Southern Cross

by Jack McKinney

  More, the wraiths exuded an air of arctic-cold confidence, an aura that the Plan, the great Vision, of the original Zor would not be derailed. The wraiths were shaped by the Protoculture, of course; even the Robotech Masters must proceed with caution.

  Yet the wraiths had evinced no physical or PSI powers beyond that of a small confusion of the Bioroids' instruments. The red Bioroid could think of two ways to proceed: a gradual, almost surgical exhumation, or a brute scooping-up of the entire area of the mounds and everything around them for later dissection. Neither process could be undertaken while the local primitives were still capable of mounting resistance; that would risk destruction of the Matrix with a stray missile, energy barrage-any of a number of awful possibilities.

  The red Bioroid awaited the Masters' commands while the trio of black apparitions within the mounds, created by the Matrix for its own purposes, following the instructions and the Vision of Zor, gloated, and mocked the Robotech Masters.

  From the top of the cliff overlooking the invader operation, Dana and Bowie looked down with cold coursings of despair rippling through them. An enemy vessel larger than an assault ship, looking somehow industrial,

  utilitarian, hung with its lower hull a mere few dozen yards off the ground. Other Bioroids were moving heavy equipment around on pallets and sledges that never touched the Earth.

  How could they have gotten past our sensors? Dana thought with a sinking feeling. Earth is wide open to them! She simply stored the references about Protoculture and excavation for her after-mission report; the intel analysts would have to deal with all that.

  She and Bowie were lying on their stomachs, peering down at the demons'-foundry scene of the Bioroid mining. Dana debated between the urge to report this catastrophic alien beachhead at once and the awareness that every scrap of intelligence could be of pivotal importance-that another few moments of eavesdropping might yield the key to the whole war.

  Training and textbook procedures won out for once. She had vital information to get back to headquarters; follow-up would be somebody else's problem. She reached out to give Bowie a silent, all-but-invisible contact signal, a code of grip-and-finger-pressure that would tell him it was time to leave the area quietly, then run like hell.

  That was when the red Bioroid, halting, turned its lustrous blue-black faceplate up in the Humans' direction.

  Dana heard the words as clearly as if the stylized ornament in her hair were a real earphone: I sense an enemy presence.

  The blues were alert at once. The red turned ponderously and stalked through the din and strobing of the work area, the great head craning to look up at their hiding place. "Geddown! Freeze!" Dana whispered, doing the same. They heard the resounding metal tread stop near the base of the cliff. It seemed to emanate from this area, the mind-voice said. It would be advisable to have a look.

  A flood of light came from below. Against all training and every instinct save curiosity, Dana was moved by those same mysterious impulses to peer over the cliff's edge.

  Bowie whispered, "What's goin' on, Lieutenant?" but she simply couldn't answer, transfixed by what she saw. Bowie eased up for a peek too.

  He saw that Dana was transfixed, in some kind of daze.

  The red Bioroid had halted and opened, its chest plastron swinging forward, pieces of the shoulder pauldrons and its helmet beaver swinging away, like an exploded illustration in a tech manual. Nestled within was a glowing orb, like a gunner's ball-turret, with a metal framing like lines of latitude and longitude, giving out a radiance even more intense than the searchlights'. The light from the orb grew brighter and brighter, then shot out long lines of shadow as something moved in its very heart. A tall, long-legged form emerged from the center of the unbearable incandescence. The Human race had been working on the assumption that these new invaders were like the Zentraedi, ten times larger than Human stature, and that the metal things the Earth was fighting were basically offworld giants in armor. That obviously wasn't true, and Bowie didn't know what to expect now. He was thinking along the lines of revolting, icky critters, when a young demigod stepped out to stand with one booted foot up on the edge of the open chestplate, surveying everything around him with an air of

  supreme hauteur.

