She was playing the celebrity host to their toasts and compliments now, using her wineglass as a prop microphone and modeling the pink chiffon dress Rook had given her. Her hair was brushed and parted in the center, for once free of the funky E.T. cap she was seldom seen without.
"To the cutest little freedom fighter around," Scott said from the table, lifting his glass.
"Thank you, thank you, ladies and gentlemen," Annie directed to her audience. "I would also like to thank my designer, Miss Rook Bartley, for this elegant gown."
Rook took in the cheers with a noticeable blush. She hadn't done more than tailor the dress down to Annie's size. And unfortunately, she had gone a little high on the hem; the dress made Annie look about six years old, but no one was pointing this out. The yellow knee socks and brown pumps didn't, help any, but they had taken what they could from the sub city, with little thought given to coordinating an outfit.
"Rook, I didn't know you were so...so domestic," Scott said from across the room.
Rook saw the bemused look on his face but ignored it. "It looks great on you," she told Annie, throwing the lieutenant a look out of the corner of her eye.
"Thanks! I feel like a beauty queen!" Annie tried a pirouette, giggling all the while, and almost lost her balance.
Cross-legged on the floor, Rand stifled a laugh. "One thing's for sure-you're no ballerina!"
Annie looked at him and shook her head as though to clear it. "And now the moment you've all been waiting for," she said like an emcee. "Approaching the judges' runway is our next contestant for the title of Miss Birthday Girl!"
Lunk and the others caught on to the act and applauded.
Annie switched to a squeaky parody of her own voice. "Thank you," she said into the wineglass. "My name's Annie. I'm four-foot-seven with blue eyes, and I'm often complimented on my personality." As she sauntered by Rand, she flashed some thigh and slipped him a wink. "And my legs aren't bad, either, big boy."
"I'll say," Rand enthused, knocking back another goblet of wine.
Annie cozied up to Lunk next. "Oh, I can't tell you how happy I am to be here! It's just too thrilling for words!" She gave him a light peck on the cheek and moved away from the table, snatching up his glass of wine.
"Hey, wait a second, that's not fair!" Rand protested while everyone else laughed. "If a contestant kisses one of the judges, she's gotta kiss all of them."
Annie had backed away tipsily to clink glasses with Lancer. "Gee, do I have to?"
"Yep. Them's the rules."
"Well, pucker up then," she said on her way over to Rand. But as he stood up and offered his lips, she stuck one of the wineglasses in his mouth. Annie dismissed the laughter and sidled up to Scott, who was leaning against the wall. "Now, don't anybody move, because my very favorite part is coming up next-the swimsuit competition!" As Scott's eyebrows went up,
she reached up and shut his eyes with her fingertips. "But you don't get to watch, you dirty old man!"
"That's telling him, Annie!" Rook encouraged her. Rand said, "Well, she's got my vote."
"Yeah," from Lunk, getting to his feet.
Rook seconded the vote, and everyone else said, "Agreed!"
"It's unanimous, Annie," Rook announced. "You are the new Miss Birthday Girl!"
Annie skipped over to the curtained window while they toasted her easy victory. "Jeepers, I don't know what to say!" Then suddenly it was her natural voice once again, full of emotion and sincerity:
"Except that this is the happiest night of my life."
But far above the spirited celebration, some uninvited guests were converging on the deserted village: an Invid patrol from the nearby hive, now under the leadership of Corg himself. He had narrowly escaped being blown to bits by the explosions that had destroyed the underground city, and the Regis had granted him a new command ship of the same design as the original.
"Are we approaching the site of the disturbance?" Corg inquired into his cockpit communicator.
The source of active Protoculture readings recently received by the hive monitors had been traced to the village, and the Regis was certain that the Robotech rebels had made their way here. She was just as certain there would be no escape for them stow.
"Estimated arrival time: five point two minutes," she told Corg through the command net that linked her with her troops.
Corg glanced out over the landscape from the cockpit of his ship and thought: The thrill of approaching victory makes me feel almost...Human!
The women were cleaning up-by choice, not design. Normally they wouldn't have even bothered to tidy up, but there was something about the
house and the town itself that brought out sentiments most of them thought they had left behind. Marlene was a little puzzled by it all, but she volunteered to help Rook clear the table and clean the glasses and plates. The luxury of running water was more than enough for Rook, and she really had her mind on the hot bath she planned to take once the supplies were repacked.
"I've never seen Annie so excited," she was telling Marlene now. "This is one birthday she'll never forget." Annie was peacefully asleep in a chair nearby. "I never thought I'd live to see her wearing a dress like a regular little girl."
Scott was outside the window, eavesdropping, his handgun raised.
Lancer found him there and wondered what it was all about. "You're concerned about Marlene, aren't you?"
"Well, what about you, Lancer? Don't you get the feeling there's something mysterious about her? And I don't just mean the amnesia. It goes beyond that...like she's never had a past to remember. Like..."
"Like what, Scott? Go on, say it."
But Scott simply tightened his mouth and shook his head.
Lancer sighed knowingly but wasn't about to open up his own thoughts if Scott couldn't bring himself to do the same. "I don't think that she's going to murder us all in our sleep, Scott. But I agree that she's an unusual woman. Maybe we just have to give her some time to come out of it."
