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by Jack McKinney

  At the same time the Council of the Local Group—made up of representatives from Haydon IV, Tirol, Karbarra, Garuda, Spheris, and Peryton—had offered Optera to the homeless Praxian Sisterhood, and Bela had accepted. Rick and I had mixed feelings about this because of the continued Invid presence on the planet; but few shared our concerns. Now the REF not only had a matrix to call its own, but an allied planetful of Flowers to harvest for its purposes.

  Optera was renamed “New Praxis.”

  All these things were beginning to threaten and erode the false world Rick and I had been creating. But the fact that we voluntarily uprooted ourselves from Tiresia to reassume our commands aboard the Ark Angel is perhaps some indication that we sensed what was in store. In fact, we were together on the bridge of the ship when fate conspired to bring that tranquil hiatus to an irrevocable end. Reports reached Fantomaspace from throughout the local group that the remaining Invid on those worlds had, in the blinking of an eye, vanished. From Haydon IV, where some of the Regess’s children had remained in residence; from Spheris, where others had been imprisoned; from New Praxis itself, where the Regent’s defeated troops had been forced into an uneasy partnership with their Karbarran jailers and Praxian landlords. Scientists, soldiers, slumbering brains.

  Vanished!

  It was Lang’s belief that the Invid Queen-Mother, the Regess, had found Earth; and had, in some unfathomable way, reached back across the galaxy to reclaim the children she and her late husband had abandoned. Exedore (who was still on Haydon IV at the time) maintained that something catastrophic had occurred on Earth to call her there—something that had to do with an unprecedented eruption of the Flowers of Life. Later, when Max and Miriya and Aurora arrived from Haydon IV, we would come to understand a bit more of this.

  In the meantime, however, the worlds that the Sentinels had helped to liberate wanted nothing more than to rally behind the REF’s cause—to help free our homeworld from that scourge that had held their own worlds in its evil grasp. No one knew how long it would take the Regess to launch her invasion against Earth, or even whether that battle would be fought against Terrans or their Robotech Masters; but the moment had arrived for an all-out push to complete and arm the first assault wave and send it on its way.

  The Mars and Jupiter Group ships were delicate looking vessels that made me think of swans in flight, with long tapering necks and swept-back wings. But the Karbarran factories were soon producing a new breed of dreadnought for what would someday make up the bulk of the main armada—crimson-bellied battlecruisers shaped like stone-age war clubs; dorsal-finned tri-thrusters; and Alpha Veritech transports that resembled old-fashioned water boilers. Garuda and Spheris and even Peryton were all sending workers to beef up the Karbarran’s factories and mine the peat that was being used for the ships’ Sekiton fuel.

  The Ark Angel had departed from Haydon IV shortly before the birth of Max and Miriya’s second child, Aurora. She was four years old by the time Rick and I first set eyes on her, and although we had seen the transvids and heard all the reports about her rapid development and extraordinary talents, the experience left us dumbfounded. Only two years older than our Roy, and she looked, spoke, and behaved like a ten-year-old! She was a raven-haired sprite like child with huge dark eyes, wearing a short, flowing Haydonite garment of white and gold on the day she stepped from the shuttle. Her tiny waist was encircled by a broad belt and her wrists and throat banded by the same red-brown hide. Miriya had weaved a garland for her hair—Flowers of Life from the orchards of New Praxis. She seemed such a vision of peace that Tiresian morning … And yet it was difficult for me to think of those Flowers as anything but martial in aspect and design, fueling as they were our fleet of warships, our arsenal of mecha—Veritechs, reconfigurable Cyclones, Hovertanks, and the like.

  But perhaps I was confusing the Flowers with the Protoculture. Innate evil doesn’t exist in this narrow dimension we call our world; only unbiased potential given evil purpose.

