Symphony of Light

by Jack McKinney

  "'No,' I told her. 'You've gotta follow your feelings sometimes, no matter what.' Naturally I thought she was trying to get to the heart of the possessive feelings I had displayed. It was only later that I realized what was really on her mind: she had known all along just who it was she was helping and befriending. The question had nothing to do with us; it had to do with loyalties of an entirely different sort..."

  "We had tracked down Scott and the gang to a saloon/restaurant straight out of an old Western movie. But if the place took me by surprise, the sight of Yellow Dancer nearly floored me. I suppose I had started to

  think of her as gone-a missing person-someone who had traveled the road with us for a short while and vanished, a casualty of this bizarre war. So to see Lancer now, in his turquoise tunic and helmet/bonnet, his pink belt and skin-tight pants, filled me with contrasting feelings. Scott and Lunk were at the bar knocking back a few while Yellow sang a very subdued 'Lonely Soldier Boy.'"

  "A couple of the town's soldiers came in just then, announcing that they had finally dug up a photo of this Dusty Ayres character, and they wanted to pass it around to us. Rook and I stood at the bar with the rest of them as the photo circulated. It was of course the face of our mysterious stranger. The cigarette in his mouth made him look even more sinister than he had appeared in the flesh."

  "I was waiting for Rook to say something or at least throw me a look, but she didn't do either. I turned to her, my face all twisted up, and said:

  "'You see?-I was right all along!'"

  CHAPTER TEN

  If the Ayres incident proved one thing, it was that Humans and Protoculture were basically immiscible. Invid and Protoculture? That was something else, as we shall see.

  Mingtao, Protoculture: Journey Beyond Mecha

  Rook edged away from the bar and left the saloon. The sight of Dusty's photo in the hands of all those soldiers who were eager to see him killed, all those soldiers who had allegedly lost friends at his hands, had brought into question her earlier efforts on his behalf. Her flirtations. She sat in the dark on the saloon steps, while inside the soldiers drank and swore vengeance, and wondered why she always seemed to fall for the bad boys, the loners and rogues. It went back to Cavern City, she supposed, to Romy and the Angels and the days when she had been something of an outlaw herself. She couldn't deny, however, that she had seen something noble in Dusty's character. She thought back to that brief glimpse she had had of his chest plates and prosthetic arm. "My friends did nothing to stop them," she recalled him telling her. "They made no attempt to rescue me, or at least put me out of my misery... " Not that that justified his going on a murder spree.

  Rook heard Rand's voice and glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the saloon. He was telling the men that he knew where Dusty could be found. But he made no mention of the time he and Rook had spent with him. He was being his usual protective self, and yet Rook found that she was angry instead of grateful; she didn't want to thank him as much as throttle him. Because Rand, underneath all the arrogance and sarcasm, was actually a pretty sensitive man-in a hick sort of way.

  Rook shut her eyes and pressed her hands to her forehead, as though in an attitude of prayer. I knew he was the one they were searching for, but it just doesn't seem possible that he could be so cold-blooded. And maybe Rand is right-maybe he is an Invid agent. When she looked up, she found

  Marlene standing in front of her.

  "Are you all right?" Marlene asked her. "I saw how upset you got in the saloon."

  "I'm touched," Rook said nastily as Marlene sat down beside her.

  Marlene made a puzzled expression. "I guess I must deserve that for some reason...You see, I don't mean to pry, but you just looked like you could use a friend."

  Rook sighed and took Marlene's hand. "I'm sorry, Marlene. In fact I was just thinking about friendship."

  "Do you want to talk about it?"

  Rook made Marlene promise that what she was about to say would remain between them; then she told her about the brief skirmish with the Invid ships and the wounded rider she had helped. "It was Dusty Ayres," Rook confessed. "I think I knew right from the beginning, but I just didn't want to believe it. And after he told me what he had been through, I started to feel sorry for him. I probably wouldn't have said anything if that photo hadn't turned up. Now I'm going to have to lie about it."

  "But Rand won't say anything. He doesn't know what you were feeling." Rook showed a thin smile. "Oh, he knows, Marlene, he knows..."

