Metal Fire

by Jack McKinney

  The creature had almost run to this one, caught up in an instinctual desire to be taken home. But instead, it followed the two Humans from a discreet distance.

  Nordoff had had a change of mind.

  "A third of our battle fleet and nearly half our transports have already been lost," he reported to the war room. "They're tearing us to shreds! Sir, it's impossible for us to maintain battle formation. I suggest we withdraw immediately."

  "Nonsense," said Leonard into the remote mike. "Why haven't you brought the AJACs to bear against the enemy, Captain?"

  "We've been awfully busy just trying to survive up to this point," Nordoff returned. "Sir," he continued with greater emphasis, "the enemy has been dispatching our largest battlecruisers with regularity; I hardly think attack choppers have a-"

  "Captain, this is a question for me to decide. Follow your instructions.

  Dispatch the AJACs!"

  Dana felt Bowie's presence essential; so she and the alien returned to the 15th's barracks and snatched Bowie from the ready-room before setting

  off for the place where Zor and Dana had first set eyes on each other, and where Bowie himself had been held captive-the burial site of the SDF-1.

  Once again Angelo Dante didn't bother to protest, happy to be rid of the three of them, liabilities all. Now the sergeant said to himself, if he could only do something about Sean and a few of the others. But when he completed his mental list of rejects he found that he had eliminated all but one man from the 15th-himself!

  Meanwhile, the therapist, her assistant, and their patient powered their Hovercycles to the top of the ridge and over the pass that linked Monument with what was once its sister city, Macross. There was no actual roadway left, but there were remnants of the original one, and the cycles easily allowed them to scramble around rough spots and landslide areas-both natural and deliberate.

  Macross was theoretically off-limits to civilians and Southern Cross troops alike, although the site was in no way patrolled or otherwise kept under surveillance. It was a well-known fact that the final battle between the SDFs 1 and 2 and the Zentraedi warship manned by Khyron and his consort, Azonia, had left the area intensely radioactive. Whether this was still the case was top-secret and a question that could only be answered by Professor Zand or one of those few scientists who had served on the dimensional fortress and had not for one reason or another elected to accompany Lang, Hunter, and Edwards on the Expeditionary Mission to Tirol. In any case, the High Command didn't want anyone poking around: most of the usable mecha and Robotechnological marvels had been salvaged from the ship, but Lang had given strict orders that no one was to disturb the area. Hence, the two-fold purpose of the bulldozed mounds themselves.

  The lakebed had dried up and the resultant bowl was now teeming with a wide assortment of vegetal and animal life, reminiscent of some of the atypical habitats that formed in the bottom of craters or calderas, like that of Ngorongoro in East Africa. And in the center of this were the three flat-topped mounds, steep-sided, with larger bases than crowns, capped with vegetation, and shrouded in mystery.

  Dana brought the trio to a halt some distance from the mounds. She turned to glance at Zor, looking for any signs that might indicate familiarity or recall. But instead, Zor seemed puzzled and possibly spooked, as she herself felt.

  "Well you know that 'military base' you keep dreaming about-the one that was attacked?" Dana began. "It occurred to me that this might be it. Bowie and I saw you here, Zor-we fought against you and your Bioroids right on this spot!" Dana looked apologetic. "I didn't want to tell you before, because Nova insists that I'm not to plant memories in your mind...but this place is so important. You actually held Bowie prisoner here, Zor. Don't you remember any of it?"

  Zor was looking at Bowie for confirmation and receiving it; but even that had no apparent effect. Zor tightened his mouth and shook his head.

  "There was a terrible battle fought here," Bowie added. "Between the Earth Forces and the last of the Zentraedi-a race sent here by your Masters to retrieve something they thought we had-something they believe we still have." Bowie gestured to the three mounds. "Underneath one of these are the remains of a ship that was probably sent to Earth from your homeworld, a planet called Tirol. By someone who you might even be related to-a being called Zor."

  Zor listened without a word, as an animal might listen to Human speech: aware of the tone and even the words, but ignorant of the sense of it.

  "My father's sister, my aunt, died here," Bowie said softly, his voice cracking. "Her name was Claudia Grant."

  "I'm sorry for that," Zor returned. "And what was this thing you were supposed to have that my Masters are still so desperate for?" he asked them.

  Dana spoke to this, shrugging first, to indicate her limited knowledge of these things. "Some kind of generator. Something that has to do with Protoculture-the sort of fuel that drives our mecha and permits our Veritechs to transform."

