Symphony of Light

by Jack McKinney

  Lancer took a step toward the pillar of flame that was the Invid Queen-Mother. "Your forces can't detect those fighters," he told her. "Your children are defenseless, don't you understand? Now you're the only one who can end this destruction."

  Unmoved, the queen regarded him. "Twice in our recorded history we were forced to relinquish our home and journey across the galaxy... But this time we shall not leave!"

  "Don't you know when to take no for an answer?!" Lunk shouted at her. "Your children are dying!"

  Sera glanced at Lunk, then looked up to the Regis. "Mother, perhaps we should listen to him... "

  "You have the power to transform any world you choose," Lancer argued. "Some planet you won't have to fight for!"

  "You cannot understand," the Regis said, almost sadly. "The Flowers of Life exist on this world and this world only. They are our strength; they are our life. Without them, we would perish."

  Scott opened his eyes to Marlene's face and a world of pain. He was in his battle armor and propped up against a tree not far from the smoldering remains of a crashed fighter. He had no recollection of the events that had landed him there.

  "Scott," Marlene was saying, dabbing at his head with a moistened rag. "Is your head any better?"

  Scott saw blood on the rag and raised his fingers to the wound. Even this slight movement brought a wave of pain along his left side; at the very least his ribs were cracked under the armor's chest plate. "Agh...what happened?" he groaned.

  Marlene gestured to the VT, "You were shot down. I saw you fall and-" "Where's the Beta's component?" He tried to raise himself and

  collapsed; Marlene laid her hand and cheek against his chest. "You shouldn't be moving, Scott. Stay here with me!"

  "I've got to get back... " He saw that she was staring at him in a peculiar way and couldn't understand it. The revelations of the previous day and the sequence inside the chamber of the hive were lost to him. "Marlene, what's wrong?" he asked her, almost warily.

  "I...I don't know how to explain it," she stammered. "I feel so strange,

  so concerned about you...Do you think you could love me, Scott? Even if only for a little while?"

  Some of it was coming back to him now, scenes of battle, memories of Corg! He looked at her like she was crazy to be saying these things. "Marlene, I'm capable of only one thing, and that's fighting the Invid!" Refusing her offered lips, he managed to struggle through the pain and get to his feet.

  Marlene chased after him as he ran off. "But, Scott," she screamed, "I love you!"

  Elsewhere, two Battloids were moving through the chaos like lovers taking a Sunday stroll in the park. Rand's had just suffered a near miss, and Rook was teasing him about it over the tac net.

  "I think you need some lessons in how to maneuver, kiddo. My grandmother could do better than that."

  "All right," he told her in the same teasing voice. "But the next time you're in trouble, don't come to me for help. "

  "Who'll come to who for help?"

  Rand smiled for the screen. "Love you, too."

  "Same goes for me," Rook started to say, but Corg's approach put a quick end to the flirtation.

  He split them up with fire from his hand cannon. They had arrived on the scene too late to see what the alien had done to Scott, so it took Rand by surprise when Corg moved against him hand to hand-something seldom done in midair-effortlessly knocking the rifle/cannon from the Alpha's grip. Rook stared out of her cockpit amazed, watching the two ships begin to duke it out, moving in to exchange rapid flurries of blows, then separating only to thruster in against each other all over again, trying to punch each other's lights out. But Rand was nothing if not resourceful, and somehow he managed to get the Invid ship in a kind of full nelson, which left Corg vulnerable to all frontal shots.

  "Okay, I've got him!" Rook heard Rand yell over the net. "Blast him!"

  Rook tried to depress the HOTAS trigger button, but her fingers simply refused to obey the command. If she didn't catch the alien just right, Rand would be destroyed along with him. Her face was beading up with sweat and the HOTAS was shaking in her grip as though palsied, but she couldn't bring herself to fire with Rand's safety at stake. He was screaming at her, telling her not to concern herself...

