Southern Cross

by Jack McKinney

  Others had accepted them too, though there was a little coolness toward Dana; she had been assigned as the 15th's new Executive Officer since the old XO had been hospitalized after a training maneuver injury. It was all perfectly ordinary, since she had been commissioned out of the Academy, but-she was the first woman in the 15th, one of the first in the ATAC.

  Two privates were killing time with a chess game. "D'you hear the latest skinny?" the smaller one asked casually. "Our CO's gonna be in stockade for a while."

  His big, beefy opponent shrugged, still studying his bishop's dilemma. "Too bad Sean's such a ladies' man-too bad for him."

  "He shouldn't've made a pass at a superior officer," the first said.

  A third, who had been kibbitzing, contributed, "Sean just didn't have his mind right, or he would've known better. Ya just don't go grabbing a colonel's daughter like that."

  No, indeed; especially when the daughter was herself a captain. But scuttlebutt had it that the grabbing had gone rather well and that initial reaction was favorable, until the ATAC Officer of the Day wandered in and found army furniture being put to highly unauthorized use, as it were, by army personnel who were supposedly on duty. It was just about then that the colonel's daughter started yelling for help.

  It was a brief court-martial, and word was that Lieutenant Sean Phillips grinned all through it. A constant stream of letters and CARE packages, sent by other female admirers, was brightening up his guardhouse stay.

  Sergeant Angelo Dante, engrossed in a conversation of his own, snorted, "Aw, all she is is a snotty, know-it-all teenager!" He had served under Sean for some time, and resented seeing him replaced. He was so preoccupied with it that he didn't realize the rec-room door had slid open and the replacement was standing there.

  "Why, Angelo, you say the sweetest things," a lively female voice said mockingly. Everyone looked around, startled, to see Dana posed

  glamorously in the doorway. The brevet pips were gone from her torso harness; she had been promoted from temporary XO-a kind of on-the-job training-to the CO slot, now that Sean was going to be spending some time playing rock-hockey over at the stockade.

  Bowie stood up from the piano with a smile on his face. "Congratulations, Lieutenant Sterling," he said with genuine delight, much as he disliked the military.

  Nobody bothered to call attention; the 15th was a casual kind of place under Sean. But there were a few appreciative whistles and murmurs for Dana's pose, and Evans, the supply sergeant, raised a coffee mug to her from his place on a stool at the (currently dry) bar. "A toast! To the cutest second lieutenant in the ATACs!" he said, pronouncing it AY-tacks.

  Other voices seconded the sentiment. Dana strolled over toward Angelo Dante with a seductive, swivel-hipped gait. "What's the matter, Angie? Don't think I'm tough enough?" She gave him a languorous smile and kept it there as she gave him a swift kick in the shin.

  Angelo was utterly shocked, but he barely let out a grunt; he was a tall, muscular man, well known for his strength and ability to withstand punishment. Dana let the guffaws and catcalls go on for a few seconds as the 15th razzed Angelo for being taken off guard. Angelo rubbed his shin and snarled at her retreating back, but inside he was suddenly reevaluating his opinion of "Miss Cadet," as he had been calling her.

  Dana crossed to the window, then whirled on them, cutting through the hoots and catcalls. "Fall in! On the double!"

  There was a confused half-second of disbelief, then the 15th scrambled to stand at attention in two precise ranks, facing her. "Now what's she trying to prove?" Angelo heard someone mutter.

  Dana looked them over, hands locked behind her back. She waited a few seconds in the absolute silence, then said, "Y'know, I've been giving this a lot of thought. And I've decided that this squad is dull. Definitely cute, but dull."

  She walked along the front rank, inspecting her new command.

  "However, I think there's still hope for you, so prepare to move out!"

  She had come to the end of the front rank, where Angelo stood glowering at her. "Something on your mind, Angie?"

  He said, tight-lipped, "I could be wrong about this, but aren't we on ready-reaction duty this week?"

  The ready-reaction squad was a kind of fire brigade, ready to move at once should any trouble occur, either at the base or elsewhere. The fact that it had to be ready to move on a moment's notice meant that the ready-reaction force usually kept all personnel in or immediately around its barracks.

  But Dana gave Angelo a scornful look. "What's that got to do with a training maneuver?"

