Robotech

by Jack McKinney

  “Yes … I remember!” Zor exclaimed. “A girl named … Musica.”

  Dana gasped. “That’s right!” So Bowie’s vision was real after all, she said to herself.

  “I’m not even certain how I know that,” Zor shrugged….

  Elsewhere, Lieutenant Nova Satori was storming back to the med center elevators. “No one makes a fool out of me like that!” she seethed out loud when the car doors closed….

  “But this is great!” Dana was telling the alien, no longer anxious to leave the room. “It’s starting to look like your memory’s returning!”

  Zor shook his head in despair.

  And suddenly the doors hissed open.

  Dana thought it might be Bowie and Angelo, but when she turned she found Nova Satori glaring at her.

  “I’ll have your bars for this, Sterling!” she heard the GMP lieutenant say. Dana took two quick steps and launched herself out the window, rappeling down to Marie’s room with Nova’s threats ringing in her ears.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  Ironically, the man who could have helped most was also the one who could have done the most damage—Dr. Lazio Zand, who emerges from his own works and those of numerous commentators as a kind of voyeur to Earth’s ravaging by the Robotech Masters. His pathological manipulation of Dana Sterling has only recently come to light [see Zand’s own Event Horizon] and one understands completely why Major General Rolf Emerson was loath to involve the scientist in any of Earth’s dealings with its new invaders. But it must be pointed out that only Zand, Lang’s chief disciple, could have provided the answers to the questions Earth Command was asking. It is indeed fascinating to speculate what might have come from a meeting between Zand and Zor Prime.

  Zeitgeist, Insights: Alien Psychology and the Second Robotech War

  NOVA’S FIRST THOUGHT WAS TO HAVE DANA ARRESTED BY the GMP for knowingly violating security, tampering, or whatever trumped-up charges the boys at dirty tricks could dream up. But the fact remained that Dana’s encounter with Zor had resulted in a breakthrough of sorts. When Nova had questioned him after Dana’s swashbuckling escape from the ninth floor hospital room, it was evident that something within the alien had been stirred; he had at least partial recall of names and faces apparently linked to his recent past, perhaps while onboard the alien fortress itself.

  Professor Cochran was already revising his initial diagnosis based on Nova’s updated report; he was now rejecting the idea of fugue state and thinking more in terms of the retrograde type, or possibly a novel form of transient global amnesia. Brain scans done after the alien’s fight with Lieutenant Sterling indicated that the limbic abnormalities detected earlier had lessened to some degree; but Cochran was still in the dark as to the etiology. He pressed Nova to openly call in Professor Zand, but Nova refused; she promised him, however, that she would make mention of Zand during her meeting with General Emerson.

  The general was furious with Sterling for about five minutes. After that, Nova could see that a new plan had come to him, one that would place Dana Sterling at the very center of things. Nova would retain control over Zor’s debriefing, but Dana was to provide the stimulus.

  Emerson explained all this to Dana scarcely a week after the med center players had made chumps out of the GMP sentries.

  Dana hadn’t heard word one from Nova or High Command during that time and had spent her idle moments preparing herself for the brig, working her body to exhaustion in the barracks workout rooms, and trying to make sense out of the conflicting emotions she now felt toward the alien pilot. Zor had been spirited away from the base hospital and even Sean hadn’t been able to pry any additional information from the nursing staff.

  So Dana was hardly surprised when the call came for her to report to General Emerson at the Ministry. But there were surprises in store for her she couldn’t have guessed at.

  Rolf was seated rigidly at his desk when Dana announced herself and walked into the spacious office. Colonel Rochelle was standing off to one side, Zor to the other. Dana offered a salute and Rolf told her in a scolding voice to step up to the desk.

  “I suppose there’s no need for me to introduce you to Zor, Lieutenant Sterling. It is my understanding that you two have already met.”

  Dana gulped and said, “Yes, sir. You see—”

  “I don’t want to hear your explanations, Dana,” Rolf interrupted, waving his hand dismissively. “This issue’s confused enough already.” He cleared his throat meaningfully. “What you may or may not know, is that Zor is apparently amnesiac—either as a result of the crash or perhaps through some neural safeguard the Masters saw fit to include in their Human pilots. Nevertheless, it is our belief that he can be brought through this. In fact, your previous … encounter with him seems to have provided a start in that direction.”

