Battle Cry

by Jack McKinney

  you wish to save the lives of your crew, you must surrender at once." "My God," said Claudia. "It's the aliens!"

  "We repeat," the voice continued, "in the name of the Zentraedi forces, I order you to surrender. The last attack on your ship..."

  Gloval listened carefully to the message. The Zentraedi, he said to himself.

  Now at least he knew what to call them.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was only during the final stages of the [Global] War that women were assigned to active military operations. Up until that time most women held rear-echelon positions; but as casualties increased among the men unilaterally, these positions came to be of paramount importance. Indeed, by the time of the First Robotech War those positions could only be filled by women. True, there were no women on the United Earth Council, but the entire bridge crew of the super dimensional fortress, the SDF-1, was female. One recalls the postfeminist claims that women were now not only victimized by male aggressive instincts but instrumental in carrying them out, that women (especially in the case of the SDF-1) had exchanged the traditional pots and pans for the keyboards and consoles of the bridge. But those claims not only simplify the issue but malign those women who contributed their unique skills to the war effort. What is most disconcerting is the fact that although women had finally achieved their long-sought-after goal of equality, the Global War had introduced a new set of polarizing issues which now had to be taken into account-there was mutual respect between the sexes but a continued sense of the same old bugaboo about knowing and adhering to "one's place in the world." In terms of male female relationships, the attitudes of twenty-first-century society suggested those prevalent in the middle of the previous century.

  Betty Greer, Post-Feminism and the Global War

  The Cat's-Eye recon unit, escorted by Rick Hunter's Vermilion Team, was launched from the flight deck of the Prometheus. Fragments of the exploded planetoid littered local space.

  Where only hours before they had been ordered to buy time for the United Earth Defense Council, Captain Gloval was now buying time for the SDF-1. The enemy's offensive strength had to be ascertained-the Zentraedi's strength-and with the ship's radar down this could be achieved only by

  deploying the recon vessel.

  Lisa Hayes had the stick-the unit's former pilot had been a casualty in the latest Zentraedi offensive. Her copilot was an inexperienced second lieutenant on loan from the Gladiator Defense Force. Most of the air wing strike teams had been deployed to guard the badly damaged SDF-1, looking crippled and deathly still now on the Cat's-Eye's rear commo screen.

  Lieutenant Hunter was on the forward screen.

  "Ironic, isn't it, Commander," he was saying, "that I should end up your wingman?"

  Lisa knew what he was referring to; less than twenty-four hours ago they had gotten into yet another tiff.

  One of Vermilion squadron's VTs had taken a hit, and Hunter had informed the bridge that he was taking his group home. The pilot of the stricken VT maintained that the damage was only slight, and scanners showed continued fighting in Hunter's quadrant, with only the Skull Team left to take up the slack; so Lisa had denied him permission to come in.

  "I'll be the judge of that," Hunter had said. "I'm group leader, and I'm responsible for the safety of my men!" Then he went on to lecture her about the dynamics of space dogfighting, how seemingly insignificant damage could quickly prove fatal, how she was safe and sound on the bridge while the big brave men of the VT strike force were constantly in jeopardy...On and on.

  She dismissed it as battle fatigue. But instead of letting it go, she had vented her own anger and frustration. After all, she was his superior.

  Then Roy Fokker, guitar-strumming darling of the Defense Force, had stepped in on Hunter's side. They went right into their big brother-little brother act, and the next thing Lisa knew, Fokker was ordering the Vermilion Team home. He did, however, scold Hunter for talking too much. If the incident had ended there, she would have forgotten it by now.

  But among the space debris that had floated past the bridge bays following the Zentraedi attack there was a disabled Battloid she had been certain was Hunter's red-trimmed own. She had even imagined (or, more likely,

  hallucinated) that she saw Rick's lifeless form drift from the shattered cockpit module...

  Even now the image was too painful to recall.

