The Final Nightmare

by Jack McKinney

  Once out of the nebula, past the point of greatest proximity to the enemy, the crewpeople began to breathe easier. But Emerson grew even more vigilant.

  The Robotech Masters gathered vast amounts of data through their Protoculture cap. "The Humans must be relieved to have passed their zone of likeliest combat without a confrontation," Shaizan conjectured.

  "Prepare to destroy them," he sent out the command.

  "What're you trying now, Louie?" Dana asked the lanky corporal as he bent over the training simulator's guts.

  "I'm gonna win back those two beers I owe you," Louie said smugly, fooling with the systemry there, changing some connections, putting in a special adaptor. "You're in for a surprise. "

  Dana scoffed, "C'mon, Louie! You can't beat a born warrior like me, even with a lot of mechie tricks."

  At least he never had yet, even on the Kill Those Bioroids! program that he himself had designed for the simulator. She was happy to let him keep trying though; hand-eye training never hurt. She was just sorry the simulator, in the canteen at the local Southern Cross service club, wasn't set up more like a Hovertank's cockpit-turret, or that she hadn't been able to beg, borrow, or steal a simulator for the 15th's ready-room.

  The thinking caps did the bulk of the controlling for Robotech mecha, but the tankers inside still had to know their instrumentation the way a tongue knew the roof of its mouth. At the 15th, as in TASC and other units, mock-ups of the cockpit layouts of the particular mecha used by the individual outfit were pasted up in the interiors of lavatory stalls so that the soldiers sitting there could refresh their memorization of their instrumentation during what the brass euphemistically called "available time."

  Now Louie, making a final adjustment said, "That's what you say." He climbed into the simulator and shocked- her by taking off the big, square, dark tech goggles that he wore almost constantly-even in the shower and often when sleeping. It gave his face an open, surprised look.

  Dana wasn't sure what to think. Louie was undoubtedly a maverick technical genius. Word was that he had passed up numerous offers for advanced study or research assignments because he liked the action in Hovertanks, but also because he preferred to tinker and modify without somebody breathing down his neck.

  Certainly, he had been responsible for one of the major victories of the

  war when his analysis of the Masters' flagship's power and drive systems permitted the 15th to disable it and bring it down. Even though the other ships had retrieved it and guarded against any recurrence, nothing was taken away from that spectacular success. And still, Louie had refused transfer to Research and Development or some think tank.

  Now he put aside his goggles and pulled on a wraparound visor, a black and glittering V shape, like something a sidewalk cowboy might wear downtown.

  Two jumpsuited technical officers in a nearby booth, discussing Emerson's mission in low tones, suddenly became aware of a furor near the simulator, with TASC pilots and ATAC tankers and others crowding around, exclaiming and cheering. They went over and saw a tall, skinny corporal in black shades blowing away computer-modeled Bioroids with a speed and accuracy unlike anything simulators-or even real mecha-had ever approached.

  As the two officers began shouldering their way through the crowd, the kid was waving an adapter cartridge around and explaining that it was computer-enhanced targeting linked into his glasses, a step up from even the thinking caps.

  "I call it my Visual Trace Firing System, or VTFS," Louie was telling them all proudly. "Or if you prefer, my 'pupil pistol.' "

  "Mind if I see it?" said one officer, holding out a hand for the cartridge.

  Louie was instantly wary, and Dana looked the two over as well.

  "Major Cromwell, Robotech R&D," the officer said. He indicated his companion. "And this is Major Gervasi. I think we can use this system of yours in our simulation training. We'll help you upgrade it and give you advice, assistance, and technical resources. Is this the only copy?"

  "N-no," Louie admitted, a little uncertain.

  Cromwell slipped the cartridge into the shoulder pocket of his jumpsuit. "Fine. If you don't mind, we'll have a look at this one, then. Can you be in my office tomorrow at thirteen hundred hours?"

  While stuttering that he could, Louie handed over the visor as well.

  Dana decided that she couldn't pull rank on two majors, especially ones who worked for the top-secret R&D division.

