"You know, I've been thinking about how we met... " he said leadingly. "Lancer, would it be possible for you to love one of my race?"
He thought back to Marlene. And Scott. "I think I could. And what about you?"
She sighed over the net. "I only hope we have time to find out."
Two Shadow Battloids were fast approaching them from the corridor terminus.
"T minus ten seconds and counting," the tech reported.
Reinhardt was standing at the control center now, Earth's beautiful oceans and clouds filling the bridge viewpoints. Short-lived explosions flashed across the field, and off to port a holed cruiser floated derelict in space. He had already inserted the override key into the console lock; he gave it a quarter turn and commenced arming the main switches as the countdown continued.
"Seven, six, five, four..."
Reinhardt hit the secondaries and slammed home the final crossover; now the S missiles were beyond anyone's control, no matter what followed.
"Three, two, one, zero!"
Reinhardt could discern bursts of white light below him against the seemingly tranquil face of the planet.
"God forgive me," he said under his breath.
The Regis's voice boomed out, omnipresent. It was as if she had become the entire hive now, and each part of it her.
"The final attack has begun. And a terrible error has been made. But in seeking to reach our own goal we shall see to it that these creatures have a chance to reach theirs as well. The shadow of the Robotech Masters has been allowed to rule this world for too long...Now it will be dispersed!"
Sera's ship took a hit to the shoulder from one of the Battloids in the corridor, but she rallied and returned fire, taking out not only the one who had shot her but two more. Lancer hovered clear off to one side, unable to assist. But he had already done his part by destroying the first two, and it pained him even now to think about those Human lives he had taken.
Suddenly two more Shadow Fighters streaked into view. "We'll never be able to stop all of them!" he shouted to Sera.
She was about to reply when unexpected fire from behind them devastated the intruders. Lancer twisted around to find Scott's VT behind them in the corridor.
"Figured you could use some help," the lieutenant said flatly. "You're a welcome sight, Human" Sera told him.
"Yeah, well I'd love to stay and chat about that," Scott said after a moment, "but I suggest we get ourselves out of here on the double."
Lunk and Annie made it out of the hive before the three pilots. Rook and Rand and Marlene were also in the clear, a few miles off when the hive began to undergo the first changes.
In the shotgun seat of the APC, Annie gulped and found her voice. "Lunk," she said, pointing, "tell me what's happening!"
As if he could explain it.
The hive had gone from a crimson, almost blood-red color to steely blue. It was also more transparent now, and some sort of huge spherical nodes had been made visible in the deep recesses of the dome-perhaps those same round commo devices Lunk and Annie had stood beneath only minutes before. With the barrier envelope disappeared, the Shadow Fighters had direct access to the Regis's lair, but they couldn't get near it because of the intense electrical discharges that were surging up throughout the area.
And somehow the voice of the Invid queen was reaching all of them where they fought, died, or waited.
"Hear me, my children," she intoned. "When we sensed the first faint indications of the Flower of Life resources on this world, we thought we had at last found the home for which we searched."
The hive was barely visible now. It was engulfed in a kind of swirling storm of blinding yellow light from which rays of raw energy poured into the sky, while a crazed network of lightning and electrical groundings danced overhead. It was more like a contained explosion than anything else, as though the hive had become an epicenter for all the world's random energy, as though the very processes of universal creation were gathering together and being run through at an extraordinary pace. The hive had become the vessel for the Great Work, the merging of opposites-the pleroma. Here was the meeting place of the red and white alchemical dragons: the point of transcendence. The air was crackling, local storms unleashed and billowing clouds tearing through darkened skies as though in a time-frame sequence. And the land was changing and reconfiguring. The trees surrendered their leaves as an intense chill swept in from all sides, minitornadoes swirling around the sunlike fires that glowed within the hive. Invid ships-Scouts, Troopers, and Pincers-were streaming into it like insects drawn to the flame that annihilates them.
"We had called together all of our children scattered throughout the galaxy to begin life anew on this planet. We began rebuilding a world that
had nearly been destroyed by evil. And we constructed the Genesis Pits in order to pursue the path of enlightened evolution. But it was not enough."
Suddenly light and shadow seemed to reverse themselves, and the world drained of color. Where the hive had stood there was now only an impossible tower of radiant amber light, launching itself through hurricane clouds with blinding determination, a pillar of raw but directed energy.
It was a mile-wide circular shaft of horrific power that erupted from the hive, mushrooming up with a rounded, almost penile head into that feminine void above, a million blast furnaces in concert.
Overhead, at the edge of the envelope that was Earth's protective shield, the neutron missiles were falling toward their target, but now that target was now coming up to meet them, with a face as different as any could be, a face only the once-dead would recognize...
