CHAPTER SIX
Why the sudden shift from Lancer to Scott? many have asked. But the answer is immediately evident once we are reminded of Ariel/Marlene's original programming as Simulagent. Then it seems entirely natural for her to seek out the leader, and, as it were, the team's weakest line of defense.
Bloom Nesterfig, Social Organization of the Invid
Rand sang to himself while his index fingers worked the machine's flippers. Sure plays a mean pinball...The left paddle caught the ball just right and sent it careening around the cushioned arena, up the forward ramp, and smack into the belly dancer's navel for a bonus score of one thousand points. But propelled free, the steel sphere fell like one of Galileo's own and shot directly through the Flipper Straits, lost to the game's mechanical bowels.
"You Khyron!" Rand cursed, whacking the machine with his hands.
Beside him, Rook made a bored sound at her own machine and moved off to one of the arcade's plastiform seats.
"Don't tell me you're giving up already?" he asked over his shoulder. "Too boring." She yawned.
"Well, how do you ever expect to improve at anything if you just keep giving up?"
He was still angry with her for the elbow she had given him earlier while they were washing their clothes in the Laundromat. Annie had wandered off, and Rand had spotted Scott and Marlene strolling by arm in arm. He was leaping up to give Fearless Leader a round of applause when the gut shot had been delivered without forewarning.
Of course, it wasn't really the case-that Rook had a habit of giving up-but that was beside the point. In any event, she ignored his comment, so he turned back to the machine, angering it just short of tilt after another ball plunged home.
"No good piece of-"
"This place just makes me feel...lonely," Rook interrupted him.
Nice, Rand said to himself. We finally get to spend a few peaceful moments together and she feels lonely. "So what does that make me-part of the furniture?" he said without turning around.
He heard her laugh. "C'mon, you don't want me to answer that, do you?"
Rand compressed his lips to a thin line. He was going to place the next shot right between her eyes...
Up on the roof, Lancer and Lunk were making final repairs to the damaged Alpha. Lancer was down on one knee operating the torque wrench. It was a rare occasion when the two men worked side by side; Lunk was continually worried that Yellow Dancer would make some unannounced appearance, and the last thing he wanted to do was to be caught alone with her, er, him! But today had been different; they had talked shop, and they had talked about the Invid.
"We've really got our work cut out for us now," Lunk was saying. "These new ships they keep throwing at us are a lot more maneuverable than the Troopers."
"You're right about that," Lancer said absently.
"I mean, we were just plain lucky the last time they surprised us in the mountains. If that ledge hadn't given way..."
Lancer recalled the fall of the pink and purple ship. And its female pilot. He found himself wondering if he would see her again-wondering with a mixture of fear and anticipation. But Annie's voice brought him from his musings before he had to grapple with the emotions behind them. She came running onto the roof from the stairway cubicle dressed like a June bride.
"Look what I found!"
The dress was a soft pink, with a white ruffled collar and matching bonnet. But it was at least four sizes too large for her, so she had most of the train gathered up in her arms.
"Just what are you supposed to be?" Lunk asked her.
Lancer laughed and stood up, wiping his hands on his trousers. "She's a bride-and a pretty one at that." He formed his hands into an imaginary camera and brought them to his eye. "What I'd give to have my old Pentax."
Annie put up her hands to stop him. "Wait! I want my bridegroom in this photo!" And with that she jumped up, threw her arms around Lunk's neck, and hung there, the hem of the gown touching the floor now.
Lunk went rigid for a moment, then scooped her up and cradled her in his arms, his dismayed expression unchanged.
Lancer threw his head back and laughed. "Perfect!" he enthused.
Scott couldn't get that zipper out of his mind, except now he was wondering what it would be like to undo it. Since Marlene's death he had been convincing himself that celibacy had been written into his destiny, but suddenly this nameless goddess, this new Marlene, was bringing all the old allegiances into question. Was it wrong for him to be having these thoughts? he asked himself. Would his Marlene have wanted him to remain faithful to her no matter what? He sensed that the phrasing was wrong, perhaps even the questions themselves, because he knew that his love for Marlene could never be extinguished. But these new feelings had more to do with happiness and companionship.
