Doomsday: The Macross Saga

by Jack McKinney

  And then there was a familiar face on an instrument panel display screen. “How you guys doin’?” Rick Hunter asked with elaborate casualness. It was the heritage; he was flying into the middle of a red-hot firefight, and he looked like it was all he could do to stay awake.

  “Boss, look sharp,” Bobby shot back. “These boys are murder.”

  Rick’s VT dove down through the rain in Guardian configuration like a rocket-powered falcon. “It’s okay. I’ll take over now. Ransom, Bobby; all of you drop back and stay out of sight.”

  He went in at them as he had gone in at hundreds of pods—thousands—since the day he first stepped into a VT cockpit. He wove through their fire, rebounded from the ground, and sprang high overhead on Robotech legs.

  The energy blasts skewed all around him. “Last chance,” he transmitted over the Zentraedi tac frequency. “Cease fire and lay down your arms.”

  If they had, they would have been the first of the malcontents to do so. But instead, like all the rest, they fired that much more furiously.

  He wondered what he would have felt like if their positions had been reversed. The human race was lost and struggling in its own ashes, but how much more so the Zentraedi defectors?

  He wondered only for an instant, though; lives were at stake.

  Skull Leader came in behind a sustained burst from its autocannon, the tracers lighting the night, blowing one pod leg to metallic splinters. As the pod collapsed, Rick banked and came to ground behind an upcropping of rock, going to Battloid mode.

  He reared up from behind the rock, an armored ultratech warrior forty feet tall with a belt-fed autocannon gripped in his fist “For the last time, I order you to drop your weapons!”

  He saw the plastron cannon muzzles swinging at him, and hit the dirt behind the rock. Energy bolts blazed through the air where he had been standing.

  When the volley was over, he came up again shooting. The high-density slugs blew another pod leg in half at its rear-articulated knee, toppling it. The third one ran, zig-zagging, evading his fire. Suddenly there was only the drumming of the rain on the field of battle.

  The Zentraedi malcontents emerged from their disabled mecha slowly. He could see that they carried no personal weapons and knew that the New Portland police and militia would be able to deal with them. The rest of Skull Team went to mop up and make sure the armored Zentraedi on foot were taken prisoner. The malcontents would pay with their lives for the lives they’d taken.

  Tonight we won. What about tomorrow?

  He was the last one to deplane; Ransom, Bobby, and Greer were already far from the hangars and revetments when Rick dragged himself from his VT, feeling dog-tired. How could peace be so terrible? Peace was all he or Roy or any of the rest had ever wanted. He wondered if there would ever be an end to the fighting.

  Then he saw Lisa standing by the fighter ops door. No peace in my lifetime, he decided. Look at that warcloud.

  “Why do I feel like I should ask for a blindfold and a last cigarette, Commander?”

  “Not very funny, Rick.”

  “No, I suppose not.” He groped for a way to tell her all the things he had thought and been through in the last few days.

  But she was saying, “You’re ordered to report to Captain Gloval at once.”

  He considered that, brows knit, turning toward the SDF-1. “Wonder what he wants.”

  She couldn’t hold back what she was thinking. “How was your visit with Minmei?” she called after him.

  He stopped. “I enjoyed her broadcast from Granite City yesterday,” she said softly.

  He drew a breath, let it out, looked down at the hardtop beneath his feet. “Well, I didn’t actually visit with Minmei.”

  He started off again. She caught up, walking right behind. She made it sound as spiteful as she could, hating herself for it the whole time. “Was that because she was so surrounded by adoring fans that you couldn’t get close to her, Rick?”

  “No.”

  “Anything happen?” Why am I putting us both through this? she wondered, and the answer came back at once: Because I love him!

  “What could happen?” he growled.

  “I don’t know!” She raced to catch up with him, taking a pale blue envelope from her uniform pocket. She dashed around in front of him, bringing him up short, pressing it into the palm of one flightsuit glove. She turned and walked away from him.

  “Lisa, what is this?”

  “Just something to remember me by,” she threw back over her shoulder, not trusting herself to look at his face once more. Her heels clicked away across the hardtop.

  The envelope held photographs—Lisa with a niece, on a vacation; Lisa as an adorable teenager with a kitten perched on her head; Lisa on the day of her graduation from the Academy.

  “What on Earth?” he mumbled, but he knew. The album, all the rest of it: What had happened came to him in a flash. He had left New Portland feeling like there was some good that he could do in the world, feeling that no matter how bad things looked, there was always hope, and feeling that he was on the side of the angels.

  But now, holding the photographs at his side and watching her disappear among the parked combat mecha, he tried to ride out a tide of regret that threatened to wash him away, and he was suddenly sorry he had ever been born.

  “Commander Hunter reporting as ordered, sir.”

  Gloval sat looking out the sweeping forward viewport of the SDF-1, at a blue sky flecked with white clouds. “Please come in, Rick,” he said without turning.

  “Thank you, sir.” Rick came in warily; Gloval did not often use his subordinates’ first names.

  “I’ll get right to the point.” Gloval swung around to face him and came to his feet. “The aliens among us are reverting to their former ways.”

  Rick considered that. He had friends among the Zentraedi—Rico, Bron, and Konda; Karita and others. “The New Portland rebels won’t give us any more trouble, sir.”

  “That incident was only a symptom, Lieutenant Commander.” There was something about the way Gloval pronounced your rank that let you know you were a part of a thing greater than yourself.

  “We cannot afford to have this occur again,” Gloval went on, “or we’ll be risking complete social breakdown. I’ve decided to have some of the aliens reassigned to new locations where we can keep an eye on them.”