Reinhardt and his bridge staff saw it coming and would not have been able to move away from it had they had the power to do so; they were transfixed, in awe, in some sort of splendiferous, almost holy, reverie. Before their eyes the light was changing shape even as it pierced through Earth's atmosphere and entered the vacuum out of which it had been born. It was anthropomorphic here, contorted into a dragon's face there, with its fanged mouth opened wide, its tongue a lick of solar fire, ready to engulf all that dared stand in its way. It struck like a serpent, twisting and flailing about as though charmed by its own-existence; charmed by its own imminent swan song.
Reinhardt saw the creature-for that's what he termed it to be, a living light: energy and life combined on some new and unimaginable scale-encounter the warheads he had launched against it, and he saw those alloyed death machines slag and melt away in the creature's wake. And he realized that this was to be his own fate as well...
There was nothing but brilliant yellow light in the viewports now; throughout the fleet men and women stood naked before it, unable to
comprehend what was happening but aware that it was something that had never occurred before. They were unable to understand That they had come all this way to meet death face to face, like the Zentraedi and Robotech Masters before them. It was as though they had been chosen to reap the whirlwind that had blown in from the other side of the galaxy. And they were unable to understand that they had been chosen to unite with the Invid in some inexplicable way, in the same manner that the Invid were uniting with the wraiths of the Protoculture. They were the homunculi, the Micronians who had been used by the conjurer Zor in the carrying out of the Great Work.
Some people, in ships at the perimeter of the fleet, saw that tower shoot up from Earth's surface like a lance of pure light, only to be joined as it pierced the night by coils of unequaled brilliance delivered up from the planet itself, encircling it for a brief moment like the shells encompassing an atomic nucleus. For this really was a kind of cosmic orgasmic fusion.
"Come with me!" the Regis's voice rang out, like the music of the spheres. "Discard this world and follow the spirit of light as it beckons us onward. And let our leavetaking heal this crippled world and reshape its destiny."
Then that light contacted the warships of the main fleet and digested and assimilated their strengths and weaknesses as it had the bombs sent aga
inst it, incorporating into itself all the contradictions and ironies and, most of all, Humankind's ability to wage war.
The dragon seemed to yawn and bellow its triumph as the light streaked on into the void.
"Our evolutionary development is complete," the racial voice continued.
"To all of my children scattered throughout the cosmos...Follow me to a new world, a new plane. Abandon this tortured life and follow the spirit of light as it spreads its wings and carries us to a new dimension..."
And those few who survived told of the ray's complete and total transmutation. To a feline face with bright blue eyes, through one that was
surely Human in form. And then it had collected itself into one mass...like a phoenix on the wing, a radiant bird with outstretched wings wider than the world it was leaving behind, soaring away quicker than thought to another plane of existence.
EPILOGUE
Which came first: the Flower or the Protoculture?
Louie Nichols, BeeZee: The Galaxy Before Zor
Life is only what we choose to make it; Let's just take it,
Let us be free.
Lynn-Minmei, "We Can Win"
There were few salvageable Veritechs left after the Transformation, but Scott Bernard had managed to secure one of them. Most of the crew and ships of the main fleet had perished with the Invid's departure-gone with them, as some were saying.
A month had passed, and Earth was indeed beginning to heal itself, as the Regis's voice had promised it would. Grass and nascent forest covered what had been wasteland before, and regions that had been hot since Doha's rain of death were showing markedly lower levels of radioactivity. Even the devastated area around the central hive had been sanitized by the light's leave-taking.
But two of the Regis's children remained...
Scott was saying good-bye to one of them now on a rise overlooking the scene of what was to be Yellow Dancer's last concert, an outdoor amphitheater not far from the city that had once been called New York. People had been drawn to the concert from all over the Northlands and Southlands, seeking some explanation for what had occurred, almost as though the Invid's departure had been something of a Second Coming. There was a sense that the Earth had come to play a pivotal role in events that were beyond anyone's ability to comprehend, that the world had been used somehow to further one species' progress toward an end that awaited all of them. And in the process Humankind had been saved from
self-annihilation, so that Earth, too, might someday follow along the same path.
A feeling of peace prevailed, of lasting calm few had ever known. War had been placed out of reach. And if one were to be fought, it would have to rage without Protoculture, for almost all that precious substance, along with all the Invid Flowers, had vanished from the face of the Earth. It would have to be a war fought with sticks and stones by a species that had been returned to a kind of primitive innocence; to childhood, perhaps.
But these issues were far from Scott's teammates' thoughts that day; rather, they were dwelling on endings and beginnings of a different sort. For now that they had done their part in allaying everyone's initial fears and confusion, the time had come for them to think about their own individual paths and the inevitable farewells those steps toward the future would entail. And amid all that returning splendor, there was an awkwardness they had never experienced with one another.
As for Scott Bernard, his mind was made up. The SDF-3 had never appeared out of spacefold, and Scott was going out to look for it aboard the only fleet cruiser that had survived the Transformation.
"But why?" Marlene wanted to know, raising her voice above the music booming out from the concert shell below them, where Yellow Dancer held center stage.
"Really, Scott, what's the point?" Rand said, backing Marlene up even though he knew it was futile. "You can start a new life here."
