End of the Circle

by Jack McKinney

  Lisa Hayes-Hunter, Recollections: The Lost Journey

  The Robotech Elders’ tempers flared, even though the rage was impotent. You fancy yourself a god? Then act like one!

  Haydon ignored them as usual. That was far more infuriating than if he had caused them pain or silenced their mental rantings.

  The Second Gen Flowers from New Praxis had been taken below the surface of the artifact planet, and faraway sounds and tremors indicated that they were being processed, or perhaps digested, in some fashion. And yet, aside from Haydon IV’s superluminal passage to the Valivarre system, nothing seemed to have been accomplished.

  If the Awareness and your facilities cannot produce any warcraft or combat mecha, then arm the sphere ships and send forth your Haydonites to do battle! You cannot venture into combat this way; OUR lives are at risk as well as yours!

  Haydon was as imperturbable as he was vast. He watched as the planet went subluminal and swung toward majestic, green Fantoma. His planet’s sensors told him that His arrival had been noticed and that a flotilla of ships was deploying even now to intercept.

  He ignored their hails. Once He would have swept them aside like so many gnats or drowned them under an ocean of His own war simulacra. But the damage done to Haydon IV by space attack and cyber-burn had limited His options.

  That only meant that His victory would be somewhat uneconomical, a bit inelegant. In another way, though, it would show those absurd little creatures what an intelligent mind could do with Robotechnology.

  The Elders felt the world shifting and quaking around them again. What are you doing? We demand to know!

  Haydon made no response as long moments slid by and the artificial planet seemed on the verge of tearing itself apart. The Elders raged and vituperated, but at last, their fury spent and their apprehensions waxing, they spoke the words they had not used since the days of their mortality.

  We … beg you to tell us what is happening.

  Haydon’s blank face gazed down at them indifferently. YOU PRESUMED TO CALL YOURSELVES ROBOTECH MASTERS? I WILL SHOW YOU WHAT MASTERY IS.

  With that, light burst from the organ in His forehead, and Haydon levitated into the air. At the same time, the carpet carrying the Elders’ imprisoning thrones rose, joining Him as an immense bubble appeared from somewhere to enclose Haydon.

  The planet below was going through profound mechamorphosis. It was only as the bubble climbed high above the atmosphere that the Elders began to understand the mind-numbing scale of it.

  Having had little time to train together, the pickup flotilla of the Local Group was fortunate that it had experienced no collisions, much less that it had somehow gotten into a passable formation.

  Tracialle led the way, with Valivarre prominent on the right wing of the formation. The armed merchantmen of the Karbarran fleet were the flotilla’s backbone, with the other planets’ vessels interspersed all through the three-dimensional deployment scheme.

  Hodel watched as long-range sensors fed him information about the intruder world’s approach, noting the appearance of the bubble high over it but more concerned with the throes of the gargantuan artifact itself. It seemed that Haydon IV was trying to self-destruct, fly apart in uncountable pieces or grind itself to dust.

  “We’re detecting anomalies,” a clone from the Valivarre reported.

  “Indeed?” Hodel scoffed in a moist rumble. “Don’t you think they’re apparent?”

  “I am referring to new topographical features on the target world,” the answer came back. “Their existence defies gravitational influence. Immense amounts of power are being expended. We have analyzed our findings and believe that an unprecedented kind of mechamorphosis is taking place, and its speed is accelerating.”

  Hodel’s barrel-chested laughter stopped suddenly as his own techs snarled at their positions. “The clone is right,” someone growled.

  “See! See!” another cried.

  A visual magnification was flashed on the main screen. In it, Haydon IV could be seen quickening its transformation. Apparently the modular alterations had been accomplished earlier—perhaps in flight—and this was the final rearrangement.

  Hodel was a captain, not a scientist, but he had more than enough technical background to know that no physical materials, no conventional power source, could possibly achieve what he was witnessing. Haydon IV should have been annihilating itself with those upheavals.