  “Uh, thank you, sir,” Dana muttered, instantly wishing she could take it back. Rolf’s eyes were flashing with anger.

  “Don’t thank me, Lieutenant! What you did was unconscionable, and at some point you’ll be expected to make amends for it!” Rolf snorted. “But for the time being, I want to place Zor under your personal direction. I want him to take part in the Fifteenth’s activities.”

  Dana was aghast. “Sir?… Do you mean?…” She looked over at Zor, struck by how terrific he looked in the uniform and boots someone had supplied him: a tight-fitting navy blue and scarlet jumpsuit, cinched by a wide, gold-colored belt, and turtle-necked, making his lavender locks appear even longer. His faint smile brought a similar one to her face.

  “I think I understand the logic here,” she said, turning back to Rolf. “A military assignment may jog his memory in some way.”

  “Precisely,” said Rolf. “Do you think you can handle it, Dana?”

  Again she looked over at Zor; then nodded. “I’m willing to try, sir.”

  “And what about your team?”

  Dana thought her words out carefully before speaking. “The Fifteenth is the finest unit in the Southern Cross, sir. Everyone will do their part.”

  “And Bowie?”

  Dana’s lips tightened. Bowie would be harder to handle. “I’ll talk to him,” she told Rolf. “He’ll come through, and I’m willing to stake my bars on it.”

  Emerson looked hard at her and said, “You are, Lieutenant.”

  When Dana had left the room with Zor, Colonel Rochelle had some things to say to Emerson, starting off by disavowing the entire project. “It’s insane,” he told Rolf, gesticulating as he paced in front of the desk. “And I want no further part of it. An alien pilot—an officer, at that—wandering around with one of our top units…. Suppose he is a mole? Suppose he’s wired or rigged in some way we can’t even fathom? We might just as well give the Masters an open invitation to have a peek at our defenses.”

  Emerson let him speak; Rochelle wasn’t saying anything that Rolf hadn’t already thought, feared, scrutinized, and analyzed to death.

  “And why Sterling? She’s a discipline problem and a—”

  Rochelle cut himself off short of the word, but Emerson finished the thought for him.

  “That’s right, Colonel. She’s half-alien herself. Part Human, part Zentraedi, and therefore the perfect choice in this instance.” Rolf exhaled loudly, tiredly. “I know full well how risky this is. But this Zor is our only hope. If we can show him who we are, then perhaps he can become our voice to the Masters. If they’re after what I think they’re after, we’ve got to use Zor to convince them that we don’t have it.”

  “The legendary Protoculture factory,” Rochelle said knowingly. “I just hope you know what you’re doing, sir.”

  Eyes closed, Emerson leaned back in his chair and said nothing.

  * * *

  “Our new recruit’s a very skilled soldier,” Dana told the assembled members of the 15th. “I can tell you that he was assigned to us personally by General Emerson himself, and that I have the utmost confidence in him.”

  The team, including a couple of g
reens fresh from the Academy, was gathered at ease in the barracks ready-room. Dana had been building up the new recruit for the past five minutes and Angelo for one was beginning to get suspicious. Especially with all this talk about having faith enough in the decision of High Command to accept a mission that seems somewhat extraordinary on the face of it.

  “All right, you can come in now,” the lieutenant was saying, half-turned to the ready-room sliders.

  The doors hissed open and the lean, clean-shaven recruit entered. He was handsome in an almost androgynous way, above-average height, and affected a shade of light purple dye in his long hair. The yoke and flyout shoulders of his uniform were green to Dana’s red, the cadets’ yellow, and Louie’s blue. Dana introduced him as Zor.

  The name had no meaning to some of them, but Angelo gave loud voice to the sudden concerns of the rest.

  “Is this the alien?!”

  Dana said, “Zor is officially part of our unit.”

