The Final Nightmare

by Jack McKinney

  The Final Nightmare

  By Jack McKinney 1987

  For Kallan and Caitlin Lock, with love from Uncle Jack

  CHAPTER ONE

  Many women were often in the thick of the fighting during the First Robotech War. They served splendidly and gallantly. But they were usually restricted to what the military insisted on calling "non-combat roles," despite the great numbers of them killed as a direct result of enemy action.

  By the time of the Second Robotech War, with the Earth's resources depleted and its population drastically reduced by the First, sheer necessity and common sense had overcome the lingering sexism that had kept willing, qualified women off the front lines.

  Nevertheless, the Robotech Masters' onslaught quickly had Earth on the ropes. It is instructive to consider what the outcome would have been if the Army of the Southern Cross had faced the planet's second invasion without half its fighting strength.

  Fortunately for us all, that is not what happened.

  Betty Greer, Post-Feminism and the Robotech Wars

  Lieutenant Marie Crystal made a willful effort to face the camera now as she had faced enemy guns yesterday.

  She drove back her bone-deep exhaustion, the pain of battle injuries, and the despair of a desperate situation that even the light lunar gravity couldn't alleviate. She intended to finish her report with the clarity and precision expected of a Tactical Armored Space Corps fighter ace and the leader of the TASC's vaunted Black Lions...

  And maybe, after that, she could collapse and get a few minutes' sleep.

  It seemed now that she never wanted anything but sleep.

  In the wake of the disastrous all-out attempt to destroy the Robotech Masters' invasion fleet, Marie had to shoulder even more responsibility. The chain of command had been shot all to hell along with the Earth strikeforce itself.

  Admiral Burke was dead-diced into bloody stew by an exploding power

  junction housing when the blue Bioroids cut the strikeforce flagship to ribbons. General Lacey, next in line, lay with ninety percent of the skin seared off his body, teetering between life and death.

  The senior officer, a staff one-star, was still functional, but he had virtually no combat command experience. The scuttlebutt was that he was being pressured to let somebody else run the show. An implausibly successful Bioroid sortie and the resultant hangar deck explosion on board the now defunct flagship resulted in Marie being named the new flight group commander.

  She went on with her after-action report to Southern Cross military headquarters on Earth.

  "Our remaining spacecraft number: one battlecruiser, two destroyer escorts, and one logistical support ship, all of which have suffered heavy damage," she said, looking squarely into the optical pickup. "Along with twenty-three Veritech fighters, twelve A-JACs combat mecha, and assorted small scout and surveillance ships. At last report we have one thousand, one hundred sixteen surviving personnel, eight hundred and fifty-seven of them fit for duty."

  Fewer than nine hundred effectives! Jesus! She pulled at the collar ring seal of her combat armor, where it had chafed her neck. She couldn't recall the last time she had been able to strip off the alloy plate and get some real rest. Back on Earth, probably. But that was a lifetime ago.

  "As I stated previously, deployment of the enemy mother ships, and their assault craft and Bioroid combat mecha, made it impossible for the strikeforce to return to Earth. Since we were also cut off from LS Space Station Liberty, and were forced to take refuge here at Moon Base ALUCE, we are making round-the-clock efforts to fortify our position against an enemy counterattack. Major repairs and life-support replenishment are being carried out as well, and civilian personnel have been placed under emergency military authority."

  It all sounded so crisp, so can-do, she thought, trying to focus her eyes on her notecards. As if everything were under control, instead of at the thin

  edge of utter catastrophe. As if the survivors were an effective fighting force instead of a chewed up, burned-out bunch of men and women and machinery. As if the attack hadn't been the most insane strategy, the worst snafu, the most horrifying slaughter she had ever seen.

  Recording her stiff-upper-lip report, she felt like a liar, but that was the way Marie Crystal had been taught to do her duty. She wondered if the brass hats at Southern Cross Army HQ back on Earth would read between the lines-if that pompous, blustering idiot, Supreme Commander Leonard, had any idea how much suffering and death he had caused.

