Lancer and Marlene had run clear through a finger of woods. They were not far from Rand and the others, but their trail had led them to the edge of a deep gully, with a river of snow several hundred feet below them. They had no way of knowing that the one Trooper on their tail was the last of the four.
Marlene seemed unaware of where she was or what it was they were
running from. Lancer had simply pulled her along like a helpless child, often shielding her with his body from debris flung up by the Trooper's discs. But now all he could do was gaze hopelessly across the ten feet of empty space that separated them from the gully's opposite face.
"Maybe if we hurry we can double back around," Lancer told her, trying to make it sound feasible.
But as he took hold of her thin wrist again and prepared to set off, he saw the Trooper emerging from the woods, closing in on them fast. Marlene understood that they would have to jump across the abyss. She nodded to Lancer, her forehead wrinkled up in apprehension.
They gave themselves several yards of runway and made a mad dash toward the ledge, hand in hand as they soared across the chasm. And they almost made it. But they fell short by a foot, catching hold of the edge-which was really little more than snow-and falling backward to what they thought would be the chasm bottom. Instead, however, they landed on a narrow ledge approximately ten feet below the lip.
Lancer was thinking that things couldn't get much worse, but of course they could. Above them, the Invid command ship came into view. But to his surprise, he watched as the control nacelle sprang open and a Human pilot jumped down from the padded cockpit. It was the same brainwashed captive he had seen on the island: a slim female of medium height with punked out greenblond hair and eyes as red as a Trooper's scanner. She wore a bodysuit of colored panels that emphasized the body's major muscle groups in swaths of black, purple, and pink-like the colors of the command ship itself.
"I know you," Lancer called to her as she peered down at them. "Why are you fighting for the Invid?"
The woman's only response was to mock him with a short laugh.
Lancer pointed at her accusingly. "You're a traitor! Answer me: Why are you fighting for them?"
Sera continued to stare at the Human, angered and confused at the same time. I should destroy this thing called man, she thought. But for
some reason I cannot.
The Trooper who had pursued Lancer and Marlene through the woods appeared on the opposite ledge now, but it, too, held its fire.
Lancer regarded the ship warily, then swung back around to confront the woman, who was obviously in command of the situation. "Can't you understand me?!" he demanded. When he failed to get a response, he altered his tone to one of cynical surrender. "Then get it over with. But spare this woman. She's done no wrong."
Marlene and Sera met each other's gaze. And during the exchange, which Lancer thought brief, a wealth of racial memories was transmitted.
That face...thought Marlene. It's as though time has stopped and I can look into my past and my future simultaneously...
Sera's face had dissolved, but Marlene seemed to follow those flashphoto eyes on a journey through space and time. Cosmic vistas opened up before her, stains and weblike filigrees of brilliantly hued clouds, swirls and spirals of galactic stuff strewn like diamonds on velvet. She beheld a vision of Optera through Sera's eyes, of the Invid as they were before the coming of Zor, of the Flowers before the Fall. Then Sera's unconscious unlocked for her the horrors of days since. Marlene saw the quest for their stolen grail; the transmutation of the race to an army of relentless warriors, burdened with a need for mecha and Protoculture that rivaled the Masters' own; the trip across the galaxy to this planet they now called their own; and the dispossession of its indigenous beings, just as they themselves had once been dispossessed...
And there was a voice in Marlene's mind-one that she could not identify but that at the same time seemed to be her own:
"Reach into the cosmic consciousness of your race, Ariel," the voice told her. "And although you feel you are dreaming, watch send observe the beauty of your home. For we are a race of powerful beings destined to control the universe with our intellect and power, and you, Ariel, are a part of that power. Come back to us, my child; come back, Ariel, and rejoin the hive..."
Marlene stared at Sera as her face took form once again, the journey through space-time concluded, and thought: I know her: we're like sisters somehow...