  "To reconfigure," Zor said, at the edge of something. He absently

  gnawed at his lower lip. "Protoculture..." he said thoughtfully. "I don't know...It does seem familiar; but I don't recall anything."

  "Well since we're here, let's poke around some," Dana proposed. "Maybe we'll find something to jog your memory. I mean, if you feel up to it..." she thought to add.

  "Of course I am," Zor assured her, straightening himself in the cycle's seat. "I'll investigate the mound on the left. "

  "I'll take the right one," Bowie said eagerly.

  Dana smiled and worked the mecha's throttle. "Okay. Then let's get cracking!"

  Zor and Bowie hovered off and she did the same, heading for the center mound, which up close proved to be somewhat larger than the others. But like them, it had the same atmosphere of enchantment and eerieness lingering about it, the same profusion of shrubs, saplings, and underbrush growing from crevices in its steep sides.

  Out of sight the pollinator watched her, and began to head toward the same mound.

  She saw nothing that might indicate a way into the mound and considered attempting to power her cycle up the sides for a look at the top; but first decided to circle around the thing once or twice to see what she could find. Just shy of completing the circle she found what she was looking for: something like the mouth of a cave, large, dark and fanged by stalactite-like deposits. She called out for Bowie and Zor to join her, and in moments they were by her side.

  They dismounted their cycles and made their way up to the mouth of the opening, scrambling over rocks and through the barbed and tenacious growth that covered the mound's inclined lower base. At the mouth, Bowie bravely stepped in, and stood for a moment in the darkness waiting for his eyes to dark-adapt.

  "It looks like it goes all the way in," he told Zor and Dana.

  They followed. Even Zor seemed to have misgivings. "Let's be careful," he told Dana. "We don't know what we might find in here."

  "Now, when have I not been careful?" She laughed, hopping over a rock at the entrance and starting in, passing Bowie by.

  It wasn't a natural opening in the side of the mound; it appeared to have been excavated. Dana began to wonder whether looters had worked over the sites during the past fifteen years.

  They moved cautiously through the darkness, alert to distant sounds. "It's like a tomb in here-all this place needs are a few mummies," said

  Bowie.

  "Stop that," Dana told him. "I'm scared enough already."

  As they penetrated further, one thing was immediately obvious: although there were indeed organic deposits growing from the ceiling of the cave (some twenty-yards high) and vines and whatnot clinging to the walls, the cave was in no way natural-they were actually inside an enormous corridor. Exposed panels and circuitry, rusting structural members and bulkheads confirmed this much.

  But there were live things in the corridor as well, as Dana was soon to find out.

  Without warning, a group of bats flew straight at them out of the darkness. Dana screamed, la
unched, and latched herself onto Zor's arm, instantly regretting her show of weakness.

  She reached up to find his mouth in the darkness, angrier when she felt a smile there.

  Zor laughed and insisted that they keep going.

  They moved along the corridor for another fifteen minutes, following it along a gentle arc; then there was light ahead of them-what appeared to be a free-standing monolithic light bar, but was in fact a narrow opening in the wall of the corridor, permitting light to issue forth from somewhere deeper inside the mound.

  Zor volunteered to take the point on this one, feeling as though he was indeed approaching something that would lead him to clues of his real origins and past. He seemed to know this place somehow, the feel of these corridors. It was not quite the same as the picture his mind drew of it, but

  familiar nevertheless. In a strange way, he felt that he knew this place as one would a home.

  The opening was just large enough to slip into, but it required that he keep his shoulders pressed flat against the wall. It had to be a ventilation shaft or accessway that was not meant to be walked.

  Dana and Bowie stuck close. "Can you see?" Dana asked Zor. "Are we almost at the end?"

  "A little more..." he told her.

  And all at once they were through the breach and inside an enormous chamber. Below them was what seemed to be an excavated pit. Rough staircases had been cut into the dirt and debris that settled into the place when the roof caved in possibly a decade or more ago. Shafts of sunlight poured in through openings in the crust above, along with vines and the off-shoots of trees.

  But the pit itself was what struck them: from a viscous-looking organic soup all but bubbling in the bottom of the cauldron, grew an orderly pattern of strange, unearthly green stalks, blossoming with fragrant buds and tripetaled flowers even as they watched.

