“Oh, that’s right. You lost your VT, didn’t you?”
“Thanks, pal,” Max said, “for rubbing it in.”
Rick clapped him on the knee. “Guess you’ll just have to use the one I flew down here.” He nodded toward the window. “It’s waiting for you on the strip, whenever you want it.”
Lazlo Zand sat alone in the dark in his office in the Tokyo Research Center, staring at the telephone and contemplating how to approach the task at hand. In the months since his abduction by the Claimers, he had noticed a gradual strengthening of some of his powers, regardless of his being denied the elements he felt were needed for a full transformation to occur. His reconfigured eyes allowed him to see in the dark with a cat’s clarity; and, like Lang, he was subsisting on substantially fewer calories, and on a mere three hours of sleep per day. More importantly, when working with Protoculture he was sometimes able to perceive ghostly images hovering at the periphery of his vision. Were these what Lang had been referring to years earlier in the engine room of the ravaged SDF-1? Was he getting a glimpse of the Shapings themselves, or were these wraithlike figures merely the guardians of some greater mystery?
Zand grasped the necessity of pushing the boundaries of the psychic envelope if he was ever going to supersede Lang. And in the absence of Flower of Life and/or ur-Protoculture derived from Invid mecha, his only hope for transformative evolution, his only key to accessing the future was via Dana Sterling. She was a nexus of some sort, a meeting place of events, and he needed to tap into her and somehow divert the flow of energies into himself. He needed to posses her as she was possessed by the Shapings.
And now that Mommy had suddenly disappeared, he thought he had a chance of doing just that. For the past year or more, Daddy Max had been growing a bit wary of little Dana’s sessions with “the eccentric professor,” and Dana’s three self-appointed Zentraedi Guardians had grown positively protective. But with Daddy off combing the forests of Amazonia for Mommy, Rico and company on the factory satellite, and the comely five-year-old being shuffled between the Grants and some nobody named Rolf Emerson, who was around to interfere? Especially when he would only be trying to help Dana through a difficult period. Mommyless, Daddyless … poor little thing. Come and tell Uncle Lazlo all about it. And don’t worry about these devices you’re hooked up to; they’re only so Uncle Laz can get a clear picture of what’s going on inside you.
The plan would entail relocating to Monument City temporarily, but that was a small price to pay for continual access to the key to the Shapings.
But what to say to Jean Grant, Zand thought, staring at the telephone. He had never been good at small talk. Best come directly to the point. Maybe he’d be lucky enough to reach the Grants’ answering machine.
But if not: Mrs. Grant, I was just calling to express my concern far Dana, and to let you know that I’ll soon be spending some time in Monument and that if there is anything I can do for the child—perhaps simply talk to hen as her mother has had me do in the past—please feel free to contact me at any hour. Should your busy schedule forbid it—I know how it can be for medical doctors—rest assured that I will be checking with you from time to time until this crisis has passed.
The approach to Cavern City’s runway, at the eastern terminus of the narrow, steep-sided canyon that cradled the city, was tricky at the best of times and downright challenging when you were facing headwinds, had a lot on your mind, and were crafted to a Veritech you had just been introduced to. Max executed a perfect landing, nonetheless. Two VTs from the Skull and one from the Twenty-third were already on the ground when Max touched down. The three pilots were waiting in the hangar, along with a red-haired Wolfe Pack lieutenant named Ron Bartley.
“I haven’t been here since we retook the Grand Cannon,” Max said, much aware of Venezuela’s humid heat, as he shook hands with Bartley.
“I wish I’d gotten to meet you then, sir.”
Max blushed. “We were in and out. Only a day of R&R in Cavern.” He glanced around. “By the looks of things, this place has changed a lot.”
“Wait’ll you see the city,” Bartley told him.
Wolfe’s man led the four pilots to a battered jeep and settled himself behind an outsize steering wheel. The RDF base was only a few miles from the airfield, but Bartley took the long way around to give Max a glimpse of the expanded city center. Max was grateful for the breeze.
Cavern’s linear sprawl of glass and adobe buildings now stretched for six miles along both sides of the natural chasm that bisected the city. Simple bridges spanned the chasm; an elevated monorail paralleled it on the north side.