  She yanked her mind off that track; feeling murderous toward her superiors would not help now.

  "Our medical personnel and volunteers from other strikeforce elements are tending to the wounded in the ALUCE medcenter. But facilities are extremely limited here, and I am instructed to request that we be permitted to attempt a special mission to ferry our worst cases back to Earth."

  What could she add? There was the natural Human impulse to tell the goddamn lardbutts in their swivel chairs how much hell she had seen. There was the desire to see someone capable, someone like General Emerson, for instance, march in before the United Earth Government council and charge Leonard and his staff with incompetence. There was an inner compulsion to tell how futile it felt, preparing the civilian ALUCE-Advanced Lunar Chemical Engineering-station for a last stand, and getting the VTs and other mecha ready to sortie out again if the need arose.

  Forget it; shoot 'n' salute, that was a soldier's duty. Maybe a miracle would happen, and the mysterious aliens who called themselves the Robotech Masters would cut ALUCE and the strikeforce a little slack. If the Humans could just have a few days to get themselves back into some kind of fighting shape, that would change the mix a lot. But Marie had her doubts.

  "This completes the situation report. Lieutenant Marie Crystal, reporting for the Commander, out." She saluted smartly, her mouth tugging in a faint, ironic smirk.

  The camera tech wrapped it up. "We'll transcribe it and send it out in

  burst right away, ma'am." She took the cassette of Marie's report.

  The Robotech Masters had been having more and more success interfering with the frequency-jumping communications tactics the Humans had been forced to use. To avoid any interference, the report would be sped up to a millisecond squeal of information. Hopefully it would get through.

  And when they get it, what then? Marie wondered. We might be able to sneak one shipload of WIAs back, but for the rest of us there's no way home.

  In the headquarters of the Army of the Southern Cross, Supreme Commander Leonard studied the tape. The smudged and hollow-eyed young female flight lieutenant reeled off facts and figures of bitter defeat with no expression except that last upcurling of one corner of her mouth.

  "Mmm" was all he said, as Colonel Rochelle turned off the tape. "We received this transmission from ALUCE eight minutes ago, sir," Rochelle told him. "Nothing else has gotten through the enemy's jamming so far. Looks like they're onto our freq-jumping stunt. The people down in signal/crypto are trying to come up with something new, but so far the occasional odd message is all we can really hope for from Strikeforce Victory."

  Leonard nodded slowly, looking at the huge, gray screen. Then he whirled around and threw himself into a seat across the conference table from Major General Rolf Emerson.

  "Well, Emerson! How about that!" Leonard pounded his pale, soft, freckled fists the size of pot roasts on the gleaming oak. "It would appear that our little assault operation wasn't a complete failure after all, eh?"

  Everyone in the room held their breath. It was a well-known fact that Emerson had opposed the mad strikeforce scheme from the outset, and that there was no love lost between the Supreme Commander and his chief of staff for Terrestrial Defense, Emerson. And everyone had watche
d Emerson grow grimmer and grimmer as Marie Crystal delivered her casualty report.

  Now Emerson looked across the table at Leonard, and more than one

  staff officer wished they had had time to get a little money down on the fight. Leonard was huge, but a lot of it was pointless bulk; there was some question about how much real muscle was there. Emerson, on the other hand, was a ramrod-straight middleweight with a boxer's physique, and few of the men and women on his staff could keep up with him when it came time for calisthenics or road drill.

  Not a complete failure? Emerson was asking himself. God, what would this man call "failure"?

  But he was a man bound by his oath. A generation before, military officers had violated their oaths. They had served grasping politicians-most tellingly in the now-defunct USA-and that had led to a global civil war. Every woman and man who had sworn to serve the Southern Cross Army knew those stories, and knew that it was their obligation to obey that oath to the letter.

