Before the Invid Storm

by Jack McKinney

  "Oh, so it was actually the GMP that won the war for us," Vincinz muttered with transparent sarcasm.

  Fredericks narrowed his eyes. "I didn't make that claim. I'm only saying that Zor Prime brought the flagship down. And I have that on the authority of lieutenants Satori and Sterling, who were onboard the flagship prior to its arrival at the mounds."

  Constanza made a gesture of dismissal. "What's done is done. I'm interested in the Invid. Did this Zor Prime provide the GMP with any data about them?"

  Aldershot grunted. "None that added appreciably to what we already know. Which is to say that they're mindless, sluglike things, nourished and

  driven by the Flower of Life, and that they've been at war with the Masters for generations. Does it sound to you like they can be 'reasoned with,' Senator?"

  Nader made his lips a thin line and shook his head. "But I'm still of the opinion that it's important to have a governmental agency in place to negotiate with them, should the opportunity present itself."

  Nader's statement met with murmurs of agreement.

  "But where?" Constanza asked. He gestured broadly to the room's painted cinder-block walls. "To quote an old line, 'We can't go on meeting like this.'"

  "It's senseless to reheadquarter ourselves in Monument," Harding said. "Not only for the obvious reason, but because the Invid may follow the Masters' lead in homing in on what's left of the Macross mounds. I recommend that we look to Detroit, Portland, or Denver."

  Once more, the wall map became the focus of attention. All three of Harding's proposed sites had been hard hit by the Masters' Bioroids. A former mayor, Harding had pull in Detroit, though probably not enough to overcome the city's reluctance to house a reborn United Earth Government. Portland and Denver were long shots. The Southlands region was problematic because of the strong presence of HEARTH. But to what other cities could they look, where both satellite and microwave communications and military support were readily available? Africa and much of the Middle East remained nuclear wastelands; Europe was ravaged by disease; Asia and the Indian subcontinent were without technology; and Indonesia, the South Pacific, and Australia—with the exception of Sydney—had been parceled into dozens of separate sheikhdoms. Eventually, everyone's gaze drifted to relatively unscathed Japan.

  As if reading the minds of his colleagues, Grass said, "There's always Tokyo. Even though it would mean dealing with President Misui . . ."

  Constanza was rubbing his chin when Grass looked at him. "It's not Misui that concerns me," Constanza said at last. "It's the people that run him."

  "The Shimada Family," someone said.

  Constanza nodded. "They kept their heads buried in the sand throughout the war, waiting for the day when we would come to them for help." He gave a brief look around. "I can't speak for the rest of you, but I for one am not ready to place the future of Earth in the hands of a family of gangsters."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Protoculture is the energy derived from the heat given off by the seeds of the Invid Flower of Life, when prevented by pressure from reproducing. The energy is produced by a process of cold fusion, when a lithium- and deuterium-rich solution permeates the seeds and their environs. A protein chain within the seeds themselves squeezes the lithium-6 and deuterium atoms into close proximity. Bosons, the resultant compressed atoms, are not affected by the effective repulsion of the Pauli principle. Only electrostatic barriers to fusion need be overcome. This solution, which also includes several seed-beneficent nutrients, is known as the Protoculture Matrix . . . Maintained in bio-stasis, the seeds gradually surrender their stores of energy; the richer the lithium-deuterium solution, the quicker the depletion. For sustained energy, a moderate solution and moderate pressure are needed. However, as the solution begins to accrue carbon as a result of the fusion, the seeds receive nutrition sufficient to germinate. Thus, the Flowers end up consuming the matrix. And without the Invid or the pollinators to help fertilize the new growths that sprout in the containment vessels, the plants are effectively useless for the generation of energy.

  Peter Walker, The Truth Behind Protoculture

  All of Tokyo was celebrating the end of the war, but nowhere were people rejoicing with as much zeal and abandon as on the rooftop of the Shimada Building. Once the sprawling though squat structure had accommodated Emil Lang's Robotech Research Center, and years later, Lazlo Zand's Special Protoculture Observations and Operations Kommandatura. The building now encompassed the whole of the Koishikawa Gardens and towered over everything in aboveground Tokyo. Had the Masters launched an attack on the city, the Shimada would certainly have been ground zero; but Kan Shimada had gambled and won, and so the physical embodiment of his power and wealth had become

  symbolic of his complete mastery over Tokyo's surface and subterranean worlds.

