The Zentraedi Rebellion

by Jack McKinney

  Rick came through the door to Gunther Reinhard’s cabin brushing snow from the shoulders of a down-filled jacket and stomping it from knee-high boots. His nose was red and running and bits of ice were stuck in his hair. Reinhardt approached with a cup of coffee, which Rick eagerly accepted.

  “There must be five feet out there,” Rick said between sips. “Only the main roads are plowed. I almost didn’t make it.”

  “Motokoff’s stuck, so he won’t be coming,” Reinhardt told him. “But Lang and Obstat are here.”

  “Caruthers and Maistroff?”

  “No word from either of them. They don’t know a thing.”

  “Good. Let’s see if we can keep it that way.”

  Built of logs and fieldstone, the cabin sat high in Monument City’s only wooded valley. Rick followed the balding general through several closed doorways to a sunken den, where Lang and Obstat were warming themselves in front of an inviting fire. Ostensibly, everyone had come to play poker.

  “Look on the bright side, Rick,” Lang said, “even reporters stay home on nights like tonight.”

  Lang was right: Rick couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to leave his house without confronting a bevy of media people, all demanding to know his reaction to this accusation or that development. The debacle surrounding the Protectorate had become the story that wouldn’t go away. Then came Zagerstown, and now Leonard’s attack on the Scavengers’ base in Amazonia.

  Obstat rose from his chair and extended a hand. “I understand that congratulations are in order, Admiral.”

  “Thanks,” Rick said, shaking hands.

  “Is it official yet?” Lang asked.

  “As of Christmas. Even though I had to send the ring upside by courier.”

  Obstat laughed. “My best to Admiral Hayes.”

  “I’ll tell her next time I see her—whenever that is.”

  “Any date set?” Lang asked.

  “The way things are going, we might have to wait till Tirol.”

  “You two should consider getting married aboard the SDF-3,” Reinhardt said. “Make it a kind of christening.”

  Obstat laughed again. “Wouldn’t the media eat that up!”

  “The price of fame,” Reinhardt said. He went to the bookshelf, unlocked the door to a cleverly concealed compartment, and spent a moment studying the display screen of a device inside. “We’re still bug free, gentlemen. Not that we have to move on immediately …”

  “No, we should get started,” Rick said. “The personal stuff can wait for later.”

  “Where do we start?” Obstat said.

  “With the Protectorate,” Rick told him. “Is there any word on how the Steel Wind knew to strike from the south?”

  Obstat shook his head. “To the best of our knowledge, it was blind luck. Maistroff denies he had any specific reason for withdrawing Destroids from that part of the perimeter. I don’t see how he would stand to gain from undermining his own defenses, in any case.”

  “Assuming Maistroff was deliberately affording Steel Wind an opening,” Reinhardt said, “he was probably counting on a full-scale riot by the detainees. A riot would have justified giving free reign to his Excaliber troops.”

  “He should never have been placed in command,” Rick said.

  Reinhardt looked at him. “That was Milburn’s doing.”

  “Yeah, they’re quite the cozy couple, aren’t they.” Rick looked at Obstat. “Were Milburn and Maistroff briefed on the location of the Scavenger base?”

  “Yes. Along with Moran, Stinson, Caruthers, Edwards, and probably as many as twenty others.”

  “T. R. Edwards?” Lang asked. Then, when Obstat had confirmed it, “I don’t know if it’s relevant, but I had several run-ins with Edwards on Macross Island when he was an intelligence agent for the World Unification Alliance.”

  Rick was nodding his head. “Roy Fokker used to tell me stories about Edwards.”

  Reinhardt stoked his beard and turned to Obstat. “Can Edwards and Moran be removed from the intel loop without arousing suspicion?”

  “It would be easier to feed them false intel and wait to see if it gets to Leonard,” Rick said.

  “With Moran, possibly,” Lang answered. “But Edwards wouldn’t be fooled by a maneuver like that. It would be safer to simply remove him from the loop.”

  “Done,” Obstat said. “And Milburn?”

  “Milburn, too,” Reinhardt said. “And Maistroff and Caruthers, if we can swing it.”