  Emerson stared down at his fingers, which were curled around an ancient fountain pen that had been a gift from his ward, Private First Class Bowie Grant. He worried about Bowie only slightly more than he worried about each of the hundreds and thousands of other Southern Cross Army personnel under his command. He worried about the survival of the Human race and that of Earth more than he worried about any individual Human life-even his own.

  Emerson gathered up all of his patience, and the perseverance for which he was so famous. "Commander Leonard, the ALUCE base is a mere research outpost, with civilians present. Aside from the fact that by the standards of the Robotech war we're fighting, ALUCE is tinfoil and cardboard! I therefore presume you're not seriously thinking of fortifying it as a military base."

  It was as close to insubordination as Emerson had ever permitted himself to go. The silence in the Command Briefing Room was so profound that the roiling of various stomachs could be heard. Through it all, Emerson was locked with Leonard's gaze.

  The Supreme Commander spoke deliberately. "Yes, that is my plan.

  And I see nothing wrong with it!" He seemed to be making it up as he went along. "Mmm. As I see it, a military strikeforce at an outpost on the moon will enable us to hit those alien bastards from two different directions at once!"

  A G3 staff light colonel named Rudolph readjusted his glasses and said eagerly, "I see! In that way, we're outflanking those six big mother ships they've got in orbit around Earth!"

  Leonard looked pleased. "Yes. Precisely."

  Emerson took a deep breath and pushed his chair away from the oak table a little, as though he was about to face a firing squad. But when he came to his feet, there was silence. All eyes turned to him. The general feeling was that no one on Earth was more trusted, more committed to standing by his word, than Rolf Emerson.

  No one could be relied upon more to speak the truth into the teeth of deceit.

  And this was certainly that moment. "ALUCE is a peaceful, unreinforced cluster of pressurized huts, Commander Leonard. I don't think that anything the strikeforce survivors can do will make it a viable military base. And it's my opinion that by provoking the enemy into attacking it you'll be throwing away lives."

  So many staffers inhaled at the same time that Rudolph wondered if the air pressure would drop. Leonard's faced flushed with rage. "They've already mauled our first assault wave; it's not a question of provocation anymore. Damn it, man! This is war, not an exercise in interstellar diplomacy!"

  "But we haven't even tried negotiating," Emerson began, a little hopelessly. An over-eager missile battery commander named Komodo had fired on the Robotech Masters before any real attempt could be made to contact them and learn what it was they wanted. From that moment on, it had been war.

  "I'll have no insubordination!" Leonard bellowed. To the rest of the staff he added, "Mobilize the second strikeforce and prepare them to relieve

  our troops at Moon Base ALUCE!"

  Outside the classified-conference room, a figure clad in the uniform of the Southern Cross's Alpha Tactical Armored Corps-the ATACs-moved furtively.

  Zor still didn't quite understand the half-perceived urges that had brought him there. It was a familiar feeling, this utter mystification about who he was, and what forces drove him. It was as though he moved in a fog, but he knew that somewhere ahead was the room where all Earth's military plans were being formulated. He must go there, he must listen and watch-but he didn't understand why.

  Suddenly there was a bigger figure blocking his way. "Okay, Zor.

  Suppose you tell me just what the hell you think you're doing here?"

  It was Sergeant Angelo Dante, senior NCO of the 15th, fists balled and feet set at about shoulder width, ready for a fight. His size and strength dwarfed Zor's, and Zor was not small. Dante was a career soldier, a man of dark, curling hair and dark brows, not quick to trust anyone, incapable of believing anything good of Zor.

  The sergeant grabbed Zor's leather torso harness and gave it a yank, nearly lifting him off his feet. "What about it?"

  Zor shook his head slowly, as if coming out of a trance. "Angle!

  Wh-how did I get here?" He blinked, looking around him.

  "That's my line. You're sneakin' around a restricted area and you're away from your duty station without permission. If you don't have a pretty good explanation, I'm gonna see to it your butt goes into Barbwire City for a long time!" He shook Zor again.