"I've got to go back," Scott insisted, turning the "thinking cap" over and over in his hands.
"But how will you figure out where to begin looking?" Annie asked him. "I mean, couldn't you be happy staying down here on Earth with your friends and everything? Gee," she added, tears welling up in her eyes, "I miss you already."
How could he explain it to them? That although their friendship had meant so much to him this past year, he had other friends as well. Dr. Lang, Cabell, and so many others. He had to find out what had become of the
SDF-3. And more to the point, space was his home, more than the Earth ever was and perhaps more than the planet would ever be.
He looked down at Annie and forced a smile. "Admiral Hunter's lost out there, and someone's got to find him and his crew. We've got to try while there's still one ship left with enough reflex power to make the fold." He glanced over at Rand and Rook, Marlene and Lunk. "Fate brought us together for a journey none of us will ever forget. But we've reached the end of that road, and there're only individual ones left for us now." Scott shook his head. "I don't know, maybe to spread some of what we learned while we were together. Does that make any sense to you?"
Rand caught Scott's eye and smiled broadly. So it's not meant to be a winding down, after all, he told himself, but a gearing up for new quests...
"Well, good luck," Lunk said dubiously, walking over to shake Scott's hand. "I think I'm through with the road for a while." He gazed appreciatively at the green hills above the festival grounds. "I'm going to do a bit of farming, try and pay back the debt I owe to good ole Earth for shooting it up the past coupla years. Especially now that I've got some real fine volunteer help," he added, looking over at Marlene and Annie and grinning.
"What about you, Rand? Any ideas?" Rook asked leadingly. The two of them were sitting side by side in the grass, their backs against a tree.
Rand leered at her fondly. "Well, yeah, I do have a notion or two. I'm thinking of going back to the Southlands to write my memoirs."
Rook grimaced. "You've got to be kidding. Who the heck cares, anyway?
Besides, you're just at the beginning of your life, not the end of it."
Rand thrust out his chin. "Hey, I think people would be interested to read about some of the adventures we've been through."
"We?" she said excitedly. "Well, that's different! But I think those books are going to need a feminine point of view, just to keep things balanced, of course."
"And you're applying for the position."
"I am uniquely qualified to edit you, rogue."
Rand was about to agree, when a tremendous cheer rose from the crowds down below.
But the cause of the commotion wasn't Yellow Dancer, who had just finished her rendition of "We Will Win"-the anthem of the First Robotech War-but Lancer himself. He had thrown off his wig and female attire and was now attempting to explain himself to the audience.
"Thank you, everyone, thank you. You've made Yellow Dancer's final concert the greatest ever. Thank you all, you're wonderful!"
Those in the front rows saw that he was directing a lot of his delivery to one person in particular: an unusual looking woman with short spiky green-blond hair and eyes that glowed like embers...For who else but an out-of-this-world woman was so well suited for Lancer?
Only he wasn't getting the response he had expected; the audience seemed almost indifferent to his visual confession. In fact, they were prepared to follow him in any guise he chose; after all, it was just the stage, wasn't it?
Up above, Scott had kissed Marlene good-bye and was headed for the cockpit of the Alpha. What would become of her and Sera? he wondered, and found himself thinking about Max and Miriya Sterling's daughter, Dana.
He waved to his friends as the VT lifted off, tuning his receiver to the broadcast frequency of Lancer's concert. He really did it, Scott chuckled to himself. It was certainly a month for revelations.
"I want to dedicate my last number to a very special group of friends," Lancer was saying from the stage. "And to one friend in particular...He's leaving Earth behind, and with it the most precious of possessions: his f
riends-the people who love him most. But I want him to know that when he returns, we'll be here to welcome him home with open arms."
As Scott listened to Lancer's latest composition, he found himself recalling the names and faces of the people who had emerged as heroes during Earth's quarter of a century of devastating warfare. Rick and Lisa Hunter; Max, Miriya, and Dana Sterling; Lynn-Minmei and Bowie Grant
and Louie Nichols...And all those who hadn't lived to see this day: Admiral Gloval, Roy Fokker, Claudia Grant, Rolf Emerson, and countless others. Scott felt a bittersweet wave pass through him as Lancer's words crept into his mind, Earth dwindling now in the Alpha's cockpit display screen.
She finds him strong and brave
And how she wants him so, so much
So much she knows she needs that touch To lead the way to love.
He spies a gentle soul
Waiting for her to find someone so So very sweet and kind
To lead the way, the way to love.
"The Way to Love," Scott repeated, meditating on the words. And it suddenly occurred to him that it was love after all that had tipped the scales in each of those terrible wars. Love had won out over the greed, the hatred, and the betrayals, redressing the evil the Robotech Masters had first unleashed, and perhaps even atoning for some unknown sin that was Zor's alone.
And now they have their space They've run the final race Love's given them a place Where love can live
Heaven is where they are
With love, they have no need to roam Just look at them to see how she,
She led them to love
They are in love They are in love...
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