"These are not your slaves!" Musica cried. "These are individuals, whose freedom of choice has made them free of your society. Now, stand away!"
"Then you will die, you who disrupt our lives!" With that, Karno brought up his weapon, as did Sookol and Darsis, and opened fire. At that moment, the young man who had acted as guide for Angelo threw himself in front of Musica. He took the first five rounds of the firelight, all at once and all in one tight group.
The ATACs were standing straddle-legged, firing back at almost point-blank range, in the same second-all except for Louie, who slid the shock grenade the guards' way and hollered, "Get back!"
Refugee clones in the first rank fell like scythed wheat, but the ATACs'
fire cut into the enemy guardsmens' ranks at once, and all the clones' accuracy was lost. Enemy shots rebounded from the troopers' armor, and the tankers laid down a suppressing fire that had the guardsmen ducking for
The detonation of the shock grenade was like a freezeframe of the guards' postures, lasting only a fraction of a second. Its blast sent them somersaulting and flying, while the refugees and the Humans scuttled for cover, and the ambushers struggled to regain the offensive.
Musica, crouched behind one structural frame, cradled to her the youth who had guided Angelo and taken the rounds meant for her. "Why did you...?"
"You are the soul of us all. You are the hope of us all." The eyes rolled up in his head, showing only white, and the breath rattled from him.
She laid his head down gently, then rose and stepped back into the passageway, into the fairway of the firelight, the various beams and bolts and streams of discs bickering back and forth. "Karno! Stop this at once!"
Bowie, pinned down, couldn't reach her, but screamed at her to get to cover. Karno, crouched to fire from cover, bawled, "Musica, the Micronians have cast a spell over you!"
"That's not true! I've freely chosen a new way of life-ahh!"
There was no telling if the beam that seared her arm was from friend or foe. She went on through locked teeth, "The truth is...we are all free beings. With free will. And you know that!"
"You speak lies!" he shrieked. "You're bewitched!"
"Got any brilliant inspirations?" Louie asked Angelo, as they squatted in the lee of a huge packing crate.
"We could send 'em candy and flowers an' say we won't never do it no more," Angelo allowed, then snapped off another round. "Or, pray for a miracle-"
Just as he was saying that, the bulkhead was punched inward, one of the more curious coincidences of the war. It was as if one of those ancient beer-car openers was broaching a cold one, only the opener was a
stiff-fingered shot by a Battloid.
The Battloid, having following their transponders, peeled back the bulkhead like wrapping paper and stood into the gap. Smoke curled around it and the guard clones shrank back in hysteria, forgetting their attack. A voice amplified to Olympian volume rang, "So for this you stood me up at our rendezvous?"
"Meant to drop ya a note, Phillips," 'Dante admitted. "But I got real distracted."
"No excuses!"
Where he might have used the towering mecha's weapons to wipe out every enemy there, Sean instead chose to chastise them. He had seen enough war, seen enough slaughter and, more to the point, sensed that a few more incidental enemy KIAs wouldn't influence the outcome of things. He had no heightened senses or Protoculture powers, just simple Human intuition that the outcome of the war-the very core of it-had nothing to-do with scoring a few more clone body counts.
The colossal Battloid brushed a flock of guards into a wall; most of the others broke and ran, dropping their weapons. Among those downed was the Guard Triumvirate.
Angelo led the refugees the other way, toward the assault ships. But Karno reared up and spied Octavia, who had been promised to Sookol so long ago by the Masters. She looked so like Musica.
Karno dragged himself up and dug out his sidearm, to shoot her as she dashed by. She screamed and fell, Bowie and Musica turning back to help her.
Sean turned his Battloid and brought up the Cyclopean foot. Even as Bowie and Musica were carrying Octavia to cover, Karno screamed. The last thing the clone ever saw was the bottom of the foot of the Battloid-configuration Hovertank Bad News, 15th squad, Alpha Tactical Armored Corps.
