He rose as if he were coming at bay before a pack of hounds, glowering at Moran and the others. “Sir, I wish I could explain how they neutralize or circumvent our sensors, but I can’t. Our only viable response is to strike back at once, and hard! We drove them off before and we can do it again, until they stop coming back.” He shook his big fist, a gesture he often used.
Inside, he knew a bitter frustration that Zand—Zand, who seemed to move in the shadows and had advised him so cannily before—could no longer be contacted. Has Zand set me up? Leonard wondered. But the man was Dr. Lang’s heir on Earth, heir to the secrets of Robotech and Protoculture; elusive, furtive Zand, had sworn he was on Leonard’s side. And so Leonard was determined to follow Zand’s council and his own prejudices.
Moran looked to Emerson. “And what does the chief of staff have to say?”
Emerson came to his feet slowly, thinking. He didn’t wish to contradict his superior, especially in that hall, but he had been called upon to speak his mind honestly. Certainly, Emerson thought that Leonard’s characterization of the Masters as having been “driven away” was wide of the mark.
“Speaking candidly, sir,” Emerson said, “we know next to nothing about Zor or the Robotech Masters’ true capabilities. And until we do, I cannot recommend any mission that would risk our people and our ships and mecha.”
Leonard, just about to sit down, slammed the table with his fist and rose up again. “Damn it, we’re talking about the fate of the planet here, and about being wiped out sector by sector!”
Emerson nodded soberly. “I’m aware of that. But nothing will be gained by sacrificing our pilots to certain destruction with no hope of inflicting significant losses on the enemy.”
Leonard sneered. “I won’t stand for that kind of talk! You’re impugning the courage and ability of our fighting forces!” Before Emerson could contradict, Leonard swung to Moran. “Those men and women have bloodied the enemy before, but good! If we let them take the offensive, they can finish the job!”
Emerson bit back his words as he heard Chairman Moran say, “Very well, Commander Leonard, prepare to attack.”
Fools! thought Rolf Emerson even as he prepared to carry out the orders he was sworn to obey.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
TO: Supreme Commander Leonard
FROM: Dr. Lazlo Zand, Special Protoculture Observations and Operations Kommandatura (Commanding)
Sir:
It is the conclusion of this unit that war against the Robotech Masters must be prosecuted as aggressively as possible, and that tactics used thus far (with particular emphasis on the Hovertank squads) still hold the best promise of positive results.
MONUMENT CITY DIDN’T FEEL MUCH LIKE A COMBAT zone even though all Earth was a combat zone now, Dana reflected as she led the 15th into the middle of the downtown area on Hovercycles.
Traffic was fairly heavy and the shops, arcades, nightspots, and theaters were all brightly lit. Streetlights, traffic signals, neon signs, and even park fountains were illuminated. Why not? she thought. Blackout measures are useless for hiding targets from the Robotech Masters.
And keeping people pent up inside didn’t do any good, either; there had been plenty of shelters in Sector Three, or so the scuttlebutt ran, and it hadn’t helped them at all. The only thing Civil Defense restrictions would do right now was cause panic.
And panic was what the 15th was there to prevent. They were on duty, but unarmed, looking more like they were out on an evening pass. The UEG had tried to suppress rumors of the atrocities in Sector Three, but there had been the inevitable leaks. Like a lot of other Southern Cross soldiers circulating through population centers this night, the ATACs were on the lookout for any crazy inclined to jump up on a street corner soap box and proclaim Judgment Day.
Well it sure beats a twenty-mile hike with full field pack, Sean Phillips decided, removing his goggles and readjusting his torso harness as the 15th parked their cycles side by side at the curb of a busy street. People were wandering by arm in arm, or window-shopping, taking in the sights. And there were women galore. “Well, men, this is going to be a true test of your character,” he said, and got sly laughs from some of the guys.
“Ahem,” said Dana, rising to face them. “All right, we start our patrols from here.” She eyed them severely, then winked. “And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, hmm?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sean said with a grin.