  Max and Miriya had changed—dramatically. Rick confided to me that he was so taken aback he could scarcely see Max as the same ace who had once led the Skull to glory, who had so distinguished himself in the Southlands, whose mechamorph maneuvers had become the stuff of text and legend. Unlike the rest of us, they had found a clear path to peace—through Aurora, I imagine. It did, however, occur to me that the REF had this same path open to it even at this late stage: we had Tirol, new lives under a new star, a local group of friends and allies, a corner of the Quadrant we could help to maintain and sustain, steer along any one of a thousand different courses … But I realized at the same time that we could never rest easy with such a choice. Not until Earth was liberated, her devastated spirit returned to her, her peoples free to make that same decision.

  I recall the heartbreak I saw in Jean and Vince’s eyes as they watched the Sterlings with Aurora. I had Roy to hold to my breast. But where, I could almost hear Jean asking herself, was her son?

  If we had known then just what it was that had brought Max and Miriya to Tirol, the question need not have been asked.

  Rick and I completed our transfer from the Ark Angel to the SDF-3 after the Mars Group launched and folded. Things were hectic but stable for most of that year [2042]. Our only hurdle was a personal one, involving a young photojournalist who had fallen in love with Rick. I suspect that the woman’s infatuation with him went well back to the beginning of the Sentinels’ campaign; the trouble was that she wasn’t some starry-eyed teenager with a mad crush now, but an attractive, capable, and assertive threat. The way I saw it. And with no apologies. I had Roy to think of, my duties aboard the SDF-3, and I certainly wasn’t about to add Rick to my list of concerns. So I saw to it that Max and Wince had the woman transferred to the Jupiter attack group.

  It seemed important at the time, but insignificant a month later when Jonathan Wolfe’s ship appeared out of nowhere, deep in the icy outer limits of the Valivarre system. We were beside ourselves with excitement and anticipation, certain that Wolfe was on a return course from Earth—not, as some were saying, at the close of a space-time circle that had failed from the start to deliver him there. Suddenly we found ourselves on the verge of having all our questions answered about Earth and the Robotech Masters, Earth and the Invid Regess …

  I can still picture us gathered around the monitors in the Tactical Information Center; frozen by speakers in corridors, bays, holds, and cabinspaces aboard the fortress; stopped in our tracks in Tiresia … The entire REF waiting to hear some word from the only crew who had been there and back.

  The first transmission from that ship is infamous now; so much was said in so few words, it left us speechless.

  “This is Dana Sterling,” the voice began, “former lieutenant with the Fifteenth Alpha Tactical Armored Corps of the Army of the Southern Cross”

  Dana Sterling!

  The Army of the Southern Cross!

  Not since the Ark Angel’s arrival in Tirolspace and Professor Lang’s subsequent revelations to the council had the REF experienced such a comingling of emotions. Wolfe’s ship had indeed made it back to Earth. And the Army of the Southern Cross had prevailed. Or had they?

  Base Tirol turned out en masse for the ship’s planetfall. Only Max and Miriya seemed unfazed by the event; and I remember thinking that they had somehow expected this all along. Later, I would learn of the telepathic link Aurora and Haydon IV’s enigmatic instrumentality had helped them establish with Dana.

  I recognized her immediately, that lithe body, mischievous smile, swirling globe of blond hair. And beside her, grown to manhood, Bowie Grant. My heart was so filled with joy that I scarcely paid attention to the other members of the cruiser’s skeleton crew—Angelo Dante, Sean Phillips, and Marie Crystal among them—but I did notice something in all their eyes that reinforced my thoughts about how splintered we had become as a planetary race. While the REF had grown undeniably warlike, we had also remained confident and self-possessed. But these young people were war
y and nihilistic; it was as though they had journeyed not from twenty-first-century Earth, but from the world of Earth’s Middle Ages.

  I hardly had time to register these thoughts when the clones began to show themselves—Tirol’s lost and now Masterless tribe, led home by the twin Mistresses of the Cosmic Harp, Musica and Allegra.