  A light rain had begun, but a moment passed before Rook took any notice of it. She could hear the soldiers in the saloon discussing their plans to hunt Dusty down. Suddenly, she shot to her feet, startling Marlene. "I won't be able to rest until I see him again. Maybe I can convince him to surrender before he gets himself killed!"

  Rook raced off, leaving Marlene alone in the rain.

  An hour later, Scott was leading a Robotech posse across the sands. Rand was overhead in one of the Alphas (the Beta was close to depleted), directing the five Cyclone riders to where he and Rook had last seen the outlaw Ayres. The APC was trying to keep up with the group; Lunk had two of the town's soldiers with him. No one knew where Rook had gone; Rand

  had an idea, but he wasn't saying.

  A heavy rain was falling, and the barren land had all the charm of a landscape in hell. But Scott was inured to the idiosyncrasies of the Earth's weather. Besides, he was obsessed with Ayres's capture, even though he had wanted no part of it initially. Perhaps it was because he was convinced that there was more to the story than anyone was telling him. A supposedly invulnerable outlaw who was systematically killing off Robotech soldiers...And yet the man wasn't thought to be an Invid agent, and no one had the slightest idea what was motivating him to murder. It just didn't add up. Scott was even beginning to suspect Rand of holding something back. It was obvious from the things he had said back in the saloon that he and Rook had had more than a passing encounter with Ayres. But why would Rand lie about it? Scott wondered. With Reflex Point almost close enough to touch (and with the new information the town's soldiers had supplied him), it was imperative that the mystery be solved so everyone could get back on track.

  As if to reinforce Scott's concerns, a squadron of some fifteen Invid ships appeared suddenly out of the clouds.

  "Invid at twelve o'clock!" Lancer reported over the net. "A bunch of 'em, too!"

  Scott made a motion for the Cycloners to fan out. "Here we go, Rand," he sent up to the Alpha. "Standard battle plan!"

  In the Veritech cockpit, Rand had to laugh. Standard battle plan. That was their little joke, meaning: Do your best and we'll all try to keep from killing one another in the process.

  Rand wished them luck and threw his fighter into the thick of things. The squadron was composed of Pincer units and one blue leader that he could see; he managed to destroy one of the ships straight away but spent the next few minutes juking and dodging discs and laser fire from the rest. The blue especially was riding his tail with a vengeance.

  "Too many of them!" he shouted over the net, upside down now and enmeshed by angry red bolts and streams of annihilation discs. "Where the

  hell is Rook when we need her?"

  Elsewhere on the sands, Rook was confronting the outlaw. Ayres had almost fired on the red Veritech when it appeared but had stayed his hand at the last minute when he recognized Rook inside the cockpit. She was standing by the fighter's kowtowed nose now, mindless of the rain. Dusty was dressed in the same poncho and hat he had worn earlier; his all-terrain war machine was idling softly behind him. "You took a chance coming out here, Rook," he was telling her.

  "I know that. But it was a chance I had to take, Dusty."

  He grinned at her knowingly. "So you know my name, huh? And you just had to find out more about the mysterious killer. Is that it?"

  "I suppose so," she started to say, wondering if she could bring herself to admit more.

  "Well, there's nothing more to find out," he answered
before she could go on. "So get back in your fighter and forget about trying to involve yourself in this."

  "But I'm already involved," Rook shouted. "I knew who you were this afternoon. I didn't need to learn that in town. And all I'm asking you for is an explanation."

  Dusty started back to his cycle. "I've got things to do, Rook. I don't have time for this."

  Rook pushed wet hair back from her face. "I guess I was naive to think I could keep you from killing again, so you leave me no choice..." She drew her blaster and leveled it at him. "I'm a soldier, Dusty, just like the rest of them. I have friends to protect."

  She could see that she had surprised him, but he made no move for his weapon. "I don't want to hurt you, Rook-"

  "Don't move or I'll fire," she warned him.

  "You're making a mistake," he said after a moment. "Just put the blaster away and listen to me. Don't make me do something I'm going to regret."

  Rook's nostrils flared, but she couldn't keep Dusty's words from undermining her will. She recalled how he had shot Rand, and she recalled the stories of his invulnerability...At last she lowered her weapon, and Dusty thanked her.

