The Zentraedi Rebellion

by Jack McKinney

  Miriya allowed her hands to be shackled behind her back, but she kept her eyes riveted on Nomarre. Sympathy notwithstanding, she couldn’t permit him to interfere with her mission.

  While he was shoving her toward the truck, where he apparently meant to store her, she tried to make him understand that she wasn’t his enemy. When all appeals to reason failed, she simply skull-butted him in the face, fracturing his nose.

  As he fell back, she leapt straight up, bringing her knees to her chest and her arms out in front of her where they belonged. No sooner did Nomarre recover from the skull-butting than she uppercut him with the backs of her shackled hands. His pained moans brought his comrades running, but by then she had hold of Nomarre’s handgun, a few blasts from which sent everyone diving for cover.

  Projectiles and energy beams tried to find her as she scrambled to the far side of the truck and jinked across the clearing for the safety of the forest. She paused to aim one blast at the Battloid’s optic sensor, then disappeared into the trees, leaves and branches falling around her as if pruned by a volley of lethal fire from the camp.

  Night was falling, but not fast enough to conspire in her escape. Breathless, she squatted on her haunches, set Nomarre’s handgun on timed release, and gripped the thing tightly between her knees. Then she laid the chain of the cuffs over the muzzle and leaned the rest of herself as far from the discharge as possible. The blast slagged the chain and drove bits of molten metal into her exposed flesh. She screamed through gritted teeth, picked herself up off the ground, and plunged deeper into the woods.

  Miriya was down there somewhere, Max told himself as he soared over the jungled escarpment that formed the western boundary of the Venezuela Sector. He had wanted to visit the spot where she’d set the trainer down, but Rick had urged him not to. Specialists from SOG’s Technical Services Division had literally dismantled the mecha component by component, searching for anything that could be construed as a message or a clue to Miriya’s disappearance. The extrapolated timing of her vertical landing coincided with that of his crash in the Congo.

  Dana had confessed that Miriya had gone to help a good friend—one she’d known longer than Max. Was it Seloy Deparra, Max wondered, alive after all these years? If so, what did Seloy want from Miriya now? And why did it entail such secrecy? Unless Seloy had joined a malcontent band …

  Flanking his VT now were those of Willy Mammoth and Nick Fowler, with Bora Hesh flying rear guard. They were fifteen miles southwest of their objective when their IFF scanners began screaming; ten when they encountered the first Stinger.

  The technohybrid had launched from the canopy like a rocket, spinning and spewing missiles in a 180-degree arc. The RDF pilots broke formation and spent five minutes shaking heat-seekers before they could even think about offensive maneuvers. When they did, a second Stinger appeared, vectoring in from the northeast and seeding the sky with a whole new crop of red-tipped pursuers.

  Max powered straight up out of the fray and went to Battloid mode to rain downward bolts on the bulky shoulders of this latest arrival, holing and crippling it. At the same time, Fowler, Mammoth, and Hesh were all giving chase to the first Stinger, dodging a flock of corkscrewing missiles while pouring everything they had at the Stinger’s eminently targetable hindquarters.

  Max’s hands clutched reflexively when he saw Mammoth take two Decas in the belly and roll over, leaking white smoke. Even so, his own missiles had found their mark and the Stinger was falling as well.

  “Skull Two to Skull Leader,” Willy said calmly. “Looks like I’ll be sitting out the next dance.”

  “Let go of it, Willy,” Max told him over the tactical net. “It’s only a piece of hardware.”

  “I’ll make sure to mention that when Command sends me the bill. Enabling autoeject.”

  “Watch your ass on the way down,” Fowler said. “Those branches are gonna want a chunk of you.”

  “Maybe I’ll just go in headfirst.”

  “Evac’ll be on the way,” Max said.

  “I’ll be partying with the Stinger pilots in the meantime,” Willy said. “Over and out.”

  Max switched to the command frequency. “Captain Wolfe, Skull Two is going to be dropping into your area, south-southwest of the main logging road. If you’ll handle recovery, the three of us will proceed to the objective and make arrangements for your arrival.”