  Over the course of the next few days Dana and her 15th filled us in on thirteen years of Earth history. We learned how the Army of the Southern Cross had come to power; of the rise and fall of Wyatt Moran and Anatole Leonard. We listened to tales of Earth’s atavistic plunge into feudalism and open warfare; of the coming of the Robotech Masters, and what had been dubbed the Second Robotech War.

  A few of us were privy to the bizarre events that had unfolded around Dana and Dr. Lazlo Zand, and a second Zor-clone the Masters had named Zor Prime. And we finally understood what baby Aurora meant when she had warned her sister about the spores.

  But if some of our questions had now been answered, there were just as many that remained unresolved. There had been no sign of the Invid Regess or her children, but the Flowers of Life were there in abundance. Dana’s own visions had prompted her to warn Earth’s leaders of the impending threat, but the planet was in no condition to defend itself. Wolfe was back, but to hear Dana tell it, he was no longer the able commander we once knew. The factory satellite had also returned to Earthspace, but it was useless and could do little more than deliver a pretense of defensive capabilities—hardly enough to fool the Invid Queen-Mother for very long.

  Miraculously, however, Dana’s ship carried more than refugees. Thanks to the work of a brilliant young scientist named Louie Nichols, the ship’s mainframes held the data Lang needed to perfect the spacefold generators. And within six months the drives of the main-fleet ships were entirely revamped.

  On the heels of this came the development of the Shadow Fighters and the neutron “S” missiles, meant to be the REF’s last-ditch weapons: radiation bombs that would render the Earth as sterile and lifeless as the Zentraedi’s deathbolts had left Optera generations before.

  There was one evening in Tiresia that found all of us together—Vince, Jean, and Bowie; Max, Miriya, Aurora, and Dana; Rem and Minmei; Karen and Jack. Max was saying something about Haydon IV, and Roy was playing at Rick’s feet with Polly, the Pollinator Dana had brought with her from Earth. Word had come of the Mars Group’s crushing defeat, but the Jupiter Group had been launched and our own window was fast approaching. I remember asking myself whether this mission would bring an end to our decades-long quest for peace. I sat there strangely distanced from my family and friends, trying to imagine the invasion we had planned—our emergence in Earthspace and our coordinated attacks against Reflex Point, as the Regess’s hive complex had been dubbed. And for the life of me I could not envision it. I had an unshakable feeling that the invasion had already occurred and that somehow we had been left out of it.

  It was a dreamlike awareness; a sense that we were about to embark on a mission none of us had foreseen.

  From Recollections: The Tirol Years,

  by Lisa Hayes-Hunter

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  It remains a mystery how the Regess was able to collect and convey the scattered remnants of her race clear across the Quadrant, but we can now state with some certainty that we know where she assembled—or, as it were, reassembled—her army and fabricated the warships and terror weapons she would employ in her conquest of Earth. Recent discoveries on Beta Centaurus VI have revealed the existence of craterlike anomalies believed to be extinct Genesis Pits. (See Extraterrestrial Archeology, Disc 712, Volume xxxii, “An Interpretation of the Prometheus Mission’s Caldera Findings on Beta Centaurus VI,” by Dr. Brian Fox.) It is interesting to speculate whether the Regess, in one form or another, reconned Earth before she created the Pits; or whether it was already in her consciousness at that time to duplicate the war machine her husband had already brought to bear against Humanity on the other side of the galaxy.

  Gitta Hopkins, Queen Bee: A Biography of the Invid Regess

  “Admiral on the bridge,” a young officer announced as Lisa stepped through the hatch.

  She put him at twenty-two; twelve when they left Earth, half her age now. Fortunately, he was the youngest member of the bridge crew. The rest were veterans like herself—Williamson, Hakawa, Price, up from engineering. And if she should need to look to someone older, there was always Forsythe. He had been acting admiral for the duration of her time with the Sentinels, but had only recently put in for a voluntary reduction to the rank of captain, which allowed him to function as Lisa’s co-commander. He was showing her a knowing smile at the moment, perhaps discerning some of her troubling thoughts.