Then without warning, explosions were rocking the ledge and erupting around the base of Sera's command ship. Scott and the rest of the team had positioned themselves on the ridgeline above the gully and were firing bursts against the command ship and its sole minion.
Momentarily confused by the renewed fighting, Sera broke off her contact with Marlene and returned to the cockpit of her ship, lifting off at once and joining her charge on the opposite side of the chasm. But no sooner did she touch down than the ledge gave way and the two dropped together, impacting rocks and outcroppings as they fell.
Lunk and Rand pulled Lancer and Marlene to safety. It seemed unbelievable that they had all survived and that all their crazed plans had worked. But even more unsettling was the Human pilot who had once again demonstrated a bewildering ambivalence. Scott refused to believe that the woman had purposely stayed her hand; he pointed out how she had fired on him earlier without compunction. Lancer, however, knew better than to accept Scott's explanation that the woman had been distracted by their sudden fire. And he also saw that something inexplicable had transpired between the woman and Marlene. Both Rand and Annie had been touched by the Invid consciousness in the past, but their psychic encounters had been brief and transient. Marlene, on the other hand, had been profoundly affected.
"I don't belong with you," Marlene told Lancer later, when the others had moved off in the direction of the buried mecha. "Please, Lancer, I'll just bring trouble for all of you..."
He tried to comfort her as best he could by offering himself as her protector. And that did seem to calm her a bit. But it brought him little succor.
Who would be next to feel the enemy's mind probe? he wondered, shivering as he led Marlene away from the abyss.
CHAPTER THREE
In quieter moments I find myself wondering about the men and women I have served with during these long campaigns. I think about the ones left behind, like Max and Miriya, and the ones sent away, like John Carpenter, Frank Tandler, Owen, and the rest. The list goes on and on. Would I have joined that crew had it not been for the Sentinels; abandoned these dark domains for even a chance at seeing Earth's blue skies once again? I think: Absolutely. But what can my homeworld offer me now? Certainly not peace, that endangered species. Retirement, perhaps. How Lisa would laugh!
Admiral Hunter, as quoted in
Selig Kahler, The Tirolian Campaign
Freeing the Veritechs and Cyclones from the snowslide proved to be a greater challenge than anyone had expected. The team brought the collective heat of their MARS-Gallant H90 hand blusters to bear against the massive chunks of ice that had been loosed during the avalanche, by sunrise they had succeeded in defrosting the Alpha Fighter. Tango-9 explosive and the VT's thrusters did the rest of the work in a tenth the time, but Annie and Marlene sustained mild cases of frostbite nonetheless. And despite Scott's optimistic projection, it took the team several false starts and another two days to cross the Sierra range. But waiting for them was the desert with those warm highland winds, and with it came a renewed sense of purpose and determination.
This was the same arid expanse crossed by pioneers and adventurers during North America's push toward its western horizon, but few would have recognized it as such. Over the course of the last two decades the region had seen periods of devastation to rival those of its geoformative years. Dolza's fleet of four million had not overlooked the cities that had grown up here, and neither had Khyron after New Macross had risen to the fore. Vast stretches of the territory were cratered from the thousands of
annihilation bolts rained upon it, host still to equal numbers of rusting Zentraedi dreadnoughts, thrust like war lances into the ravaged land. Just north of the team's present route were the remains of Monument City, which had played such a pivotal role in the Second Robotech War.
Population centers had grown up in some of the craters, but most of these were abandoned now, their onetime residents returned to life-styles more befitting the territory's original nomadic tribespeople than the Robotechnologists who had once tried to breathe new life into the wastes.
Scott had listened intently to Lancer and Lunk's information; he of course had read and heard accounts of Macross and Monument, and the team's propinquity to those legendary cities filled him with an awe usually reserved for sacred places and archeological power spots. It made him think about the long road that had taken him back to this land of his parents' birth and the treacherous one that lay ahead. The team was close to Reflex Point now-the presence of an Invid tower assured him of this much-but he had to wonder how many more twists and turns they would have to negotiate before they stood at the portal of the Regis's central hive, how many Invid stood in their way, and how many more deaths their journey would entail.