  “You’re not out to steal our thunder, are you, Captain?” Wolfe asked.

  “Just trying to hold onto whatever surprise we have left, Jon. Although even the Wolfe Pack deserves a break once in a while.”

  “Only on my say-so,” Wolfe said. “But good hunting until then, guys.”

  Max zeroed the VT’s autopilot and executed a low flyby over the objective, expecting ground fire but receiving none. Through the treetops he could make out the crude huts, the scrambler tarp, and two upright mecha. The on-board computer identified the mecha as Stingers; infrared confirmed the presence of at least three Humans in two separate huts.

  Reconfiguring the VT to Guardian mode, Max ordered Fowler and Hesh to remain airborne while he went in for a closer look. The malcontent camp was uncomfortably quiet. He landed, autocannon in gauntleted hand, walked the Guardian to the scrambler tarp, and tore it loose from its stakes. The skyjacked cargo plane looked as though it had been looted; during the attack, the Stingers had ripped several gaping holes in the fuselage.

  The VT’s external mikes picked up the distressed sounds of one of the survivors, and in a moment Max saw a man stagger from one of the huts, clawing at his back.

  “Help me, somebody help me!” the man was screaming. “Take ’em away, they’re crawling all over me!”

  Max raised the canopy and climbed out of his craft. “Easy does it, fellow. You’re going to be all right.”

  He hadn’t even gotten the words out when the man whirled on him—face beaded with sweat—and attacked, knocking Max aside and disappearing around the corner of a hut. “They’re going to kill us, they’re going to kill us all!” Max heard him screaming.

  Shaken, Max returned to the VT and told Fowler to land at the opposite end of the camp and begin a hut-by-hut search. “But for God’s sake, be careful.”

  Max drew his sidearm and cautiously entered the hut the man had exited. Facedown on the floor was a dead crewmember. Rodents were brazenly gnawing at the corpse. Max tasted bile in his mouth, and made a slow turn to the right. Standing with his back to the wall was the plane’s pilot—Captain Blake, Max recalled. Blake, panting and gripping a survival knife in both hands, wore the same crazed look as the man Max had confronted outside.

  “No one’s going to hurt you,” Max said in the most soothing voice he could manage under the circumstances. “I’m Captain Sterling, from—”

  Blake leapt at him, slicing the air with the knife. Max slid to the ground, extending a leg into Blake’s midriff, knocking the wind out of him. “I don’t want to have to hurt you, Cap—”

  Blake rallied and came at him with the knife raised in both hands. Max saw the futility of trying to talk the man down and took charge, slipping to the side of the blow, backhanding Blake across the jaw, spinning him around, and sending him headfirst into the mud wall. Two more jaw-jarring punches were required to send Blake to the ground and keep him there.

  Fowler was calling to Max over the radio. “Captain, I’ve found the woman, Ramirez, but she seems to be in shock. The one with her wasn’t as lucky. Looks like he was rat food.”

  “I’ve got the same situation,” Max said, frightened and breathing hard.

  “What happened here, sir?” Fowler asked.

  “I don’t know.” Max heard a noise and started, but it was only one of the rodents. His heart was racing. “Any word from Wolfe?”

  “The Pack’s just arrived. They extracted Willy, he’s okay.”

  “Did they find the Zentraedi pilots?”

  “They have them, too. Three women.”

  “I thought you said the Shroud and
Fist was an all-male group,” Max said when he and Wolfe had rendezvoused in a longhouse at the eastern extreme of the malcontent camp.

  Wolfe scratched at his head. “Maybe they’ve decided to go coed?”

  Hands cuffed behind them, the three alien women wore utility jumpsuits emblazoned with the Zentraedi sigil. The tallest of the three had long honey-blond hair and an up-turned nose. Another was petite but fierce looking. The third was powerfully built and had a shaved head.

  “You feel like talking to us?” Max asked them in Zentraedi.

  They were taken aback, but only momentarily. “Don’t mistake us for hajoca, Human,” the hairless one said. “We have nothing to say to you.”

  Max translated for Wolfe’s benefit, then turned to the women again. “You may not be traitors, but right now you are something equally deplorable—prisoners.”