  Hunter had rescued her on Mars. But so what? He'd been ordered to do it. Any of the VT pilots would have done so; it certainly didn't mean that she had to feel anything special for the guy. Of course, it might have been different if she felt something coming from him, but-

  "I show four bogies at four o'clock relative," her copilot informed her. "I see them," Lisa heard Rick say.

  "There going to try a surprise attack," said Ben Dixon. "Let me at 'em." "Negative, Ben," Hunter countered. "Do not give pursuit. We're going

  to stick to the Eye."

  Here he goes, thought Lisa. He was doing it again, making her feel like she couldn't take care of herself. He infuriated her with his unsolicited protection. She went on the tac net.

  "I can protect myself, Lieutenant Hunter. Give pursuit. That's a direct order, do you copy?"

  Hunter was silent for a moment, then said, "All right, boys, you heard the little woman. Let's go get 'em."

  The three VTs of Vermilion Team broke formation and went after the Battlepods. The Cat's-Eye was relaying positional data to them, but the enemy bandits were still too far off for visual contact. Rick called up full magnification on his port and starboard screens, and suddenly there they were: guns bristling, extended claw thrusters radiant in the perpetual night.

  "I see them," said Max Sterling. "Going in..."

  Max and Ben, both of them anxious to post a few more pod decals on their fighters, hit their afterburners and passed Rick. by. Rick found himself holding back, thinking about Lisa's safety. Damn her, he thought. Let her go ahead and get herself atomized. What did he care? He shook his head as if to clear it and threw his VT into the fight.

  A Battlepod had swooped in and fixed him in its lasers. Rick in turn engaged his starboard thrusters, then cut his forward speed and fell away

  from the laser lock. At the same time, he loosed aft heat-seekers, which caught the pod where the legs met the spherical body. The pods were highly vulnerable there, and this one went into an uncontrolled accelerated spin as the legs blew away. Rick saw two quick flashes ahead of him, and soon his fighter was sailing through more pod debris.

  It was easy if you let yourself think of the pods themselves as the enemy. Remind yourself that there was a fifty-foot humanoid giant in each of them though, and your brain began to short-circuit. In Battloid mode, Rick had been face to face with Zentraedi warriors on two occasions. And each time he had been paralyzed with fear. The Robotech Defenders who had trained on Earth before the invasion had been shown the skeletons and had been conditioned to accept the reality, but Rick had to learn it the hard way. Rick, however, was one of the few men who had actually met a live Zentraedi and lived to tell about it.

  Battloids were the perfect mating of mind and mecha and were ideally suited to a war with giants. But what would it be like to confront a Zentraedi without the mecha? What could you do against something ten times your size? There was a seventy-year-old film on videotape in the ship's library about a giant ape who had been found on a remote Pacific island. The ape had terrorized New York City the way later mutants and giants would wreak havoc on Tokyo. But there was something about that old film...it had somehow managed to communicate the mixture of awe and terror Rick felt when he faced the giants. There had been a woman in that film, he recalled...

  The Battlepods destroyed, he switched on the tac net and tried to raise the Cat's-Eye. But there was no response.

  The recon ship was in trouble.

  In pursuit of their surveillance mission, Lisa and her copilot had entered into an area filled with massive chunks of what had once been the planetoid Pamir.
They had their hands full dodging these while at the same time reporting on enemy locations.

  "We have multiple radar contacts, picking up four, five, six, eight, and

  twelve heavy," the copilot said.

  Lisa watched the radar hand sweep across the color-enhanced screen. There was something enormous ahead of them. It would have to measure more than fifteen kilometers in length. Possibly a piece of Pamir, but the shape was all wrong. This thing was like an elongated ellipse, a zero stretched at its poles. It had to be an enemy ship!

  She began maneuvering the Cat's-Eye in for a closer look, her attention fixed on the radar screen.

  She didn't see the island of space rock they collided with.

  The radar disc was torn from the ship, and one by one the life support systems began to fail. The forward portion of the canopy was damaged but intact. But the copilot had not been as fortunate; his limp form hung in space, still tethered to the ship by an untorn length of seat strap. There's no atmosphere in space, Hunter's words came back to her before she slipped from consciousness.