“The city keeps growing higher because it has nowhere else to go,” Bartley commented. “Mayor Carson has tried to restrict immigration, but Zent refugees keep arriving every day.” He looked over his shoulder at the dark-complected pilot from the Twenty-third, Boru Hesh. “No disrespect intended.”
Hesh shrugged. “We refer to one another as Zent. No reason you shouldn’t.”
“Where are all the building materials coming from?” Max asked, wiping sweat from his upper lip.
“From the Cannon. You can recognize pieces of the thing in everything that’s been built in the past two years.”
“At least it’s finally being put to good use.”
Bartley cut his eyes to Max. “Think it would’ve made a difference if they’d finished it on time?”
“Against the fleet?” Max shrugged. “Ask Boru.”
“There would have been fewer ships to fall to Earth,” Boru opined. “Otherwise, conditions would be much as they are now.”
When they finally arrived on the RDF base, Bartley again took the long route, wheeling the jeep past the mecha hangars before heading for Wolfe’s office.
“Centaur tanks,” Max said in exaggerated disbelief. “This has got to be the museum, right?”
“You’re not the first one to use that line, sir,” Bartley said.
“Is it true Wolfe went to Freetown for parts?”
Bartley nodded. “I can introduce you to the guy who went with him—Roger Malone.”
“No wonder people refer to your unit as a ‘pack.’ ”
“We gave ourselves that name, sir,” Bartley amended. “But it’s true, we’re like a family. Even though I would have been the last person to say that when I first met the captain.”
Max thought about his own family. He had spoken with Dana and she was fine. And he had managed to convince himself that he was doing all he could to locate Miriya. “Is Wolfe married?”
“Uh, yeah, he’s married. Has a son, too. Mrs. Wolfe works for Mayor Carson’s office. But I think she’d rather be living in Monument or somewhere happening.”
Max recalled Rick’s statement about the promotion Wolfe had turned down. “It’s not always easy doing equal service to a marriage and the military.”
Bartley rocked his head from side to side. “I’ve got a wife and kid myself, but all of us understand the priorities. I figure there’ll be time enough for family life after we get the planet cooking again.” Bartley made an abrupt stop in front of Wolfe’s tile-roofed office, and everyone piled out into the glare of the midday sun. The captain himself—with his signature shades and pencil-thin mustache—hastened outside to greet them. His khaki shirt was mottled from perspiration.
“A real honor, Captain Sterling,” Wolfe said, pumping Max’s hand.
“You’re no stranger, either,” Max told him.
“Yeah, but believe only the good stuff.”
Max introduced Wolfe to his Skull teammates and to Boru Hesh. Wolfe asked after some of the Twenty-third pilots who had flown raids from Cavern City against the Shroud and Fist. Then, after directing Bartley to show Max and the others to their quarters, he spun on his heel and hurried back into his office.
Two hours later, ten men were grouped around a long table in a briefing room that was stiflingly hot, despite a large fan that was lazing overhead. Wolfe, wearing wraparound sunglasses and a clean
shirt, stood at the head of the table. “At six-thirty local time four days ago,” he began, “four Stingers attacked a cargo plane en route to Cavern from Monument.” He aimed a laser pointer at a wall map studded with colored pushpins. “The last commo from the flight crew was at grid reference MM-seven-two. Now, we’re reasonably sure we’ve found the plane—it was ID’ed by satellite look-down—but the question of why it was skyjacked remains unanswered. The skyjacking of a lone cargo plane crewed by five civilians doesn’t fit the malcontents’ standard MO.”
“What was the cargo?” a member of the Wolfe Pack asked.
“Food and medicine.” Wolfe held up his hands to silence conversation. “I know what you’re thinking, but it doesn’t hold up. All reports indicate that the malcontents aren’t going hungry, thanks to the Human trash that have thrown in with them. And we don’t know of one case where they’ve gone after medicine or medical supplies.”
“Maybe their modus operandi is changing,” someone suggested.
Wolfe nodded. “Okay, maybe it is. But what else?”
Max gestured to the map. “Which band controls the area where the plane was located?”
