Scott and Rook went wingtip to wingtip to launch a salvo of missiles, but again the Invid outmaneuvered them, diving down into the city's hollows, where Lunk almost fell victim to the command ship's wrath.
"That thing is dangerous!" he shouted over the net as explosive light lit up the inside of his cockpit.
"All right, let him go for now," said Scott. He turned to make certain the Invid was willing to give it a rest and exhaled with relief when he saw the ship arrow off. "We've got to find Lancer."
"Yeah, but where do we start looking?" asked Rook, disheartened by the inferno below, to say nothing of the complexity of the city's intact landscape and terrain.
"Just keep your external receivers open," Scott told her.
Hopeless, she thought. Just what kind of sign does he expect us to see from up here?
Two hours later, the three Veritechs were still circling. They were all running dangerously low on fuel, and there had been no sign of Lancer, Annie, or Rand. Or the Invid, which was a lucky break. Then Rook picked up something on the receiver and reported her coordinates to Scott and Lunk. She supplied them with the frequencies as they came into view on her display screen.
"Tune in and tell me who that sounds like."
Lunk fiddled with his controls, listened for a moment, and heard the strains of "Look Up" coming across the cockpit speakers.
"Hey, that sounds suspiciously like an old buddy of mine."
Rook laughed shortly. "Scott, you wanted a sign, huh? Well, how's that one down there at three o'clock?" She tipped the VT's wings once or twice over the source of the transmissions: a tall, squeezed pentagon of a building
whose rooftop was currently the scene of some kind of concert or show.
Scott completed a flyby and signaled Rook in a similar manner. He could discern the words PAN AM at the top of the building, above a huge lightboard sign that was flashing the word HERE.
"That's Lancer all right," Scott started to say. Then he noticed that his radar display was active once again: The command ship had returned with reinforcements. "Follow my lead to the street," he told his teammates. "And activate cluster bombs on my mark."
The Invid ships pursued them just as he had hoped they would, and when the three VTs were properly positioned, he called for a multiple missile launch. Warheads streaked from the fighters, arcing backward and detonating in advance of the Invid ships; several of the Troopers were destroyed, and even the command ship was brought up short by the force of the explosions.
"I'm going back for Marlene," Scott reported as the Veritechs climbed. "I'll rendezvous with you at the source."
Rook and Lunk kept their fighters airborne until the concert ended; then they hovered down in Guardian mode, just as Scott was returning from the Jersey side of the river. Yellow Dancer, who had borrowed makeup and a flashy pink outfit for his part of the show, was already out of character by the time everyone regrouped.
"I got a bone to pick with you three," Scott yelled as soon as the VT canopy went up.
"Save it, Scott," Rand answered him from the roof. He tossed a canister of Protoculture fuel up to Rook. "Figured you might be a quart low by now."
Scott lost most of his stored anger while he listened to a quick rundown of the events of the day. He couldn't really find fault with their actions, especially in light of what had followed. There was certainly no going back to the storage facility now, but what they had managed to carry out was more than enough to take the team the rest of the way to Reflex Point. Once they finished here, of course.
Scott pulled Marlene, aside while Lunk set about refueling the mecha energy systems. "We're going to have to go back up," he explained, his hands on her shoulders.
"Yes, I know."
He wanted to say more, but Lancer was now standing alongside them, urging Scott to hurry it up. "I don't mean to break you kids up, but we've got lots of work to do."
Embarrassed, Scott withdrew his hands. "See you," he said, blushing, and ran for the Beta.
Lunk and Annie remained with Marlene as the two Alphas and the now separate components of the Beta lifted off. Hurry back, Marlene was saying to herself when Lunk stepped up behind her.
"You miss him alread-"
An explosion erased the rest of his words and threw both Lunk and Marlene ten feet or more in opposite directions.
Marlene was first to come around. Unsure how long she had been out, she stood up and coughed smoke from her lungs. One section of the roof was holed and in flames, and she could hear screams of panic in the darkness. Lunk was on his back nearby, apparently unconscious; Annie was nowhere in sight. Someone yelled, "Ariel," and for some reason she found herself turning around.
It was the green-haired woman they hadn't seen since the mountain attack. She was stepping from the flames that were licking at the armored legs of her towering command ship.
"Ariel," the woman repeated, and again Marlene felt something stir within her. "I am Sera, princess of the Invid, and I have come for you."
Trembling, Marlene stared at her. "But my name is...Marlene. I don't understand why you've come for-"
"Because you have turned against your people and I must know why, before we begin transmutation of our race. Why have you disobeyed the Regis?"
Marlene gasped. What is this woman talking about? "I don't believe what I'm hearing," she said, as if Sera were some hallucination she could banish through an effort of will. "I'm not an Invid."
Sera was taking steps toward her now, her crimson eyes flashing a kind of anger that burned deep into Marlene's soul. "You were placed among the people of Earth to learn their ways, so that we might profit from your discoveries. The Regis has been awaiting your reports, and yet you choose to ignore our commands. Do you expect me to believe that you have forgotten who you are and why you are here?"
Marlene shook her head back and forth; she tried to deny the words her heart seemed eager to affirm. "No...it can't be."