  Corg was just as confused as Rand: the red Battloid had a clear shot at him, but instead of firing the pilot was throwing herself against him, trying to batter him with the mecha's cannon. It was a tactical blunder and one that gave him all the time he needed to reverse the Battloid's hold. Corg grinned to himself and fired off a charge into his opponent's right arm, taking it off at the elbow; then he threw open the command ship's arms to propel the Human mecha backward. Engaging his thrusters now, he fell against the red ship, striking it with enough force to stun the mecha's female pilot.

  Rook came around as Corg's ship was surfacing in her forward viewport, the hand cannon primed and aimed at her. But just then Rand rammed the thing from behind, and although he had managed to interrupt Corg's shot, he received the blast that had been meant for her.

  Rook could hear his scream pierce the net as his crippled Battloid began a slow backward fall, bleeding smoke and fire and sustaining shot after shot from Corg's weapons. Rook came up from behind to try to slow his descent, but Rand protested loudly:

  "Rook, it's useless...He's coming in for another run. You've gotta save yourself!"

  "You're out of your gourd, mister," she told him, "I'm not letting you go now!"

  Corg had the two Battloids centered in his sights and was preparing to fire the one that would annihilate them both, when an energy bolt out of the blue impacted against the back of his ship.

  Scott's voice came over the tac net as Rook saw the component section of the Beta come into view.

  "Get Rand out of here. I'll take care of things up top."

  "Roger," she exclaimed, wrapping the arms of her mecha more tightly around that of her crippled friend.

  The Beta and the alien mecha went at it again, only this time both of them knew it would be for keeps. Enough of Scott's memory had returned to make him aware of what Corg had done to him.

  The two ships spun through a series of fakes and twists, drops and booster climbs, slamming each other with missiles and volleys from their cannons. Again, flocks of projectiles tore into the skies and met in thunderous explosions, throwing angry light across the field. But then Scott saw a way to prey on the alien pilot's technique: He made a move as though to engage Corg hand to hand, then surreptitiously loosed a full rackful of heatseekers as Corg hovered open-armed and defenseless.

  Even Corg wasn't aware of how much damage the Bludgeons had done to his ship and sat for a moment, complimenting the Human pilot on what had been a clever if underhanded maneuver. But all at once his ship's autosystems were flashing the truth, even as the first explosions were enveloping him, searing flesh and bone from the humanoid form that had been created for his young soul...

  Scott shielded his eyes. Fire and green nutrient seemed to gush from the ship at the same instant as the explosion quartered it, arms and legs blown in different directions. But as important as it had been for him personally, Scott knew it for what it was: a minor battle in a war that was still raging all around them.

  Scott put down a few minutes later to see about his friends. His mecha's missile supply was virtually depleted, and it was time to let the fleet VT squadrons take charge of things for a while. He asked Rand if he was all right, but instead of the thanks he thought he was due, Rand said: "What the heck did you say to Marlene?"

  "Yeah," added Rook, "we can't get a word out of her."

  "I'd rather not talk about her," Scott started to say. But without

  warning Rand was all over him, head bandage or no, his hands ripping at the armor at Scott's neck.

  "You're gonna tell me whether you like it or not! You think you can just walk out on this thing? She's got some crazy idea that she loves you-as if she had some idea of what that means. But you're gonna see to
it that she understands, pal! I think you would have loved her, too, if you hadn't found out she was an Invid."

  Rook separated the two of them. Then she had a few things of her own to say to Scott. "Stop torturing yourself over your dead girlfriend and come back to life, will you?"

  "How can I ever forget that she was killed by the Invid-by Marlene's race?"

  "So you're going to hold that against Marlene?" Rand seethed. "It wasn't like she pulled the trigger, you know. Besides, what about all the Invid you and the rest of Hunter's troops killed? This war has made victims out of all of us. When are you going to realize that the Invid are just our latest excuse for warfare?"