  The creature seemed to be male, and looked Human enough, though with an elfin air and long eyes and ears. The face was a chiseled archetype, ageless and slender, handsome as a Grecian statue. Masses of lavender ringlets tumbled around the being's head and shoulders. The limbs were long, too, but muscled and graceful; the torso was slender but powerful and well defined in the tight, shiny black costume the Bioroid pilot wore.

  The outfit had a military look to it, with high, open collar, broad yellow belt, and scarlet demisleeves covering the forearms. At another time, the face would have been handsome, almost beautiful, Dana realized, but at the moment it was stern and watchful. She was having difficulty breathing, and it suddenly felt as if the air were thin, superheated, low in oxygen. She breathed short, quick breaths too rapidly, and watched that face.

  Bowie gulped, then gasped, and that triggered a gasp in Dana. They seemed to be sounds too small to be detected in the noise of the alien work area, but somehow the red Bioroid pilot became aware of the observers,

  whether by hearing or some higher sense.

  They heard his words quite clearly, though his lips never moved. Just as I thought: there they are! Then he spoke directly to them, mind to mind. Do not attempt to escape! You will remain where you are!

  Lights! Sentries: take them! the willful demigod commanded his horde. Dana, faint and panting for breath, drew on every reserve of will as she fought the red Bioroid pilot's silent compulsion. Then she felt Bowie's hand close around her upper arm, pressing her ATAC arm brassard hard into the flesh just as the fully dilated searchlights swung round beams to converge on the troopers' hiding place, and it seemed to break the spell. The blues were pounding toward them, weapons coming to bear.

  Dana and Bowie slid and churned and scrambled back down the incline, abrading hands and ripping uniforms, tumbling and skidding. But in time they reached the base, already up and running. They were two ATAC regulars in superb shape; ignoring the minor hurts, hurdling boulders, they were astraddle their cycles and gunning the engines in moments.

  Behind them they could already hear the racket of preparations for the chase, like the baying of hounds. And the only word of encouragement Dana had left to give her blood brother, brother in tears and in arms and in peace, was a word used carelessly by others but emphatically in the 15th squad: "Faster!"

  The cycles sprang away, trailing spumes of dust in the moonlight, nearly standing on their tails, and Dana felt the naked vulnerability any tanker would in that situation. Her thought, like Bowie's, was for the safety of speed, speed...but there was swift pursuit on her track already, and she knew better than virtually anyone else alive how fast those Hoverplatforms moved.

  The aliens had turned the gleaming, enigmatic faceplates to Zor Prime, their leader, who screamed silently, All Bioroids to your Hovercraft!

  Then the Hoverplatforms rushed out from the landing ship, in answer to the mind command, the blues thronging for battle, and the red Bioroid,

  with the hypnotic alien inside once again, leapt high to land on its skyriding platform with sinister grace. The red came after Dana and Bowie, a very Angel of Death.

  The canyon was too narrow for evasions; Dana and Bowie went high and low, rode the highside of the stone walls, and let centrifugal force pull them down, over and up again to ride the opposite wall. They crisscrossed and shot along, all the time waiting for the shot that would end their lives; alien annihilation discs crashed around them. But there was no side street; it was a flat-out race. And the swift Hoverplatforms were erasing the cycles' lead at a fearsome rate.

  "Hey, Lieutenant! These androids're gonna be right on our necks in another coupla seconds!" Bowie yelled over the rush of their passage.

  Androids? Now, why did I assume
they're clones?

  Dana wondered even as she reached down for the short energy carbine strapped into its scabbard beneath her saddle. With its wirestock folded, a Hovercyclist could fire it with one hand if the need arose.

  "Well, how about a little target practice, Bowie?" she called back to him, trying to sound as if she didn't have a misgiving in the world.

  Bowie didn't quite achieve a smile as more discs ranged around them, detonating. "Anything's better than this!" He started freeing up his own carbine.

  They got ready to turn. "Don't fire until I do." "You got it, Dana!"

  They had ridden together and trained together enough to swing their cycles in tight bootlegger turns at almost the same moment, coming end for end and charging back at the onrushing Bioroids.