The two of them were exploring a department store. Scott had located the sound system and an original Lynn-Minmei disc-probably the first one she had ever recorded. He knew her well from Tirol, but how different that Minmei seemed from the innocent girl whose bright eyes shone from the CD jacket. It seemed ages ago, Scott realized, before all the troubles with Edwards, before Minmei's devastating encounter with Wolff...
"Stagefright," one of the singer's most popular numbers, was blasting through the PA speakers. Marlene, still in that strapless gown that fit her like a glove, was trying on jewelry. Scott watched her in wonderment. They picked out a silver and brass collar and a bracelet of gold. He found her a
leather shoulder bag and a floppy blue hat.
They exchanged meaningful looks. And Scott asked her about love. "Was there anyone, Marlene? Were you ever in love?"
"Love?" she asked him.
He could see that she had no understanding of the emotion. How traumatized she must have been to have had even that erased from her past!
He began to envy her.
In the next store they separated, as two people might drift apart in a museum, lost in private thoughts and personal moments. It was the toys that fascinated Marlene: wind-up clowns and talking bears, music boxes and transformable gadgets, drummer boys and lively ballerinas. She switched all of them on, filling her world with a symphony of transistorized sounds and songs. She was handling a fragile glass giraffe when the gorilla showed up.
Marlene uttered a frightened scream and fell back, dropping the small figurine to the floor. Of course it was only Scott in a mask, but how was she to know that?
She ran to him after he had taken it off, seeking shelter in his arms. "Hold me, Scott," she whispered. But he held back and gently pushed her to arm's length, his hands on her shoulders.
"Marlene, I...I want to know all about you."
She gave him a helpless look. "I wish I could tell you," she apologized. "I wish I knew the words..."
But what he saw in her eyes was enough. "We don't need words," he told her, drawing her in. They kissed lightly, tentatively, exploring each other.
Then suddenly she pulled back, overcome first by dread, then pain. "They're coming!" she managed. "It's hopeless, hopeless!" Her mane of red hair was shaking back and forth. "There's no escape from them!"
Scott did what he could to comfort her and began to look left and right in desperation. "We're trapped down here!" he berated himself. "Trapped!"
There was no escape!
Far above them in those displaced mountains that towered over the buried city, Corg, the crown prince of the Invid horde, had zeroed in on the rend the freedom fighters had inadvertently opened in the dome. He was a sharp-featured young man with lean good looks and mysterious oblique blue eyes. His hair, which was also blue, lay flat and fine against his skull, lending itself to his somewhat cruel and ascetic look. Corg had been created from the lifestuff of his race by the Regis herself, to rule at Sera's side in the new order.
His command ship was like hers: somewhat acephalic, top-heavy, and buxom-looking with its heavily weaponed torso pods and power nacelles.
Accompanying him were two Enforcer ships that repres
ented the most recent examples of technological innovation from the Regis's weapons factories. They were not unlike their crablike prototypes but somehow appeared almost naked beside them. They were bipedal and seemingly four-armed, their optic scanners were more Cyclopean in placement, and there was a phallic, muscular flexibility to the top-mounted cannons that was absent in the more cumbersome-looking Shock Troopers and Pincer Ships.
Corg chose to make his own opening in the city's dome and did so with a massive charge from his ship's shoulder cannon. Then he began his hellish descent, his two underlings following him down into the breach.
The freedom fighters were waiting for them, though. Scott had alerted the rest of the team to Marlene's premonition, and they had elected to draw the Invid down into the city and utilize the more maneuverable Cyclones to battle them in the streets.
In Battle Armor mode, Scott, Lancer, Rand, and Rook were assembled at street level when the first two Invid blasts shook the city, impacting against the upper storys of one of the tall towers and showering them with chunks of concrete and shards of plate glass.