  But more than that, she was experiencing strange sensations, something to do with the mention of research, of Robotechnology, and thus of Protoculture. Something about Protoculture and experimentation...It gave her a queasy feeling, sent a jolt of fear zapping through her, brought not-quite-perceived, evil memories...

  But she shook it off as Cromwell walked away telling Louie, "We're looking forward to working with you."

  Dana smiled affectionately at the goofily grinning Louie. "My brainy boy!" she said.

  Outside the service club, Gervasi said to Cromwell, "Good work, Joe.

  Just what we need, out of nowhere!"

  Cromwell nodded. "Send word up the back channels to Leonard and Zand right away. 'Rolling Thunder' is about to get the green light."

  Emerson's force was very close to the moon when the Masters' fleet appeared like ghosts all around them, not on the monitors one second, hemming them in the next.

  It was what the general had feared. The Masters had penetrated Earth's detection systems before; measures to counter that capability just hadn't worked, and the invaders had bided their time until they could use the tactic to best advantage. That time was now, with the expedition out of combat formation and deployed for lunar approach, with no way back and no way forward.

  Emerson was reordering the disposition of his units even as the alien mother ships disgorged scores of the whisk broom-shaped assault craft. With his battlecruiser Tristar at the center, Emerson prepared to fight his way through to ALUCE.

  Blue Bioroids came in at the Humans like maddened automaton hornets. The call went out for the A-JACs to scramble, and the expedition's ships began throwing out a huge volume of fire to clear the way for them

  and hold the Bioroids off.

  Once more, Marie Crystal led her Black Lions out in the A-JACs. She was all combat leader, all Robotech warrior now, the regret and hurt from Sean's betrayal savagely thrust aside. Leave love for fools, and let Marie Crystal do what she did best!

  The Bioroids and the A-JACs swirled and struck, lighting an unnamed volume of space with thermonuclear lightning and sunfire. The killing began at once, the casualties piled up.

  Marie skeeted a Bioroid right off its Hovercraft, so that the circular platform went on, unguided, heading for infinite space. She went to Battloid mode, ordering others to do the same, changing tactics abruptly and taking advantage of the foe's brief confusion.

  Assault ships swept in, to hammer away at the larger expeditionary vessels and be volleyed at in reply. Hulls were pierced through and through; blasts claimed Human and clone alike. Space was a maelstrom of plasma-hot beams and blowtorching drives and the ugly flare of dying ships.

  Professor Miles Cochran gathered up all of his nerve to ask, "Dr. Zand, the Invid Nebula is so appallingly dangerous-it might even take hostile action against Emerson's force. Are you certain we shouldn't give him some inkling of that? Perhaps it's not too late..."

  There had been a tremor in his voice; he couldn't help it. Cochran began to tremble as Zand turned that eerie stare upon him there in the grandiose, forbidden sanctuary of the Kommandatura in a Robotech-rococo chamber deep in the Earth. Zand's eyes were all pupil, with no iris or white at all; his was a gaze no one could meet for long.

  Even more unnerving than his eyes was the power radiating from him, which intimidated his handpicked disciples. The power of Protoculture. The outside world might see him as a slightly odd-looking researcher, the UEG's top scientific officer and adviser-a man of normal height and build with an unruly forelock, who dressed in a somewhat r
umpled uniform. An egghead.

  But the seven men and one woman seated around the table knew differently.

  The group met in a vaulted room that mixed the technological with the mystical. Side by side with the latest computer equipment and with Zand's own systemry were musty copies of the Necronomicon and The Book of James, along with talismans and gnostic paraphernalia. There was an enlargement of a satellite photo of the mound in which the wreckage of SDF-1 was buried. Zand sat at the head of the black obsidian table staring at Cochran.

  He said, almost delicately, "Do you think I expunged all mention of the Invid, the Matrix, and the Flower of Life from every record but our own just so that you could go blurting it to Leonard and his military imbeciles? Or the fools at UEG? Have I wasted so much time on you?"