  The smallest damage could prove fatal.

  Exedore watched his commander pace the bridge.

  Continuous setbacks and defeats at the hands of the Micronians were beginning to take their toll.

  When the projecbeam field formed itself for viewing, the now crippled SDF-1 could be discerned amid the asteroid field. Scanners indicated that Micronian fighters had taken up defensive positions in all quadrants in anticipation of a second offensive.

  "Look at that ship," said Breetai. "We're fortunate that it survived the attack."

  "No thanks to Khyron. This time he has gone too far.

  "Too far, indeed. And do you see how the Micronians react to our demands for surrender, Exedore? They ignore us."

  "Yes, Commander. I fear that they have seen through our strategy. There is in fact a word for it in their language-bluff. It means to mislead or intimidate through pretense."

  The comlink tone sounded on the bridge, followed by the voice of the duty officer.

  "Commander Breetai, we have Commander Khyron standing by." Breetai dissolved the projecbeam and hit the communicator switch.

  "Patch him through-immediately!"

  Khyron wore his familiar expression of slight bemusement. Exedore had heard rumors to the effect that he was addicted to the Invid Flower; if this was true, Khyron was even more dangerous than Breetai realized.

  "You will be pleased to learn that the matter has already been settled," the Backstabber was saying.

  A frightened junior officer was then shoved forward into the screen's field of view. His shackled hands managed a two-handed breast salute as Khyron ordered him to speak.

  "Commander Breetai, I take full responsibility for the misplaced laser bolt which destroyed the radar tower of Zor's ship. My aim was untrue, and I humbly await your judgment."

  The officer hung his head in shame.

  Breetai stared at the screen with a look of disbelief that quickly refocused as anger.

  "Khyron, do you take me for a complete fool?!" Khyron smirked, "Not complete, Breetai."

  Exedore's commander was enraged; he shouted, "You have not heard the end of this!" and shut down the comlink. He resumed his pacing as a second message was fed to the bridge: An enemy recon vessel disabled by a collision with an asteroid had been captured and was being brought to the flagship.

  So something had been salvaged from this operation, after all, Breetai told himself. He heard Exedore give the order that all survivors were to be left unharmed.

  "Well, Exedore, it looks like you'll have the specimens you wanted."

  "So it would appear, Commander," Exedore replied guardedly. These would-be minor triumphs had a vexing way of reversing themselves.

  Nevertheless, Exedore and Breetai rushed from the bridge and made for the docking bays. They were halfway along the main corridor to the elevators when an announcement from ship security brought them to a halt. "Three Micronian ships in pursuit of the captured recon craft have broken into the lower deck holding area. Commander Breetai, contact the

  bridge."

  Breetai growled, "They dare to enter my ship?! Now I will deal with them personally!"

  The Zentraedi commander broke into a run; Exedore was behind him, throwing caution to the wind.

  The Vermilion Team had pursued the captured Cat'sEye into the lower hold of the huge ship, reconfiguring to Guardian mode when they cleared the hatchway. Afterburners were now accelerating them along the kilometers of floor in the enormous chamber.

  Rick took out the enemy tow which had ensnared Lisa's craft and ordered the team into Battloid configuration. The two Zentraedi pilots who jumped from the flaming wreck were easily chased off by gatling fire loosed by Max and Ben.

  The two corporals were speechless. Those were living, breathing giants who had clambered out of the tow. All that training-the photos, the videos, the skeletal remains-hadn't prepared them for this moment of actual confrontation. They couldn't help but notice, however, that the place was a wreck all on its own: Spare parts from Battlepods and other mecha littered the area, overhead gantries and hull hatchways were in desperate need of attention, and an atmosphere of ultimate neglect and disrepair hung over the area like the stench of decay.

  Rick, meanwhile, was bringing the Battloid down on one knee to inspect the Cat's-Eye. He could see Lisa begin to stir inside the smashed cockpit. Seeing the Battloid, she switched on the external speakers.