Bowie knelt in the lee of the alloy container while Musica sought to comfort her sister.
Octavia's hand caressed her cheek. "It's all right, Musica-I know my spirit and my songs will live in you!"
"We're still...as one," Musica struggled.
"Yes, I know, though greater things are in you now, such greater things!
But to the end of space and time-we three are one...always...."
And she was dead. Bowie tugged at Musica's arm because a sudden rush by counterattacking guards might put Musica in jeopardy before Sean's Battloid could make them see reason and drive them back.
The counterattack was repulsed, not much of a job for a mecha that had the firepower of an old-time armored troop. Sean's Bad News burrowed through a bulkhead like a big, glittering badger, and opened the way for the refugees, who went spilling into the assault ship hangar deck. "There; that oughta do it; everybody into the troop carriers!"
As planned, the battle on and just over the planet's surface and the decoys that were the surviving mother ships had led most of the Earth forces away from the flagship. Those that were left were of no importance. The Robotech Masters' last functioning mother ship closed in to execute the final portion of its mission.
Three segmented metal appendages, like huge blind worms, extruded themselves from the underside of the flagship and met, their completed instrumentality throwing out a light as bright as a solar prominence. A beam sprang down to penetrate one of the mounds below, and the second, and the third, with zigzagging sensor bolts.
Inside the Masters' ship, engines of raw power were brought into play. The distortions and occlusions of the Protoculture wraiths could not stand before that raw power, and the Masters saw-at last where their target lays.
The three wraiths looked upward. Their hour was nearly sped; there was no resisting the focused might of the mother ship.
At the touch of the Masters' might, the mound covering the SDF-1
shuddered, then began to split open, as the Flowers of Life stirred, and the spores bobbed upward. Rock ground against rock, and tremendous volumes of soil were shifted with ease. The mound itself was split in half and pulled apart by the invaders' awesome instrumentality. As the gap widened, trees, boulders, and dirt from the mound's flat top rained down onto the wreckage below. In the place of the relatively small opening that had been above the Matrix garden, there appeared a rift that exposed the entire wreckage of the SDF-1.
The guardian Protoculture wraiths released the hold they had maintained on the spores for so long; the spores began drifting up toward the sunlight and the winds of Earth.
The Masters, studying their operations with satisfaction, watched the mound split open and willed their great ship to speed to it, for the extraction of the Matrix. There was time to save enough of it to provide them with sufficient new Protoculture to rebuild their galactic empire.
They were no longer on their floating cap, since its systemry had to be merged with that of the ship itself for this crucial function. Instead they stood on a circular antigrav platform, nearly at floor level. Without Bowkaz, it was less crowded than they were used to. Shaizan held the canister with the last mass once more, waiting for the moment when its total power must be brought to bear.
"Soon even the Invid will not dare stand against us," Shaizan declared. He turned to issue another order to the Scientist triumvirate, whose members stood nearby, supervising the mission, gathered around a big control module in the middle of the chamber.
But the opening of a hatch behind them made Shaizan and Dag whirl. Zor Prime entered, with the clone guard they had posted held in an armlock, his rifle aimed at them with his free hand. Dana followed, holding h
er carbine.
"Masters, heed me: the moment of retribution has come. Now you pay for all the evil you've done!" Zor Prime thundered.
Shaizan seemed almost sad. "Will you never understand, Zor? It is much too late." He gestured to the screens, which showed the opened mound, and Monument City in flames. "In moments, we will have the Matrix back, at last. You cannot stop us."
Dana snarled, "We're not going to let you snakes have that Matrix. It's too powerful!"
The Masters were mystified as to how Zor and the female had escaped; it was, perhaps, some effect from the sundering of their Triumvirate, Dag and Shaizan concluded.
Dana brought the carbine up and aimed it at the Scientist clones, clicking off the safety. "Stop the machines."
Dovak, the triumvirate leader of the Scientists, protested, "Impossible!