  Rick shook his head in puzzlement. “What would motivate any of them to go to Leonard with top-secret information?”

  “Perhaps no one did,” Lang said. “Perhaps Leonard got lucky. Forgive me for mentioning it, but I believe it was an RDF information officer who blithely announced to the world that the Scavengers were based in Amazonia.”

  “There’s another issue we need to discuss,” Reinhardt said. “Disciplinary action for Lieutenant Summers.”

  Rick snorted a laugh. “Summers’s media briefing didn’t provide Leonard with a missing clue. All she said was ‘Amazonia.’ And how many millions of square miles is that?”

  “You’re right,” Reinhardt was willing to admit. “Which only reinforces that someone in the loop went to him with our satellite intelligence.”

  “Was it really mass suicide, or did Leonard execute the Zentraedi?” Lang asked.

  Reinhardt shrugged. “No one’s come forward with evidence of an execution. But one thing’s certain: they missed out on capturing the Scavengers. Only five of the victims were females.”

  “That means the Scavengers are still at large,” Lang said, “and another Zagerstown could occur at any time.”

  “So long as it happens south of the Venezuela Sector,” Reinhardt muttered.

  Lang stared at Reinhardt while Reinhardt and Rick were trading glances. “We’re phasing out all RDF operations in the Southlands,” Rick explained. “Cuiabá, the Argentine, every base except Cavern City, where Captain Wolfe has somehow managed to score repeatedly against the dissidents. The Twenty-third’s success against the Shroud and Fist was chiefly Wolfe’s doing.”

  Lang adopted a defeated look. “In other words, the RDF is surrendering control of the Southlands to Anatole Leonard.”

  No one spoke for a long moment. Wind howled at the cabin’s insulated windows and infiltrated the stone chimney to rouse the fire.

  “Perhaps we should concentrate on discussing Rick and Lisa’s wedding plans,” Lang said. “Before those get sabotaged as well.”

  When word had reached her of Neela’s undoing in Freetown, Seloy Deparra knew that it was time to abandon the mecha base. Later she would hear on television that the “Scavengers,” as the RDF had branded them, were believed to be operating from a secret installation in Amazonia. But before that, she had received warning directly from the dispirited remnants of Neela’s organization—some of them former Senburu, more recently into prostitution and enforcement—who had carried south the news that those arrested by the RDF had informed on the “zopilotes”

  Seloy was neither surprised nor unduly alarmed; after all, the Scavengers had already enjoyed a good run. And she liked that the name selected for her band of female techs referred to a beast that fed on carrion, which was exactly how she had come to think of the Human race—as decaying flesh. But knowing Anatole Leonard as well as she did, she understood that he would scour every square mile of jungle until he found them—scorching the forest if necessary—and she couldn’t allow that to happen. Not when so much remained to be done.

  As for Neela’s employees, they hadn’t traveled south to escape the long arm of the RDF, but to beg Seloy’s forgiveness for doubly dishonoring the Imperative: first, by failing to protect Neela; and, second, by not having somehow arranged for the death of their weak-willed comrades. Seloy had granted them permission to amend their disgrace through an act of mass suicide. It was nothing more than coincidence that the seventeen had done so on the morning of Leonard’s attack, only
a day short of the camp’s abandonment by the last of the Scavengers.

  The new base was high in the foothills of the mountain range that ran the length of the Southland’s western coast. Nourished by the clouds themselves, the jungle here was even more lush and varied than that of the lowlands. From the crude balcony of her quarters, Seloy could look down on treetops, pairs of brightly colored birds in flight, the white-water rapids of a river. In the mornings, mist lingered on the valley floor, evanescing as Earth tipped toward its star. Even Hirano, learning to talk in sentences these past few months, was stirred by the balcony view. In fact, all the Scavengers were becoming increasingly enamored of the forest and its profusion of animal and insect life. Xan Norri was especially fond of wasps and spiders. The Amazonian indigines who had guided the Scavengers to the site called that area of the mountains “the eyebrow of the forest.”