“The Shroud and Fist—an all-male group armed with a couple of Tactical ‘Pods and second-generation Stingers. We’ve been mixing it up with them on and off for two years now.” Wolfe motioned with his chin to Boru Hesh. “So has the Twenty-third. The surveillance satellite diverted over the area shot opticals of six longhouses, four Stingers, and our missing plane, concealed under a scrambler tarp.”
“They’re hiding the thing?” someone asked in puzzled amazement.
“It’s bait,” the Skull’s Bill Mammoth said.
“Of course it is,” Wolfe told him. “But I put it to you again: Why? What are we being set up to encounter?”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
On the occasion of our second meeting [with Tan Fose], I realized that I was being set up—that I had been targeted for abduction by some malcontent group. But what did that matter, if in the end I would have access to what I needed to complete the transformation: access to Protoculture, Zentraedi blood, artifacts, and who knew what else the aliens were harboring. Even as I lay chained to the dank floor of that cave in Australia, I was thinking of how to make the most of my predicament. Reasoning that sexual congress might result in a transfer of bodily fluids, I asked one of my female captors if she wished to have her way with me while we were awaiting a reply to the demands Tomina Jepp had issued the RDF.
Lazlo Zand, Event Horizon: Perspectives on Dana Sterling and the Second Robotech War
The forests of southern Venezuela were not unlike those of Singken, a planet the Zentraedi had conquered early in the Masters’ campaign to rule the Local Group. Tasked with the conquest, Azonia’s Quadrano had been relentless in their attacks on Singken’s techless populace. Even now Miriya could recall the sight of an entire continent aflame, millions of acres of trees and grassland torched by the directed energy of Female Power Armor. To be walking in such a forest now, alone and weaponless, filled her with a disturbing sense of irony.
It had been five days earlier that a malcontent operative had paid a late-night visit to the high-rise apartment in Monument. The woman had the unkempt look of a sympath, only rougher around the edges. Miriya recalled her wary, haunted eyes. She said she had a message from an old friend, but when Miriya asked who, she received not a name but a one-time-only diskette. “Know this much, T’sen Parina,” the woman told her. “Many T’sentradi have died to see this delivered to you.”
Miriya had played the disk and listened, intuiting that it was from Seloy Deparra long before her friend spoke. Yes, it’s me, Miriya Parina. Alive, and in urgent need of your help … Seloy had said nothing about what she’d been doing since the Brasília riot; only that Miriya needed to travel to the Southlands immediately—if their friendship still mattered to her. Coordinates were furnished, along with instructions to take along survival gear and food.
“Activate this when you reach the designated place,” the messenger had added, pressing a locator device into Miriya’s left hand. “Walk west, keeping the river on your right. You will be found.”
“But how am I expected to get to this place?” Miriya asked.
“That much is up to you. Surely a Quadrano can find a way.”
Miriya had been tempted to let Dana sleep, but her heart forced her to say good-bye, to cradle the half-asleep child in her arms and explain as best as she could.
“You know how you and Bowie are best friends?” she had whispered in the dark. “Well, I, too, have a good friend whom I haven’t seen in many years. I knew her even before I met and married your father. And now this friend needs my help very badly, so I have to go to where she is. Right away, darling, tonight. So Mommy has to ask you to be brave while she’s gone, and to be good for Jean and Vince, who are going to take care of you until I come home. Jean will be here soon to get you. Do you understand?”
Dana nodded, asking, “Does Daddy know?”
“He’ll find out.”
“Is this about the angry Zentraedi?”
Clever, clever, child, Miriya had thought. “I don’t know, Dana. But you’re not to tell anyone, okay? And always remember that you have the best of Human and Zentraedi inside you, and that there’s no one else like you in the entire universe. You’re special, you’ll always be special, and your Daddy and I love you very, very much.”
“I know,” Dana said. “And I won’t tell what you said. But please, Mommy, don’t do anything bad.”
The words were still echoing inside her. How simple it was for children, their world of black and white, good and bad.
She had been walking for three days, keeping the meandering river on her right as instructed, and had probably put close to forty miles between herself and the Veritech trainer she had commandeered from Fokker Base and abandoned to the forest. How easy it had been for the well-known Mrs. Sterling to infiltrate Fokker. Rank really did have its privileges.
