, Sean? No hot date today? After all, the Fifteenth's not part of this action."

  "Hey, don't say things like that, Marie," he said peevishly. "You're tearing me apart, you know that? I came here because I wanted to see you off. I care about you, in case you haven't guessed."

  Marie looked at him over her shoulder. "Don't think that one night on the roof makes us an item, Sean," she warned him. "I trust you just about as far as I can throw you."

  "T minus six minutes to launch," the controller told them from the tower. "All commanders to their posts..."

  Neither one of them said anything for a moment; then Sean broke the silence with a quiet. "Be careful, okay?"

  Marie's hard look softened. "I almost believe you really mean that..." "I, I mean it," he stammered.

  Marie blew him a kiss from the elevator.

  Elsewhere on the base, Zor stood alone, his azure eyes scanning the field, an unwitting transmitter of sight and sound...

  In the Robotech flagship, the three Masters watched over the Earth Forces base through the clone's eyes. The Protoculture cap was beneath their aged hands now as they readied their fleet for battle.

  "This new armada is the single largest fleet they have yet dared to send against us," Bowkaz saw fit to point out, no suggestion of fear or anticipation in his deep voice.

  "The more ships they employ, the greater our triumph," said Dag. "Their armada will be destroyed and their spirit broken," Shaizan

  added. But suddenly there were signs of interrupted concentration in the transignal holo-image. "What is happening?" he asked the others.

  Bowkaz repositioned his hands on the Protoculture cap, but the image of the prelaunch battlecruisers continued to waver and ultimately de-rezzed entirely. "Someone is interfering with the clone," he explained. "Distracting him..."

  While Dana had excused herself to notify Rolf Emerson of Zor's latest flashback, the alien himself had left the barracks. All at once compelled to visit the Earth Forces launch site, he had ridden his Hovercycle up to the plateau, and chosen a spot near the field that offered a vantage point for all the myriad activities taking place. In a certain sense he was not cognizant of where he was, nor what he was doing; and equally unaware that both Angelo and Dana, on separate cycles, had followed him there.

  The sergeant had watched Zor for some time, wondering what his next move might be; but when he realized that the alien was simply staring transfixed at the prelaunch activities, he decided to move in.

  "Just what the hell do you think you're doing up here, Zor?" he demanded, seemingly awakening Zor from a dream. "This sector's off-limits. And besides, you're supposed to be back at the barracks."

  "I was trying to get a better view of the liftoff," Zor offered as explanation, although one part of him realized this wasn't true.

  Angelo took a quick glance right and left; there was no one in sight, and Angelo was tempted to fix it so the alien would no longer be capable of moving around scot-free. Dante took a menacing step forward, only to hear Dana's voice behind him.

  "It's all right, Sergeant, I'll vouch for him."

  Angelo glared at Zor and relaxed some. Dana was marching up the small rise to join them, breathless when she arrived. She glanced briefly at Zor, then threw the sergeant a suspicious look.

  "What did you have in mind, Angelo?" she asked him, her chin up. Dante met her gaze and said: "Not a thing, Lieutenant."

  Dana nodded warily. "I gave Zor clearance to go wherever he wants. I thought it might help him get his memory back."

  "Or something," said Angelo.

  Zor looked at both of them, beginning to feel the anger return.

  Supreme Commander Leonard and his staff viewed the armada liftoff from command central's underground bunker. The darkly armored leviathanlike battlecruisers were underway, rising from the plateau base like a school of surfacing whales.

  "Just look at them!" Leonard gushed, his eyes glued to the monitor screen. "How can they possibly fail?"

  "Very impressive, Commander," said Rolf Emerson, giving lip-service to the moment. I wish to heaven I shared your confidence, he kept to himself.

  Schematics of the attack force and the relative position of the Masters' fleet were carried to the oval screen in the flagship command center.

  "Ah, here they come," said Bowkaz. "Like the proverbial moths to the flame."

  "Is there no one among them who sees the stupidity of this?" Dag asked rhetorically.

  "I will summon our defense force," said Shaizan.

  But Bowkaz told him not to bother. "This won't require the rest of the fleet. One ship will be sufficient."