Scott gave him a dubious look and was about to press the point, but just then Rand broke into the conversation.
"Hey, guys, do you really think the Invid might show up tonight?"
There was something about Rand's tone that suggested more than his usual concern, almost as if he had other plans. But Lancer chose to reply to his remark, not to the unsaid things. "There's no sign of them yet," Lancer told him. "And believe me, that's just the way I want it. I think I've had more than enough entertainment for one day."
Rand tittered, delighted. "Well, maybe you've had enough. But as far as I'm concerned the party's just beginning."
Lancer beetled his brows. "Rand, what exactly do you have in mind?"
When Rook and Marlene finished the dishes, they woke Annie up and surprised her with a bag of peppermints they hadn't brought out at the party.
"Peppermints!"
Rook patted her on the shoulder. "I knew those bags you took wouldn't last."
Annie was handling the bag lovingly one moment, and the next she was crying. "When I think that I'm having a real birthday after wanting one so badly...with peppermints and everything..." She buried her face against Marlene.
"We're just glad you enjoyed it," Rook said, smiling. "The only problem is we only get to do it once a year." She yawned and stretched. "And now, something for the three of us to enjoy together..."
The bathroom was in the rear of the house; it was a completely tiled room with a shower stall and a sunken tub large enough for four. Rand had been there when Rook made the discovery, and he knew it was only a matter of time before she would go back to avail herself of the pleasures of an honest-to-goodness hot bath. So he had already stationed himself below the room's only window well before the time Rook, Marlene, and Annie entered. He couldn't believe his luck when he realized that all three were about to take the plunge.
He had actually convinced himself that he had no idea just what the room contained. As far as he or anyone else was concerned, he was merely sta
nding guard out here while the rest of the guys dillydallied out front, cleaning their weapons and waiting for the Invid to home in on that device Lancer had rigged in the armory. Therefore, it was entirely understandable that he poke his head up to that window at the first sign of any unusual noises, because who knew what was lurking around in these supposedly deserted villages?
What he hadn't figured on was the damn window being quite so high; he was forced to stand on the rather shaky woodpile underneath it in order to peer in. And it was only then that he realized the window glass itself was frosted-not opaque but certainly a lot less clear than he would have liked. And the steam from all that hot water wasn't helping any, either.
Nevertheless, he was able to discern a good deal of what was going on. He knew, for example, that that was Marlene stepping out of her pants, and Annie discarding her dress, and Rook slipping off her jumpsuit and bra and panties...It was just the details that were left to his imagination. And the need to know those details soon had him on tiptoe atop the woodpile, eyes and cupped hands pressed to the glass.
Annie was already in the sunken tub when the first logs began to slip under his feet.
"It sure is warm enough," she was saying. "I feel like a lobster." Naked, Rook and Marlene were laughing playfully but not loud enough to cover up the sounds from outside the window.
Rand gripped the windowsill, held his breath, and tried to will the logs silent, but they just kept rolling off the top of the pile and crashing against the side of the house. At first he wasn't sure if the women had heard anything, nor could he be sure they were looking his way. But the bathroom was awfully quiet all of a sudden...
I'm just investigating these strange sounds, Rand said to himself over and over. I'm just investigating these strange sounds
"Hey, is there somebody out there?!" Annie asked.
Rand heard her and started to back off, but the pile gave way again and sent him down on his butt to the ground. By the time he turned around, the window had been thrown open, and in addition to clouds of steam came a bucketful of ice-cold water that caught him squarely on the back and seemed to lift him right off the ground.
"That oughta cool you down, Rand," he heard Rook saying.
"That's what I get for trying to be helpful?!" he shouted in return, running off toward the front of the house.
Overhead, the Invid squadron closed in on the village, a constellation of evil moving across the heavens.
"Estimated three point seven three minutes to objective," Corg told his troops. "Focus scanning systems on Protoculture activity. And remember: These are Robotech rebels. They are not to be neutralized for the farms; they are to be destroyed."
Scott and the others had moved indoors by the time Rand entered, towel-drying his hair and trying to work some warmth into his scalp. Lunk was spreading out the sleeping bags, and Scott seemed to be spit-polishing the muzzle of one of the assault rifles.
"I'm starting to think maybe the Invid aren't as stupid as we thought they were," Lancer was saying from the window.
"Don't worry, they won't let us down," Scott told him. "Just keep your eyes peeled."
Shivering, Rand draped the towel around his neck. "Whew!" he said loudly enough to capture everyone's attention. "I've never been able to figure women out. They go on and on about how men don't appreciate them, and when we do go out of our way to appreciate them, they start screaming bloody murder like it was all news to them."
Lancer threw him a disapproving look. "There's a big difference between appreciating them and leering at them, Rand."
"Ah, what do you know about it?" Rand countered angrily.
Scott ignored the two of them and asked Lunk about the so-called Roman candles he had set up outside.
"It's just my part of the surprise for Annie's birthday," Lunk explained.
Meanwhile, the birthday girl was back in the tub having her hair washed by Rook. She asked Marlene if she had ever been in love.
