“Captain Sterling,” Max said, leaping to attention. “Reporting as ordered, sir.”
“At ease, Sterling,” the major said, motioning Max back to his seat, then extending a hand. “Honored to meet you in person. I’m Rolf Emerson.”
Max shook hands. Emerson was fine-featured and solid-looking, and his baritone voice betrayed a slight Australian accent. “We have mutual friends in Monument City, Major—Lisa Hayes and Vince and Jean Grant.”
“How is Admiral Hayes?” Emerson asked, pouring himself a glass of limeade.
“Frankly, sir, I haven’t seen her in months. Not since she shipped for the factory.”
“That monstrosity,” Emerson said with patent disdain. He sat down and raised his glass in a toast. “To better days, Sterling.” He took a long gulp and set the drink aside. “So what’s your impression of BA?”
“Hot and crowded. But it’s wonderful to see a city with most of its buildings intact.”
“You’re not kidding.” Emerson’s brown eyes appraised him for a moment. “Sony you have to be down here for the reasons you are.”
Max hid his true feelings. “About the mission—”
“Suppose we leave that for tomorrow’s briefing.” When Max gave him an uncertain look, Emerson added, “Having misgivings?”
“Some.”
Emerson nodded. “I think I understand. But war sometimes throws us into peculiar circumstances, Sterling. I shouldn’t have to tell you that. Hell, back in Australia, before the Visitor, I fought against the Neasians when they tried to march into Melbourne. Then, five years later, I fought with them when the Exclusionists had a go at the place.”
“You were born there?”
“In Sydney, yes. I was fifteen when Macross Island became the center of the world. Me and a couple of friends sailed there all the way from New Zealand, just to get a look at the ship, but the supercarrier Kenosha had the place blockaded. Like nearly every other sixteen-year-old, I enlisted in the RDF in the hope of getting posted to Macross, but that never happened. Instead, I was stationed right in Sydney and assigned to cleaning up the mess the Exclusionists had left behind. How about you, Max? How old were you when the SDF-1 arrived?”
“Nine. When I heard about it I thought it was some kind of movie promotion.”
A tall, dark-complected woman with handsome, angular features appeared on the veranda to refill the pitcher with limeade. Max watched her intently.
“Her name’s Ilan Tinari,” Emerson explained when the woman was out of earshot. “We came here from Australia two years ago, when my request for a transfer came through.” He paused for a moment. “I lost my wife and our only child in the Rain.”
“I’m sorry,” Max said—the most oft-repeated phrase since the events of 2012. “Where did you two meet?”
“She became my chauffeur and bodyguard in Sydney when we were trying to pick up the pieces Dolza left us.” Emerson watched Max for a moment, then said, “Go ahead, Sterling, say what’s on your mind.”
“She’s Zentraedi.”
Emerson smiled lightly. “You’d know, wouldn’t you?”
“I only meant—”
“I know what you meant: that you generally don’t see much fraternization between male RDF officers and female Zentraedi. Excepting yourself, of course. But you’d be surprised at the men I could name who consort on a regular basis with Zentraedi women.”
Normally, Max wouldn’t have asked, but it was plain from Emerson’s expression that the major wanted him to.
“Anatole Leonard, for one,” Emerson said. “Brasília’s best-kept secret. But you didn’t hear it from me. Besides, I’m not certain it’s still going on.”
Max was dumbfounded. “Then how can Leonard be so intolerant of Zentraedi rights?”
“He’s a complex man, Sterling. I wouldn’t even presume to be able to explain it. No more than I could explain how it is that I’m with a person whose race was responsible for the death of my family. Or that you’re married to a woman whose people you’re about to engage in combat.” Emerson shrugged. “Maybe we should chalk it up to the confusion of the times.”
At sunrise, in the small circular chapel that stood beside Brasília’s Alvorado Palace, Anatole Leonard thanked God for protecting him from the aliens’ bombs. Daily prayer had long been a ritual in Leonard’s life, but the sunrise sessions had only begun a month earlier, on the morning following the assassination attempt.