  The top of the building was a fanciful, five-story arrangement of unevenly yet artistically placed opensided levels, linked by glass-booth elevators and Escheresque stairways, and lighted by massive skylights and fiber-optic arrays. Each hosted bird-filled gardens and shimmering waterfalls and ponds stocked with live carp. The war's-end fête was taking place on every level, though the uppermost was reserved for the elite among Kan-san Shimada's hundreds of invited guests.

  Loosed from the streets below, tens of thousands of helium balloons were rising into Tokyo's warm night air, while brilliant fireworks blossomed over the Dream Archipelago landfill dumps that rose from the bay. Joyous people lined the roof's parapets, raising crystal goblets of vintage champagne, fresh from bubbling fountains. Others saluted the display—or the night, or perhaps the heavens—with bits of food plucked from tables replete with mushi zushi, sticky-rice cakes, udon, seaweed, shiitakes, lotus roots, omelets, fern shoots, and other "down-home" dishes.

  Standing at the east parapet, Misa Yosida sipped champagne and ooh- ed and aah-ed with the rest of the well-dressed crowd as orange and blue umbrellas erupted in the southeastern sky. And she tried not to think too hard about the fiery demise of Monument City, footage of which was being run to death on the "news channels. How she had come to be among the party's VIPs—rubbing elbows with the likes of President Misui and the members of the Diet—was a story that played like a fractured fairy tale, even when she recited it to herself on nights when the very reality of her circumstances made sleep impossible.

  Misa was still the tall and voluptuous young woman she had been in her B.S. years—Before Shimada. But little else about her life was recognizable: not the balconied apartment underground, or the wardrobe and jewelry, or the number-crunching job with the Shimada organization. And the odd thing was that the transformation of her world owed less to the Robotech Masters than to a series of mishaps three years earlier that had

  landed her in the wrong place at the right time.

  Landed not only her, but her closest friends, Gibley, Shi Ling, and Strucker. All three were present tonight on the top floor, and any one of them was more important to Kan Shimada's grand scheme than Misa was.

  Now, if only Terry were here, the night would be complete, she told herself, looking up, not at the fireworks, but at the moon, where ALUCE Base was located. In the end, just before his reenlistment, physical contact between Terry and her had come down to point fighting in Onuma-sensei's dojo in Old Tokyo. But she went on loving him, and suspected that she always would.

  "Some show, huh, gorgeous?" Strucker said, sidling up to her out of the crowd and smelling of scotch and potato chips. Blond and blue-eyed, he looked as if he had been imported from a different party. "Almost makes me nostalgic for life aboveground."

  Misa looked at him askance. "The fresh air would probably kill you." "You're right," Strucker hollered over the sound of distant reports.

  "Besides, I hear they have day and night up there."

  Misa nodded. "It's true. The sun rises out of a cave in the east, and everything gets bright."

  Strucker shuddered in elaborate disapproval.

  When Misa had first met him, years back,
he had been just another pimple-faced otaku—computer wizard—from the communal homes, who then went by the name Discount. But only the previous year he had learned the actual family name of his birth parents and so had dropped the self- styled sobriquet. An unexpected growth spurt that same year had brought him even in height with Shi Ling, but he was still only eye-to-mouth with Misa, and a good eight inches shorter than gangly Gibley. The sim-leather pants and vest made him appear less important than he was, but Misa, in a baggy velour suit, was no one to be throwing stones.

  Shi Ling and Gibley wandered over while she and Strucker were talking, the pockets of their white utility coveralls bulging with pilfered foodstuffs and glass bottles of beer.

  "Ah, to be rid at last of those pesky Masters," Gibley said, affecting a nasal, Northlands accent. "I was beginning to think they'd never leave."