  "Now!" Dana leaned to one side of her handlebars, steadied her weapon with both hands, and fired. The surprise move by the cycles caught the Bioroids completely off guard. In fact, the enemy firing stopped as the aliens tried to figure out what was happening.

  And some incredible luck was upon her at that moment. The carbine was a powerful small arm, but nothing compared to weapons that had

  already failed to down Bioroids; nevertheless, the bolt hit a startled enemy mecha and knocked it off balance, so that it fell from its Hovercraft.

  Dana swerved to elude the red, and drove for the hole in the invader formation left by the toppling of the blue. For a split-second she was among the huge offworld mecha, as a crashing shook the ground, then she was beyond. Dana waited for a disc to annihilate her, but none came.

  She chanced a quick look back, and realized that Bowie wasn't with her anymore. She came through another sharp turn in a shower of dust and grit, and stopped short. Far back, the red Bioroid stood with one enormous, two-toed foot crushing the smoking remains of Bowie's cycle.

  And, high aloft in the vast metal fist, it held Bowie. In the strange silence following the first passage-at-arms, he lifted his head and spotted her despite the knocking-around he had been through.

  More, she could hear him. "Make a run for it, Dana! Save yourself!"

  This, after she had led him into this horrifying mess. "Hang on!" she hollered, and pulled her cycle's nose up and around like a rearing charger. She roared straight at the gathered Bioroids.

  Bowie screamed for her to turn back, but he could see that she wasn't about to. The red felt him struggle, and closed its grip until he couldn't breathe, his ribs feeling as though they were about to give.

  Dana came racing directly at the red, which waited motionlessly. Dana saw in her mind's eye the unearthly eyes of the pilot. She leaned off to one side of the saddle, firing, praying for another miracle shot.

  But this time a blue jumped into place in front of the red, to shield its leader and the prisoner with its own body. Two more leapt in to flank it, and the three laid down a murderous fire with their hand weapons. Dana rode straight into it, juking and dodging, triggering madly.

  All three of the aliens began to get her range, their discs converging in a, coruscating nova of destruction. It was so close that it jolted her from her bike, do what she might.

  Bowie, straining, saw the Hovercycle go up in a deafening thunderball. He put everything he had into one last effort to escape, to get to Dana and, if

  she were dead, to somehow avenge himself. But the red closed its grip tighter and he slumped, unconscious.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Just like I tense up whenever somebody says the word "alien," there's a word that always gets Bowie sort of silent and thoughtful. Even if-and I've seen this happen-somebody innocently mentions the intermediate mode of a Veritech, Bowie sort of goes sphinx.

  And so, I react the same way, too, a bit. Nobody can say "Guardian" to me without conjuring up the image of General Rolf Emerson.

  Remark attributed to Lieutenant Dana Sterling by

  Lieutenant Marie Crystal

  When Bowie came to, he was still being held by the red. It was supervising from one side, as the blues picked through the wreckage of Dana's cycle. There wasn't much left, and what was was scattered wide. The Bioroids hadn't even been able to find pieces of Dana.

  At a silent signal from the red, the searching stopped. There was no telling whether the humans had reported the aliens' presence; the all-important mission to recover the Protoculture Matrix took priority.

  The Bioroids boarded their antigrav platforms and flew back to the mounds, where strange lights still probed sky and ground. Bowie lay helpless in the red's fist, weeping and swearing terrible vengeance.

  But from a cleft of rock, a battered figure pulled itself up to watch the invaders go. Dana spat out blood, having bitten her own lip deeply and loosened some teeth in the fall. Her body felt like one big bruise. Fortunately, her tough uniform was made for this kind of thing, and had saved her from having the flesh rubbed right off her in the tumble. The many practice falls taken in training had paid off, too.

  After she had been jolted from the cycle, the aliens had kept firing at it, thinking she was still aboard, unable to see it well in the midst of the explosion and raining debris. She managed to pull herself to safety outside the area where they looked for her remains.