  "Rand, you've lost it-you've gone battle-happy. They started it; they attacked our planet-"

  "Listen, there were wars before we even heard of the Invid or the Robotech Masters or the Zentraedi. You might've lost your Marlene fighting other Humans."

  Scott shook his head in disbelief, but even so he sensed some rightness in Rand's words. Not the way he was phrasing it; more in the sentiments he was trying to express, the sensibilities...

  After a moment, he said: "If only we could have avoided this... " Scott Bernard might as well have asked to negate his own birth.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The so-called trigger point was that point at which Flower production would have provided the Regis with adequate supplies of liquid nutrient for the

  conversion of her hibernating hive drones to quasi-Human form. Once this had been accomplished, her soldiers with their Protoculture-fueled ships-the Troopers, Pincers, and Enforcers, would have been turned loose to eradicate the remaining Human population, including those who had comprised the labor force in the Protoculture farms, which (with more than enough Protoculture on hand to maintain a standing army) would have been shut down. Presumably...But would this then-reformed race have taken up where they had left off on Optera? Would they continue to employ the Flower that had been central to their society there? Would they have become somewhat Humanized by the Reshaping?...We are open to suggestions.

  Zeus Bellow, The Road to Reflex Point

  With the arrival of the Invid legions from the Southlands the tide began to turn on the Expeditionary Force. It was a matter of sheer numbers.

  Even though the Shadow Fighters had been initially successful in decimating the enemy ranks, the odds had now changed. The alien hordes were now punching through Reinhardt's forward lines and launching strikes against the fleet warships themselves. Consequently, contingents of Shadow Fighters had fallen back to protect their mother craft, leaving vast regions of space unprotected and vulnerable to infiltration. And though the hive barrier shield had been breached, the Terran ground troops had yet to gain entry to Reflex Point itself. Reinhardt, of course, had no way of knowing that six Humans not only had been inside the hive but had met the Invid Regis face to face.

  "Three cruisers wiped out!" Sparks reported from his duty station as the flagship was rocked by another volley of enemy fire. "They're all over us, Commander. Even the Shadow Fighters can't stop them!"

  Reinhardt swiveled in the command chair to study one of the threat board displays. "Blast it! What in heaven's name is preventing Harrington's men from getting into that hive?!"

  "Sir, the Second, Third, and Fifth Divisions are reporting extremely

  heavy casualties. I can't raise the Fourteenth at all."

  Reinhardt cursed. If the fourteenth was wiped out, it meant that responsibility for the entire assault had fallen to the Cyclone squadrons. And they would have to accomplish that without air support.

  "At this rate we won't be able to hold out for more than a few hours," Reinhardt muttered. "Order one of the Shadow squadrons to prepare for a direct assault against the hive. I don't care how they accomplish it-even if we have to pull everyone back for a diversionary move. Tell the air wing commander that I'm instructing cruisers in the fleet to concentrate their firepower in sector six. We'll guarantee a hole, but the rest is up to them."

  Sparks swung to his tasks.

  Reinhardt sucked in his breath and waited.

  In the hive chamber the Regis regarded the Protoculture globe with growing alarm. Though her children were meeting with success, the battle was far from won. And could it ever be? she began to ask herself.

  "This planet retains the malignant spirit of the Robotech Masters," she said out loud to Sera and the three Humans. "Whether one race or the other emerges victorious is of little consequence now, because such lingering hatred will only breed greater hatred into the race that survives. This world is contaminated, and I am only just beginning to understand..."

  "The conflict will rage from generation to generation unless every last Human is wiped out, and that still won't be enough. Because we have inherited that evil bent. Our gene pool is polluted by it."