  "Leave?" Shi Ling said, playing along. "Why, I do believe they were

  destroyed."

  Gibley's big-knuckled fingers wriggled dismissively. "Please, dahling, don't bore me with details."

  Hooked on end-of-the-century films, they made each other laugh, if seldom anyone else. The handsome and wiry Shi Ling, who had once called himself Census, was Chinese, but his parents had been in Japan during the Rain of Death, and he'd wound up orphaned in Tokyo. Gibley, though, was a Northlander, like Strucker, and pushing thirty-four.

  An otaku of the first order, it was Gibley more than anyone who was responsible for the upgrade they'd all experienced, the outcome of an illegal run against Zand's Protoculture research facility, for whom Gibley had once worked. So there was some irony to his working in the facility once more— the expanded facility, to be sure—where he spent most of his time talking to machines. Not the way pilots did to their mecha via virtual-environment helmets, but actually talking to machines.

  Misa was back to gazing at the moon when a pair of strong arms encircled her waist from behind and the owner of those arms pressed his right cheek to her left ear. "And I'll wager that Terry is looking straight at you right now."

  She turned into Miho Nagata's embrace and kissed him on both cheeks, then stepped back to regard the dashing cut of his tuxedo and the luster of his leather wing tips. Even at forty-three, he looked better than the fireworks.

  Misa's direct boss in the Shimada organization—her kumi-cho—Miho answered directly to oyabun, Kan Shimada. He had been promoted to gang boss in reward for the part he had played in Zand's downfall. Two years before the Masters had arrived in Earthspace, Gibley had sussed out that Zand was in communication—perhaps in league—with them, and Miho had successfully secured that information for the Shimada Family. In the wake

  of Zand's recall to Monument City, the Family purchased the phased Protoculture facility—lock, stock, and barrel—and had installed Gibley to head up research into what Gibley termed "machine mind." At the same time, Kan Shimada had parlayed knowledge of the Masters' imminent arrival into a vast enterprise, by discouraging the development of surface Tokyo—including the construction of a Southern Cross base—and encouraging the immigration to underground Tokyo of select individuals from all over the world.

  Misa suspected that she had been taken under the Shimada wing primarily because she reminded Kan of Yoko Nitabi, his adopted daughter who had been an operative within Zand's operation, and whom Zand had had executed. Her talent for numbers notwithstanding, only Misa's resemblance to the late Yoko could explain why she, too, had people answering to her—even if they were only money-drinkers and errand boys. Thus she occupied a top position in the traditional yakuza ranking, with a curious twist, in that working at or near the top now meant living at the bottom—in the underground—while working at or near the bottom meant living at the top, in the realm of okage—expendable—surface Tokyo.

  Similarly, the end-of-the-century portrayal of the yakuza as full-body- tattooed mobsters was as period an image as that of the sword-wielding samurai. While the organizational hierarchy had been maintained, the goals of the organization had been legitimized. Where once only the dumbest of street boys were employed to run errands, the Shimada Family now employed only the brightest—and not to busy themselves with motorcycle thefts, drug dealing, or pimping, but assist in the even more profitable business of political control. Softened, as well, was the policy of racial purity that had characterized the crime families of the twentieth century. The survival of Tokyo was given central prominence, for the city had come to represent the ark that would carry Humankind into the future.

  Miho was exchanging back-clapping embraces with the guys and making fun of Gibley's and Shi Ling's outfits, though that didn't dissuade him from accepting the bottle of beer Gibley conjured from the front pocket

  of his coveralls.

  "Kanpai!" Miho said, lifting the bottle before chugging half of it. "Now if we can just get through the next war." He chugged what remained of the bottle and patted his full lips with a monogrammed handkerchief.

  His comment strained the levity of the moment, but only briefly. "How many years do you figure we have before the Invid come calling?" Gibley asked. "We went twenty between the Zentraedi and the Masters."

  "I'm guessing ten," Strucker said.

  Shi Ling shook his head. "No way. Five, tops." Gibley held up three fingers, and glanced at Miho.

  "Mr. Shimada has reason to believe that the Invid will be here within the year."

