The Zentraedi Rebellion

by Jack McKinney

  Seloy was taken with Xan’s intelligence and confidence. “Sounds as though you’ve already organized yourself into a band.”

  “We’ve named ourself the Senburu,” Bross supplied. She lifted her shirtsleeve to reveal a crudely executed body marking, similar to the ones many Humans sported on limbs and torsos. The term Senburu meant “silent leadership”; the dye drawing depicted the face of a woman with a hand across her mouth.

  “I want to join you,” Seloy had announced, only to be ridiculed by Marla and Bross.

  “The Senburu needs warriors,” Marla commented, “not would-be mothers.”

  Seloy delivered her response with firm pride: “The infant is mine; I birthed it. His name is Hirano and mine is Seloy Deparra, former commander of the Lightning Brigade.”

  The mouths of her audience fell. “T’sen Deparra,” Marla said with wide-eyed deference. “If I’d known—”

  “How could you know?” Seloy had asked. “How could any of us be expected to recognize one another on this world, after what the Humans have done to us? We are ghosts of our former selves. But I promise one thing: that we can make them pay for their injustices.”

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  It never occurred to them [the Malcontents in possession of the Southern Grand Cannon] that the largely dismantled Cannon was worthless to anyone. So, the question frequently asked is why the RDF couldn’t simply have allowed Khyron’s Fist to remain where it was, rather than strike back, making martyrs of the Malcontents and ushering in the years of violence that followed. The answer, of course, is the same one invariably offered up as an excuse for responding to violence with violence: an example needed to be set.

  Raphael Mendoza, The Malcontent Uprisings

  “Do you have a pass to be admitted on base?” a corporal at Fokker Aerospace’s intimidating front gate had asked.

  “I’m Miriya Parina,” she had told him, only to hear the question repeated with hostile impatience.

  “You have a pass or not?”

  “I’m Max Sterling’s … wife,” she managed.

  The corporal had paled some, making rapid hand gestures to a security officer in the gate control booth. “I’m sorry, ma’am, uh, Mrs. Sterling. Pass right on through.”

  It wasn’t the first time she’d been singled out for second-class treatment—the lustrous green hair consistently betrayed her—but the incident had left her feeling humiliated and angry, and Dana’s insubordination was only making matters worse. The two of them were in the civilian waiting room of the Administrative Center, Miriya pacing back and forth in front of the tall windows that overlooked the jet landing field, Dana running circles around her when not climbing the seats, tipping over wastebaskets, and yelling at the top of her lungs. Elsewhere in the room were the wives, friends, and lovers of other Skull Team members: Sara Mammoth; Greer’s friend, Lee something-or-other; and Tom Foley, Jim Ransom’s companion. Miriya liked Jim and Tom, individually and as a couple. Where heterosexual coupling was a source of confusion to many Zentraedi, homosexuality had a certain logic to it. Long segregated by gender, the Zentraedi identified with the concept of like-with-like, if not fully with the sexual component of the partnering.

  Skull’s retaliatory raid against the Southern Grand Cannon had been termed an unqualified success by the RDF: no losses for the team, and seven out of what turned out to be nine Battlepods destroyed. The other two had escaped. On learning of the success Miriya had examined her feelings. Certainly she felt something akin to relief knowing that Max was safe. But even though she was growing increasingly concerned for her fellow Zentraedi and increasingly distrustful of the motives of both the RDF and the UEG, she felt no sympathy for the malcontents who had died in Venezuela—neither pity nor sadness. Seven Battlepods had been destroyed. Not until that morning, during the ride to Fokker, had she stopped to think of the fourteen lost lives.

  That in itself was unZentraedilike. The qualities of empathy and sympathy had not been written into the program the Masters had devised for their clone creations. Arrogance and aggression were the touchstones of Zentraedi character. Most lacked the ability to remember events from one moment to the next, so there was little sense of personal or racial history to their lives. They were empty shells, waiting to be filled and drained again and again. None, Miriya included, had the least idea of how old they were or just how long they might live under nonviolent circumstances. It was Dr. Lang’s belief that, once inoculated against Earth’s bacteria and viruses, a Zentraedi could live for hundreds of years. The challenge, however, was to create an inoculation against the persistent effects of the Imperative.