There were many such communication towers placed around the hive complex, and Scott knew from past experience that the team's further progress toward Reflex Point would depend on how many of these they could circumvent, or better still, destroy. Options were discussed while the team made temporary camp near a meandering river where cottonwoods and conifers provided a narrow green ribbon of safety and shade. In the end it was decided that Scott and Rand would recon the outlying area; nearby were the ruins of a deserted city and what appeared to be an inhabited town. Annie insisted on tagging along, hoping they would run across a cowboy or two.
The three freedom fighters set out on Cyclones, Annie in her customary place on the pillion seat behind Rand. Only Scott was suited up in battle armor. Rand had tried to talk him out of it but soon recognized that Scott
fancied himself the only law and order between here and Reflex Point.
A short ride brought them into the town they had glimpsed from the Veritechs, a curious combination of high-tech modular buildings and wooden structures fashioned after centuries-old designs, complete with elaborate facades, shaded boardwalks, and hitching posts for horses and pack animals. The dirt streets were empty, but this no longer came as any surprise. Scott was certain the townsfolk were well aware of their arrival and were merely concealing themselves until the proper moment. As they powered the Cyclones down the town's main street, he could almost feel the weapons being trained on them from upper-story windows.
The one thing he hadn't figured on was getting arrested.
But that's just what the residents of Bushwhack had in mind when they finally did show themselves, twenty or so strong, dressed in Twentieth-century garb and armed with antique rifles, shotguns, and revolvers. They formed a broad circle around the rebels and ordered Scott and Rand away from their mecha. Scott was willing to comply-even to go as far as removing his battle armor-until he saw the ropes come out. But by then it was too late to do much about it. He and Rand were stripped of their weapons, tied up, and led by the jeering mob to the sheriff's office.
He was a short, stocky man with curly black hair and a handlebar mustache. He was wearing a beat-up felt fedora and a sheepskin coat. Scott didn't see any badge displayed, but when the sheriff pointed a six-gun at him, he stopped looking.
"Anybody who goes around dressed like that is just lookin' for trouble," the sheriff told him, gesturing to the heap of Cyclone armor Scott had piled in the street. "I reckon you're under arrest, strangers."
"But we haven't done anything!" Rand protested, struggling against the rope coiled around his arms. Silently he cursed himself for having listened to Scott's harebrained logic about uniforms and earning respect.
"Well, you look like you might do something," the sheriff answered him, putting the muzzle of the revolver close to Scott's head.
"It's illegal!" Scott argued, trying to step away.
"Yeah, you can't arrest us without charges," Annie added.
The sheriff's dark eyes narrowed. "That so? Well, I reckon I'll be the one to decide that, young 'un. You renegade soldiers and your catch try to take over everything. But we're not lettin' you take over this town."
"Who'd want to, anyway?" said Annie.
"But we're not renegades," Scott argued. "I'm from Mars-"
"From Mars?!" The sheriff laughed and turned to the crowd. "Here that, folks? He's from Mars!" The crowd started whooping it up. "Reckon you better tell it to the judge, robby."
"Fine," Scott said through gritted teeth. "Lead us to him."
The sheriff flashed a smile and pushed his hat back on his head. "You're lookin' at 'im."
Again the crowd got into the spirit, laughing and jeering. One dangled a noose in front of Rand's face, while a second began to inspect Rand's boots with an evil glint in his eye. There was what amounted to a festive atmosphere brewing, so much so that no one took notice of the two strange figures who were watching the scene from nearby. One was perhaps two feet shorter than his companion, but both were clothed alike, in bottletop goggles, helmets, cowls, and full-length cloaks.
"Looks as though these strangers are going to be occupied for a spell," said the taller of the two.