“Okay, I’ll patrol the discos,” somebody volunteered.
“And I’ll start with that bar over there,” another added with a goofy laugh.
“Yeah, you’ll end with it, too,” the first countered.
In another moment they were all splitting up to check out the area, all except Angelo, who gave a disgusted grunt. Duty was duty and playtime was playtime and the two shouldn’t mix!
“Angie, why do I have the feeling you’d rather stay here and guard the horses?” Dana asked sweetly.
He crossed his arms and put his feet up on his handlebars. “Because you’re a mind-reader, I guess.”
That gave her a start, and she saw Zor’s face again. Maybe I am. But she recovered and told her troops, “Right, move out.”
Which they did with a will, whopping and laughing. “Idiots,” Angelo snorted.
Is every attractive female in this town grafted to some civilian’s arm? Sean thought as he made his way along. Then he saw her standing by a boutique window, looking at a coat. She was small and shapely, with auburn hair to her waist and yellow slacks that did nice things for her figure.
Sean squared his uniform as he went over. Lady, this is your lucky night! “You seem to like that coat a lot,” he said. “I admire your taste.” Actually, he scarcely glanced at it.
She turned in surprise. “What?” She looked him over and broke into a dimpled smile. “Will you buy it for me, hmm?”
This was more like it. The coat was nice, he guessed; all scarlet embroidery and white fur trim. “Well, now, I just might be persuaded—uh!” As he read the price tag and recalled that he was now a deuce private, he went pale. Gah! That’s more than I make in a year!
“On second thought, red’s not your color,” he improvised. “Listen, why don’t you and me go someplace and get ourselves a drink, yes?” He winked.
She made a wry face and removed the hand he’d settled lightly on her shoulder. “Thanks anyway. Maybe some other time.” She said it walking.
“Sure, anytime you say!” he called after. Maybe I sounded too insincere? Well, it’s her loss.
Two blocks away, Dana was looking into another boutique window, considering a nice little evening frock that looked just about right for her. A hand fell on her shoulder and she pivoted, ready to show some masher what Hovertank officers learned in hand-to-hand.
But she was facing a smug-looking Angelo Dante. “Time to spit on the fire and call in the hounds,” he said. “We just got a general recall to base. Something big is up.”
The 15th was back on standby alert, manning their Hovertanks and waiting. This show was reserved for the TASCs and the Cosmic Units.
Fokker Base had been rebuilt hastily. Barely twenty-four hours after the raid on Sector Three, the light of morning showed a half-dozen shuttles at the vertical and ready to launch. Final preparations were under way, and people were running for bunkers and observation posts.
The shuttles launched, the first battle wing of the planned strike. On the other side of the base, the Black Lions and the other Veritech outfits waited, the second battle wing. When the shuttles were away and clear, the VTs got the green light. With Maria Crystal leading, the fighters thundered down the runway to even the score with the Robotech Masters.
Leonard came into the command center to find Emerson bent over the illuminated displays. Leonard had regained his composure, especially in light of the fact that Emerson was his most capable subordinate. To put it more truthfully, over the years Leonard had garnered credit for many things that had b
een Emerson’s accomplishments.
Leonard dropped a thick hand on the flared shoulderboard of Emerson’s torso harness. “Believe me, Rolf, this is the only way.”
Emerson studied him for a long time before replying, “I hope to God you’re right.”
* * *
The VTs went in first, loosing swarms of missiles at the enemy flagship, their sole objective. But the missiles were no sooner away than globes of light boiled out of the flagship, like enormous will-o’-the-wisps, bursting into hexagonal webs of pulsating light like gigantic snowflakes.
The snowflakes moved and drifted into position, intersecting the missiles’ paths, and the Earthly ordnance detonated harmlessly against them. The other mother ships were silent and dark but for running lights, waiting.
Still more of the energy snowflakes came forth, until a net of them protected the flagship. The VTs swept around for another try, and this time beams from the chandelier-bulb cannon crackled across empty space. More than forty fighters were lost in the first ninety seconds of the massed attack on the flagship. Still the VTs swung around for another go, hoping against hope to get in under the hexagons and deliver a blow.