  Miriya wanted a different life for Dana. That Dana was having an infancy and accumulating memories was a good beginning. Miriya thought often of the attack on the factory satellite, when she had held Dana aloft to Commander Reno and proclaimed, “Behold the power of Protoculture!” Before she had any understanding of genetics, the power of biological reproduction, or the frailties inherent in Dana’s Human side. She shivered when she reflected on the dangers Dana had been exposed to as a baby, with Max ever-patient and tolerant of Miriya’s mistakes and inadvertent oversights. Did she love Dana? she frequently asked herself. Did she love Max the way Sara Mammoth loved her husband, Bill, or Tom Foley loved Jim Ransom? What had she been at the mercy of in inboard Macross when she had agreed to marry Max? Or had it been nothing more than a response to his having defeated her in hand-to-hand combat at the Peace Fountain? Would the Imperative someday reassert itself without warning, and might she then be a danger to Max or Dana? Again, she shivered. Perhaps Dr. Lang or Professor Zand could remove and banish Dana’s Zentraedi programming. Hadn’t Zand once mentioned something to that effect?

  Her musings were interrupted by an ear-piercing squeal from Dana and the sight of Skull One roaring in for a landing on Fokker Field. The rest of the team followed, and everyone in the waiting room hurried to the window wall to wave to the deplaning pilots. Miriya scooped Dana into her arms and positioned herself among the group, the loving and vigilant partner. She watched Max climb down from his mecha, remove his thinking cap, and glance expectantly toward the waiting room. She smiled and waved a hello at him.

  They embraced outside the door to the pilots’ locker room. Max hugged Dana and lifted her over his head, making her laugh. He didn’t offer details of the mission or his after-mission debriefing in Cavern City, and Miriya didn’t ask. Instead, they kept things neutral by discussing the latest news.

  “Things have gotten worse since you’ve been gone,” Miriya said while they were walking to the bus stop. The Skull’s easy win in Venezuela notwithstanding, the UEG was preparing to reestablish control over the autonomous Arkansas Protectorate, allegedly to safeguard Zentraedi citizens, when in fact the aim was to halt the emigration of Zentraedi to the Southlands and to intercept any shipments of supplies to the malcontents.

  “Settlements along the Arkansas border have enacted new measures against unlawful assembly,” Miriya continued, “and the RDF has been given broad authority to conduct search and seizures.”

  “I’m sure those laws apply to Humans and Zentraedi,” Max said.

  “If that’s true, why is the government offering economic incentives to any Zentraedi willing to submit to voluntary Micronization?”

  Max glanced at her. “Sounds like the UEG is trying to turn Arkansas into a kind of Zentraedi preserve.”

  “That’s exactly what they’re doing.” Miriya put a hand on his arm to arrest his motion. Dana was riding on Max’s shoulders, banging her small fists on the top of his head. “I’m worried about Dana. You may think she’s too young to understand what’s happening, but she does.”

  “I know that. I’m concerned for her, too.”

  “Then do you think I should ask Lang or Zand to speak with her—just to explain things?”

  “That’s probably not a bad idea.”

  “I wish there was someone who could help me.”

  Max regarded
her questioningly.

  “I feel like I have to do something.” Miriya shook her head in exasperation. “The rights of my people are being violated. I’m well-known, there must be something I can do.” She held Max’s troubled gaze. “And one more thing, Max. I want you to ask Rick to keep you off the roster for further missions in the Southlands.”

  “I can’t ask—”

  “Please, Max. A dishonorable end will come to any RDF officer assigned there.”

  “I hate it, Jonathan, I’m going to hate it here,” were Catherine Wolfe’s first words on emerging from the military transport that had carried her, her husband, and their young son Johnny from the high desert of New Mexico to the suffocating heat of Cavern City, in the Venezuela Sector. A tall and strikingly handsome woman with long red hair and a cleft chin, Catherine was highly intelligent and always spoke her mind. “We’re going to do terribly here.”