  Cochran fought against a years-long habit of obedience to Zand, of self-sacrifice to the transcendent plan the scientist had enacted. He and the few others who sat there-Beckett, Russo, and the rest-were the only ones on Earth aside from the man himself who knew just how much Zand had altered the course of history.

  "Confrontation is the whole point of the Shaping, don't you see?" Zand went on. "War is the whole point. Do you think Dana Sterling's dormant powers will be released by anything short of the Apocalypse?"

  Data on the Invid and the Matrix and the rest of it, gathered from the Zentraedi leaders Exedore and Breetai, and from Captain Gloval, Miriya Sterling, and a few others, had been kept under tightest restrictions. Once Lang, Hunter, and the rest left Earth on the SDF-3 mission, it hadn't taken Zand long to see to it that everyone who knew about that information either joined his cabal, or died.

  "The Protoculture's Shaping of history is moving toward a single Moment," Zand reminded them all. "And that Moment is near; I can feel it. I shall take ultimate advantage of that Moment. Nothing will be allowed to stop it."

  Cochran, a thin-faced, intense redhead, swallowed. He had a brother in

  Emerson's strikeforce-who probably would soon become a casualty of the Shaping, but Cochran knew that would not matter to Zand.

  To make him feel even more uncomfortable, Cochran was seated next to Russo. Russo was the former senator and head of the United Earth Defense Council. He was the man whose ambitions and prejudices had made him, more than any other Human being, the source of the misjudgments and errors that had cost Earth so terribly in the First Robotech War.

  Russo had no ambitions now; he was barely alive. He was a vacant-eyed, doglike slave to Zand, very much a creature of the shadows, like his master.

  Cochran managed, "I just thought-"

  "You just thought to interfere with the Shaping so that your brother would be out of danger?" Zand cut in. "Don't look so surprised! Why do you think your attempts to get him a transfer all failed? It was because I was giving you a test, a test of loyalty. You wavered, and so you failed. Kill him."

  The last words were soft, but they brought instant action. Russo was out of his seat in an instant, pouncing on Cochran. Beckett, on the other side-Cochran's colleague and friend since college-didn't hesitate either, helping Russo bring Cochran to the floor.

  Zand's other disciples threw themselves into the fray, terrified of failing this newest test. Even matronly Millicent Edgewick was there, kicking the doomed man. Zand sat and watched, nibbling dried petals of the Flower of Life.

  Cochran went down, his chair overturned. His screams didn't last long.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The generals who let us die so they can shake a fist— They'd none of 'em be missed, they'd none of 'em be missed!

  Bowie Grant, "With Apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan"

  Bowie was tinkering with the keys again, trying not to think about the strikeforce expedition. "Doesn't that get boring?" Sean asked, leaning on the piano.

  "Not really."

  "I don't mean you, Bowie; I mean those two."

  He pointed toward Dana and Louie, who were toiling over a simulator that looked as if it had been stripped, components lying everywhere. Why they had chosen the readyroom to work in instead of one of the repair bays or maintenance workrooms was still unclear, except perhaps the fact that Dana kept trying to entice people into volunteering to help.

  Dana had commandeered the simulator from the canteen on authority from R&D, and neither she nor Louie had slept that night. On the other hand, as of yet no R&D support troops had shown up.

  "I'm starting to wonder if that Cromwell really wants Louie's gizmo for simulation training," Sean murmured.

  "I just like machines," Louie was expounding to Dana, as he reassembled things. "They expand Human potential and they never disappoint you, if you build 'em right. Somebody with the right know-how could create the ideal society. Unimpeded Intellect! Machine Logic!"

  "I didn't know you were such a romantic," she said dryly. Ideal society?

  Boy, what a mechie!

  Louie wanted to run the final test, but Dana pulled rank and he yielded amiably. She pulled on a visor, hopped into the simulator, and the

  computer-modeled slaughter began. It was a quantum leap from the old thinking cap; her score soared.

  Elsewhere, the Tristar, Emerson's flagship, was fighting a desperate diversionary action, luring the main body of the enemy's forces one way so that the more badly damaged expedition ships could try to limp to ALUCE.

