Southern Cross

by Jack McKinney

  Well, it sure beats a twenty-mile hike with full field pack, Sean Phillips decided, removing his goggles and readjusting his torso harness as the 15th

  parked their cycles side by side at the curb of a busy street. People were wandering by arm in arm, or window-shopping, taking in the sights. And there were women galore. "Well, men, this is going to be a true test of your character," he said, and got sly laughs from some of the guys.

  "Ahem," said Dana, rising to face them. "All right, we start our patrols from here." She eyed them severely, then winked. "And don't do anything I wouldn't do, hmm?"

  "Yes, ma'am," Sean said with a grin.

  "Okay, I'll patrol the discos," somebody volunteered.

  "And I'll start with that bar over there," another added with a goofy laugh.

  "Yeah, you'll end with it, too," the first countered.

  In another moment they were all splitting up to check out the area, all except Angelo, who gave a disgusted grunt. Duty was duty and playtime was playtime and the two shouldn't mix!

  "Angie, why do I have the feeling you'd rather stay here and guard the horses?" Dana asked sweetly.

  He crossed his arms and put his feet up on his handlebars. "Because you're a mind-reader, I guess."

  That gave her a start, and she saw Zor's face again.

  Maybe I am. But she recovered and told her troops, "Right, move out."

  Which they did with a will, whopping and laughing. "Idiots," Angelo snorted.

  Is every attractive female in this town grafted to some civilian's arm? Sean thought as he made his way along. Then he saw her standing by a boutique window, looking at a coat. She was small and shapely, with auburn hair to her waist and yellow slacks that did nice things for her figure.

  Sean squared his uniform as he went over. Lady, this is your lucky night! "You seem to like that coat a lot," he said. "I admire your taste." Actually, he scarcely glanced at it.

  She turned in surprise. "What?" She looked him over and broke into a

  dimpled smile. "Will you buy it for me, hmm?"

  This was more like it. The coat was nice, he guessed; all scarlet embroidery and white fur trim. "Well, now, I just might be persuaded-uh!" As he read the price tag and recalled that he was now a deuce private, he went pale. Gah! That's more than I make in a year!

  "On second thought, red's not your color," he improvised. "Listen, why don't you and me go someplace and get ourselves a drink, yes?" He winked.

  She made a wry face and removed the hand he'd settled lightly on her shoulder. "Thanks anyway. Maybe some other time." She said it walking.

  "Sure, anytime you say!" he called after. Maybe I sounded too insincere?

  Well, it's her loss.

  Two blocks away, Dana was looking into another boutique window, considering a nice little evening frock that looked just about right for her. A hand fell on her shoulder and she pivoted, ready to show some masher what Hovertank officers learned in hand-to-hand.

  But she was facing a smug-looking Angelo Dante. "Time to spit on the fire and call in the hounds," he said. "We just got a general recall to base. Something big is up."

  The 15th was back on standby alert, manning their Hovertanks and waiting. This show was reserved for the TASCs and the Cosmic Units.

  Fokker Base had been rebuilt hastily. Barely twenty-four hours after the raid on Sector Three, the light of morning showed a half-dozen shuttles at the vertical and ready to launch. Final preparations were under way, and people were running for bunkers and observation posts.

  The shuttles launched, the first battle wing of the planned strike. On the other side of the base, the Black Lions and the other Veritech outfits waited, the second battle wing. When the shuttles were away and clear, the VTs got the green light. With Maria Crystal leading, the fighters thundered down the runway to even the score with the Robotech Masters.

  Leonard came into the command center to find Emerson bent over the illuminated displays. Leonard had regained his composure, especially in light of the fact that Emerson was his most capable subordinate. To put it more truthfully, over the years Leonard had garnered credit for many things that had been Emerson's accomplishments.

  Leonard dropped a thick hand on the flared shoulderboard of Emerson's torso harness. "Believe me, Rolf, this is the only way."

  Emerson studied him for a long time before replying, "I hope to God you're right."