"We won't stand a chance head to head against these guys," Scott said over the tac net. "We've got to take advantage of their clumsiness!"
"Gotcha!" Rook returned as everyone took to the air.
Rand lingered behind and was almost slagged because of it. "We'll make mincemeat out of them," he was saying when an energy bolt exploded in the street. He caught up with Rook a moment later in an alleyway, but the newfangled Enforcer had pursued him and loosed a shot that nearly fried both of them where they stood. They launched and took up ground-level positions on either side of the alley's exit and poured return fire into the Invid ship as it rounded the corner.
The Enforcer found Rand first and swung toward him, the triple nodes of its cannon primed for fire. Rand leapt away just in time, amazed to see two steady streams of crimson fire where he had expected annihilation discs.
Elsewhere, Scott and Lancer were facing off with the second Enforcer. They had their backs to the wall as the Invid came at them, its rear thrusters keeping it airborne, a flying insect nightmare in the city's twilight.
"I'll draw its fire," Scott told Lancer. "Get above and do some damage!" The Enforcer's cannon muzzles came to life, spewing two deadly beams,
which converged and struck the base of the building, sending shock waves through the streets. Glass was now raining down from everywhere, along with snow that was avalanching through the dome's ruptured skin. Both freedom fighters jumped aside, but Lancer stayed in the air while Scott attempted to lure the enemy onto a wider boulevard. He dug in at the end of the street and waited for the Enforcer's approach; then, with the thing scarcely two hundred yards away, he launched two time-charged Bludgeons from the right forearms tubes of his battle armor. The missiles detonated in the air over the Invid's back, with a collective force great enough to throw the thing face-first to the street. Lancer was in position now, and on Scott's command he activated nearly all his suit's launch tubes; missiles arced from the open compartments and racks and fell like a fiery hail on the immobilized alien ship, destroying it even while its own cannons were
blazing away. To add insult to injury, Scott launched another missile into the dome overhead, loosing a fall of massive ice chunks, which sealed the Enforcer's fate.
Rand and Rook were still being pursued by the first ship, whose pilot was obviously the more experienced of the two.
"Boy, this high altitude's beginning to affect me," Rand told his teammate, fighting for breath.
They had stopped to go face-to-face with the ship after realizing that Scott and Lancer were coming in to outflank it. Now all four of them opened up at once, throwing everything they had against the Enforcer and what was left of the devastated dome, burning and burying it much as they had its companion ship.
But suddenly there was another ship in the arena: a drab gray-green command ship with orange-tan highlights. They had seen this one before and had hoped they wouldn't see it again.
"Scott, behind you!" Rook warned.
The team scattered, but the command ship stuck with Scott, pursuing him through several blocks-literally through the buildings, although Scott was using the doorways and the alien was simply making his own. Ultimately they squared off, the giant insectlike ship and the diminutive Cyclone, and Scott flicked on his externals to say: "I had a sick feeling you would show up again."
The Invid raised its cannon arm and would have slagged him then and there had it not been for Lancer and the others, who distracted it with rooftop fire. Scott seized the moment to leap away, but the command ship continued to stalk him-probably angered by the earlier comment, Scott had the temerity to say to himself. Even Lunk, Annie, and Marlene had joined the fray by this time; they were packed into the APC, riding circles around the Invid's feet while spraying it ineffectually with machine-gun fire. Down on his butt with the alien looming over him, Scott wondered how they had gotten the vehicle down to street level, but he didn't dwell on it for long, because the Invid was ignoring the trio and raising that handgun again.
Just then Annie somehow succeeded in angering the thing with some silly comment; the Invid switched targets, reangled its handgun, and fired off a rapid burst that nipped at the carrier's tail. The APC was unscathed, but something had been thrown from the rear seat-something pink and soft-looking...
Scott realized it was a dress of some sort but couldn't believe his scanners when he saw that Marlene was running back to retrieve it! Lunk had brought the APC to a halt and was yelling at her to forget about it.
The Invid ship swung around and took one giant step, aiming menacingly at its defenseless prey. In the cockpit, Corg stared down at the sister his race had lost to the Humans and could not bring himself to fire.