  "We can't take much more of this pounding!" Green growled, as the Tristar was jarred again by enemy fire.

  "I know," Emerson said calmly. "Get me a precise position fix and tell the power section we'll need emergency max power in two minutes."

  "Sir," Rochelle said and bent to the task. Green turned a silent, questioning look on the man he had served for so long.

  "We're going to generate a singularity effect," Emerson said. They all knew he meant use of the mysterious "special apparatus" given him by R&D in a cryptic transfer that, rumor had it, could be traced to Zand himself.

  The idea was to create a small black hole where the ship was, the ship itself being yo-yoed momentarily into another dimension. The singularity would then pull in and destroy everything in close proximity to it. The untested theory and some of the apparatus came from Dr. Emil Lang's research on the now-destroyed SDF-1.

  "And then the enemy becomes a brief accretion disc, gets sucked into the singularity, and vanishes forever," Green muttered. "Perhaps."

  "We try it or die anyway," Emerson pointed out. To underscore that, another enemy salvo shook the Tristar.

  Power readings seemed insane, violating all safety factors and load tolerances. Emerson had a microphone in his hand.

  "Lieutenant Crystal, you and the other TASCs will lure all enemy forces as close to the Tristar as possible, and be ready to get clear on a moment's notice, in approximately six minutes, do you copy?"

  "You heard the man," Marie told the Lions.

  It was the weirdest mission she had ever been on: sting and run, get the

  enemy assault ships and battleships and 'roids chasing you. Juke and dodge to keep them from shooting your tail off; somehow keep them from engaging and diverting or delaying you. Protect your teammates but keep moving; do your best to ignore the heavy losses suffered by pilots who had been forbidden, in effect, to turn and give battle. And watch the time diminish down to zero.

  As the timer wound down, the area around the Tristar was thick with dogfighting mecha, the biggest rat race of the Second Robotech War. The enemy forces were hitting Emerson's flagship almost at will, and it couldn't last much longer.

  Then Marie heard Emerson's order to get clear; the A-JACs cut in all thrusters and headed away, leaving the field to the milling Bioroids and combat vessels.

  Emerson watched the indicators and, when it was time, he threw the switch. Crackling energy wreathed the battlecruiser, seeming to crawl around it like superfast serpents. The tremendous discharge expanded to form a sphere just big enough to contain the ship. The Bioroids' emotionless faceplates were lit up by the radiance of the blaze.

  Ther
e were cosmic fireworks, then nothing to see as the lightshow was engulfed by the Schwarzchild radius. The Bioroids and vessels closest to the vanished flagship were destroyed by tidal forces. The invaders were sucked into nullset-space.

  Those slightly farther away were helpless to escape becoming accretion material, whirling down to and over the event horizon after their fellows. The Masters' mightiest assault force was gone except for a little quantum leakage.

  Marie was waiting for the Tristar, praying that the last and most critical part of the operation wouldn't be a disaster, when cannonfire rocked her A-JAC. "Damn!" she yelled, pushing her stickup into the corner for a pushover, imaging the aerocombat move through her horned helmet even though she was in airless space. There was one battleship left!

  The other A-JACs scattered as the enemy drove in at them, putting out

  a fearsome volume of fire with primary and secondary batteries. It was obviously damaged-and so had moved too slowly to be drawn within the deadly radius of the singularity effect.

  Now it was practically on top of the Lions, still capable of doing fatal damage to the Tristar, should Emerson's ship reappear and be taken by surprise. Marie gave quick orders, and the Black Lions went at the enemy dreadnought like wolves after a mammoth, biting, ripping, coming back for more even though they suffered heavy losses-and luring the battlewagon into position.

  But the clones weren't blind to what had happened to the rest of their battle group and fought to keep clear. The Masters' battleship put its remaining power into a run for safety.

  But it found another vessel blocking its way. Although the Salamis was shaking with secondary explosions and seemed more holes than hull, it closed in on the alien, firing with the few batteries still functioning.