  But she could feel no gratitude. "Bowie!" She tried to draw herself up, to follow after the Bioroid pack, but whimpered in sudden agony at the pain that shot through her shoulder.

  Dana was brought before General Emerson without much cleaning up and only the most cursory debriefing. Whatever she had discovered was still going on, and time was all-important. Her left arm was in a sling; the medics said it wasn't a dislocation, but it was a painful sprain. She had survived the crash better than she had any right to.

  Emerson put aside the dressing-down Dana had coming for disobeying orders; there were more important matters at hand. Besides, if it hadn't been for her curiosity, Earth might very well have remained ignorant of the alien landing until it was too late-if in fact it wasn't already.

  "I've been informed that you've had a closer look at these alien Bioroids," Emerson said as soon as Dana saluted and reported.

  "Yes, sir. In the wasteland north of Section Sixteen."

  "And a Human being, or something like a Human being, was operating one?"

  Dana couldn't hold back a little gasp, as a sudden vision of the red Bioroid pilot came to her. "That's the way it looked from where I was hiding, sir."

  Rochelle turned to his superior. "General, Human or not, what would they be looking for out in that wasteland?"

  "Could they be scavengers or something, looking for salvage?" Green interjected.

  Emerson shook his head irritably. Green was a steady sort as a combat leader, but the suggestion was ludicrous. These invaders had come from an advanced culture with a highly developed technology, and everything about them suggested that they had an extensive technological and social support system behind them-at least until recently.

  "No, that can't be the answer." He had read the Zentraedi debriefing files as thoroughly as anyone. "They're in the service of the Robotech

  Masters."

  Rochelle drew himself up. "Then, sir, I suggest we attack as soon as possible, before they become impossible to dislodge from their foothold."

  Emerson shook his head again. "Not yet. First I want to know more about this situation, and about these Bioroids. And above all, I want to know what they're looking for."

  Dana said plaintively, "But one of my men has been taken prisoner!

  Please, you have to let me go in there after him!"

  "Permission denied." Emerson rose to his feet, no happier with the necessities of the situation than Dana was, but in a better position to see the overall picture.

  "It was your decision to return to headquarters with this intelligence. It was the correct thing to do; we're fighting for Earth's survival. A lot of lives have been lost already, and more are certain to be before this thing is over. But our mission is to repel an alien invasion, do I make myself clear?"

 
; He did, to all those listening. They were all soldiers in a desperate war, even Bowie, who meant so much to him.

  But all Dana kept hearing were those words, it was your decision.

  At the barracks she wandered back toward the readyroom, sunk in despairing musings, until she realized someone was blocking her way.

  Angelo Dante leaned against one side of the doorframe, arms folded, his foot braced against the other. "Well, well! Aren't we forgetting a little something? Where's Bowie, Lieutenant? I hear he didn't make it."

  Her face went white, then flushed angrily. She tried to move past, still feeling shame and failure at Bowie's capture. "Move it, Dante."

  "I call that pretty tough talk for somebody who cut and ran and abandoned that kid out there like that."

  Dana made a sudden decision and met Angelo's glare. "If I hadn't abandoned him, there wouldn't be anybody to go out and get him back, would there?"

  With her foot she swept the leg supporting all his weight from beneath

  him; Angelo ended up on the floor with a yelp. "Got it?" she finished with a slow smile, shucking off the sling. Her arm hurt like blazes, but this was no time to be hampered.

  Angelo was looking up at her with his mouth open, not sure if he was going to jump her and give her the drubbing she had coming, or congratulate her for what she seemed to be saying.

  "Sergeant, it is my considered opinion that this squad needs some night training maneuvers."

  He gave her a slow smile. "Like in that off-limits area?"

  She stood there and gave him a wink even while she was saying, "I don't know what you're referring to, Angie. Ten-hut!"

  The big three-striper was on his feet with machinelike speed. "Now, then," she went on. "This squad's gotten complacent, sloppy, and out of practice. Get me?"