But they were flying straight into a murder machine.
“Attack groups two and eight have disengaged from the enemy,” the flat, synthesized voice of the intel computer echoed in the command center. “Groups three, four, and seven report heavy losses. Other groups fail to respond to transmissions and are believed to have been totally destroyed.”
Leonard turned to Emerson angrily but also, people in the command center could see, with a tremble of fear. “How can this be happening to us?”
Emerson chose to ignore him, except to observe, “So far we haven’t even put a dent in them.” He looked to Rochelle. “Any sign of a counterattack yet?”
“Negative at this time, sir. They’re standing pat.”
Emerson called for an update on losses. The computer printed out the awful facts and figures. Three quarters of the attack wings’ forces were gone, immolated in a few minutes.
“All those men and women lost,” Emerson murmured, scanning the list.
“It’s—it’s a disaster,” Leonard said unsteadily. He turned and lurched toward the door.
Emerson didn’t even bother to solicit Leonard’s permission. “Call off the attack! All units disengage and return to base.” Then he turned and glared at Leonard’s back as the supreme commander exited.
* * *
Not far away, there was a different kind of battle being fought in the UEG’s foremost Robotech research laboratory, in the military-industrial facility near the airbase. And this battle was turning, slowly, in the Human race’s favor.
Dr. Miles Cochran and his colleague, Dr. Samson Beckett, were two of the hottest of the Robotech hotshots who had trained under Dr. Emil Lang and, later, Dr. Lazlo Zand. Now they pored over the remains of a downed blue Bioroid that lay on a worktable like the world’s biggest cadaver awaiting the championship autopsy of all time.
Its guts were opened up and wired to every monitoring device the lab had. It looked like it was sprouting a garden of sensor wires, photo-optic lines, monitoring circuits, and computer links.
Cochran, a thin-faced, intense redhead, said, “I’m activating ultraviolet scanner, Sam.”
Beckett, smaller and dark-haired, wearing tinted glasses was oohing and aahing over the things he was encountering with his probes, but stopped to step back and watch.
The scanner came down to irradiate the Bioroid’s entire form, passing from crown to toes, coordinating with readouts and analysis computers, scrutinizing every part of the shattered mecha.
The two went to the computer screens to see what they came up with. The data banks were linked in with recordings and sketches of the mecha the Southern Cross forces had fought thus far. The two watched the information and diagrams flash, the light reflecting off Beckett’s glasses.
“What about the damage received?” Cochran asked. “See if you can get me a readout on that.” Beckett bent to the task.
He got an integrated analysis of the internal structure of the mecha. There was severe mechanical damage because a leg had been ripped off in battle, but no physical explanation as to why all systems were so completely inert despite the Humans’ efforts to activate them. Then they got the confirmation they were looking for.
“Definite traces of biogenetic material,” Beckett said flatly.
“So there was something alive in there, something that escaped before the mop-up crew got to the scene, or self-destructed. Can you give us a look-see at what it was?”
“I can try.” Beckett bent to his task again. The most powerful medical and genetic engineering programs were accessed, a stupendous amount of computer power. Alongside a detailed DNA blueprint, the computer drew up a human form. “Unbelievable,” Beckett breathed.
“It’s Human! Not simply like us, as the Zentraedi were, but Human!”
“But—it’s from outside the Solar System!” Beckett was shaking his head. “Maybe … somehow they’re from Hunter’s SDF-3 expedition?”
It was Cochran’s turn to shake his head. “No. But those ATAC tankers were right; they saw what they thought they saw.”
Beckett removed his glasses. “God! Wait till Zand hears this! He’ll freak!”
There was a chuckle from the darkness; Cochran and Beckett spun toward it even as they realized they knew who it was. “Perhaps that is too extreme a word, Samson. Let’s just say that I’m—pleased.”