They cannot be stopped now; they've been given final instructions!"
Dana decided to find out, with a few well-placed bursts into the controls-perhaps even into the clones, if they didn't see reason. But just then, Zor shoved her aside. Energy bolts blazed through the spot where she had stood, splashing molten droplets and sparks from the bulkhead.
The Masters' antigrav platform was rising, and from an energy nozzle on its underside, a stream of shots raged at the interlopers. Zor had dived for cover, hurling the guard. against the bulkhead and the clone dropped, stunned. Rolling, Zor fired back, and Dag clutched his midsection, slumping, crying out in pain and hysterical fear of death.
Dana fired, too, but her shots at the weapon nozzle and the platform's underside didn't appear to be doing much good. Then she hit a hornlike projection, and the platform rocked, smoking and crackling with powerful discharges, and fell back to the deck.
The platform came straight at them, and Dana and Zor threw themselves to either side. Somehow, Shaizan, still cradling the canister to him, gained control at the last moment and managed to leap free, before the platform went on to plow into the Scientist clones and their control module. They screamed, transfixed with horror, as the platform crashed down on them and their control module ruptured, spilling out furious energy surges.
By the time Zor and Dana got back to their feet, Shaizan was already at another hatch, clinging to the Protoculture mass. Zor screamed, "Master, you can't escape me!" but the tripartite hatch closed behind Shaizan.
As they were rushing to catch up, Dana heard some monitoring system shrilling in alarm. A voice simulacrum wailed, "Warning! Warning! Guidance systems off-line! Power systems failing! Crash alert! Impact in three point five five units!"
Dana looked at the display maps, and saw the projected point of impact: it looked to her like Monument City. She wasn't aware that the city had already been shot to ruins by the Triumviroids.
"We've got to stop it, or it'll kill everyone in the city! Zor, there's got to be a manual control system!"
He shook his head slowly. "We must get Dhaizan to release his hold over the systemry first."
He started for the hatch with Dana sprinting along behind. "Then we have to capture the last one alive!"
In fear of his life, Shaizan ran as he hadn't run in an age. Fright gave him more strength that he had ever thought possible, and the pumping of adrenaline in his system felt savage, bewilderingly primitive, after a long sedentary life.
But he was the quarry of young people in top condition; they soon caught up with him, in an ejection capsule access deck not far from the bridge. Zor saw Shaizan ahead and stopped to take up a firing stance. "Stop, I command you!"
"Zor, don't!" But before Dana could strike down the rifle barrel, Zor fired. Shaizan dropped in a swirl of robes; somehow, the canister remained intact.
Zor went to look down at the old man. Somehow, death had taken away the constant anger of the Master's visage, and he was nothing but a frail, infinitely tired-looking creature with a smoking hole in him, head pillowed on a collar resembling the Flower of Life. How could these creatures have lived so long and thrived on the Protoculture without understanding its
Shapings-without foreseeing this day?
"It's over now," Zor said, more to himself than to Dana.
"What d'you mean, 'all over'?" Dana barked. "This ship's gonna demolish the city!"
"The Masters brought their own punishment down on themselves, by their misuse of the Protoculture," he told her, putting a hand on each of her armored shoulders. "And I was the instrument of that punishment, ordained by the Shaping."
"But what about my people? It's not fair to punish them for something they didn't do-mmmmm..."
He leaned forward to put his lips to hers. Their months locked, they kissed for what might have been seconds or centuries. When they parted a bit, he smiled at her tenderly, and she was astounded to see from his eyes that
He-he loves me!
Zor had her back in his arms, was lifting her off the deck. "Do not worry about your people, Dana. I will allow no harm to come to them."
She felt like relaxing, just letting him carry her where he would; like going limp and simply trusting him. But some inner, independent part of her made her start to object. Just then, she realized that he was setting her down into the cocoon padding of an ejection capsule.
"Good-bye, Dana."