The woman regarded her quizzically. "What can't be, Ariel? Search your thoughts, search them for the truth."
"You're lying! You must be!" Marlene screamed as an explosion tore up another section of the roof.
Sera leaned away to shield herself. "I must stop Corg, before the battle comes any closer," she said. Then her eyes found Marlene. "I will deal with you later."
Marlene watched Sera race off to her ship. Behind her, Lunk was coming around, wondering aloud what had happened. But she hardly heard him.
It can't be true, she thought. It can't be true!
Down below, the battle was raging in the streets. Reconfigured to Battloid mode, Scott's section of the Beta was backed against a building, the rifle/cannon in both hands laying down a thunderous sweep of fire into the face of an advancing Trooper. Elsewhere, two Pincer Ships pursued Lunk through the city's right-angle canyons. Two more had ganged up on Rook's red Battloid, forced it into a corner, and were now attempting to open it with their claws.
She called for help over the net. "These cursed things are trying to rape my ship!"
Rand came to her aid a moment later, his Battloid hovering overhead and taking out each ship with a single shot. But the next moment he was facedown in the street, felled by a blast to the back by none other than Corg himself.
The Invid put down behind the crippled Battloid and moved in to finish it off, but Lancer blew it back into the air with a massive Bludgeon release from the reconfigured burly hindquarters of the Beta. At rooftop level, Corg countered with a wave of annihilation discs that pinned Lancer to the wall, but the Invid prince recognized that he was outnumbered and darted off to muster support.
Scott moved in to check on Rand's status, the rifle/ cannon upraised and ready for action. Rook joined him shortly.
"Looks like they're pulling back," said Lancer, while his ship launched and reconfigured. "What do you say we call it a day, Scott?"
"We're not done yet; there's still the hive."
Rand whistled over the net. "The hive! Don't you think you're
asking a lot out of four little fighters?"
"Yeah, Scott," Rook chimed in. "Have you got a secret army or something?"
"No, but I've got a plan," he told them. "Obviously the Regis never figured on a direct attack, or she wouldn't have had her workers build the hive in such an accessible spot. My bet is we can bring the whole thing down with a few well-placed cobalt grenades."
There wasn't much time to discuss the pros and cons because Corg had returned with three Pincer Ships to back him up. So the three Battloids launched to join their leader and boostered off toward the hive, the four Invid ships in close pursuit.
In the hive, the Regis's voice reached into the very thoughts of her unsuspecting children.
"Attention, perimeter guard: Four Earth fighters are preparing to launch an attack against the hive."
But Sera was nowhere to be found, and without her the Invid drones and Enforcers could do little more than scurry about in a kind of blind panic. And by the time Corg understood the Humans' intent, it was already too late to stop them.
The VTs had climbed to an altitude of several thousand feet and were now falling on the hive like metallic birds of prey: They directed their warheads into the conical summit of the tall structure that housed the hive, and the energy of the ensuing explosions funneled down through the building like a bomb dropped through the top of a chimney. The hive took the full force of the contained blast and blew apart, raining great clumps of organic mass to the streets.
Corg felt the collective deaths pierce him like a lance. In the face of the hive's collapse he broke off his pursuit and cursed the Humans for their barbaric act.
I will have my revenge for this day, he promised the stars.
Lancer insisted on saying good-bye to Simon.
"There's no way we can ever thank you for what you and your friends have done," Simon told him. "Why don't you stay here and leave the rest of it to them, Lancer? Surely you've done your part by now."
The city's survivors were leaving the subway shelters, taking stock of what had been leveled against them. Simon, Jorge, and the freedom fighters were near Carnegie Hall, having just finished loading the VTs with as much Protoculture as they could safely carry.
Lancer knew that Rand had heard Simon's remark and was waiting for his response. Lancer flashed him a brief look and said: "I've been with these people for a long time, Simon, and I plan to be with them right to the end."
Simon offered an understanding nod.
"This was just a skirmish in a much bigger war," said Rand.
"Well, I hope all of you will return someday. And when you do, we'll have the celebration you deserve." Simon embraced Lancer and wished him luck.
On their way out of the city (Lancer, Annie, and Marlene squeezed into the Beta's cramped storage space), the team flew over the remains of a metal statue that had once stood proudly in the harbor. It had once symbolized liberty, Lancer explained.
Scott regarded it and said: "I only hope we can return that to the world someday."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Reflex Point consists of a central hemispherical hive close to what was once the city of Columbus, Ohio and several attendant structures linked to it by numerous Protoculture conduits and instrumentality lines. There appear to be seven secondary nodes-one at twelve o'clock, a second at two, a third at four, a fourth and fifth at seven, and a sixth and seventh at eleven-along with an unattached and somewhat larger dome, south at six o'clock. And that's about the best we can offer you right now, fellows. We hope you'll be able to tell us more once you get down there.