  "Oh, Zor! There you are!" First Lieutenant Dana Sterling, commanding officer of the 15th, practically squealed it as she rounded a corner and hurried toward them. Angelo shook his head a little, watching how her smile beamed and her eyes crinkled as she caught sight of Zor.

  Like her two subordinates, she was dressed in the white Southern Cross uniform, with the black piping and black boots that suggested a riding

  outfit. She barely reached the middle of Angelo's chest, but she was, he had to admit, a gutsy and capable officer. Except where this Zor guy was concerned.

  She rushed up to them and grabbed Zor's hand; Angelo found himself automatically releasing his captive. Dana seemed completely unaware that she had blundered into the middle of what would otherwise have been a fight. "I've been looking for you everywhere, Zor!"

  Zor, still dazed, seemed to be groping for words. "Just a second, Lieutenant," Angelo interrupted.

  But she was tugging Zor away. "Come along; I want to ask you something!"

  "Hold it, ma'am!" Angelo burst out. "Why don'tcha ask pretty boy here what he's doing hanging around a restricted area?"

  Dana's expression turned to anger. Like the sergeant, she had tracked down Zor with difficulty, but she wouldn't let herself think badly of her strange, alien trooper. She shot back, "What are you, Angie, a spy for the Global Military Police?"

  Angelo's black brows went up. "Huh? You know better than that! But somebody has to keep an eye on this guy. Or don't you think what he's doing is a little suspicious?"

  Dana rasped, "Zor's suffering from severe memory loss. If he's a little disoriented at times, that just means we should show him a bit of compassion and understanding!"

  She slipped an arm through Zor's, clasping his elbow. Angelo wondered if he were going crazy; wasn't this the same alien who had led the enemy forces in his red Bioroid? Didn't he try to kill Dana, as she had tried to kill him, in a half dozen or so of the most vicious single combats of the war, her Hovertank mecha against his Bioroid?

  "I'll speak to you later, Sergeant," Dana said, dragging Zor off.

  Angelo watched them go. He had gained a lot of respect for Dana Sterling since she had taken command of the 15th, but she was only eighteen and, in the sergeant's opinion, still too impulsive and too inclined

  to make rash moves. He tried to suppress his sneaking suspicion as to why she was so protective of Zor-so possessive, really.

  But one indisputable fact remained. No matter how loyally Angelo tried to discount it, Dana herself was half alien.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I coul
d never figure out why Leonard, who hated anything alien, would tolerate that wacky experiment where Zor was thrown in with the 15th ATAC-especially since a female halfbreed was CO. One day, I remember, Leonard had been grumbling about putting Zor back into lab isolation and dissecting him.

  Ten minutes later the phone rang. Leonard didn't say much in that conversation-it was real brief. And whatever he heard through the earpiece had him sweating. Right after that he dropped the topic for good.

  I happened to see the phone logs for the afternoon over at the commo desk a little later. The call had come from Dr. Lazio Zand, who ran Special Protoculture Observations and Operations Kommandatura. I did my best to forget I'd ever seen that log.

  Captain Jed Streiber, as quoted in "Conjuration,"

  History of the Robotech Wars, Vol. CXXXIII

  "The Revenge of the Martian Mystery Women?" Zor echoed Dana. "Right!" she said excitedly. "Everybody says it's a dynamite movie.

  You'll love it! And it won't cost you anything 'cause I've already got the tickets!" She showed him the pair of ducats.

  They were sitting in a little park outside the big, imperial-looking building that housed Alpha Tactical Armored Corps HQ. Birds were singing, and a fountain splashed nearby. "As a matter of fact, they're hard to come by, and the scalper charged me plenty for these!" She frowned a bit, wondering if she was making a fool of herself.

  Zor gave a thin smile. "Well then, how can I refuse, Lieutenant?"

  An officer in the 10th squad who had seen the movie last night had said that it was romantic as well as exciting. Dana liked the idea of seeing a movie about alluring, captivating alien women with Zor.

  She rushed on, "I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't said

  yes!" Then she stopped, looking perplexed. "Only-now I'm not sure what I ought to wear..."