At first she had thought he was going to join her inside-that they would cast aside the armor of war and never wear it again. And she had been working up the self-discipline to make sure everything really was all right before she took her own armor off, though the temptation was great.
But instead, he drew back, and she was so astounded that she sat frozen while the hatch of the little superhard alloy sphere closed and secured. All at once she was staring at him through a viewport. His smile was wistful, as he made some adjustment to the locking mechanism, and it gave a loud click. He smiled at her again, fondly but mournfully.
"Zor!" She was pounding at the viewport and trying to work the locking
controls, but it did no good. He disappeared from view. She was still struggling to get free, crying, shouting his name, when the capsule gave a lurch, moved by the transfer servos, preparing for ejection.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
They give you clothes, they're free with guns, And trainin', food and lodgin',
But tell me: what career moves Can come from bullet dodgin?
Bowie Grant, "Nervous in the Service"
"Sarge, we're picking up some kinda we ejection capsule launch from the mother ship," Louie Nichols reported, sitting beside Angelo at the controls of the liberated assault ship.
Behind them, refugee clones were crowded in tightly, frightened, but used to the discipline of the Masters and so obediently quiet. Angelo, sweating over the controls, snapped, "So what? Maybe it's somebody makin' their own getaway. It sure ain't a raidin' party or a Bioroid."
That was true, and it was unlikely that there were many combat forces left in the mother ship, or that they would do the Masters much good even if they could get to the Earth's surface. For some reason, the Bioroid-pilot clones and other fighters of the Masters' invasion force had, according to the transmissions the escapees were monitoring, suddenly become almost totally ineffective. The attacking enemies' ability to fight, their very will to fight, seemed to have simply vanished, and Earth's ragtag defenders were counterattacking everywhere, a complete rout.
Something occurred to Angelo. "Get on the military freqs and find somebody who's in charge," he told Louie. "Tell 'em we got an airlift of refugees comin' down, and to hold their fire. Tell 'em...tell 'em these people here ain't the enemy."
Louie threw him a strange smile. "Hear, hear, Angie."
He felt Bowie, who stood behind him, clap him on the back, and felt Musica's light touch h at his shoulder. Then Angelo pronounced a few choice army obscenities, the ship having wandered off course. He was no
fly-boy and even the coaching of experienced clone pilots didn't make it much easier to herd the alien craft along.
"Everybody keep still and lemme drive," Angel
o Dante growled.
Within the mother ship, Zor's red Bioroid stomped back toward the command center, its discus pistol clutched in its gargantuan metal fist. Below the ship, the mounds hove into view.
I cannot undo the damage I've done. Across a hundred reincarnations; across a hundred million light-years light-years. And yet: I'll make what restitution I can...
The Invid would not have Earth.
Below, the Protoculture wraiths sensed Zor Prime's coming, all in accordance with the Shaping that had given the original Zor his vision and set the course of the Robotech Wars, so long ago and far away.
The wraiths summoned up the strength that was left to them, for their final deed. The rainbow-rings of the Matrix were dimmer now, but still dazzling, still playing their haunting song. As the wraiths tapped its power, the Matrix flared brighter.
Dana's efforts to contact Zor with the capsule's little commo unit had drawn no response. Now she blinked at the bright sunlight, as the hatch opened and the fragrant air of Earth drifted in.
The capsule had landed at the cress of a low foothill across the plain, just within view of the SDF-1's gravesite. She already knew from the capsule's crude monitoring equipment that the mother ship had followed her down through the atmosphere, headed for the mounds.
Dana drew herself out of the capsule and saw the five mile length of the Masters' last starship come in to hover over the resting place of the SDF-1. "Zor. Don't-please!"
There was no other way.
Zor's red raised its discus pistol. The destruction of the mother ship directly over the mounds would ensure that the Flowers of Life and their spores would be completely obliterated, and spare the Human race the slaughter and ruin of an Invid invasion.
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