As old as the city itself, the Alvorado was Leonard’s place of residence. The work of governing the district was done at the nearby Palacio de Planalto; but Alvorado, on the shore of Lake Paranoa, was where he relaxed, prayed, punished and, yes, was punished in return.
He understood that the bombs had constituted a warning of sorts, one aimed at demonstrating how easily evil concealed itself in the world at large. He had been arrogant that November morning in thinking himself invulnerable, in relaxing his focus on the holy imperative to eradicate the malevolent spawn of the Visitor. And so God had arranged it that others should suffer in his place—the chauffeur, the senator, young Joseph Petrie, dozens of people guilty only of adoring him … God was clever that way, knowing that when it came to punishing Leonard for straying, no one took a stronger hand than Leonard himself.
But where was his physical tormentor? Gone. Missing for months now, disappeared into the city’s slums with the great gift he had given her. Oh, how in need she was of a touch of the whip he had taught her to wield—a taste of the flame, a flick of the blade. Satan’s Whore! he screamed at the memory of her. This wasn’t the exquisite torture of being left chained to a bed, crazed for her slow return and promised forgiveness. This was abandonment, pure and simple, treachery of the highest order, and if and when he ever found her he would teach her new things about pain. Then, done with her, he would make her disappear for good. The way he had the doctors who had assisted him in impregnating her. The way he would do with Max Sterling and Miriya Parina should an opportunity ever present itself. But until such time as his vengeful fantasies could be fulfilled, he could do little more than beg God’s forgiveness and promise to expand his campaign against the wretched Zentraedi.
He began his penance but had only reached his fifth rendition of the Lord’s Prayer when Joseph Petrie interrupted him with a whisper from the rear of the chapel.
“Senator Moran is here to see you.”
Rather than check his watch, Leonard conferred with the light entering through the chapel’s rose window. “At this hour?”
“He has someone with him.”
“Someone I should know?”
“The senator seems to think so.”
Leonard instructed his aide to show Moran and his guest to the breakfast room of the palace, then he resumed his prayers, punctuating them with bows of his shaved head and sharp, fisted blows to his massive chest. When he marched into the breakfast room forty minutes later, he was wearing his woolen uniform and shiny black jackboots.
Patty Moran stood up to greet him, supporting himself on the ivory-handled cane that had been his constant companion since the assassination attempt. Moran’s blond, half-masked guest remained seated on the brocade chair. Leonard needed no introductions.
“Thomas Edwards,” he said, genuinely surprised to find the man alive after some three years. “The last I heard you were at Alaska Base when the Grand Cannon was destroyed.”
“You heard right,” Edwards told him flatly.
Leonard was momentarily nonplussed. “But I thought Lisa Hayes was the only one who got out of there alive.”
Edwards sneered. “Then I guess you heard wrong.”
Leonard didn’t bother to pursue it, knowing he would be lied to in any case. As far back as the Global Civil War, Edwards had enjoyed that kind of reputation: mercenary for the Neasians, “facilitator” for the World Unification Alliance, intelligence officer for the Russo-and-Hayes-run United Earth Defense Council … “What brings you to Brasília, Mr. Edwards?” Leonard finally got around to as
king.
Moran traded amused looks with Edwards. “Thomas has a Christmas present for you, Anatole.”
Leonard regarded Edwards and laughed. “Imagine my embarrassment—I must have overlooked your name on my shopping list.”
Edwards went along with the joke, laughing out of the undamaged side of his once-attractive mouth. “Well, how about this,” he said. “I give you your gift now, and I accept your IOU for mine.”
Leonard straightened his smile. “I take that to mean you know what you want.”
Again, Moran and Edwards traded looks. “Did I mention,” the senator said, “that Thomas has been providing the UEG with some first-rate intelligence regarding the Zentraedi malcontents? Works very closely with Niles Obstat and Dimitri Motokoff, who personally brief the RDF on all developments.”