  Seloy had no regrets about having abandoned the partially completed Stingers. The Shroud and Fist had already made the Stinger obsolete by allowing theirs to fall into RDF hands. How long could it be now before Penn or Bronson or some other mecha engineer discovered a way to thwart the Stingers by encoding every Destroid and Veritech with an IFF signature that would render them easy targets, despite their innate maneuverability and enhanced firepower? More importantly, the flow of Protoculture cells from the factory satellite had ceased; Theofre Elmikk was apparently more cautious with his operation than Neela had been. Not that Seloy trusted Elmikk for a moment. Like all male Zentraedi, he was incapable of thinking like a Human, and was therefore bound to fail at whatever plan he set himself to. The Shroud and Fist, the Steel Wind, the Burrowers … all of them blind with rage, consistently subverting themselves.

  The latest entry in the field, for example. The so-called New Unity, made up of the ten former members of the Steel Wind who had escaped Arkansas with their lives and some forty former detainees from the Protectorate itself. Detainees: another word Seloy liked. Ranoc Nomarre, the New Unity’s leader, was a small, facially scarred male, unsure of himself, untested in battle, still seething about having been downsized—operating on pure hatred for anything Human. He had visited the lowland camp in its final days, all but begging Seloy, Marla, and the others for a Stinger. Hostility oozed from him when he had described his three-month ordeal in the Protectorate, and the difficulties he’d endured in reaching the camp—shipping across the Gulf of Mexico and the open ocean on the same freighter that had carried the Steel Wind north a month earlier, hacking his way through the forest, fording swollen rivers … Once a member of Khyron’s Seventh Mechanized, Nomarre was a guaranteed threat to the cause, but Seloy had bestowed a Stinger on the New Unity nonetheless. Terror was terror, whatever form it took.

  With only fifteen Stingers remaining—not counting those scattered about the Southlands, the property of one male group or another—Seloy understood that she was going to have to be more circumspect about who got what. No easy task, what with representatives of outlaw bands turning up every week petitioning for mecha. Excepting the one that had gone to the New Unity, the Scavengers’ most recent donation of a Stinger was to an all-female group known as the Claimers. Founded in Australia by ex-Quadrano lieutenant Tomina Jepp, the group had plagued Southeast Asia with successful raids. But what had interested Seloy and persuaded her to part with a Stinger was Jepp’s disclosure that the scientist Lazlo Zand, stationed at Tokyo’s Robotech Research Center, had been making discreet inquiries about the possibility of procuring “alien artifacts.”

  Besides, what was one less Stinger? If the terror was to continue, the Scavengers were going to have to come up with something new and daring to spring on the Human race—something not necessarily limited to inflicting damage on cities and convoys.

  Seloy was forever trying to will herself to think like a Human. When she looked at Hirano, she thought about Miriya and her daughter, Dana. Miriya had appeared on television frequently during the Protectorate occupation, proclaiming how her first cause was Zentraedi rights, even though she was married to a Human. But how might Miriya feel if she knew the truth about her best friend? Would it matter any if Miriya learned the truth about who had fathered Hirano? Indeed, would the fact that Seloy was alive mean anything, or had Miriya Parina been more corrupted by Human ways than she herself realized? Sufficiently changed to consider Seloy one of the enemy?

  Human thinking was difficult. Taxing. Humans had been through scores of wars, almost as many as the Zentraedi, so in some ways the idea of terrorizing them with weapons seemed naive. What were their most deeply seated fears, and how could they be unleashed? If only there was a way to use the Stingers to truly sting the Humans. To somehow infect everyone of them with terror.

  Terror as a kind of contagious disease.

  An epidemic of terror.

  “Where did you get a tan this time of year?” Lang asked Zand the moment he saw him.

  “Sunlamps,” Zand said, ignoring Lang’s offer of a chair in favor of adopting a guarded position against the far wall.

  The two were in Lang’s office in the Robotech Research Center. With the UEG in recess and the factory projects on schedule, Lang had decided to spend a week or so in Tokyo, catching up with everyone. Zand was at the top of the list of people he wanted to meet with. Suddenly, now, the vague unease Lang had felt in recent phone conversations with Zand was blossoming into full-fledged concern.

  “Sunlamps?” Lang said skeptically.