  It wouldn't actually be breaking a reg, but it would be bending some. "Well, we haven't gotten official clearance from regimental HQ."

  If there was a funny, warm Human side to her, there was a fire-breathing Zentraedi amazon side, too. Dana's eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. "If you're looking to be busted to buck private, Dante, just keep doing what you're doing! 'Cause I give the orders here and you obey them!"

  The usually gruff Angelo unexpectedly broke into a smile. "If you say so, Lieutenant." The simplest solution would be to give the kid enough rope, and even egg her on a little without being too obvious about it.

  Dana showed locked teeth and the assembled 15th wondered silently if steam was going to start coming out of her ears. "If you have a problem, Sergeant, maybe I ought to send you to get your Chaplain Card punched. Or do you just resent taking orders from a woman?"

  That stung Angelo, who was what he liked to think of as a little old-fashioned, but didn't want to be branded a sexist. He drew a deep breath. "That's not it at all, Lieutenant, but with all this trouble out at Liberty and the Moon Base-what if something happens and we're not here?" He gave her a condescending smile.

  Dana was furious. Dante plainly didn't think she was fit to command,

  to fill the shoes of the dashing, devil-may-care Sean Phillips. So the 15th respected officers with a wild streak only, officers who were daredevils? She'd show them that Dana Sterling could lead the pack!

  "In that case, Sergeant," she said, smirking, "why don't you just sit here and twiddle your thumbs? The rest of you, get to your Hovercycles! Move out!"

  She's acting like it's all just a big picnic, Angelo saw. I just hope she doesn't get us all into trouble.

  But as the 15th dashed for the drop-rack, whooping and shouting, Angelo was right with them.

  The drop-rack was a sort of skeletal ladder that, like a conveyor belt or pater-noster, moved downward endlessly, a modern-day firemen's pole giving quick access to the motor pools below ground level.

  At the first motor pool level, the troopers jumped from the drop-rack with practiced ease, just before it disappeared through a square opening in the floor, bound for the next level down, where the Hovertanks were kept.

  The 15th dashed to its Hovercycles, one-seater surface-effect vehicles built for speed and maneuverability. Dana leapt astride her saddle, taking 'the handlebars. "Recon patrol in G sector, gentlemen!"

  She settled her goggles on her face, gunned the engine. "Let's...go-ooo!" The 15th shot away after her, yahooing and giving rebel yells.

  Dana laughed, exulting. Whoever said a drill couldn't be fun?

  First they barreled through Monument City on a joyride that sent civilian pedestrians scuttling for safety. The cycles roared up and around access ramps and cloverleafs, threaded through traffic, and got into cornering duels with one another. The troopers yelled to one another and howled their encouragement to Dana, who had taken the lead.

  She loved it, loved setting the pace and hearing her men cheer her on. "See if you can keep up with me, guys!" She gave a burst of thruster power, leaping the railing to land on an access ramp higher up and several yards away. They were headed the wrong way, against oncoming traffic.

  Somehow, nobody was killed; the cycles deftly jumped the cars with thruster bursts, and the careening civilian cars managed not to annihilate one another as they slewed to avoid the troopers. Fists were shaken at them, an
d obscenities hurled, but the Southern Cross soldiers were above it all, literally and figuratively.

  Then it was down onto a major traffic artery, for a flat speed run into the badlands on Monument City's outskirts. Rusting Zentraedi wreckage of the Robotech War dotted the landscape. This particular area still hadn't recovered from the alien fusillade that had devastated nearly the entire planet some seventeen years before; it looked more like the moon.

  "Fokker Base is only a few more miles," Dana yelled over the wind and the sound of the engines. "We'll stop there!"

  As Bowie passed the word, she thought sarcastically, All this commanding is such a lot of work. Then she laughed aloud into the rushing air.

  Marie Crystal and her Black Lions were relaxing in the squadron canteen when the shrilling of the Hovercycle engines approached. The VT pilots had just finished an afternoon of target runs.

  Dana came to a stop with a blare of thruster power and a blast of dust and debris. She hopped from her cycle as the rest of the 15th drew up next to her. She looked the enormous base over; Fokker wasn't far from the Humanmade mounds that covered the fallen SDF-1, SDF-2, and the flagship of Khyron the Backstabber.