An excerpt from the Mars Devision premission brief
—as quoted by Xandu Reem in his biography of Scott Bernard
She was most definitely humanoid but of indeterminate, often variable height. The form was as close an approximation of Zor's as was possible for the Invid Queen-Mother; with her children she could work wonders, but to become like them she would need to divest herself completely, a thought beyond contemplation. Her cranium was well shaped but hairless, her large, exotic eyes a deep royal-blue, elongated to near slits, with sparse lashes and pencil-thin brows. She was attired in gloves and a full-length red robe whose curious collar encased her ears like a kind of neck brace. Two oval-shaped sensors were set into the robe's collar; they matched a third that was affixed to her breast.
She was deep inside the hemispherical hive that was the living heart of Reflex Point, positioned beneath an enormous globe of Protoculture instrumentality, her link with the outside world in which her children lived and died. The trigger point for the Flower of Life grew near, but the recent events had made her more fearful than encouraged by its timely approach. The experiment in racial transmutation had become hurried and desperate now, in the face of an imminent Human onslaught from the far reaches of space, from that very world that had once doomed her own Optera to
death-the Tirol that haunted her memories and dreams.
How like those war-hungry creatures I have become in my drive to possess this world! she told herself. But wasn't this a condition of the body she inhabited?
It was strange that this very Human form should be deemed the one best suited to her designs for racial transmutation, that these very beings she and her children had labored to enslave should prove the form most suitable to the planet itself. And yet didn't she know somewhere in her heart that this would have to be the true form, the form that she had grown to love, the form that Zor had inhabited when he first seduced the secrets of the Flower from her innocent and trusting nature?
The Regis was well aware of the recent destruction of her outpost in the Human city of tall towers and artificial environments, and that the Robotech rebels who had so far eluded her were quickly closing in on the central hive complex. But she couldn't hold Corg or Sera accountable for their failures, or even Ariel, now that she understood. It was this physical form itself that was to blame; once instilled with consciousness, a subtle sabotage began to occur, an undermining of all spiritual vigor. It was like the Protoculture itself, that artificiality the Robotech Masters had conjured from her precious flowers. These bodies took over the stuff of soul and subverted its true purpose, enslaved it to emotions and whims and unfathomable interior currents.
But if these things were not far from her mind, they were at least somewhat removed from her priorities-the continuation of the Great Work. And the Human form, however gross, would have to serve them in this purpose; it would merely represent a stage on the way to the final realization, the transcendence itself.
The sky above the western horizon was drained of color and angry with flashes of intense light, brighter than the midday sun. It was all the world's lightning in concert, a blinding stroboscopic show that could be seen and felt for a radius of one hundred miles.
Scott looked into the face of it, hands shielding his eyes from random bursts of unearthly whiteness. The assault has begun, he told himself with a mixture of excitement and terror. Hunter's forces have arrived and are attacking the hive complex itself.
The team was at the eastern perimeter of Reflex Point, Veritechs and Cyclones grounded after Scott's advance sightings and subsequent commands to regroup. They were in an area that had seen relatively recent tectonic upheavals, jagged outcroppings that looked as though they had been thrust up from the bowels of hell and had no place in this otherwise stable terrain of soft grasslands and rolling hills.
Annie stared at the sky in wonder. "Is it some kind of storm? A tornado, maybe?"
Rand and Rook, exchanged grim glances. "I wish it were," Rand told his young friend. Bass sounds were rumbling across the sky, seconds late of the explosions that birthed them.
"It has to be Admiral Hunter," Scott said behind them. Squinting, he could discern dark shapes streaking through that celestial chaos. Hundreds of shapes-fighters, mecha, and surely the Invid ships launched to engage them. "Let's move in," he said firmly. "We can't just stand here and watch."
They kept to the high ground and began a slow
forward advance. Oddly enough, the light show seemed to wane as they approached, and when at last they reached the arena itself-a wooded valley, host to a wide, meandering riser-they understood why.
"We're too late," Scott informed everyone over the net.
They could see for themselves what he meant from their vantage on a cliff overlooking the battleground. The landscape was littered with the smoldering remains of Veritechs and Invid Pincer Ships and Trooper craft. Patches of forest across the valley were burning, and layers of smoke and gas hovered above the valley floor like some nefarious fog; it was as though the land itself had belched up fire and gas from its seething nether regions. In the distance, the uppermost portion of a hemispherical hive was visible, squadrons of Invid closing on it like wasps returning to their nest. A huge
gunship crashed and burned while the team watched helplessly.
"It's too horrible," Annie sobbed, putting her face in her hands, and remembering Point-K and similar horrors. Marlene put her arm around Annie's shoulder and pulled her close. Lunk turned around in the front seat of the APC to stroke Annie's back.
"I've never seen ships like these," Lancer said from the seat of the Cyclone. Rand and Rook were nearby on their mecha. Of the three VTs, only the Beta had been moved in, and Scott was overhead now, hovering at the edge of the cliff.
"They must be the latest upgrades," said Lunk. "But I guess there's still some flaws in the design, huh?"
Scott heard the comment. "Can that talk, Lunk," he barked over the net. "This was only an advance group. The admiral is probably trying to ascertain the defensive strength of the hive complex. But he'll be back-you can count on that now."
Lunk grunted an apology.
"I'm going in to check things out down there," Scott continued, bringing up the Beta's rear thrusters. "Stay put until you receive my all clear."
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