Metamorphosis

by Jack McKinney

  Air and ground forces of the Human race, we salute you and send you our best wishes! We know that, in your overwhelming numbers, and with the undeniable power of Human Robotechnology behind you, you will triumph!

  Morale twix from Colonel Ackerman (GI staff-SDF-3) to Earth relief strikeforce (never received)

  So far the three VTs were winning the air battle. Pincer Ships were no match for VTs in one-on-one dogfights. But the new enemy mecha had been hanging back, studying their opponents; Rand wasn't sure what would happen if they decided to jump in with both feet and a roundhouse swing.

  Lancer had taken the Beta up. The purple-and-pink monster machine he had seen on the island came up fast and its back pods gushed forth a torrent of missiles. Lancer went into a ballistic climb, cutting in all his jamming gear, side-slipping, and weaving. Warheads detonated behind him and missiles fizzled past in near misses.

  Then Annie's voice came up over the tac net. "Lancer! Come in!" "I'm right here, Annie. What's up?"

  "I can't raise Scott. We're on the ship and we're in trouble. Lunk's been

  hit!"

  "Annie, this is Scott. I just got to my Alpha; I heard your last

  transmission."

  "Scott, this is Lancer. Hook up our fighters and take the Beta. I'm taking over for Lunk."

  It only made sense; aside from Lunk, Lancer was the only one with any real experience at the helm of a large vessel. "I copy, Lancer. Meet you at the cutter."

  Seconds later, the Beta settled in on its blasts and lowered the bottom

  half of its cockpit like a dinosaur opening its mouth. As the pilot's seat was lowered, Lancer yelled over the tac net to Scott, "It's all yours, pal! Go get 'em!" Then he jumped to the ground and got clear.

  The Beta shifted components slightly, preparing for interlock. Scott's Alpha backed in at its nose, tailerons folding, and a complex joining took place in seconds, with a clanging of superhard alloy. The latched fighters formed a single ship that sprang away into the sky at incredible boost.

  Lancer ran for the cutter.

  Scott scattered the remaining Pincer Ships and the new enemy mecha, intimidating them with the combined fighters' speed and the volume of fire they could spew. Corg and Sera broke in different directions, cautious, deciding to feel out their enemy's strengths and weaknesses-if any.

  "Follow me, you guys," Scott radioed to his wingmates. "We'll try to lead them in front of the gunboat-in range for a knockout." He cut in full thrust, rushing to catch up with Rand and Rook. Corg and the two surviving Pincer Ships climbed after, but Sera's mecha poised in midair, as she listened to her computer and the Regis's voice.

  "Scanner confirms Human life-forms now aboard third flotation target mecha." Far below, the cutter was underway, racing for the open sea.

  Lunk eased his arm in its sling and grated his teeth against the agony of the burns and what he figured was probably a hairline fracture. There were painkiller ampules in the med supplies, but he wanted a clear head for battle.

  "Sorry about getting you into this, Lancer." He was crowded into the bridge with Marlene and Annie, all of them doing their best to give Lancer room to man the wheel.

  Lancer, helmet cast aside, spared one gauntleted hand from the wheel for a moment, to give a blithe wave. "You did great, Lunk. The cutter's still in one piece, isn't she? I got no complaints."

  Indeed. The kamikaze Invid had taken a hit at the last instant and broken up in the water just in front of the cutter's bow, showering it with

  flaming wreckage. A chunk of it had hit the optical pickup for the pumpedlaser's scope, blowing it up in Lunk's face. A major piece had hit the turret, throwing the unbelted Lunk out of the gunner's saddle and giving him some considerable lumps and burns-and damaging the main battery beyond repair.

  Scott's voice came over the net. "Lancer, Lunk! Heads up! We're going to try to draw the enemy down to you!"

  Lancer had barely gotten finished acknowledging and begun preparing for a make-or-break shootout, when something enormous blocked out the sky. Everyone on the bridge cringed, seeing the immense tower of Robotechnology that was Sera's mecha. Lancer tried to reverse-all, hoping he wouldn't blow every bearing in the power train or tear apart a propeller shaft.

  It did no good; the alien advanced at what was for it a slow approach-speed, with something like a deliberate vindictiveness. Rather than fire, it drew back one titanic fist, bracing to put it right through the bridge. The freedom fighters could only steel themselves, and dread the impact.

  In her cockpit, Sera made an animal snarling, her teeth locked, eyes like red coals of anger fixed on the cutter. So many Pincer drones had died! So many conflicting emotions had interfered with her devotion to her Queen/Mother, the Regis! Now it was time to thrust aside confusion and prosecute the war these Humans seemed determined to fight.

  And breaking this toylike water-vessel to bits with her mecha's hands, sending it and its crew to the bottom, was the ideal place to start.

  She drew back her mecha's hand, wrapped in a fist the size of an oldtime tank. She could see, through her mecha's eyes, the terrified looks on the faces of the Humans. Three of them dropped to the deck, the fourth clung to the wheel despite the swells set up by her machine's back thrusters. Sera drew a quick, almost whistling breath. The one at the wheel was him, the one with the purple hair who had made those strange, seductive,

  achingly beautiful sounds.