  Now everyone went bananas—all except Bowie, who Dana had spoken to beforehand and who was now gritting his teeth. Murmurs of disbelief and confusion swept through the ranks, until Dante angrily called them to a halt.

  “Lieutenant, is this the real dope?” Corporal Nichols asked unconvinced.

  “Blazing Battloids,” Dana responded. “Do you think I’m making this up?”

  Again the comments began and again Dante silenced them, stepping forward this time and fixing Zor with a gimlet stare.

  “Lieutenant, I saw this alien shot down by his own troops! I saw it with my own eyes! The guy’s a spy! What is it—too obvious for High Command to see that?! He’s a damn spy!”

  “No way I want him for my wingman,” Sean called out.

  “QUIET!” Dana shouted as things began to escalate. “Now, I’m still in command here, and I’m telling you that Zor is officially assigned to our unit! You let the general staff worry about whether or not he’s a spy. It’s our job to make him feel welcome and that’s the long and short of it!” Dana stood, arms akimbo, with her chin thrust forward. “Any questions?” When no one spoke, she said: “Dismissed!”

  All but Louie Nichols began filing out of the room, throwing hostile stares at the new recruit. The corporal, though, went over to Zor and extended his hand.

  “Welcome to the Fifteenth,” Louie said sincerely.

  Zor accepted the proffered hand haltingly. It was easy enough to see where most of the team stood; but what was he supposed to feel toward those who were suddenly befriending him?

  “So, big fella,” Louie smiled. “You and Dana—you two getting along all right?”

  The situation was, of course, fascinating to Nichols: the child of a bio-genetically engineered XT and a Human, now made responsible for an XT who might very well have contributed his own cellular stuff to the genetic slushpile…. Dana and Zor could be father and daughter, sister and brother, the possibilities were limitless. But what intrigued Louie even more was the idea that this Zor was related in some way to his Tirolian namesake—the genius who had discovered Protoculture itself!

  The recruit Zor was puzzled by Louie’s question; but Dana seemed to have seen through the corporal’s friendly gesture.

  “Don’t you have something better to do?” she said leadingly. “Perhaps down in the mechanics bays or something?”

  Louie took the hint and smiled. “Guess I could find something to do…. Later, Dana.”

  “And I’ll thank you to address me in the proper manner from now on!” she barked as he was backing off.

  Louie reached the sliding doors just ahead of Eddie Jordon, the younger brother of the private who had met such a cruel end during the fortress recon mission. Dana noticed the cadet add his own hostile glare to the pool before exiting, fixing Zor with a look that could kill.

  They placed him in a small room, empty save for a single chair and dark save for the meager red light of solitary filament bulb. It was all so alien to him: these encounters, events and challenges. And yet one part of his mind was surely familiar with it all, directing him unthinkingly through the motions, putting words in his mouth, summoning emotions and reactions. But he was aware of the absence of connection, the absence of memories that should have been tied to these same encounters and emotions. A reservoir that had been drained, which they now hoped to refill.

  Taken from the room he was left alone in the dark, although his senses told him that this area was much larger than the last, and that he was under observation. The slight one who had escorted him to this new darkness had strapped a weapon on him, and unused laser pistol that somehow felt primitive and archaic in his grip. Again, the thought assaulted him that there was a kind of mindless redundancy at work here: the weapon ought to be firing of its own accord, adapting itself to his will, reconfiguring….

  But all at once a spotlight found him, and he was no longer alone but at the center of a whirling ring of sequenced targets; and he understood that the nature of the test was to destroy each of these within a predetermined interval of time. Commands and countdowns were conveyed to him over an amplified address system he could not see, loud enough for him to hear through the padded silencers which someone had thought to place over his ears.

  The black and white targets had been whirling faster and faster, but were now dispersing, abandoning the tight order of the circle for the safety of random, chaotic movement. A digital chronometer flashed in the background.

  He spread his legs and clasped the weapon in both hands, empty of all thought and centered on picking out the sequenced target. As number one came in behind him, he crouched, turned, and squeezed off a charge, disintegrating the substanceless thing in a fiery flash. Number two flew in from his right and he holed it likewise, remaining in place for numbers three and four.