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  With Dana Sterling's penetration of the SDF-1 burial mound, Humankind (on Earth) had observed three separate stages of the Optera lifeform and still didn't recognize what they were seeing: Lynn-Minmei had watched Khyron ingesting the dried leaves, Sean Phillips had actually tossed the fruit of the tree in his hand, and Dana Sterling had seen the plants in full flower. All this intrigue centered on Protoculture, when the real treasure was in front of them all the time-the Flower of Life itself!...Only one stage remained, but Humankind would have to await th
e Invid's arrival to glimpse it. In thinking about it, though, one might almost say that the Invid were the final stage!

  Maria Bartley-Rand,

  Flower of Life: Journey Beyond Protoculture

  General Leonard's attack plan was a basic one ("simple-minded," as Rolf Emerson would call it later): meet the enemy's six spade fortresses head-on with the more than fifty battlecruisers of the Earth Forces armada; use the new AJAC gunships to confuse them; then, simply overwhelm them with superior firepower. Captain Nordoff would supervise the first-wave assault; Admirals Clark and Salaam would take it from there. There were no tactics built into the plan, no flanking or diversionary operations, no contingencies for possible setbacks. The attack, which Leonard had optimistically (and unrealistically) labeled preemptive, would render needless Angelo Dante's concerns that Zor might be an enemy agent; the Robotech Masters hardly needed the clone's eyes to see what was coming, and consequently they were more than prepared.

  At a distance of 100 miles from the alien fortresses (which were still holding in geosynchronous orbit, some 47,000 miles above the Equator), Nordoff gave the order to open fire. Annihilation discs streamed from the cruiser's pulsed laser cannon like so many small golden suns-energy-

  Frisbees that to the last found their targets. But the enemy defense shields absorbed it all and gave every indication of being hungry for more. The great horned and spiked fortresses were not only left undamaged, but untouched as well.

  Knowing how much was riding on the success of the first wave, Nordoff ordered his wing to maintain course and continue firing, even if that meant at point-blank range. An armchair tactician, Nordoff, not unlike Commander Leonard, refused to accept the fact that the fortresses were effectively invincible-this despite the projections and cautions of the Southern Cross's most brilliant minds. Even the 15th Squadron's downing of the alien flagship was now being reevaluated in terms of the Masters's own allowances and strategies.

  At less than sixty-five miles the first-wave battlecruisers launched a second fusillade; but this time the annihilation discs were not absorbed: they were added to the fortresses' already immeasurably charged stockpiles and spit back. Radiant blue-white tentacles reached out from the lead fortress and grappled with one of the battlecruisers, probing indelicately for weak spots in its armored hull. Troops were caught unawares by the force, incinerated in a thousand flashstorms that swept through the ship, or sent spinning to vacuum death through ruptures which instantaneously bled precious atmosphere from the already scorched and scoured holds.

  In the AJACs launch bay aboard Nordoff's ship, Marie Crystal heard that what remained of the 007 was dead in space. She had been supervising the launch preparations for the choppers, but now ran from her post to one of the starboard cannon turrets, literally kicking the gunner from his seat to have a crack at the enemy herself. She had good friends aboard the demolished cruiser and wasn't about to allow their deaths go unpunished.

  Once in the turret seat, Marie quickly removed her helmet and strapped on the weapon's sensor-studded targeting cap. As computer-generated graphic displays flashed across the helmet's virtual cockpit, she immediately realized why the first-wave had failed to cripple the enemy flagship: Nordoff and the other commanders were completely

  disregarding intel analysis reports concerning the fortresses' vulnerable spots. Concentrated fire directed at any one of these would circumvent the shields' absorption potential and allow pulses to penetrate to the hull itself.

  Marie had been close enough to these things in the past to have committed their surface details to memory; in fact, during her recent hospitalization (when she wasn't glancing at muscle mags), she had done little else except replay the fortresses' topography over and over to herself. Ranging in the gun now, she felt as though she were directly over the fortress in her Logan and could place the shot precisely where she wanted it. "Ah-ha! There you are!" she said out loud as the spot was centered in

  the cannon's reticle. Marie pulled home the twin hand-brake-like triggers and loosed a full ten seconds of plasma fire at the flagship, knowing almost before the fact that she had scored a direct hit.

  In the flagship command center, the three Masters hardly reacted to news that one of the fortress barriers had been breached. Absorbing the energy discs delivered by the Terrans' cruisers had enabled them to leave their own plasma reservoirs untouched and therefore shunt would-be weapons system power to the fortresses' shields and self-restorative systems.

  No sooner had Marie's well-aimed barrage holed the hull than new plating was already sliding into place to seal the breach.