  Her mecha answered her thought-images; it drew back, hanging there on thrusterfire. Although her mecha was nearly as big as the cutter itself and well able to break it to matchwood, it held back.

  Lancer thought about the woman he had confronted in the quiet jungle clearing. Why doesn't she shoot? Who is she, and what's going through her mind? He was frozen at the wheel, waiting for the missile, the annihilation disc, the single blow of a mecha fist that would make four Human Beings into scraps of fishfood.

  He wanted more than anything to run from the bridge and scream, Wait! I don't want to be your enemy! I don't want you to be mine!

  Sera shrank back from the visual displays before her, eyes still fixed on the male with the purple hair, pressing the back of her hand harshly against her lips, whimpering, sobbing.

  Rook's voice came over the tac net. "Lancer, hang on! I'm almost in range!" Lunk's eyes flickered to the target-acquisition displays and saw that there was no alternative; the cutter was helpless before this Invid.

  Sera's indecision gave way to conviction. She couldn't harm the man.

  All the rest was murky: whys and wherefores and what might happen next. She had failed her Regis; and yet something had been born in her that was herself, that was Sera, and not something that had been put there. It was frightening, and it was at the same time wonderful.

  Her mecha was jolted by an Alpha energy volley. She looked and saw Rook diving at her like an angry hawk, going to Battloid. Sera whirled her mecha away, leaking fire and smoke, dodging further damage.

  Rook hovered close, confronting her, whamming away with the Battloid's fearsome rifle/cannon. Sera gathered herself and sprang away into the air faster than any rocket, unable to tell if she had won some personal victory or suffered a disastrous defeat-or both.

  Lancer watched her go, his heart beating hard, pulse throbbing against

  the collar ring of his Robotech armor.

  Scott's voice crackled. "Lancer, we're almost to you! Coming into range now! Get set!" Lancer glanced aside; target-acquisition displays had them.

  "Ready Scott." He could see the VTs and their Invid pursuers. "Breaking on three! One, two" Lancer clutched the remote firing grip,

  his finger curled just off the trigger. "Three!" Scott finished. "Fire!"

  But Lancer had seen his three friends break away, and was already triggering. The cutter's fore and aft launchers belched; racks of Tarpons emptied, and thick flights of Copperheads went up as well. "Firing!"

  Two Copperheads broke in burning wrack across Corg's mecha but were otherwise insig
nificant. But other missiles savaged the Pincers that had made it that far, and not a single personal-armor machine survived. Corg's mecha closed its bulky, armored forearms around its cranium, protecting its pilot, while an inferno washed past it. Sera, soaring in to join her brother-unsure of what she would do-pulled clear, as the missiles drew instant lines of contrail across the sky.

  Rand, Rook, and Scott stayed out of the demon's brew of detonating warheads until there was quiet again. There was no sign of the enemy anywhere. They banked and headed for the cutter, which sailed along on an impossibly placid ocean, a Pacific unaware of the carnage that had ended seconds before.

  Sera landed on a beach from which she could watch the cutter and its accompanying VTs dwindle from sight toward the horizon. Soon Corg landed, and the two skyscraper mecha stood shoulder to shoulder.

  "Patrol escorts destroyed," their computers told them in the Queen-Mother's voice. "Abandon further pursuit. Do not risk loss of royal mecha at this time."

  Corg emerged from his upholstered nacelle. He was a sharp-featured, handsome young man with lean good looks and mysterious, oblique blue eyes. His shoulderlength hair was blue as well, lying flat and fine against his skull and lending itself to his cruel, ascetic look. He snarled at the escaping

  enemy, then looked to his twin's mecha.

  Sister, what possessed you? Brother, I-I do not know...

  Lancer stood looking out over the fantail, as he had for so much of the voyage. Annie showed up in her usual ebullient mood, rejoicing that land had come into view. He said he would be along to the bridge in a moment. Annie gave him a dubious look, but then frolicked off, ecstatic with the idea of getting away from shipboard confinement.

  He brushed the long lavender stands from his face, but the wind only fluttered them back there again.

  Who is she? How did I lose a piece of myself so quickly?

  "Hard to believe we've come such a long way in such a short time," Rand said, breaking the long silence of the net. He looked over to where Rook cruised close, but she didn't even glance aside at him or otherwise show that she had caught the implication.

  Rand trimmed his Alpha. Where Rook was concerned, silence was a kind of a start.

  Baja California gleamed ahead. The imperatives of history and the Vision that had moved Zor across the years and light-years were pulling together; their warp and woof were almost complete. What was to be, would be.

  But that wasn't how it felt to anyone on the team. If Corg and Sera were confused by Human emotions, the freedom fighters were at least dazed by them, each in his or her own way-arguably, they were disabled in some measure. But if emotions had been taken from them they would have fallen like scythed wheat, and the Third Robotech War would have ended right there and then.

  As it had been ordained from the beginning, the deciding force in the

  Robotech Wars was something neither side would ever see or understand, but everyone involved had felt it.

  And just over the horizon, a Phoenix waited to spread its wings.

  End RTUCN.COM