Wearying of the game, Leonard nodded, then scowled, “Suppose we come to the point, Patty.”
Moran started to speak, but Edwards cut in. “All I want for Christmas is the promise of a high-rank commission in the Army of the Southern Cross. Not now, and maybe not for years to come, but at my say-so.”
Leonard stared at him in astonished disbelief. “You want to be a general in my army. In exchange for what?”
Edwards met Leonard’s gimlet gaze. “A bit of intelligence that’s going to put ‘your’ army neck and neck with the RDF.” He paused briefly. “The only catch is that you have to be willing to travel to get the most out of it.”
2016
CHAPTER
TEN
“When it came to registering them [the Zentraedi], we found ourselves up against some real problems. Because only a few of them knew how to write the glyphs for their names, most of us had to come up with a spelling based on how they pronounced their names, which usually turned out to depend on which battalions they’d been attached to during the War, and so on. So what happened, was most of us [at Macross’s Alien Registry Bureau] started making the names intelligible by using close-sounding words. I remember we’d go through different phases. Like one week we’d be into using names for office stuff or things you’d find around a house, and another week we’d be thumbing through a French or Arabic dictionary. Once, we even got over into Native American culture. I can’t tell you how many ‘Saloiois’ became ‘Seloy,’ and how many ‘Shaaynnas’ became ‘Cheyenne.’ ”
Unattributed source quoted in Tommy Luan’s High Office
Outside the daunting entrance to Fokker Aerospace’s Defense Force Administration Center, a military limousine was waiting in the snow. Fat flakes were melting on contact with the car’s hot hood and piling on the epauletted shoulders of two soldiers standing guard. Christmas wreaths adorned with crimson bows hung in the tall windows on either side of the center’s sliding glass doors, and holiday Muzak was wafting from speakers concealed somewhere in the Spartan vastness of the lobby.
Descending into the lobby by escalator, Rick asked himself if this was indeed his life or if he’d inadvertently wandered into some stranger’s anxiety dream. Nothing felt entirely real, neither the limo nor the falling snow, and least of all the red-haired lieutenant with the document-stuffed attaché cuffed to her left wrist who recently had been assigned to him. Even now the young woman was chattering into his ear about scheduled appointments at RDF HQ in Monument City. Rick had a sudden urge to switch identities with her, though he understood that to be a product of his own dreaming.
Nevertheless, once the two of them had stepped from the moving stairway, Rick instructed the lieutenant to proceed to the car without him, explaining that he had matters of a personal nature to attend to elsewhere on Fokker Base, and that he would find his own ride into Monument City in time for the next appointment. The aide hesitated, but only for a moment, offering a crisp salute before hurrying through the sliders into the snow squall.
Rick waited for the limousine to move off, then walked across the expansive lobby to where a fighter-mode Veritech was suspended by monofilament cables from the arched ceiling. An inscribed brass plaque affixed to the belly of the fuselage explained that the mecha—the Valkyre—was the first-generation VF-1J Fokker Aerospace’s eponymous Roy had flown during the War. The Valkyre had been moved from Macross City to Monument several weeks before Khyron’s raid, first to the Mecha Museum on the Excaliber base, then to the aerospace base on the day of its official dedication. Rick had piloted the VT for a short period following Fokker’s death, almost four years earlier. But it felt like yesterday, Rick frequently told himself, as he suspected would ever be the case.
The obvious reasons notwithstanding, the War against the Zentraedi had redefined the meaning of holocaust. Where survivors of previous wars or natural catastrophes had had to cope with deaths numbering in the hundreds or even the thousands, the Robotech War had left every survivor on Earth coping with the deaths of hundreds of millions. Every husband who had lost a wife; every parent who had lost a child; every child who had lost parents and siblings alike; every sole survivor of a village or a small city who had lost parents, siblings, relatives, and neighbors … The War had erased entire lineages from Humankind’s family tree; worldwide, people were left family- and friend-less. Less.