Scott, meanwhile, had launched himself straight up, crying out Marlene's name and launching half a dozen Scorpions straight into the Invid's back. Leaking fire from its seams, the alien whirled on him and raised its cannon, but Scott was again quicker to the draw with two more missiles that managed to sever the ship's right arm.
The cannon hit the floor with a thunderous crash, but Corg wasn't about to retreat just yet. He turned and stomped after Scott, shouldering the ship through the walls of the building and out into the street.
There, the reunited rebel team ganged up on the command ship, paralyzing it with missile fire and opening up the rest of the dome. It was as though a dam had collapsed: hundreds of tons of snow and ice were pouring into the city. The Invid struggled against the slides but eventually succumbed to the sheer weight of the fall. It went down on one knee, systems sputtering and shorting out, then tipped to its side.
"To the Alphas, everybody!" Scott commanded.
"Well, there goes the world's shortest vacation," Rand said in response. Lunk, Annie, and Marlene were waiting for them on the roof. Once more, Scott couldn't figure out how the APC had managed it, but he didn't stop to ask. He reconfigured his mecha to its two-wheeled mode and told Lunk to stow the four Cycs in their Veritech compartments. Marlene was frightened but unhurt. Scott wanted nothing more than to hug her, his
battle armor notwithstanding, but he contented himself with simply touching her shoulder.
Shortly they had the Veritechs in the air, the APC slung from the undercarriage of the Beta.
"Sorry about the accommodations," Scott apologized to Lunk, Annie, and Marlene, "but the fresh air will do you good."
Lunk swung himself around in the driver's seat of the APC to look back at the massive holes in the ice dome that had kept the city a secret from its surroundings for the past twenty years. In his hand he held an electronic detonator he had rigged to the computer control system of the city's thermal furnaces.
"Now or never," he said out loud, and thumbed the trigger button.
Five minutes later the city exploded with near-volcanic force; a swirling pillar of fire shot up into the winter skies, vaporizing snow and ice and capturing the resultant thaw and c
louds of steam. The sound of follow-up explosions echoed in the mountains, catching the Veritechs in their roar. They fought to stabilize themselves in the shock waves and newborn thermals, the jeep rocking to and fro like a pendulum beneath Scott's fighter.
"What the hell happened?!" Rand's panicked voice boomed over the
net.
Lunk flipped on the APC mike. "I rigged the main generator to feed
back on itself," he explained. "Bu-but why?!"
"Because that city had no place in this world." There was a kind of anger in Lunk's voice.
"Well, it sure doesn't anymore," Rand said. "Some fireworks, though," Rook commented.
"Well, golly gee, Miss Rook, sure glad we were able to bring some excitement to your day. Least you won't have to be bored anymore."
"Who asked you?!" Rook returned.
Scott listened to them go at it, then reached out to lower the volume in
his cockpit. He craned his neck to see if he could get a glimpse of Marlene, below him in the personnel carrier. She knew they were coming, he told himself. But what was the strange link they shared? What channel had the Invid opened in her shocked mind that allowed her to sense their coming? And could the team somehow tap that frightening frequency?
He thought back to the command ship's momentary paralysis when Marlene had appeared to pick up Annie's lost dress. Why didn't the alien pilot fire? he wondered, thinking back to the blond pilot's similar reluctance. The Invid had her right in its sights, and yet it was almost as if the thing had recognized her.
Almost as if Marlene was...one of them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Opinions vary: there are those who give Annie LaBelle's age as thirteen and others who give it as seventeen; and there's enough contradictory background data to give strength to either argument. Subsequent research has yet to reveal enough to persuade or dissuade either camp. Rand, in his voluminous Notes on the Run, states that "Annie was thirteen going on seventeen," while elsewhere he opines that "she may be seventeen, but she acts like she's thirteen." It is a minor controversy, to be sure, but one that is still argued over. Ms. LaBelle has not been helpful in laying this matter to rest.
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