Initially, she had raged against the forest’s heat and insects, but had since resigned herself to the discomforts and had actually managed a few hours’ sleep the previous night. Her thorn-torn clothes, the backpack and sleeping bag, even the dehydrated meals, had all come from Max’s closet at home. On landing, she had disabled one locator only to activate another, but as yet there had been no sign of Seloy. For the past half hour, however, she had been closing on the odors of a cook fire, and she thought she could distinguish distant voices amid the cacophony of insect sounds.
Another fifteen minutes of stealthful walking brought her to the edge of a small clearing. Peering through tangled brush, she counted eight Zentraedi males, busy at camp chores. A few mules were grazing on leaves, and two of the men had their heads buried in the engine compartment of a much-abused canvas-topped truck. Just inside the treeline north of the clearing stood a captured Veritech, Battloid-configured and repainted in camouflaging colors. Miriya was debating the wisdom of showing herself when someone laid the barrel of a handgun against her hair-plastered right cheek.
“Raise your arms above your head and stand up slowly,” a man said quietly in broken Spanglish. He was shirtless and toned, with youthful features and spiked, light-brown hair.
“Par dessu, T’sen,” Miriya said.
Surprise wrinkled the Zentraedi’s face. “Are you with the Scavengers?” he asked in their language.
Miriya shook her head. “I’m unaligned. But I’m ready to fight the fight; to kill or be killed—”
“Save your enthusiasm for the captain,” the man interrupted. He prodded her in the small of the back, motioning her into the clearing. “T’sen Nomarre,” he shouted, “kyy teezel.”
While the rest of the band were gathering round, a small, scar-faced man with thick brows and a high forehead emerged from a thatch-roofed lean- to and began to saunter toward her, dark eyes widening with each approaching step. “Am I to believe what I’m seeing?” He stopped to glanc
e at his comrades. “Don’t any of you recognize her? This is Miriya Parina!”
The quizzical stares and sinister smiles became gapes of confoundment.
“You’re wrong, T’sen,” Miriya said quickly. “But your mistake is easily explained. Parina and I are members of the same clone queue. I know her, of course, but appearance is all I share with her. My name is Jiwei Coor.”
Nomarre looked skeptical. “You’re lying.”
“It’s the hair,” Miriya said, fingering her damp green strands. “I’ve tried to recolor it to lessen the similarity, but it doesn’t seem to accept Human-made dyes.”
Nomarre regarded her in silence for a long moment. “What you doing out here, ‘Jiwei Coor’?”
Miriya glanced around. “Looking for you.”
“For us?”
“Any band that will have me, I mean. I’ve grown sick of my life among our acculturated breathren in Cavern City. I wish to put my warrior skills to work for the cause.”
Nomarre signaled the shirtless malcontent to holster his weapon and told Miriya she could lower her hands. “So, Jiwei Coor perhaps shares Parina’s fighting spirit as well as her features.” He motioned her to a log that served as a bench. “I am Ranoc Nomarre, and we are the New Unity.”
“I’ve heard of you,” Miriya said. “Is this your permanent camp?”
Nomarre made up his mind about something, then shook his blockish head. “We’re on our way to a meeting hosted by the Scavengers.”
Miriya pretended to be impressed. “Will you take me?”
Nomarre grinned. “We certainly will, T’sen.” He walked over to her and grabbed hold of her chin. “They will tell us who you really are. And if you’re lying, I will personally gut you.”
Miriya was careful not to resist. “You’d gut one who has been the most vocal supporter of equal rights for our race? Who told the truth about the Brasília Riot, and pressured the UEG to end the occupation of the Protectorate—”
“Who married a Human,” Nomarre countered. “Who birthed a Human child. Whose alleged concern for her people makes her the ideal RDF spy … And what do you know of the Protectorate, female. I was there. One of the detainees, one of the many forcibly Micronized. Parina—ever the media celebrity—did nothing to prevent it.” Nomarre swung to his men. “Cuff her.”
The Zentraedi Rebellion Page 30