  It was not, however. It was taking on a new shape. Its astonishing division at Ranaath’s Star was nothing compared with what it was doing now.

  “Mechamorphosis, in truth,” Hodel heard Prah say from the Quartzstar.

  Hodel roared and slashed at the air with his claws. “How long before we can close with them?” Perhaps Haydon IV was as yet defenseless.

  “Thirty-two minutes until they’re in maximum range,” a bridge crewwoman called out. “But the speed of the mechamorphosis is increasing. Estimated time to completion, twenty-eight minutes.”

  “We will attack and obliterate them before they can catch their breath and prepare for battle,” Hodel howled. “Full speed ahead! All ships, watch your deployment and intervals and prepare to attack!”

  Before them, Haydon IV grew. It contorted and re-formed, land features sliding, rising, falling—extending and reconfiguring in ways Local Group science would have pronounced impossible.

  The substance of the planet was redistributed, prominences growing and lengthening, the center shrinking. Even the Karbarrans knew a cold fear, their snarls and rumblings more muted as they watched the artificial planet take on the form of a megacosm Robotech warrior.

  Max was glad Lisa forcibly broke up the meeting when she did; in another few minutes, Nichols and Lang might have attempted some kind of voodoo dance to summon up the Regess, while Rem and Marlene performed a little lounge-act mind reading and Dana told a fortune or two.

  Emotions had run high as theories and assertions clashed. It seemed that all the mystics knew pieces of what was happening but that nobody had the big picture. A lot of people at the meeting were still at the trying-to-believe-it stage.

  Perhaps the major distraction, however, was the conviction many of the adults had that the real action was going on down in the child-care center. Aurora and the SDF-3 kids were being exactingly recorded, but Obstat and the others were not likely to learn much from the motionless, silently communing séance the rug rats were holding.

  The real question, of course, was where the Regess was and how to get in touch with her. Lots of people had ideas, but none of them sounded very convincing to Max.

  Vince, Lisa, and Rick were off to cope with whatever tangible problems they could find and handle—integrating working teams, transferring supplies to the Peter Pan just in case there was no choice but to run for it, resuming patrols of the planet.

  Max, like Miriya, had left his seat after the adjournment and gone to comfort Dana. Encountering Rem seemed to have knocked her feet out from under her; they were not used to seeing their gutsy older daughter so despondent.

  Miriya had one arm around Dana, who was nearly her height, before Max got there and led her off into an empty adjoining compartment. Dana’s head leaned on Miriya’s shoulder. The look his wife shot him told Max that he ought to hang back for the time being.

  Lisa and Rick had made some vague reference to Max’s going to work coordinating the combined fighting elements of the joined ships, but Max did not feel much like talking war right at the moment.

  He turned instead to find his way aft and see if Aurora’s kiddie coven had broken up yet. He wandered along, thinking of her whispered message to him. Why was he, especially, to be on guard there in newspace—to be careful of his thoughts? Aurora either could not or would not clarify.

  Distracted, he realized he was lost. It had been a long time since he had wandered the passageways of the SDF-3. There was no one around, but he got his bearings and began moving aft again. He went slowly, meditating.

  Peace had seemed
at hand when the Sentinels War ended. He and Miriya had played less and less of a role in the fighting, and he would have been perfectly happy to go on the inactive rolls for good.

  Once, he’d been the terror of the Robotech battlefield, a dogfight wizard with a mother lode of the right stuff, an unparalleled feel for his mecha, and unrivaled combat instincts. Slight, pale, and bespectacled, he seldom attracted a second glance from a stranger, but he had no equal among humans, Zentraedi, Invid, or any other species.

  Max passed into a big, empty observation area, its sweep of viewport showing a broad expanse of newspace and the appearing stars.

  Funny how that Robotech gift of his had just gradually slipped into the background as being a husband and father became more and more central in his life. As if whatever had given him his matchless skills had been rechanneled.