  "You remember what I told you at the river, Rook? About the Invid's experiments with me?" He tossed the poncho over one shoulder and opened his shirt to give her a good look at the alloy plates that covered half his chest. "My friends let this happen to me, Rook. They stood by and let those monsters use me like a laboratory animal. They replaced my entire right side piece by piece with Protoculture-generated organs and these metallic prostheses." Ayres glared at her. "Do you really blame me for hunting them down?"

  Rook lifted her head to answer him. "It must have been unbearable," she began on a sympathetic note. "But think about it, Dusty: you were a soldier once. Maybe your friends couldn't get to you. Maybe they tried and failed. And look what you're doing now: you're killing the only people who can avenge you. Your enemies are the Invid. How can you be sure they didn't implant something in your brain when they were carrying out those experiments-something that would compel you to attack your own friends."

  Rook waited for him to respond. The latter possibility made a lot more sense to her than the former, because if Dusty's friends really had made an attempt to rescue him, why were they now acting like the whole deal was one big mystery to them? It was a moot point, though: Dusty was shaking his head, rejecting what she had said.

  He raised his prosthesis into the cycle's headlamp and indicated eleven crosshatched marks engraved into the forearm alloy. "Each mark is a name I'd just as soon forget," he told her. "But I won't forget until I've killed every one of them!"

  More than the marks, Rook could see the madness in Dusty's eyes. "I understand," she said softly.

  He uttered a short maniacal laugh. "I was hoping you would, Rook." He goosed the cycle's throttle and pulled the hat down on his forehead. "I've got

  no gripe with your friends, but don't try to stop me-any of you. "

  Rook allowed him to ride off. We'll meet again, she told herself. And I'll do what I have to do...

  Rand took out another Pincer unit with heat-seekers from the undercarriage launch rakes and reconfigured to Battloid mode, bringing the rifle/cannon out in the mecha's metalshod right fist.

  "It looks like we've gotten ourselves into a hole this time," Lunk said from the ground, where the soldiers were pouring fire into the sky.

  Employing the foot thrusters to stabilize the ship, he raised the weapon to high port position and bracketed yet another Invid in his sights. He triggered off a burst, catching the ship midsection. "Just keep firing," Rand told Lunk, while the enemy fell like a meteor.

  Scott screeched his mecha to a halt and stood up, straddling the seat to bring his assault rifle into play. In the distance at ground level, he saw a bright light moving toward him. "Something's coming!" he alerted the others.

  "Let's hope it's on our side," said Lancer.

  Lunk lowered his weapon to have a look at it. "It's sure moving fast!"

  Suddenly the Invid ships ceased their attack and began forming up on the blue leader, as though to observe the arrival of the newcomer. Then Rand's voice cut through the net: "That's Dusty Ayres's machine!"

  With a dozen Invid ships still overhead, Rand expected Scott would have had sense enough to pull back and regroup, but instead, he heard Scott say, "Let's get him!" and launch himself in pursuit of the outlaw. Two of the other Robotech soldiers followed his lead.

  Dusty Ayres saw the Cyclones speeding toward him and flashed a satisfied grin. Well, well, Steve and Kent driving out with their greetings, he thought. How considerate of them. The launcher's panel slid to, and Ayres let his thumb hover over the trigger button. "Now die!" he screamed, and fired.

  Missiles streaked from the rack and found their targets; the two riders

  were blown to bits. Scott squinted as flames geysered up out of the sands, instantly superheating the air and filling it up with the stench of death. "Outflank him!" Scott commanded Lancer and the fifth Cycloner. "We'll try a cross fire!"

  The three Cyclones and the APC converged on the lone rider, announcing themselves with a horizontal storm of lethal rounds. But Ayres appeared to be weathering it all; his clothes were torn to shreds and aflame, but the man himself was unscathed.

  "They were right, Scott! The guy's indestructible!" Lancer exclaimed.