"Then I guess they won't be needin' their Cyclones, huh, Roy?"
"I feel it only right that we see to it that no harm comes to them." "The Cyclones, you mean."
"Now what else would I mean?"
"Well, you coulda meant the strangers."
Roy made a face. "Now, have you ever heard me express any concern for strangers before?"
"No...but-"
"And is it likely that I would be concerned about the strangers?" "Well, no. But-"
"Then I think it would be prudent for you to adhere to our original
plan."
"Adhere, Roy?"
"As in 'stick to.'"
"I should get the truck?"
Roy let out an exasperated sound. "Yes, Shorty, you should get the truck."
Back at the camp on the outskirts of town, Lancer, Lunk, Rook, and Marlene were doing what they could to camouflage the VTs with strategically placed branches and bunches of sagebrush and tumbleweed. They had moved the fighters to a kind of natural shelter Lancer discovered, a rock outcropping with plenty of surrounding scrub. It seemed a senseless task, but at least it was keeping everyone busy.
Lancer hadn't been in favor of Scott's heading off into town; whenever Scott disappeared, it usually spelled trouble for the rest of them. It was some comfort to know that Rand and Annie were with him, but not enough to keep Lancer from worrying. The major source of his concern, however, was Marlene. She had said little these past two days, and it was obvious to Lancer that her confrontation with the Human pilot of the Invid command ship had had a devastating effect. Was it possible, he asked himself, that Marlene herself had once been used in a similar fashion? Perhaps she had escaped after her own command ship had been destroyed. There was a certain logic to it, since, like the blond pilot, Marlene seemed to have no recall of her past life.
I don't belong with you, Lancer could hear her say. I'll just bring trouble.
Marlene was aware of Lancer's concerns and smiled weakly at him as she continued to tug handfuls of tall grass from the sandy earth. Then suddenly she was down on her knees, moaning and clutching her pale hands at her temples. Lancer jumped down from the radome of the Alpha, but Rook beat him to Marlene's side and was already stroking the tortured woman's long hair and speaking soothing words into her ear by the time
Lancer got to her.
"She must be sensing the Invid again," Rook told Lancer and Lunk. "I told Scott this would happen if we camped too close to that communications tower."
Lunk shook his head. "We're not that close to the thing. But maybe there's a Protoculture farm around here."
&nb
sp; Lancer knelt down to take Marlene's hand. "Marlene, can you tell us what you're feeling? Can you tell from the pain whether it's a patrol or a hive?"
Marlene pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead and made an agonized sound.
"You're asking a lot of her, Lancer," said Lunk.
"Look," Lancer said, turning around. "I know what I'm asking. But it could be that Scott and Rand are in danger, and Marlene might be able to lead us to the source of it."
Rook looked at him as though he had just sentenced Marlene to the rack. "The closer she gets, the more unbearable the pain becomes. I don't have to tell you that."
"No, you don't. But all of us are at risk here-not just Marlene." He touched Marlene's cheek with his fingertips, and she opened her eyes. "The decision's yours. Do you think you can lead us to the source of your pain?"
"I can...try," she responded weakly.
Lancer tightened his mouth and nodded. "Then we're going out together," he said, getting up.
Rook and Lunk were dead set against it, but Lancer convinced them that there was really no other choice. Marlene was part of the team, with strengths and weaknesses just like the rest of them. And it only made sense to exploit her strengths, especially when that early warning system of hers was kicking in. So an hour later Lancer and Marlene were cruising out over the wastes, side by side in the APC that Lunk had reluctantly given up.
"Are you all right?" Lancer asked her after they had been driving for some time.
She nodded without saying anything. "Is the pain still there?"
"Not now. It's like someone just switched it off inside me."
"It would help if you could remember something. about your past."
"I feel like I was born on the day you people found me, Lancer. There's nothing beyond that-I'm empty."
He looked over at her. "Still, you had a life. We just need to find out who you were."
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