  The place was the home of Tactical Air Force and Cosmic Units along with the TASC Veritechs, as well as experimental facilities and an industrial complex. It was also a commo nexus and regional command headquarters.

  Inside the canteen a mohawked VT pilot inspected the 15th through a large permaplas window. "Uh-oh, looks like school's out."

  Dana was gazing back at the pilots now. "Hey, the eagles are being led by a dove, huh?" said one Lion approvingly.

  Marie set hands on hips and hmmphed. "More like turkeys being led by

  a goose," she sneered.

  Dana led her men in and was confronted by First Lieutenant Marie Crystal. Dana saluted, and Marie barked, "State your mission."

  Dana saw that the hospitality carpet was definitely not out. There had always been rivalry between the TASCs and the ATACs; their VTs and Hovertanks had some Robotech capabilities in common and therefore at times ended up with overlapping mission responsibilities. There was strong disagreement about which mecha was better in this mode or that, and which was the all-around superior. More than a few fists had flown over the subject.

  This was the first time Dana had encountered such hostility, though. She had chosen Hovertanks because, she was certain, they were the most versatile, formidable mecha ever invented, so she wasn't about to take guff from some VT bus driver.

  Dana identified herself, then drawled, "It's been a hard ride an' a dusty road. Y'wouldn't happen to have a little firewater around, would yuh, pard?" That had the 15th guffawing and the Black Lions choking on their coffee. Marie Crystal's brows met. "What'd you do, kid, escape from a western? Don't you know how a commander's supposed to behave, even the

  commander of a flock of kiddie cars?"

  Now Dana was annoyed, too. "My squad's got more citations for excellence than you could fit into your afterburner! Number one in every training maneuver and war game it's ever been in!"

  Marie smiled indulgently, maddeningly. "Games don't prove a thing; only combat does."

  Dana decided things had gone far enough. The 15th and the Lions were eyeing one another, some of them rubbing their knuckles thoughtfully.

  Dana turned to go, but threw back over her shoulder, "My unit would never turn its back on a real fight, Lieutenant."

  Her troopers began to follow her, but one of the VT fliers-Eddie Muntz, a pinch-faced little guy with a reputation as a troublemaker-jumped to his feet. He called after them, "Hey, wait! Don'tcha want a cuppa coffee?"

  Royce, a tall, skinny trooper wearing horn-rimmed glasses, turned to tell him no thanks. He got most of a full cup flung into his face.

  Eddie Muntz stood laughing, managing to gasp, "Nothing like a good cuppa Java, I always say!" He was convulsing so hard that he didn't see what was headed his way.

  "Try this," Bowie Grant invited, and tagged Muntz with an uppercut that sent him crashing back across the table. Bowie didn't like the army, or violence, but senseless cruelty was something that simply enraged him.

  A couple of Lions helped Muntz to his feet, one of them growling, "So, the kids want to play rough."

  Muntz wiped blood from his split lip. "Pretty good for somebody in day care," he admitted. Then he launched himself through the air to tackle Bowie.

  But Bowie was ready for him; the ATAC trooper caught a hold of Muntz's uniform at the same time bringing up one foot and setting it in the juncture where leg met abdomen. Bowie fell backward to the floor, rolling, pulling his opponent with him, and pushing him with the foot that was in Muntz's midsection. It was just like Bowie had been taught at Academy hand-to-hand classes; with a wild scream the practical joker went flying through the air straight over Bowie's head.

  Bowie's only miscalculation was that Dana was right in Muntz's trajectory. The VT pilot crashed into her headfirst and bore her to the floor. They lay in a tangle of arms and legs, with Dana hollering at the dazed Muntz to get off her.

  Dana's scrabbling hand encountered a piece of metal, a table leg that had rolled there after Muntz's first fall. She grabbed it just as the VT pilot shook his head and leapt to his feet to face Bowie again.

  His luck wasn't any better this time; Bowie was just out of the Academy, young and fast and in good shape. He rocked Muntz back with a left hook, and Muntz ended up knocking Marie Crystal back onto a couch, lying across her lap. While Marie pounded his head and howled at him to get off her, the riot got going in earnest.

  As chairs were flung and punches thrown, kicks and leg-blocks vigorously exchanged, Dana suddenly realized what she had gotten herself and the 15th into.