  The VTs went in first, loosing swarms of missiles at the enemy flagship, their sole objective. But the missiles were no sooner away than globes of light boiled out of the flagship, like enormous will-o'-the-wisps, bursting into hexagonal webs of pulsating light like gigantic snowflakes.

  The snowflakes moved and drifted into position, intersecting the missiles' paths, and the Earthly ordnance detonated harmlessly against them. The other mother ships were silent and dark but for running lights, waiting.

  Still more of the energy snowflakes came forth, until a net of them protected the flagship. The VTs swept around for another try, and this time beams from the chandelierbulb cannon crackled across empty space. More than forty fighters were lost in the first ninety seconds of the massed attack on the flagship. Still the VTs swung around for another go, hoping against hope to get in under the hexagons and deliver a blow.

  But they were flying straight into a murder machine.

  "Attack groups two and eight have disengaged from the enemy," the flat, synthesized voice of the intel computer echoed in the command center. "Groups three, four, and seven report heavy losses. Other groups fail to respond to transmissions and are believed to have been totally destroyed."

  Leonard turned to Emerson angrily but also, people in the command center could see, with a tremble of fear. "How can this be happening to us?"

  Emerson chose to ignore him, except to observe, "So far we haven't even put a dent in them." He looked to Rochelle. "Any sign of a counterattack yet?"

  "Negative at this time, sir. They're standing pat."

  Emerson called for an update on losses. The computer printed out the awful facts and figures. Three quarters of the attack wings' forces were gone, immolated in a few minutes.

  "All those men and women lost," Emerson murmured, scanning the

  list.

  "It's-it's a disaster," Leonard said unsteadily. He turned and lurched

  toward the door.

  Emerson didn't even bother to solicit Leonard's permission. "Call off the attack! All units disengage and return to base." Then he turned and glared at Leonard's back as the supreme commander exited.

  Not far away, there was a different kind of battle being fought in the UEG's foremost Robotech research laboratory, in the military-industrial facility near the airbase. And this battle was turning, slowly, in the Human race's favor.

  Dr. Miles Cochran and his colleague, Dr. Samson Beckett, were two of the hottest of the Robotech hotshots who had trained under Dr. Emil Lang and, later, Dr. Lazlo Zand. Now they pored over the remains of a downed blue Bioroid that lay on a worktable like the world's biggest cadaver awaiting the championship autopsy of all time.

  Its guts were opened up and wired to every monitoring device the lab had. It looked like it was sprouting a garden of sensor wires, photo-optic lines, monitoring circuits, and computer links.

  Cochran, a thin-faced, intense redhead, said, "I'm activating ultraviolet scanner, Sam."

  Beckett, smaller and dark-haired, wearing tinted glasses, was oohing and aahing over the things he was encountering with his probes, but stopped to step back and watch.

  The scanner came down to irradiate the Bioroid's entire form, passing from crown to toes, coordinating with readouts and analysis computers, scrutinizing every part of the shattered mecha.

  The two went to the computer screens to see what they came up with. The data banks were linked in with recordings and sketches of the mecha the Southern Cross forces had fought thus far. The two watched the information and diagrams flash, the light reflecting off Beckett's glasses.

 
"What about the damage received?" Cochran asked. "See if you can get me a readout on that." Beckett bent to the task.

  He got an integrated analysis of the internal structure of the mecha. There was severe mechanical damage because a leg had been ripped off in battle, but no physical explanation as to why all systems were so completely inert despite the Humans' efforts to activate them. Then they got the confirmation they were looking for.

  "Definite traces of biogenetic material," Beckett said flatly.

  "So there was something alive in there, something that escaped before the mop-up crew got to the scene, or self-destructed. Can you give us a look-see at what it was?"

  "I can try." Beckett bent to his task again. The most powerful medical and genetic engineering programs were accessed, a stupendous amount of computer power. Alongside a detailed DNA blueprint, the computer drew up a human form. "Unbelievable," Beckett breathed.