  Cocooned within her column of cold white fire, the Regis turned slowly to gaze down upon Sera. "My child, this is not what we seek. This is not what we have traveled so long to achieve. But I begin to see a way clear of the treachery that has ensnared us...the truth I refused to grasp on Haydon IV It is almost as if he were speaking to me across the very reaches of space and time...as though he had some inkling of the injustices he unleashed even then, when his Masters first directed their greed against us... "

  She could see Zor's image in her mind's eye, and it came to her now

  that the Flower. that had been the cause of it all was about to bring their long journey full circle. That the Protoculture he had conjured from its seeds was to provide her with the energy she needed to complete the Great Work and ascend with her children to a higher plane, the noncorporeal one at last, that timeless dimension. No earthly chains to bind them...no emotions, no lust, only the continuous joys and raptures to be found in that realm of pure thought.

  But could he really have seen this all along, been so omniscient? she asked herself. Such a precise vision, such an incredible realtering and reshaping of events...Sending his ship away to this world, then drawing the Masters and their gargantuan armies here, only so that the Flower could take root and flourish, so that the Invid might follow.

  And now these returning ships with their untapped reservoirs of Protoculture-destined from the start to be her mate in the new order.

  She had been so misguided in assuming his form; in so doing she had been captured by the rage and fears and emotions that blinded her to Protoculture's true purpose. It was not simply to supply mecha with the ability to transform and interact with its sentient pilots; it was meant to merge with the race that had passed eons cultivating its source. They had used the Flowers for nourishment and sustenance and spiritual succor, and for all these millennia the Flower had been trying to offer them something more.

  And Zor had played the catalyst.

  "My child," the Regis continued, "I see now the new world that calls to us. And we shall consume and bond with that blessed life that provides our passage."

  "Do you understand what she's saying?" Lancer asked Sera as the Regis seemed to reincorporate with the chamber globe.

  Sera nodded, her attention still fixed on the battle scenes displayed there. Lunk and Annie gasped as the latest view was flashed into the inner chamber: Shadow Fighters, visible now, piercing through the hive's protective envelope.

  And Reflex Point was beginning to react to their entry. Colored lights began to strobe into the chamber from unseen sources, dissolving the weblike neural arrangements supporting it and eliciting a threatening tide of organic waste and refuse from those collapsing cells.

  "Well, the takeoff may be decided, but she just ran outta time," said Lunk.

  Sera started off in one direction of her command ship, but Lancer put his arm out to stop her. "Let me go," she pleaded with him. "I must protect the Regis and the hive until she has assured our departure."

  "I want to help you," Lancer told her.

  She stopped struggling and turned to him. "You will be fighting against your own people."

&n
bsp; Tight-lipped, he nodded. "If they knew what I know now...they'd understand."

  "We understand," Annie encouraged him. She grabbed hold of Lunk's arm and led him toward the APC. "Now let's get out of here before this whole place comes apart."

  Word of the Shadow Fighters' successful penetration of the hive was relayed to the flagship, but Reinhardt was still not encouraged. Six cruisers had been taken out in the past hour, and it had required over fifty fighters to get a mere four through the hive's defenses. And if those few survivors didn't make it into the central chamber, Reinhardt asked himself, what then?

  "Sir?" Sparks said from his station.

  Reinhardt looked at him wearily. "I have no choice...I want all neutron missiles armed and ready for an immediate launch against Reflex Point."

  Sparks swung around to his console. Reinhardt listened while his orders were radioed to the rest of the fleet. He wondered what the other commanders must be thinking of him. But there was no alternative; they had to realize that...

  "T minus fifty and counting," he heard Sparks say.

  At the edge of Earthspace, the thrusters of two dozen mushroom-shaped droneships flared briefly, propelling their armed warheads toward the target area.

  The hive corridor was oval-shaped and surgeon's-gown green. Lancer had no idea as to its purpose or its direction. But Sera appeared to know where she was going, and that was all that mattered. She was at the controls of her pink and purple command ship; he was alongside her in a Cyclone he had taken from the VT, reconfigured in Battle Armor mode.

  "I consider it an honor to be fighting side by side with you," Sera told him over the comlink.

  Yes, we're both fighting on the same side now, he thought. And in a sense they were a nonallied counterforce, separated from the Human as well as the Invid cause.