Dr. Lazlo Zand came a little farther into the light, so that his eerie eyes could be seen. “And of course my little Dana was right! Of course your findings bear me out! The Protoculture weaves, it spins, it manipulates and shapes, young doctors! Its ability to shape mere machinery is nothing next to its ability to shape event!”
He stepped a little closer still, studying the Bioroid. He was a man of medium height, in unornamented UEG attire, his hair still unruly after all these years. His eyes seemed to be all iris, as Lang’s had been ever since Lang had taken that Protoculture boost aboard the SDF-1 when it first landed. Only, in Zand’s case, the transformation hadn’t taken place until years later. He looked no less unearthly than a Robotech Master.
“You’ve done well, but now you must double-check your findings to be sure there is no error in your presentation when you take them to the UEG.”
Cochran found his voice. How had Zand gotten into the lab? How had he known what Beckett and Cochran were doing there? They hadn’t seen or had word of or about him in years. Yet, those weren’t questions Cochran felt safe in asking, so he said, “Surely, Dr. Zand, you’ll want to accompany us and elaborate on—”
“No!” Zand raised a warning finger. “No mention of me, understood? Good! Now, back to work, both of you.” Zand turned for the door.
“But when will you—” Beckett began.
“When the time is right,” Zand said, silhouetted against the light from outside, “you will hear from me again.”
Emerson rested his chin on his interlaced fingers. “And so you’re saying Zor is a Human being, and not a miniaturized Zentraedi?”
Beckett and Cochran nodded.
“Then Dana and Bowie were right,” Emerson said softly, staring into space. “And we’re fighting our own kind. Like brothers slaughtering each other.”
Just then Rochelle buzzed Emerson with the final compilation of the battle casualties. Eighty-five VTs destroyed, seven damaged beyond repair; five shuttles destroyed, one damaged beyond repair. Two-hundred-seven pilots and aircraft crew people dead, another twenty ground support and two-hundred-odd civilians dead, the latter two figures from crashes of damaged aircraft. Eighty-seven missing in action and unaccounted for, presumed to be adrift in space, dead or alive.
In the ready-room at the 15th, for once the banter was all but nonexistent.
“Worst defeat of the war,” Bowie said, stretching out the kinks that wearing armor always gave him, grateful to be back in a
simple uniform.
“And that was only one ship,” Sean reminded him.
“I tell ya, the VTs coulda got through if they hadn’t’ve been called off,” Angelo insisted. “Look what we did to those ali—those XTs on the Liberty mission.”
Dana made no response to the fact that he hadn’t used the word aliens, but she noticed that nobody in the 15th used it when referring to the enemy now. It moved her so, their literally unspoken support of her—she very warily felt them to be the family she’d never had.
Louie looked up from the calculations he was doing on a lap-size computer. “And I’m telling you, Angie, that that ship’s design makes a frontal assault a complete impossibility.”
Sean chortled. “I forgot: the professor, there, knows everything!”
Louie held his temper, used to this kind of flak. Bright and inventive enough for any tech school or advanced degree program, he had still opted for the ATACs. He liked being a corporal in a line outfit and, more to the point, the tinkering and computer hacking and equipment modifications he did were done without some frowning lab-coat type looking over his shoulder. He was also confident that the studying and research he did on his own, open-ended, put him way ahead of the people who had to complete course requirements in any school.
Dana put in, “But Zor’s ship must have some weak spot.”
Louie turned the dark-goggled gaze on her, nodding. “Exactly right. To start with, I figure that Zor’s ship is not powered by an engine as we would recognize one.”
“Huh?” Dana said. “Then how’s it get around?”
“Well, it can travel between the stars by spacefolding, of course, like the SDFs and the Zentraedi,” Louie explained. “And to get around over smaller distances, it has a more localized folding process, a sort of a twisting of opposing forces, like squirting a grape seed between your fingers.”
Dana remembered some of the theory and jargon Louie had spouted in sessions past. “So, if you upset the hyper-balance, you’ve got yourself an unstable ship.”
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