  "It's Human! Not simply like us, as the Zentraedi were, but Human!" "But-it's from outside the Solar System!" Beckett was shaking his head.

  "Maybe...somehow they're from Hunter's SDF-3 expedition?"

  It was Cochran's turn to shake his head. "No. But those ATAC tankers were right; they saw what they thought they saw."

  Beckett removed his glasses. "God! Wait till Zand hears this! He'll freak!"

  There was a chuckle from the darkness; Cochran and Beckett spun toward it even as they realized they knew who it was. "Perhaps that is too extreme a word, Samson. Let's just say that I'm pleased."

  Dr. Lazlo Zand came a little farther into the light, so that his eerie eyes could be seen. "And of course my little Dana was right! Of course your findings bear me out! The Protoculture weaves, it spins, it manipulates and shapes, young doctors! Its ability to shape mere machinery is nothing next to its ability to shape events!"

  He stepped a little closer still, studying the Bioroid. He was a man of medium height, in unornamented UEG attire, his hair still unruly after all these years. His eyes seemed to be all iris, as Lang's had been ever since Lang had taken that Protoculture boost aboard the SDF-1 when it first landed. Only, in Zand's case, the transformation hadn't taken place until years later. He looked no less unearthly than a Robotech Master.

  "You've done well, but now you must double-check your findings to be sure there is no error in your presentation when you take them to the UEG."

  Cochran found his voice. How had Zand gotten into the lab? How had he known what Beckett and Cochran were doing there? They hadn't seen or had word of or about him in years. Yet, those weren't questions Cochran felt safe in asking, so he said, "Surely, Dr. Zand, you'll want to accompany us and elaborate on-"

  "No!" Zand raised a warning finger. "No mention of me, understood?

  Good! Now, back to work, both of you." Zand turned for the door. "But when will you-" Beckett began.

  "When the time is right," Zand said, silhouetted against the light from outside, "you will hear from me again."

  Emerson rested his chin on his interlaced fingers. "And so you're saying Zor is a Human being, and not a miniaturized Zentraedi?"

  Beckett and Cochran nodded.

  "Then Dana and Bowie were right," Emerson said softly, staring into space. "And we're fighting our own kind. Like brothers slaughtering each other."

  Just then Rochelle buzzed Emerson with the final compilation of the battle casualties. Eighty-five VTs destroyed, seven damaged beyond repair;

  five shuttles destroyed, one damaged beyond repair. Two-hundred-seven pilots and aircraft crew people dead, another twenty ground support and two-hundred-odd civilians dead, the latter two figures from crashes of damaged aircraft. Eighty-seven missing in action and unaccounted for, presumed to be adrift in space, dead or alive.

  In the ready-room at the 15th, for once the banter was all but nonexistent.

  "Worst defeat of the war," Bowie said, stretching out the kinks that wearing armor always gave him, grateful to be back in a simple uniform.

  "And that was only one ship," Sean reminded him.

  "I tell ya, the VTs coulda got through if they hadn't've been called off," Angelo insisted. "Look what we did to those ali-those XTs on the Liberty mission."

  Dana made no response to the fact that he hadn't used the word aliens, but she noticed that nobody in the 15th used it when referring to the enemy now. It moved her so, their literally unspoken support of her-she very warily felt them to be the family she'd never had.

  Louie looked up from the calculations he was doing on a lap-size computer. "And I'm telling you, Angie, that that ship's design makes a frontal assault a complete impossibility."

  Sean chortled. "I forgot: the professor, there, knows everything!"

  Louie held his temper, used to this kind of flak. Bright and inventive enough for any tech school or advanced degree program, he had still opted for the ATACs. He liked being a corporal in a line outfit and, more to the point, the tinkering and computer hacking and equipment modifications he did were done without some frowning lab-coat type looking over his shoulder. He was also confident that the studying and research he did on his own, open-ended, put him way ahead of the people who had to complete course requirements in any school.