  “All right, all right, if you have to know, I took some time off and went to the beach.”

  “What beach? There isn’t a sun-drenched beach within a thousand miles.”

  Zand made a minor adjustment to his dark glasses. “I don’t remember the name of the place. Somewhere in Thailand.”

  Lang sat back in his chair. “Let me be sure I have this straight: you decided you needed some time off, so you, what?—you jetted down to Thailand to a beach you can’t remember the name of, and you soaked up some color.”

  “Exactly. You have it straight.”

  “You traveled alone?”

  “I happen to enjoy traveling alone.”

  Lang stood up and walked across the room. Without announcing his intentions, he swept the sunglasses from Zand’s face and looked into his eyes. It was like looking into a mirror.

  Lang staggered back, supporting himself on the edge of his desk. “Good God, you’ve done it. You found a way to take the mind-boost.”

  Zand whipped the glasses out of Lang’s hand and put them on. “What are you babbling about? You know as well as I that Zor’s console was destroyed.”

  Lang stared at him, wide-eyed. “You found a way. Tell me what you did, Lazlo. Don’t shut me out.”

  Zand hesitated, then grimaced sinisterly. “You’re right, Doctor, I did find a way. You want the details? I injected myself with a mixture of Zentraedi blood and a couple of ccs of fluid from that Invid craft we found. I was unconscious for three hours. I’m sure I almost died. But believe me, Doctor, my IQ is right up there with yours now, and it’s increasing—every day, every hour. And soon I’ll have an understanding of the Shapings. I’ll have powers you never dreamed of.”

  Lang lowered himself to the desk like one deflated. “Lazlo, listen to me. You don’t realize what you’ve done. You think this is all some competition, but it isn’t, and you’re going to begin to understand the downside of the boost. The hunger that surpasses any known addiction. The moments of madness—” Lang paused to catch his breath. “Why couldn’t you have talked to me first?”

  “Talked to you? Talked to you? When exactly was I supposed to do that? The great and all-powerful Lang, always addressing the UEG, or receiving one honor or another. Designing mecha, designing starships, traveling up and down the gravity well like a superhero … Tell me, Doctor, when was I supposed to talk to you?”

  “Lazlo,” Lang said softly, “I never realized—”

  “That’s right, you never did, and that’s been the problem all along. But no more. Because I don’t ne
ed you anymore. I have people who accept me for what I am, not as just some pale alternative to the great Lang. I have funding, I have projects. I have my own mission, my own destiny to shape. And perhaps it’s not as bound up with yours as you’d like it to be, but I can’t help that the lowly disciple has grown up to found his own movement, Doctor. And we’ll just have to wait and see which of us turns out to be the more influential.”

  Zand spun on his heel and hurried out of the room. Lang followed him out into the corridor but soon gave up the chase, stopping to lean on a water cooler and collect his thoughts.

  Was Zand—even Zand the perennial risktaker—strong enough to navigate the razor’s edge of madness and survive? The objective and curious half of Lang’s mind belonged not to the world of Human emotions but to Protoculture and the Shapings. But the Lang that cared for Lazlo Zand was the more powerful one, and already he mourned the loss of a friend and brilliant colleague. Zand—after Milburn and Moran—had joined the list of people he could no longer count on. When was it going to stop?

  His thoughts were interrupted by a mellifluous soprano voice singing a rendition of one of his favorite pre-War songs, “A Day in the Life.” He followed the voice down the corridor and through several turns until it led him to the cybertechnology lab. By now several of the center’s machine intelligence specialists—short-haired men and women sporting baggy, retro fashions—had joined in the song, but the soprano’s was the only voice on key. Lang had guessed from the start that it was the android, JANICE M, though he hadn’t been told anything about its learning the Beatles classic.

  The cybertechs grinned when they saw him enter the room.

  “We thought this might get your attention,” one of them said.

  The android stopped singing to stare at Lang. In its jumpsuit and real-hair wig, it couldn’t have looked more lifelike. “That was lovely singing, JANICE,” Lang told it.

  The living machine smiled. “I’m glad you enjoyed it, Doctor Lang.”