  The tall one’s face flushed with rage. “Filthy Micronian! You think you can defeat us? The Scavengers will wipe this planet clean—”

  “Alinnen—enough!” the bald one said, cutting her off. “Sesannu!”

  Max grinned at Wolfe. “I think we might be able to get somewhere with these three if we separate them.”

  “Good thinking,” Wolfe started to say when the radio clipped to his belt chirped.

  “Wolfe, this is Rosen.”

  Wolfe depressed the radio’s talk button. “Go ahead, Rosen.”

  “We’ve got a situation developing out here. The two Stingers have self-activated. They’re making all kinds of—shit!”

  Cannon reports from outside shook the longhouse. Over the radio came a squabble of voices and a loud hissing sound, followed by a single whump! from the Centaur’s main gun and a deafening explosion.

  Reflexively, Wolfe had ducked under a crudely built table. “We better get out there,” he told Max.

  Max glanced at the three Zentraedi. None of the three had moved a muscle, and just now the bald one was grinning. “Kara-brek,” she said softly, as if to Max. “Kara-brek, kara-brek …” One at a time, her comrades took up the chant, gradually upping the volume and the tempo.

  “Kara-brek, kara-brek, karabrek, karabrek …”

  At the same time, the ground under their feet had begun to quake from the rhythmic fall of heavy footsteps.

  Max and Wolfe exchanged sudden, knowing looks and broke for the doorway—not a moment before the arms of a Stinger burst through the sidewall and the entire longhouse blew to pieces.

  It took several minutes for the dust to settle, and for Max and Wolfe to dig themselves out from under the mud-and-wattle rubble and to pick the thatch from their hair.

  “The Stinger was programmed to make sure those women wouldn’t be taken alive,” Max said. “They knew all along they were going to die.”

  “Us with them,” Wolfe said. “If things had gone according to plan.”

  Max forced an exhale. “I should have taken the Stingers out as soon as I arrived. When I didn’t meet any resistance, I kept thinking about Leonard’s raid on the Scavenger base, and assumed we were home free.”

  Several members of the Pack had showed up to check on Wolfe and Max. “How are your men?” Wolfe asked Ron Bartley.

  “They seem all right. The Stinger emitted some kind of particle cloud before Rosen took it out, but no one’s any the worse for wear so far.”

  “Was that the hissing sound we heard?” Max wanted to know.

  Bartley nodded. “No evidence of radioactivity or known chemical agents.”

  Wolfe threw him a look. “Not good enough. I want Rosen’s Centaur wrapped and sealed for decontamination, and everyone in the Pack into antihazard suits. On the double.”

  “The battle for possession of the surface is almost over,” Breetai told Jevna Parl on the bridge of the factory satellite. “The flow of Protoculture cells from this facility has stopped, the Protectorate is a failed experiment, the few dissident groups that remain are squeezed into an inhospitable area of the Southlands.”

  “I’m aware of all these things,” the gnomish Parl said.

  “And still you will not be dissuaded?”

  “What is the alternative? If I am no longer with you, I am against you. Would you have me attempt to undermine you here, as Theofre Elmikk did? Would you dishonor us both by imprisoning me aboard the factory?”

  Breetai growled. “All because I executed the traitors.”

  Parl shook his head. “Because you chose to define them as traitors, Breetai. You claim that our new allegiance must be to the REF, but why must we swear allegiance to any group? Why must the Zentraedi serve any masters?”

  “Not everyone can rule, Jevna.”

  “Perhaps not. But everyone should have the right to pursue freedom. Elmikk and his comrades were not traitors to our cause—to the Zentraedi cause—only the Human one. You were not hearing the voice of the Imperative in their attempted mutiny. Their actions were those of free beings, and you had no right to condemn them.”

  Breetai sneered. “So Jevna Parl has discovered himself to be a malcontent.”

  “A Human word.”

  “A freedom fighter, then.”

  “Since you’re compelled to define me, yes, consider me a freedom fighter.”

  “And should I choose to grant permission for you to go down the well?”

  “I will join the ranks of the disaffected.”

  “And attempt to undermine me from afar.”