  Unfortunately, she was also in the habit of issuing dire pronouncements when faced with even the smallest of obstacles. But Captain Jonathan Wolfe—her equal in looks, with slick-backed black hair and a natty mustache—had grown so accustomed to her moods over the seven years of their marriage that he scarcely paid them any mind. “Why don’t we at least give the place five minutes before we decide,” he suggested.

  He had always been more adventurous than Catherine. His fondness for new places knew no bounds, and in point of fact he thrived in the heat and humidity of the tropics. Macross Island in the years before the War had been Wolfe’s fantasyland, and he would have given anything to have been aboard the SDF-1 when it had made its accidental jump to Pluto—Zentraedi attacks or no.

  One of the first cadets graduated from the Robotech Academy, he had had every right to be aboard the ship. But just short of Breetai’s attack on the island, fate had landed him on the RDF’s Albuquerque Base, and it was there that he had met and married Catherine Montand. She had seemed daring at the time—a backpacker, a cyclist, an ace skier—but had since turned sedentary, rarely wanting to venture as far from Albuquerque as Santa Fe, let alone to the leading edge of the Southern Hemisphere. Eight-year-old Johnny, who had inherited his mother’s nesting instincts, was angry at both his parents for having been forced to leave behind his friends and his favorite TV shows.

  In the absence of jetways, passengers arriving at Cavern City Airport had to cross a stretch of blisteringly hot tarmac to reach the terminal. The Wolfe family was struggling along with their hand baggage when a man in a lightweight suit hurried out to them from the terminal and insisted on carrying Catherine’s bag.

  “Captain, I’m Martin Perez, from Mayor Carson’s office,” he said, pumping Wolfe’s hand. In a courtly manner, Perez dipped his large head to Catherine, then ruffled Johnny’s mop of dark curls, receiving a glower in return.

  “Mayor Carson requests that you stop by the Cabildo—City Hall, that is—on the way to your quarters. If it wouldn’t be inconvenient, of course. Lea—that is, Mayor Carson would like to welcome you personally. She would have met you here, but something came up at the last minute. Always a crisis, lately. I’m sure you understand, Captain.”

  Wolfe grinned. “Sure, that’d be fine.” He cut his eyes to Catherine. “You okay with it?”

  “Whatever,” she said, scowling.

  Perez looked at each of them uncertainly. “Well, then, great,” he said after a moment. “I have a car waiting out front—air-conditioned, for your pleasure—and I’ll see to it that your baggage is delivered to your quarters. We can attend to immigration and customs later on.”

  The car was a twenty-year-old Toyota with nearly bald tires, a faulty muffler, and more rust than intact metal. The air conditioner worked well enough, but the windows had to remain open to keep exhaust fumes from fouling the cab. Perez did the driving.

  The airport was situated north of the city on an expansive plateau. The two-lane road coursed through cattle-grazing land that had been hacked and burned from the surrounding forest. In the distance, in all directions, rose tall mesas with jungled crowns. Wolfe, practically leaning out the window of the right rear door, was in his element, soaking in every detail of the landscape, nostalgic for New Mexico but at the same time excited to be beginning a new phase of his life. With a grandfather who had served in Southeast Asia, a father who had designed computer software, and a mother who been a photojournalist before settling down to newscasting on Macross Island, travel had been a major influence on his life. The elder Wolfe had contributed to the creation of the machine language Emil Lang’s cybernaut teams had used to interface with EVE, the mother computer discovered aboard the Visitor. It was on-island, at the Robotech Academy, that then-cadet Wolfe had learned to pilot prototype Veritechs. But his first love had always been tanks and any sort of mobile battery—and it was Wolfe himself, early in 1999, who had put in for the transfer to Albuquerque Base, which specialized in tank training.

  Brian and Angelic Wolfe, his parents, had died during Breetai’s attack.

  Except for the billboards and the ramshackle storefronts that lined the road, there were no signs of the city; then, suddenly, the road crested a slight rise and Cavern City was below, sandwiched into a cliff-faced ravine that was itself cleaved along its length by a deep, natural trench.