  Lisa coughed and cleared her throat, returning the lieutenant’s salute, then extending her hand. “Mister …”

  “Toler, ma’am,” he said brightly, shaking her hand. “Er, sir, I mean.”

  “At ease, Lieutenant,” she told him, smiling. “We can be a little more casual here than in the rest of the ship.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “Just stay sharp and we’ll get along fine.”

  “I’ll do that, sir.”

  Forsythe was beside her when she turned to head for the command chair, right hand to the visor of his cap. “Welcome aboard, Admiral,” he grinned.

  Lisa gave him a quick hug and eased herself into the seat.

  It was all coming back to her as she knew it would, flooding her thoughts with memories of the mistimed jump that had brought them here, Minmei and Janice in the EVA craft they had pirated from the factory satellite, Invid ships at the edge of Tirol’s envelope. The big change then had been simply the fact that she was in command. Now command came as second nature, and the news was that she had a toddler waiting in the nursery.

  She permitted these thoughts a brief run, then turned her attention to the tasks at hand. She studied displays on heads-up screens and peripherals and listened to the crews’ updates on systems’ status. At the end of a long tunnel lay Earth; but she could not yet fix that image in mind. Tirol, Fantoma, and Valivarre were conspiring in the forward viewport to keep her anchored here, these stars and reconfigurable constellations that had spun about her world for almost ten years.

  “Message from Base Tirol, sir,” Toler said.

  “Go ahead, Mr. Toler,” Lisa told him.

  “It’s from Cabell, Admiral,” he added after a moment. “He wishes you a safe and speedy return, and looks forward to being the first to welcome you back to Tiresia.”

  Lisa smiled, biting back a wave of nostalgia and more. “Tell him I expect no less, Mr. Toler. And that Tirol will always remain bright in my thoughts, no matter how dark the night or sunless the day.”

  In the SDF-3’s Tactical Information Center, Rick took a moment to absorb the scene the main screen played for the room. It was an external view forward off the fortress’s bow, the ships of the Saturn Group assembled for fold. Neptune was already on its way, Shadow Fighters and Alpha Veritechs ready for launch as soon as the fleet manifested in Earthspace. Rick turned to study Vince Grant’s on-screen reaction, then Reinhardt’s; the former on the bridge of the Ark Angel, the latter on one of the Karbarran built boiler-shaped ships. Most of the members of the Plenipotentiary Council and Jean Grant’s med teams were aboard the Ark Angel as well. The SDF-3 had been designated flagship for the assault.

  Rick could tell from the look on Vince and Reinhardt’s faces that they, too, were moved by the scene unfolding in local space.

  “Any questions, gentlemen?” he asked, breaking the spell.

  “About the Cyclone teams,” Reinhardt began. “There still seems to be some question about their use to spearhead our rapid deployment force. The Jupiter Group’s recon evaluations show a heavy concentration of Pincer and Enforcer ships in the area surrounding Reflex Point.”

  Rick shook his head impatiently. “You tell … what’s his name—that Cyclone commander?”
r />   “Harrington,” Vince supplied, “Captain Harrington.”

  “Right,” Rick said. “Tell Harrington that his teams will have all the VT backup they’ll need. The important thing is to move those ground units as close as possible to the central hive. I want those Shadow Fighters kept in space until the last possible moment.”

  No one could predict whether the Regess would act as her counterpart had on Optera; but Rick was counting on the fact that the hive’s defenses would behave the same. It was hoped that the Cycloners could accomplish what the Karbarran foot soldiers had—and that they would scramble through the hive walls once the barrier shields had been softened up with antimatter torpedos and destabilizer cannonfire. The Earth forces would be much more heavily armed than the Karbarrans had been, and they wouldn’t have an army of Inorganics standing between them and the hive. On the other hand, it was yet to be determined whether T. R. Edwards had been a more dangerous foe than the Invid Regess would turn out to be.

  “True to form, the hive will launch most of its troop carriers and Pincer Ships directly at the fleet,” Rick continued. The Shadow Fighters would chew them up, then throw their support to the ground-based units.