  He stopped, instincts telling him that he was being watched. With absolute certainty, he pivoted suddenly toward the viewport.

  Something hung there in the night of the SDF-3’s shadow, looking back at him. It was a shape blocking out the stars, the unreflective black of soot or that jersey dress Miriya had. He could not make out its shape, but it moved slowly like a marionette drifting in water. It was difficult to estimate, but he got the impression it was only about a hundred yards or so from the hull … and it was big.

  Without taking his eyes from it, Max edged over to an intercom on the bulkhead and signaled the bridge. “This is Sterling—Max Sterling on Foxtrot Deck, compartment, uh, H-2108 starboard. I have a visual on possible bogey.” Something about the indistinct shape made his stomach twist, and sweat had started at his forehead.

  A brisk voice—Mr. Toler, Max thought it was—answered. “Our sensors show nothing, Commander.”

  “Then they’re malfunctioning! Gimme some hull lights down here, now!”

  High-candlepower external lights sprang to life out on the hull. The harsh illumination they threw forth splashed against a shape that made Max’s mouth fall open.

  It was not like any mecha he’d ever heard of, though he’d been pretty sure he knew them all. It incorporated features of Invid Inorganic, RDF Beta Battloid, and Robotech Master Bioroid. But the bulbous torso with its plastron cannon and the reverse-articulated legs immediately made him think of Zentraedi pods. And its single-lensed turret of a head sported long, gleaming saber-tooth fangs like those of a Hellcat.

  It floated out there, looking straight at him with its yellow and red lens, while Max whispered a soft, almost admiring obscenity. Seconds ticked by while the two stared at each other.

  He heard running feet and glanced over automatically to see Colonel Xien dash into the compartment with some staffers bringing up the rear—a mere flicker of the eyes. And yet, when Max looked back, the black mecha was gone.

  “Commander Sterling, we have nothing on scopes or visual,” the voice from the bridge said a bit primly, perhaps peeved at Max for implying that those on watch would let something sneak up on the ship. “Whatever it is, we don’t see it.”

  Max stared at empty space for a few moments before keying the intercom to reply. “That figures. It wasn’t here to see you, either.”

  It was a race against time that had the Elders frothing behind their respirator masks. The mechamorphosis of Haydon IV into a Robotech warrior was an astonishing achievement, violating laws of engineering and strengths of materials by means of higher powers Haydon reserved unto Himself.

  But still the transformation was too slow to suit the Elders.

  The rabble are too close! Nimuul protested, following developments via the planet’s mental data dissemination nets. Where are your weapons? Why do you not fire?

  Haydon was smaller than they had yet seen Him, appearing from the west like a moving crag. I WEARY OF YOUR STUPIDITY.

  There was a multiplicity to the voice, as if more than one were speaking. The Elders became aware of other moving shapes. BEHOLD AND LEARN.

  From east, north, and south came other embodiments of Haydon returning from unguessable missions. As the four merged, there were outpourings of radiance too intense to bear; when the Elders could look again, Haydon was a single figure, back to his original size.

  Once more he flew off over the terrain of His synthetic world, which had in effect become a mecha, and the Elders’ carpet lifted off to follow.

  They were not far from the right arm’s juncture to the body, but from their viewpoint it was more like a curve in the world, vanishing away, with another even greater bulge rising out of sight far beyond. They were too small to have any sense of the planet’s new shape.

  A yawning opening appeared in the surface of the planet, and Haydon entered in serene, floating fashion. The carpet trailed obediently after. Haydon IV reverberated to the shocks of the final reconfigurations. As it did, the first maximum-range salvos began to blossom around it.

  The war machine waited in space as the flotilla of Local Group ships rushed to the attack.

  PART IV

  FINALE AND OVERTURE

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  It’s been said that we’re all three people: the one we see ourselves as being, the one others see us as being, and the one we really are.

  The Regess seemed determined to explore all of those, and I don’t know which frightened me most.