  “Not you, nor any aboard this artificial world. Only the uncharitable below, stingy with the freedoms they hold so dear. I will do all I can to undermine them.” Parl paused for a moment. “You command the power to prevent that; you could withhold permission. But if that is your choice, I would rather you kill me.”

  Breetai folded his arms across his massive chest. “I will honor your request.”

  Parl blanched.

  “No, not to kill you, Jevna. On the contrary, I want to see you live to regret your decision.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  JANICE M proved to be a better spy than any of us (at the Robotech Research Center) would have imagined, in part, I believe, because of the countless volumes on espionage “tradecraft” we downloaded into her … When I learned that Minmei and “Janice” had been asked to accompany Moran and Milburn to the fete celebrating Southlands unification, I tasked the android’s programmers with transforming her into an ambulatory voice-stress analysis device for the event. The cybertechnician team went me one better by programming her to probe for data when the conversation turned to certain, key topics, such as the malcontents, Anatole Leonard, and the Lorelei Network. Upon uploading JANICE days after the fete, I realized at once that Moran had deliberately outted Milburn, perhaps in the hope that, as my “niece,” Janice would relate what had transpired over dinner. But I have always suspected that Moran recognized Janice for what she/it was; and though their close relationship would continue until the launch of the SDF-3, I wonder if JANICE wasn’t so much an agent provocateur as an unwitting agent of disinformation for the Army of the Southern Cross.

  Emil Lang as quoted in Justine Huxley’s I’ve Been to a Fabulous Party

  The possibly contaminated Centaur sat in a controlled-environment mecha bay on the RDF’s base in Cavern City. Inside the tank waited Wolfe Packers Rosen and Kimball, who’d taken the brunt of the Stinger’s seemingly harmless particle-cloud release prior to its self-activated attack. Elsewhere on the base, in isolation and under constant surveillance, were the three surviving crewmembers of the cargo plane. Sterling and Wolfe, along with a mecha specialist named Gillespie, stood on an observation balcony that overlooked the glassed-in decontamination area. Gillespie, formerly of the Argentine Base, was one of the techs who’d helped recommission the Centaurs two years earlier and had stayed on as chief engineer.

  “What exactly are we looking for, Jon?” Gillespie was asking Wolfe.

  “I don’t know that we’re looking for anything. I just want the thing fully checked out.”

  �
��It’s quite possible the cloud your men claim to have seen was nothing more than escaped mecha coolant of some sort.”

  “I’ll buy that. Just show me there’s nothing unusual about the tank and I’ll be on my way.”

  Gillespie bent to a radio tuned to the Pack’s tactical frequency. “How are you two doing?”

  “Peachy,” Kimball said in piqued voice. “Just get on with your tests so we can get out of here.”

  Sterling and Wolfe traded worried looks.

  It had been a long, overnight haul back to Cavern City, everyone on edge—spooked—and griping about having to wear the antihazard suits. The cargo-plane crewman Max had first encountered had been found, unconscious but alive, and he, Blake, and Ramirez, along with the bodies of the two dead crewmen, had been placed inside a personnel carrier normally used to carry malcontent captives. Then the camp had been razed. Max’s team had remained with the Pack for the trip, hanging above the logging roads; Willy Mammoth, suddenly VT-less, had ridden in Wolfe’s Centaur.

  “You know, it’s getting damned hot in here,” Kimball said over the net. “What’s taking so long?” Max could hear the sound of Kimball’s hand slamming against the tank’s topside hatch.

  “Try to relax, son,” Gillespie said. “We’re working as fast as we can.”

  “You better be. I don’t know about my pal Rosen, here, but I can’t take too much more of this heat.”

  All at once, just as two medics in bubble-helmeted antibiohazard suits were approaching the tank, the top hatch flew open and Kimball scampered out onto the turret.

  Wolfe grabbed the radio handset. “Kimball, get your ass back inside—”

  “Get me out of here!” Kimball bellowed in an inhuman voice. Then he threw himself onto the closest medic, driving him to the concrete floor. The other medic was quick to react, and he and Kimbell tumbled in a thrashing tangle of limbs.