  "Lieutenant Hunter, take your men and get out of here. You've got no time to spare."

  Her voice was weak.

  "Time enough to bring you with us."

  Max came on the line: "Lieutenant, the Zentraedi are taking up positions at the end of the corridor. We better blow this place."

  "Just give me a few minutes of cover fire, Max. Then we're outta here." "That'll just about deplete my cannon charge."

  "Mine, too," Ben added. "Cut the chatter. Open fire."

  Rick returned his attention to the Cat's-Eye while his teammates laid down a deafening barrage of fire.

  "Can you operate the manual eject mechanism, Commander?" "Negative," Lisa answered him. "The controls are jammed. Move out,

  Lieutenant. I'm giving you an order."

  "This is no time to stand on protocol, Commander. Cover yourself; I'm going to break into the cockpit."

  Lisa saw the Battloid's enormous hand come down on the shield and screamed, "Keep your hand off me, Hunter! I'm not kidding, don't touch me with that thing!"

  The Battloid's fingers pinched the shield, shattering it. Cursing Rick the entire while, Lisa pulled herself up and free of the wreckage.

  "I'll have your stripes for this, Hunter. I swear it."

  Rick heard Ben's gatling sputter out; Max flashed him a signal that he, too, was out of ammo. Lisa had moved away from the Cat's-Eye. Rick was offering her the outstretched open hand of the Battloid when he caught her startled reaction to something that had appeared on the overhead catwalk.

  Halfway to standing, that something landed hard on the Battloid's back, driving the mecha to the floor of the hold with a force not to be believed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Few of us were fortunate enough to have seen the interior of the SDF-1 before Dr. Lang's teams of Robotechnicians had retrofit the fortress with bulkheads, partitions, lowered ceilings, and doorways and hatches proportioned to human scale; so our entry into the enormous lower hold of [Breetai's] flagship proved to be a veritable assault on the senses. Although I learned much later that human-size enclosures did in fact exist aboard the SDF-1 prior to reconstruction, here were all the things Sterling, Dixon, and I had been hearing about from members of the early exploratory teams: the three-hundred-foot-high ceilings, thirty foot-wide hatchways, miles of corridors...It was not surprising, then, that our minds refused to grapple with these new dimensions. We didn't experience the hold as human beings entering giant-sized spaces; it was instead as if we had been reduced in size
!

  The Collected Journals of Admiral Rick Hunter

  Even by Zentraedi standards, the soldier who leapt from the hold gantry and decked Rick Hunter's Battloid was enormous.

  Max calculated the giant's height at sixty-plus feet. He wore knee-high utility boots and a blue uniform trimmed in yellow at the collar and sleeves; over this was a long, sleeveless brown tunic adorned with one bold vertical blue band. At breast level was some sort of insignia or badge of rank-almost a black musical note in a yellow field. But the most memorable thing about him was the gleaming plate that covered one side of his head, inset with what appeared to be a lusterless cabochon. He had jumped more than 200 feet from the catwalk, yet here he stood glaring at them, ready to take on the entire Robotech Defense Force single-handed.

  Max didn't have to be told that he'd met one of the Zentraedi elite.

  Sterling allowed these diverse emotional reactions to wash through him; he then relaxed and began to attune his thoughts to the Battloid's capabilities. Quickly positioning his mecha behind the giant, he swung the

  depleted gatling cannon across the warrior's chest and held it fast with both hands, pinioning the giant's arms at his sides. Displays in the Battloid cockpit module ran wild as the Zentraedi struggled to free himself. Max could sense the extent of the enemy's will reaching into his own mind and grappling with it on some newly opened front in this war, a psycho-battleground.

  The Battloid's arms were stressed to the limit, threatening to dislocate with each of the giant's chest expansions. The Zentraedi was growling like a trapped animal, twisting his head around, each deliberate move calculated to bring that gleaming faceplate into violent contact with the canopy of the mecha. Max knew that something was going to give out soon unless he changed tactics.