  Misa's jaw dropped. "Do you think he's right?"

  Miho draped a comforting arm around her shoulders. "We're in the process of investigating some data that has come to us from associates in what's left of Monument City. It seems that the Invid have moved some sort of Protoculture sensor into our planetary neighborhood. That suggests that they are on the way. But I say, the sooner they arrive, the sooner we get to clear the air—so to speak."

  Gibley shook his head uncertainly. "I don't know that Tokyo will be as lucky next go-round."

  "Our survival had nothing to do with luck," Miho said.

  "Sure, by keeping the Southern Cross away, we managed to keep the Masters away," Shi Ling said. "But the Invid may not be as discriminating about which cities they target."

  "True," Miho allowed. "But our prominently displayed offering may give them pause."

  "Offering?" Misa said.

  Miho trained his smile on her. "Flowers of Life. To be gathered from places throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim nations and brought here, to Tokyo. We might even gift wrap them."

  It surprised no one on Nova Satori's recovery team that Lazlo Zand's research laboratory was filled with the Flowers of Life; after all, Zand was believed to have been ingesting them since the late teens, when isolated clusters had begun appearing in the Southlands. Rumors persisted that he had even managed to fabricate a miniature Protoculture Matrix. But, no, what Nova's team found surprising—remarkable—was that the laboratory was at all intact. Cached among the amorphous buildings of the military- industrial complex that adjoined Fokker Aerospace Base, outside Monument City, the small L-shaped cell had sustained a near-direct hit that had flattened everything around it. But it figured that Zand would have had the place secretly hardened—in all probability to the detriment of its close neighbors.

  It figured, too, that Zand would have had the lab wired for self- destruction, which was why Nova had sent a bomb squad in advance of her team. Several devices had been disarmed, and yet, despite the caution exercised in opening a hole in the wall—no one dared use the single, reinforced-alloy door—undetected devices had flooded the interior with a gas that was not only lethal to living things but corrosive to the lab's library of conventional and optical data-storage tapes and diskettes.

  Once again, though, Nova had second-guessed Zand. Outfitted in antihazard suits, everyone on the team had been ordered to rush into the lab and grab whatever they could lay their gloved hands on, without wasting time on assessments.

  Much of what was recovered was irreparably corrupted long before it reached the GMP's transitional headquarters, so
uth of Denver. Then came the daunting task of analyzing and deciphering Zand's encryption techniques. The codes used to encrypt some of the data proved unbreakable, but GMP specialists chanced on the discovery that Zand had frequently employed the code he had used in his Tokyo-Monument communications with Anatole Leonard. Among the latter data was what seemed to be a partial biography of the Tirolean scientist, Zor. The biography had perhaps been gleaned from dialogues with the mother computer Emil Lang had

  removed from the SDF-1 before the Zentraedi had come looking for the ship, and which had provided the voice and image for Tokyo's youth-friendly telepresence, EVE. There were also hints of some compromised surveillance operation that had involved Zand, Leonard, and the Robotech Masters, along with several members of the Shimada Family.

  Other tapes and disks contained transcriptions of Zand's initial meetings with Leonard, back in the teens, and subsequent meetings that were attended by Wyatt Moran and T.R. Edwards, then in the employ of a covert UEG agency.

  However, the real prize among all that encrypted treasure was the data on the Invid and their precocious Flowers, which Lang either hadn't had access to or hadn't shared with the UEG prior to the launch of the SDF-3. It was conceivable that Zand had retrieved the information from the mother computer, but just as conceivable that the information had arisen a priori through Zand's intimate acquaintance with the Flowers of Life.

  Last but not least was the directory—if not the files—devoted to Zand's blatantly obsessive fixation on Dana Sterling. Dana's childhood predilections, Dana's adolescent comings and goings, Dana's misadventures in the Academy, Dana's performance on the battlefield . . .

  Nova cursed her bad luck in not having recovered those files. But if nothing else, Nova still had access to Dana. And if Dana was even half as important to Earth's future as Zand had seemed to think, then the time had come to put Dana to the test.

  CHAPTER FOUR