"Scott asked me the same question," Marlene said, soaping herself up,
"and I have to give you the same answer I gave him: I know it must sound strange, but I honestly don't remember."
"How can you not remember if you were in love?" Annie said in amazement.
Marlene shrugged. "I've forgotten everything. I'm a living, breathing, walking blank-I can't even remember what my purpose in life is."
"Your purpose in life is to find a man," Annie told her with certainty. "Everyone knows that. Rook has found herself a man."
Rook stopped massaging Annie's hair and gently twisted her head around. "If you're talking about Rand," she said into Annie's face, "let me enlighten you about a thing or two. First of all, about this business of needing a man-huh?!"
Marlene was staring at them in stark terror. "They've come!" she screamed. "The Invid are here!"
Inside the armory the bio-emulator continued its false siren song.
The men were also aware that the Invid had arrived, and the ships were doing just what the plan called for: forming a circle around the building.
"Remind me to congratulate the wise guy who invented that bio-emulator," Lancer said, arming his blaster. "It's working like a charm."
Scott was the first through the open window. "Lunk, stay with the women. And Rand, grab those detonators on your way out. Time for this evening's next surprise."
While Scott, Lancer, and Rand were stealing away from the house, Corg was issuing orders to his troops. They had put down in formation fifty yards from the circular structure and were spreading out to take up positions. The voice of the Regis came across the communications net.
"You have reached the focus of the disturbance."
"Deploy for complete encirclement of the Robotech rebels," Corg ordered. "None of them must be allowed to slip through our grasp."
"Scanners indicate the Protoculture emanations are definitely
Robotech in origin..." the Regis updated as the combat units fanned out. "We will not fail you this time, my queen," Corg started to say, but the
Regis had something to add.
"However, the nature of your readings is disturbing. The Protoculture activity is unusually steady in its dispersal pattern. We detect no modulations or fluctuations of any kind-almost as if the matrix waverings were being synthetically produced."
"Nonsense! Humans are incapable of such deception!" He already had the cannon arm of his ship raised.
The cockpit displays in Corg's ship began to flash as new data was received and transmitted. "Our bio-detectors register no sign of Human movement within the structure," the Regis continued. "Probability cortex indicates likelihood of a trap, increasing by a factor of one hundred for every five seconds you remain in present situation..."
Corg reached out and shut down the audio signals. "Open fire!" he commanded.
Streams of annihilation discs began to tear into the circular walls of the armory, and explosions erupted across the face of the dome, filling the cool air with the sound of thunder and throwing pyrotechnic light into the night sky. Corg continued to scream "Fire! Fire!" urging his troops on to greater heights of destructive catharsis, pouring out all the misunderstood feelings and frustrations that were part of the life the Regis had given him.
But outside the circle of pincer-clawed ships, the Humans had some feelings of their own to express. And suddenly there were explosions coming from the trees that surrounded the building, explosions Corg could not understand. He watched as his Troopers were hurled violently against one another and sent smashing into the building's stone walls. Others were lifted off the ground by the force of the blasts. Claws, scanners, and pieces of hardware became fiery-hot projectiles blown from his decimated squadron. The hull of his own ship was holed with shrapnel and pieces of airborne debris, and all at once he felt himself overturned, felled by a storm of enemy fire. Shock Troopers were taken out while they attempted to lift off, erupting
like brilliant balls of flame, raining pieces of themselves throughout the field.
"Easy as shooting fish in a barrel," Rand said from the perimeter.
Lunk, too, was yahooing from the window of the house. The women had joined him in the front room, clad only in bath towels. Annie was so excited, she leapt clear out of her towel, breasts bobbing up and down, but Lunk was too preoccupied with the explosions to notice.
"Ka-boom! Yeah! I love this stuff!"
"Wow! This is the best birthday present of all!"
Meanwhile the few remaining Invid ships, including the command ship, were taking to the skies in retreat.
"Okay, we're free to use the Alphas," Scott told Lancer and Rand. "Let's move it!"
The three men ran past the house to the concealed fighters, waving back to Lunk and their towel-clad teammates. Lancer stopped to say: "Don't anyone go to bed yet, because we fly-boys have one more surprise in store!"
"Another surprise?" Annie asked him, adjusting her towel. "Just what are you guys up to now?"
"Just you wait and see," Lancer said, running off to catch up with Scott.
Lunk had jumped out of the window and was showing Annie an enigmatic grin. "I've got one of my own," he added, rushing away.
The women exchanged puzzled looks and then some as the sky began to fill with starburst explosions.
Rook laughed. "He wasn't kidding: they really are Roman candle launchers."
Annie looked at her. "You mean you knew all along?" "Only some of it."
Scott was glad to see that the fireworks had only added to the enemy's confusion. The Invid ships were streaking away, trying desperately to evade the fireworks, fooled into thinking they were some sort of lethal missile.
In fact, Corg was reporting as much to the Regis while he led his ragtag troops back toward the hive.
But Scott didn't call for pursuit. Instead, the Alphas formed up on his lead and went through the unrehearsed moves they had discussed earlier that day.
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