  Dana put in, "But Zor's ship must have some weak spot."

  Louie turned the dark-goggled gaze on her, nodding. "Exactly right. To

  start with, I figure that Zor's ship is not powered by an engine as we would recognize one."

  "Huh?" Dana said. "Then how's it get around?"

  "Well, it can travel between the stars by spacefolding, of course, like the SDFs and the Zentraedi," Louie explained. "And to get around over smaller distances, it has a more localized folding process, a sort of a twisting of opposing forces, like squirting a grape seed between your fingers."

  Dana remembered some of the theory and jargon Louie had spouted in sessions past. "So, if you upset the hyper-balance, you've got yourself an unstable ship."

  Sean caught her thoughtful tone and looked her over. "What exactly are you thinking about?"

  She gave him a closed-face look. "Basic military strategy." She rose, took a few paces, then turned back to them. "C'mon, Louie, we've got work to do!"

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Lazlo, my valued colleague,

  It falls upon me to leave now with the SDF-3 expedition, and falls to you to stay, for reasons we both know.

  But I ask you to keep in mind the fact that my Awakening to the Protoculture was in some measure accidental, while yours was fully aforethought, and that certain intents and purposes in you are at times very strong.

  I exhort you to remember that you will be dealing with HUMAN BEINGS, and to work contrary to their wellbeing will be in some measure, always, to work at cross purposes with the Protoculture. Please don't let the eagerness to plumb the depths of Protoculture distort your thinking.

  Your friend, Emil Lang

  When Dana appeared at the Robotech research lab with Louie in tow, she had the impression that Drs. Cochran and Beckett were looking at her rather strangely, at least at first.

  But she shrugged it off; research types were always off somewhere in a world of their own. Besides, Louie had them totally fascinated with his idea in short order. First thing she knew, Louie was sitting at Beckett's main computer terminal with the doctors looking on, bringing up diagrams and displays and equations and computergenerated images to explain and verify his analysis.

  "It's only a theory, I admit," he said as the computer illuminated various parts of a grid-diagram of Zor's vessel. "But after all, no scans show any central power source, am I right?"

  Cochran nodded, lower lip between his thumb and forefinger, staring into the screen. Louie went on. "But I, um, I accessed the intel computers

  and I found what's gotta be a bio-gravitic induction network."

  The computer showed it, a convoluted array like a highway system or blood vessels, picked out in neon red. "There seems to be some kind of perpetual bio-gravitic cycle; the Protoculture quanta are s
imultaneously attracted to and repelled by one another. Kinda like what's going on in the sun, if you want to put it that way, gravity and fusion fighting it out in a sort of equilibrium."

  Dana tried to get a word in edgewise, but the three men were completely caught up in their tech-talk.

  Beckett did sneak in a sidelong look at her, though. How had Dana, of all people, come to be the one to find this Louie Nichols, this gem-in-the-rough genius/weirdo? Of course it was again in total defiance of any coincidence, and Beckett had renewed awe for Protoculture's power to shape events.

  "It appears to effect these two strong mega-forces," Louie said. "Through phased bonding!" Cochran comprehended, grinning from ear

  to ear.

  Dana was tired of hearing about the framistat field connected to the veeblefertzer anomalies. "So if we destabilize this equilibrium of yours, we'll knock the whole ship out of whack, right?"

  They frowned at her coarse language, but Louie shrugged. "Yes. At least theoretically."

  She hooked to Cochran and Beckett. "Then you find the right spot and we'll see that the job gets done!"

  Cochran hedged. "I don't think the chief of staff will choose you for the mission, Lieutenant. Not with your track record."

  But inside he was wondering how Zand could let the girl run around loose like this, constantly daring aliens to shoot her cute blond head off. She was the very core of so much of Zand's work and planning.

  Ah, but that's the heart of the matter, isn't it? he seemed to hear Zand lecturing. It's Protoculture that shapes events, and living beings interfered with it or sought to hamper it only at their own peril.