  And she stood numbly, watching a mental image of her lieutenant's bars as they flew away into the clouds forever on little wings. I wonder if Sean's got any CARE packages to spare, there in the stockade? she thought.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The occasion of the 15th's first social encounter with the Black Lions was rather less auspicious than subsequent, more cooperative military collaborations. It is a fact, though, that the ATACs ever thereafter insisted on referring among themselves to Veritech recons and penetration strikes in football-play jargon, as "Debutantes Go Long."

  Zachary Fox, Jr., Men, Women, Mecha: the Changed Landscape of the Second Robotech War

  Dana waved the table leg, shouting, "Stop! Stop this immediately!" It didn't do a bit of good.

  The brawl was a confused sequence of split-second events; time and distance seemed strangely altered. A blond VT pilot swung his forearm into the face of a 15th trooper; another of Dana's men downed the mohawked Black Lion with a dropkick.

  An ATAC was on the floor with a VT pilot's head in a leg lock; Shiro had Evans down and bent the wrong way, painfully, in a "Boston crab." Marie Crystal finally got the groggy Eddie Muntz off her just in time to have Louie Nichols and a VT man with whom he was locked in combat pile into her and bear her down in a struggling heap.

  Dana couldn't think of anything to do but keep yelling "Stop! Stop!" and wave the table leg. It didn't accomplish much, and she had to stop even that and duck suddenly as a Black Lion flung bodily by Angelo Dante went crashing through the big window behind her.

  The broken window let in a sound that made Dana's blood run cold: police sirens. An MP carrier was coming hell-for-leather across the field toward the canteen, all lights flashing. Dana turned and bellowed, "MPs! Hey, it's the MPs! Let's get outta here!"

  Other voices took up the cry, and in seconds the brawl was over. Marie

  Crystal looked on as the 15th raced after its leader, hopping on Hovercycles. Dana made sure all her men had gotten out. "Split up! We'll meet back at the barracks!" The ATACs zoomed off in all directions.

  Dana gunned her engine and headed off straight for the police van. It was closer now, an open surface-effect vehicle, and she could see that there was a fifteen-foot-tall police robot standing back on the troo
p carrier bed. Dana calmly watched the distance close; she was determined to keep the MPs busy until the rest of the 15th had time to get clear.

  The MP major standing behind the open cab felt sudden misgivings as the cycle rider came straight at the van's windshield. He let out a squawk and went for his sidearm, steadying it at her with both hands over the top of the cab. "Stop or I'll shoot! Look out!"

  The latter was because Dana had increased speed and hit her thrusters. The major dove for cover, thinking she was out to decapitate him. But at the last instant she took the cycle up in a thruster-jump, neatly tagging the police robot's head with the sky-scooter's tail. The robot toppled backward like a falling sequoia as the major screamed in horror. The sound the machine made against the hardtop resembled that of several boilers being rung like gongs.

  The Black Lions stood outside the canteen, watching, as Dana threw them a jaunty wave and disappeared in the distance. Marie Crystal stood with hands on hips, a feline smile on her face. "Not bad for a beginner, Lieutenant Sterling. You show real promise." And you haven't heard the last of the Black Lions!

  The MP van slowed to a stop. The major shook his head in disgust, watching the ATAC cycles leave dust trails to all points of the compass. Doesn't the Academy teach these hoodlums the difference between us and the enemy?

  The robot lay unmoving, but its visor lit with red flashes with each word it spoke. "Hovercycle operator identified as Lieutenant Dana Sterling," the monotone voice announced, "Fifteenth ATAC squad." It made some strange noises, then added, "Recommend immediate apprehension. I don't

  feel very well. May we return to headquarters now? Perhaps you could give me a hand up, sir. Vvvt! Wwarrrzzzp! Kktppsssst! Reenlistment bonus? Sounds good to me!"

  The major gave the robot a little first-echelon maintenance in the form of a good swift kick.

  On a moonlit night with the silver veins of cloud overhead, Monument City had the look of a place transported to an eldritch graveyard. The wind-sculpted crags and peaks around it, the rusting dead leviathans of the Zentraedi wreckage, the barrenness of the countryside that began at the city limits-it all suited Dana's despair precisely.