  Dr. Harold Penn,

  The Brief but Timeless Voyage of the Peter Pan

  Because Dante and Gnea had been accosted there by the Regess’s strange luminous effects, it was decided that the attempt to establish contact with her should be initiated on the planet, which some scholar in the SDF-3 crew had dubbed Omphalos.

  Most of the command people were all for it, since it was seemingly the only course of action open to them. Rick and Lisa were more hesitant, since the experts felt the only plausible method of communicating with the vanished racial entity/queen lay in Roy and the other children; everything that had happened regarding newspace thus far indicated that it was a domain with a special affinity for psi-phenomena. Certainly the Regess had not responded to any conventional attempts at communication.

  Calculations showed that the breach draining the substance of the universe into newspace was widening, though. There was a growing faction among the theorists, lining up behind Lang, who believed that real spacetime would be altogether sucked into the adjunct province of newspace and find itself under the dominion of the Regess. Thus, the children’s lives were already horribly at risk, and the perils of contact with the Regess must be borne.

  A lot of people in G2 and G3 wanted to make a landing in force to secure the area against any possible hostile action by the Regess—post Battlepods, hovertanks, Veritechs, and the rest in a layered defense. But cooler heads prevailed; mecha firepower probably would not amount to much against the entity that controlled newspace.

  So, two shuttles flanked by one Alpha and one Beta descended as if on a diplomatic mission, slow and steady, followed by two pods and two suits of powered armor. Once down on Omphalos, the party formed up on the ground and moved out for the field where Angelo and Gnea had disappeared.

  They could have dropped in for a landing directly in the field, of course, but it was felt that going in on foot would help re-create the circumstances of the first encounter and look much less belligerent. The Alpha was sent back aloft to patrol, and the ground party started walking.

  Rick and Lisa led the way. Roy was farther back, with the children and most of the other parents. Scott Bernard was following close behind the Hunters. Marlene came after him, a part of the group at her own insistence and over his objections. The Hunters and the rest welcomed her presence; she was the closest thing the expedition had to an expert on the Regess.

  The landing party was armed, but it did little to assuage Rick’s nervousness. He did not really think guns would do much good against the dangers that menaced his ship, friends, and family.

  Lisa cast a glance back to make sure the kids were all right and to see if the other parents we
re coping emotionally. All of them were under stress, but she was particularly worried about Max. If the Veritechs’ top gun was starting to see things that weren’t there, anybody could lose his grip.

  In the last few hours others had begun falling prey to the insidious effects of the new continuum. Word had it that the Karbarrans’ morose augury chants had brought them Wagnerian visions of doom. The Garudans’ hin sendings had the lupine XTs fatalistic and despairing. Baldan had had ghostly encounters on the Crystal Highways of Omphalos and at length had been ejected by them.

  Even the music of the Muses and the Cosmic Harp had taken on a doleful sound they seemed helpless to rise above.

  The libidinous climate of the past few days had changed, and the only possible explanation was that something about the Regess had changed.

  And what if Her Highness doesn’t feel like granting us an audience? Rick was asking himself at the same moment. Do we sacrifice a few oxen, blow on a ram’s horn, or what?

  But as he pushed through the last screen of bush, he saw that there was reason to hope for an audience with the Regess, after all: The field had changed, even though nobody from the SDF-3 or the recon flights had seen it.

  Where the swaying grasses had grown to midcalf height, there was a structure that brought a sinister grunt from Scott. “Invid hive. Huh. Looks like a miniature Reflex Point.”

  It did indeed, but it was far smaller than the sprawling stronghold/nerve center that had been the Regess’s seat of power on Terra. It was a dome with the same organic look, the same glowings in orange and red and yellow, like a super-high-speed photograph of a thermonuclear explosion. Around it was the strange foam of bubblelike objects suggesting concentric waves coming in at the dome, as at Reflex Point; there were the same smaller peripheral nodes, much like the central structure, all of them interlinked by a network of conduits or accessways as brilliant as tubes of flowing lava.