  Overhead, light, mist, and bioenergy given off by the plants conspired to form what looked to be an arrangement of power coils.

  "This place is unbelievable," said Dana. "It's throbbing with power...and those plants...What on Earth are they?"

  "It's like some kind of greenhouse," Bowie suggested.

  The trio made their way down the roughly-hewn staircase until they were standing at the very edge of the cauldron. The plants swayed, as though moved by some wind only they could detect. More, they seemed to be communing with each other, issuing a song that circumvented normal Human hearing. Dana felt compelled to reach out toward one of the flowers, just to stroke the velvety surface of its petals...

  "No, don't touch that!" Zor yelled.

  But it was too late. The flower seemed to meet Dana's hand halfway and attach itself to her. She felt no pain from this, but Zor's yell had startled

  her so, that she quickly snatched her hand away.

  Bowie was aghast. "The plant sensed you, Dana! Did you see it move toward you?"

  Zor was now standing transfixed by the scene, mesmerized by the shafts of dazzling light and something that played at the edge of his memory.

  "The Triumvirate!..." he said suddenly. "Look at these flowers-they grow in threes!-the three who act as one! Once again, the same thing I saw in my dream."

  Dana tried to coax more from his tortured mind. "Could those things be related somehow?"

  "Do you think maybe these plants are what the Masters are trying to get their hands on?" Bowie asked.

  Zor shook his head, eyes shut tight. "I don't know...But I do know that these flowers aren't what they seem. They're some kind of dreadful mutation, feeding off a source of incredible power. They're definitely a new form of life, unlike any that we've ever seen."

  Dana turned to regard the cauldron, the writhing plants, their siren song...

  "I don't like this at all..." she said warily.

  Zor concurred. "Neither do I," he told her. "I feel this cavern is full of emanations of great strength. It's as if these plants were calling out...making contact with something far away. My past is buried here somehow. But how can I expect anyone to believe this?"

  "We'll bring the Supreme Commander here and show it to him-he'll have to believe you then!"

  "Oh, terrific!" Bowie exclaimed. "Can you imagine what he'd say to that-'You expect me to believe this balderdash about flowers and strange emanations?'...That's what he'd say! He'd think we're crazy, Dana."

  Dana took a deep breath and reached for Zor's hand.

  General Emerson and Colonel Rochelle sat silently in the war room. The assault had proved to be a total disaster, to men and mecha alike.

  Dozens of battlecruisers had been lost, along with an untold number of the AJACs the supreme command had put so much faith in.

  Nova Satori was with the two men; she had volunteered to get some coffee for all of them, and was returning with steaming mugs when ground-base com acknowledged an incoming message from Lieutenant Sterling. Emerson had the techs patch the transmission through to the command balcony, and in a moment Dana's face filled the monitor screen.

  "First of all, sir...I'm fully aware that I disobeyed orders."

  "So, what else is new?" Nova muttered behind the general's back.

  Dana caught the comment and replied to it. "I'm sorry, Nova, but I have Zor with me and we've just paid a visit to the site of the SDF-1. General, I hope you're not too angry with us."

  Depleted of emotion, Emerson simply snorted. Besides, he had interesting news of his own to report-perhaps the only good news that had come from the battle.

  "Lieutenant," he began. "We've just received a transmission from Marie Crystal. She was in direct contact with the enemy and her visual evidence seems to bear out that theory of yours regarding the trichotomous pattern of the aliens' behavior."

  "I can't take credit for it, sir. It was Zor's idea. Is Marie all right?"

  "Our losses were disastrously heavy...But I've been informed that Lieutenant Crystal is now safely back aboard. She and the entire first assault wave have disengaged and are withdrawing toward the dark side of the moon. However, I regret to say that the attack has been something of a fiasco."

  In another part of the UEG headquarters, Leonard was receiving the most recent battle update.

  "Supreme Commander," a tech reported from the monitor, "the first assault wave has fallen back in disarray."

  "Well then, we'll demonstrate that we have more where that came from," Leonard growled.

  "Sir?..."

  "Mobilize the second assault wave. Order them to rendezvous with the remaining operational units of the first wave and prepare for a combined attack against the enemy."

  The tech went wide-eyed with disbelief. "Another frontal assault, Supreme Commander?"

  Leonard ran a thick hand across his bullet-shaped skull and nodded gravely.

  "And this time, we'll fight to the very last Human life!"

  End RTUCN.COM