  Ayres answered the challenge with shots of deadly accuracy, first taking out the Cycloner, then picking off the soldiers in the APC one by one before loosing missiles against the vehicle itself. Lunk was thrown a good twenty feet from the fiery wreck; when he looked up, he saw Scott hovering over Ayres in Battle Armor mode, dumping everything the mecha had against him. Lancer pulled up a moment later, and Scott put down beside the two of them.

  "Nice shooting," said Lancer as the three of them regarded the ruin that was Dusty's cycle.

  But it wasn't over yet: Ayres-at least something that resembled Ayres-was stepping from the flames.

  "I must be seeing things!" Lunk cried.

  Scott's eyes went wide beneath the helmet faceshield. "I wish I could say you needed glasses, but I'm seeing it, too!"

  In the meantime, everyone had forgotten about Rand-all except the Invid Enforcer, that is. The rest of the ships were still in formation overhead, but the commander had pursued Rand to the ground. Still in Battloid mode, he was trying to go one on one with the thing, but his reconfigured fighter was an infant to the enemy's giant.

  Fortunately, Rook came roaring to his aid not a moment too soon, somehow managing to pilot her red VT right through the Pincer combat units without a fight. Together, the two Veritechs turned on the Enforcer and brought it down with enough explosive heat to turn the rain to clouds of

  steam. When the Pincer Ship pilots saw this, they broke formation and fell on the Humans; but by now Rand and Rook were back to back, with the VTs' weapons systems synchronized. On Rand's command they launched all their remaining cluster rockets, and in the fireworks display that followed, every Invid ship was destroyed.

  At the same time, Lancer was seeing fireworks of his own. The first to attack Ayres, he was the first down, toppled by a blow from the outlaw's bionic arm. Lunk was already out-he had fainted from shock-but Scott stepped forward now, raising his weapon and cautioning Ayres not to move. Confident inside the reconfigured mecha, Scott reasoned that Lancer's battle armor hadn't been enough to withstand the Human monster's strength, but surely Ayres couldn't bring a Cycloner down...

  Scott tried to reason through it again a moment later, when he found himself flat on his back with Ayres standing over him aiming a blaster at his heart. He couldn't even recall the punch Ayres had thrown.

  "Stay there," said Ayres. "Don't get up."

  Who is to say what he might have done had the two Veritechs not put down on either side of him just then? Rook and Rand had the fighters in Guardian mode now; Rand leveled the rifle/cannon on Ayres while Rook leaped from her cockpit to face off with the gleaming half-
Human outlaw.

  "You told me it was just revenge, Dusty. That you weren't after the rest of us, remember?"

  "They tried to kill me," Ayres threw back, training his hand weapon on her. The implication was clear: if Rand fired, Rook was going to die as well. No one was even certain at this point that the VT could really take Ayres out.

  "Well, what did you expect them to do?" Rook screamed. "You're a murderer." She took two steps toward the muzzle of the weapon. "So you might as well start with me, because these people mean more to me than life itself. And if I thought that my helping you had contributed to their deaths, I couldn't live with myself." She gestured to her breast. "Go ahead, Dusty: right here, right here..."

  Scott, Lancer, and Lunk were urging Rook to get back, but she stood her ground.

  Ayres glowered at her and extended his weapon, but a moment later, much to Rand's amazement and everyone else's relief, he lowered it.

  "I couldn't do that," he said, unable to meet her eyes. "I just couldn't...Maybe if I'd had friends like you, none of this would have happened. I told you: I've got no argument with any of you people."

  In the midst of all this, the Invid Enforcer had struggled to its feet and was now taking halting steps toward the Humans. Scott and the rest of the team swung their guns off Dusty to train them on the approaching ship. But Ayres told them not to worry about it. "I can tell by the way it's moving that it's no threat to us anymore."

  Scott, who figured he knew the Invid just about as well as anyone, disagreed and told his team as much. So it seemed that only Dusty was surprised when the ship's cannons flared to life. He pushed Rook aside, raised his handgun, and fired, bull's-eyeing the ship's scanner.

  Rook hid her face from the ensuing blinding flash and follow-up explosion. She thought she heard a bloodcurdling scream pierce through it all, one of agony and release, and when she looked up Ayres was gone, disintegrated along with a great portion of the Invid ship itself.