Not a day passed that Rick didn’t think about Roy—his best friend and confidant, his inspiration for stunt flying, his instructor in the mental and physical disciplines of mecha combat. Rick knew a lasting ache in his heart from not being able to talk to him. To some extent, Max Sterling had assumed the role of closest friend, but Rick and Max didn’t always see eye to eye on judgment calls—the use of force against the dissident Zentraedi, for one thing. That was because Rick had, to some extent, become Roy—Roy as a career fighter jock. Besides, Max was too unassuming and even-tempered to ever replace impetuous Roy. Rick figured, for instance, that had Roy been around to talk some sense into him, he probably wouldn’t have spent years bouncing back and forth between Lisa and Minmei. And Roy—a pilot to the last—would have stuck by him when Rick wanted to refuse the promotion. They might have ended up wingmen on the same VT team, perhaps in the Southlands, on the very mission to which Max had been assigned.
Max wanted to believe that Rick was responsible for the assignment, that it was blackmail of a sort, designed to force Max to choose between the REF or several years of pursuing malcontents through the Amazon rain forest. Opting for the former entailed leaving Earth; opting for the latter, the risks posed by daily combat. Either way, Rick would have preferred the luxury of a choice. And he had no illusions about malcontentism, as Max seemed to have. That the Zentraedi were Miriya’s people didn’t mean that they were her family. Like so many Earthers now, Miriya had no family. But should Miriya decide to accuse Max of crimes against her race, was Rick then entitled to hold Miriya—another of his closest friends—accountable for Roy’s death? After all, it was the all-female Quadrano battalion that had carried out the raid against the then-grounded SDF-1 in which Roy, Kramer, and so many other Defense Force fighters had died. Miriya might have loosed the blue beam that brought the Valkyre down. In the same way, Rick might as well hold Lisa personally accountable for the burst of friendly fire that had left him critically injured during that same battle.
Circling the suspended Veritech, he imagined himself flying with the Skull again—flying, instead of attending briefings, reviewing dossiers, and arguing with government bureaucrats and number crunchers over each and every requested REF expenditure. But thoughts of mechamorphing with the Skull were simply more flights of fantasy. He was no longer a pilot; he was a public relations executive costumed in an admiral’s uniform. He wanted to bitch about it to Lisa, but she was so seldom available she might as well have already left for Tirol. Bitching, in any case, wasn’t what he was really after. He wanted to talk to her, friend to friend, and confide in her, lover to lover.
The squall had moved through by the time he stepped outside. He acknowledged the guards’ salutes as he walked to the curb of the circular drive.
“Should I call for a car, Admiral?” one of
the guards asked.
Rick had his mouth open to respond when a limousine pulled up alongside him and the driver’s side rear window began to lower.
“Rick!” Behind the sunglasses and beneath the cowboy hat was Minmei. “Rick!” she repeated.
His look of disbelief gave way to puzzled surprise. “What are you doing here?”
She huffed. “Almost a year since I’ve seen you and that’s what you ask—what I’m doing on base? Well, if you must know, I’ve enlisted in the REF.” When Rick’s jaw had dropped sufficiently, she added, “I’m only joking, Rick—though the REF could do worse than have me aboard.”
“So then what—”
“I was with Colonel Caruthers. He’s been giving me flying lessons. At least he was until the snow started. But, Rick, now I understand why you love flying. It’s so fun.”
“Yeah,” Rick mumbled.
Minmei reached out the window for his hand. “I can’t believe it’s you. I’ve been meaning to call …”
“Me, too,” Rick said quickly.
She grinned knowingly. “You’ve been busy. And congratulations on your promotion. The uniform suits you.”
“More than the rank.”
“How’s Lisa? Is she here?”
Rick raised his chin to the overcast sky. “She’s upside. On the factory.”
“Will she be down for Christmas?”
“I doubt it.”
“That’s a shame.” Minmei paused for a moment, then brightened. “Rick, are you busy right now?”
Rick checked his watch. “I have to be in the city by two-thirty.”
“That’s perfect, we have just enough time.”
The Zentraedi Rebellion Page 11