  He risked a gaze at the numerical countdown and realized that he would have to press himself harder if he was to destroy all of them. His next blast took out two at once.

  Now they were coming at him on edge, but still his aim proved true, as two, then three more targets were splintered and destroyed. He took out the final one with an overhead shot just as the countdown reached zero-zero-zero-zero.

  As the room’s overhead lights came on, Zor holstered the pistol and removed the safety muffs. Dana came running out of the control booth, complimenting Zor on his score. Behind her, were several members of the 15th, sullen looks on their faces.

  “I can’t believe it!” Dana was gushing. “Where did you learn to shoot like that? You beat the simulator! No one’s ever done that before! You’re good, Zor; you’re really good!”

  Zor felt something akin to pride but said nothing. He heard one of the cadets say, “Yeah, too good.”

  He was young, on the small side, with dark brown bangs and an immature but not unpleasant face. He had his arms folded across his chest, defiantly.

  Eddie, Zor recalled.

  “You can shoot all right, but what now, hot shot? You gonna destroy the Bioroids or us?”

  Zor remained silent, uncertain.

  “Can’t hear you, big man!” Eddie taunted him. “What’s the matter—cat got your tongue, tough guy?”

  “Come on, Eddie,” said Dana. “Lay off.”

  “You come on, Lieutenant!” the youth told her. “I don’t buy this lost memory crap!”

  Without warning Eddie drew his sidearm and leveled it at Zor, who stood motionless, almost indifferent. Dana had stepped in front of him, warning Eddie to put the gun away.

  Instead the cadet grinned, said, “Here!,” and gave the gun a sideways toss. Dana ducked, stumbling into Angelo’s arms, and Zor caught the thing.

  “And I don’t think he’s so tough, either!” Eddie said, walking away from all of them.

  Dana drew herself upright and stared after him, hands on her hips. “Wise guy!” she muttered.

  Zor looked down at the weapon, feeling a sudden revulsion.

  The alien remained the outcast, but most of the 15th grudgingly grew to accept him. It seemed unlikely
that he would ever be accepted as one of the team, but by and large the hostile looks had ceased. Except for Bowie and Louie, they all simply ignored him. Dana was a special case; her interest in Zor was certainly beyond the call of duty and especially worrisome to Sergeant Dante. There wasn’t much he could do about it, but he kept his eyes on Zor whenever he could, still convinced that the Bioroid pilot was an agent of the Robotech Masters, and that this amnesia thing was spurious at best.

  Only Sean was neutral on the issue of Dana’s infatuation. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t given it any thought; it was just that he was too wrapped up in his own infatuation with Marie Crystal to pay it any mind. Ever since the night on the med center roof, Sean had been preoccupied with the raven-haired lieutenant, almost to the point of forgetting entirely about the other women in his life.

  On the day Marie was due to be released from the hospital, Sean decked himself out in his fanciest suit and wiped the base florist clean of bouquets. He was on his way to see her, when Dana almost bowled him down in the barracks corridor. Sterling, too, was dressed to the nines: a skirt and blouse of pink shades, a white silk scarf knotted around her neck.

  “Now listen, trooper,” she laughed, “Marie’s not going to be as easy as shooting down skylarks, do you get me?” She emphasized this by flicking her forefinger against one of the half-dozen bouquets he was carrying, shattering the petals from a rose blossom.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” he joked back. “I shoot pretty well…. And what’s with the civvies?” he said, giving her the once-over.

  “Just a debriefing session with Zor,” Dana told him, starry-eyed.

  “Debriefing? In those clothes?”

  “Yep,” she nodded, checking her watch. “And I’m late! So tell Marie I said hi, and that I’ll come and see her as soon as I can!”

  With that, Dana was gone, leaving Sean to mutter in her wake: “A true space cadet.”

  Dana’s idea of a debriefing session was to take Zor to Arcadia, Monument City’s one and only amusement park. There they ate the usual junk food and fed credits to the usual games, but only Dana was interested in going on the rides. Zor watched her from the sidelines, as she allowed herself to be turned in circles in an endless variety of ways—upside-down here, centrifugally there, backwards, forwards, and sideways.