  “I see where the place gets its name,” Catherine remarked. She was seated at the window opposite Wolfe’s; Johnny, sullen, was between the two of them.

  “Many of our citizens call it Trenchtown,” Perez said, reacting only to the question and not Catherine’s nasty tone. “You’ll see as we descend that the buildings have been designed to harmonize with the ruggedness of the canyon walls. Much of the adobe is provided by the land itself. The same principle has been applied in several nearby cities, some constructed on the tops of mesas, others concealed in ravines such as Cavern’s. The architectural style has been dubbed ‘the Obscuro Movement.’ ”

  “How interesting,” Catherine said. “We’ll make sure to visit each and every one of them, won’t we, Jonathan?”

  “I can assure you,” Wolfe said brusquely.

  Perez smiled uncomfortably. “Because of its location, Cavern City has been attracting diverse groups of people—some from the Northlands, many from Amazonia and the Andes mountains, and quite a number of Zentraedi who escaped the tyranny of Khyron. And now—hopefully with increased RDF presence to discourage further acts of terrorism such as occurred at the Grand Cannon—we expect an even greater influx of immigrants.”

  “Zentraedi immigrants?” Catherine asked.

  “Some, I’m sure. But have no fears, Mrs. Wolfe, Cavern City has no malcontents. We all live in harmony—just like the buildings and the land.”

  Catherine regarded him in mild alarm. “Are you saying that the Zentraedi live among you?”

  Perez nodded. “Over four hundred of them now. We’re proud that no Zee-town exists in Cavern City.”

  “Terrific,” Catherine muttered.

  Hoping to change the subject, Wolfe pointed to a dome-shaped structure, close to where the simplest of bridges spanned the city ravine. “What’s that place?”

  Perez glanced out the driver’s side window. “Ah, that’s the Church of Recurrent Tragedies.”

  Wolfe lifted an eyebrow. “Some Southlands cult, right?”

  “It’s more than a cult—a religion I’d say. We also have our share of Interstellar Retributionalists, Catholics, Jews and Evangelicals. Cavern City is very multidenominational. If the Zentraedi had houses of worship, I’m sure there would be one here.”

  “The perfect community,” Catherine said.

  Perez gestured to a series of looming concrete trestles. “Soon to be our monorail,” he told them.

  Johnny perked up at the throaty sound of a motorcycle—a brand-new Marauder—as it roared past them on the highway. The rider wore a leather vest emblazoned with a serpentine symbol and the words RED SNAKES. “Bikers!” he said elatedly. “Maybe this place won’t be so bad after all.”

  Like most of the buil
dings along Cavern’s two-mile-long main strip, City Hall was a mix of adobe and plasteel, blockish and three-storied, with a rooftop tent of solar collector panels and the requisite microwave dishes. Perez left the Toyota in an elevated lot filled with electric vehicles parked in reserved spaces, then escorted the Wolfes upstairs to the mayor’s office.

  “You’ll like her,” he said to Wolfe. “She has that Irish sense of humor.”

  On being admitted to the office, however, Wolfe thought Lea Carson appeared anything but good-natured. In her antifashion hairstyle and suit, she looked downright belligerent.

  “Wolfe, glad to have you aboard,” she said, stepping out from behind her desk to shake his hand. “I’ll tell you straightaway, Captain, we’ve got lots of work to do here, so I hope to hell you’re up to it.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Wolfe said.

  “You’re right about that.”

  There were two others in the room, and Perez handled the introductions. Carson’s director of emergency services, Rafael Mendoza, was a short, fair-complected black with somewhat squashed features under a tangle of henna-colored hair. Rho Mynalo was tall and thin, with shoulder-length brown-blond hair. He bore the enigmatic title “director of information” and wore a kind of uniform whose insignia seemed to be a corruption of the RDF fighting kite.

  “Rho is Zentraedi,” Carson thought to point out. “He’s our liaison with the Cavern’s extensive alien community.” She looked at Wolfe. “You’ll be working closely with Rho, Captain. Any problems with that?”