  Dag suggested that it might not even be necessary to fire on the Terrans; better to let them fall back in complete confusion, demoralized by their futile attempt.

  But Bowkaz wanted to see concrete results.

  The fortress fired back, taking out two more battlecruisers.

  Dana and Zor had left their Hovercycles at the base and set out on foot for the grassy overlook high above Monument City. Dana had sent Dante back to command the 15th in her absence, ignoring his reminders that just because the ground-based tactical armored units weren't directly involved in the battle they were nevertheless still on standby alert. Not that he had

  expected her to abandon her pet project and return to the barracks; and the only reason the sergeant didn't bother to press his point (or, for that matter, inform Sterling's commanders) was that he felt a lot better off without the alien around-and that went for both Zor and Dana.

  Dana was encouraged by Zor's most recent mention of "the Triumvirate" to resort to what she considered highrisk therapy now, and as they walked and talked, she was sorely tempted to confess her past to him, certain that he would then move even closer to recovering his own. It was of course a double-edged sword and she was aware of the ambivalence within her: on the one hand, Zor's memory could turn out to be the key that would unlock the mystery of the Robotech Masters and give Earth the data it needed to mount a proper defense, or, as Rolf hoped, engage in some sort of deal-making. But on the other, Dana liked having this past-less Zor by her side, this empty mind she could fill with the memories she wanted placed there; in a way there was something nurturing and maternal about the whole thing that went side-by-side with the more primitive feelings she had for Zor.

  They had reached the flat grassy area now, lifeless crags and shale rivers ascending on three sides, with the last open to a spectacular view of the city, several thousand yards below them. Dana tried not to think about George Sullivan and the few moments the two of them had shared here.

  The sky was not cloudless, but deeply sky-blue nonetheless, and the air was unusually warm, especially for this altitude.

  Zor must have been aware of it, too, because he commented that it was hard to believe there was a war going on.

  "It's so peaceful and quiet up here," she told him as they walked. "I always start thinking about where I grew up when I come up here...the people I left behind."

  It would have been better to tell him about where her mother grew up, she added silently. That would undoubtedly interest him a lot more than stories about Rolf's farm and the almost idyllic childhood she and Bowie had shared-until military school, that was, and Rolfs appointment to

  general and their move from New Denver to Monument City.

  But Zor didn't ask for any specifics about that place; instead, he asked with a laugh: "Was one of the people you left behind a boyfriend?"

  It sounded so ridiculous coming from him that for a moment she was certain he was joking with her. So she played cryptic to his question and said, "No, not really..."

  They were overlooking the city now, and Zor sat down in the tall grass to take in the view. "I wish I could remember where I grew up," he said wistfully. "I guess I'll never know what it's like to go home again."

  "Well, the war will be over someday," she suggested. "You could think about starting a new home..."

  Zor had pulled up a long blade of grass and was chewing at
one end of it absently. "No," he told her. "It's not as simple as that. A man without a past is a man without a home-now and always."

  "But each day brings a little more of your past back to you," she reminded him encouragingly.

  "That's true," he admitted haltingly. "I do remember something about the Triumvirate and Musica...but mainly it's these terrible visions about death and destruction. I know I was doing something important when the enemy attacked. And I get this feeling that there were giants there to protect me...but after that, all I can think about is bloodshed, devastation." Zor pressed the heels of his hands to his temples. "If only I could remember where and why that attack took place. But there's nothing there. Just a blank."

  "Don't put yourself through it now, Zor."

  "And those strange mounds that Nova showed me before I passed out..."

  "Mounds?" Dana said all of a sudden. "You didn't tell me about this!" "That's when we weren't speaking. When I was staying at the GMP

  headquarters."

  "Of course! Why haven't I thought of this before?!"

  Suddenly Dana had a flash of insight: the mounds, of course! Zor had

  been there. There was no reason to think that the mounds would do it for him after Bowie hadn't, but it was worth a chance.

  Dana stood up, took hold of Zor's hand, and led him off in a run.

  Nearby, a curious animal poked its head from the tall grass. From a distance it might have been mistaken for a small shaggy dog; but up close several differences immediately presented themselves: the two knob-ended horns that rose from behind its sheepdog forelock, the feet like soft muffins, the eyes that were not of this Earth.

  There was something about the creature's pose and expression that suggested disbelief. It recognized its onetime female friend. But it was the other human that captivated the creature's attention just now: it was the being who had taken it from its homeworld.