  None of the importance of that was lost on Rick. We promised them freedom! It was all coming apart, everything that had seemed so bright two years before.

  The rest didn’t really have to be said. Gloval was counting on Rick to enforce his directives and letting him know what he would be in for.

  Rick Hunter looked at the old man who’d been through so much for Earth, and for the Zentraedi, too, in truth. The younger man snapped off a brisk salute. “Whatever you decide, you have my support; you know that, sir. And you have the support of everyone on the SDF-1.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.” Gloval acknowledged the salute precisely but rather tiredly. He didn’t look like he had gotten any real sleep in a long time.

  They met each other’s gaze. “I understand,” Rick said.

  Minmei shivered under her jacket, leaning against a pylon of Zentraedi wreckage and staring into the sky as night came on Granite City.

  So much desolation. And so much bitterness, even between people who should have learned to love one another a long time ago!

  She looked to the few lights of the town. Kyle had gone off that way, and she had no idea whether he intended to stop or keep on going, had no idea whether she would ever see him again and no clear conviction as to whether she wanted to or not.

  She looked up as the stars appeared. Oh, Rick. Where are you?

  FOR BONNIE BADER, AND HER WORK ON THIS PROJECT

  DOOMSDAY

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  Had the Robotech Masters the power to travel as freely through time as they did space, perhaps they would have understood the inevitabilities they
were up against: Zor’s tampering with the Invid Flower was a crime akin to Adam’s acceptance of the apple. Once released, Protoculture had its own destiny to fulfill. Protoculture was a different—and in some ways antithetical—order of life.

  Professor Lazlo Zand, as quoted in

  History of the Second Robotech War, Vol. CXXII

  The dimension of mind … the rapture to be found at that singular interface between object and essence … the power to reshape and reconfigure: to transform …

  Six hands—the sensor extensions of slender atrophied arms—were pressed reverently to the surface of the mushroomlike Protoculture cap, the Masters’ material interface. Long slender fingers with no nails to impede receptivity. Three minds … joined as one.

  Until the terminator’s entry disturbed their conversation.

  Offering salute to the Masters, it announced:

  —Our routine scan of the Fourth Quadrant indicates a large discharge of Protoculture mass in the region where Zor’s dimensional fortress defolded.

  The three Masters broke off their contact with the Elders and turned to the source of the intrusion, liquid eyes peering out from ancient, ax-keen faces. Continual contact with Protoculture had eliminated physical differences, so all three appeared to have the same features: the same hawkish nose, the flaring eyebrows, shoulder-length blue-gray hair, and muttonchop sideburns.

  —So!—responded the red-cowled Master, though his lips did not move—Two possibilities present themselves: Either the Zentraedi have liberated the hidden Protoculture matrix from Zor’s disciples and commenced a new offensive against the Invid, or these Earthlings have beaten us to the prize and now control the production of the Protoculture.

  There was something monkish about them, an image enhanced by those long gray robes, the cowls of which resembled nothing so much as outsize petals of the Invid Flower of Life. Each monkish head seemed to have grown stamenlike from the Protoculture flower itself.

  —I believe that is highly unlikely—the green-cowled Master countered telepathically—All logic circuits based on available recon reports suggest that the Invid have no knowledge of the whereabouts of Zor’s dimensional fortress.

  —So! Then we must assume that the Zentraedi have indeed found the Protoculture matrix, ensuring a future for our Robotechnology.

  —But only if they were able to capture the ship intact …

  The organic systems of the Masters’ deep-space fortress began to mirror their sudden concern; energy fluctuations commenced within the Protoculture cap, throwing patterned colors against all but breathing bulkheads and supports. What would have been the bridge of an ordinary ship was here given over to the unharnessed urgings of Protoculture, so that it approximated a living neural plexus of ganglia, axons, and dendrites.

  Unlike the Zentraedi dreadnoughts, these spadelike Robotech fortresses the size of planetoids were designed for a different campaign: the conquest of inner space, which, it was revealed, had its own worlds and star systems, black holes and white light, beauty and terrors. Protoculture had secured an entry, but the Masters’ map of that realm was far from complete.

  —My only fear is that Zor’s disciples may have mastered the inner secrets of Robotechnology and were then able to defeat Dolza’s vast armada.

  —One ship against four million? Most unlikely—nearly impossible!

  —Unless they managed to invert the Robotech defensive barrier system and penetrate Dolza’s command center …

  —In order to accomplish that, Zor’s disciples would have to know as much about that Robotech ship as he himself knew!

  —In any event, a display of such magnitude would certainly have registered on our sensors. We must admit, the destruction of four million Robotech vessels doesn’t happen every day.

  —Not without our knowing it.

  The terminator, which had waited patiently to deliver the rest of its message, now added:

  —That is quite true, Master. Nevertheless, our sensors do indicate a disturbance of that magnitude.

  The interior of the Protoculture cap, the size of a small bush on its three-legged pedestal base, took on an angry light, summoning back the hands of the Masters.

  —System alert: prepare at once for a hyperspace-fold!

  —We acknowledge the Elders’ request, but our supply of Protoculture is extremely low. We may not be able to use the fold generators!

  —The order has been given—obey without question. We will fold immediately.

  High in those cathedrals of arcing axon and dendrite-like cables, free-floating amorphous globules of Protoculture mass began to realign themselves along the ship’s neural highways, permitting synaptic action where none had existed moments before. Energy rippled through the fortress, focusing on the columnar drives of massive reflex engines.

  The great Robotech vessel gave a shudder and jumped.

  Their homeworld was called Tirol, the primary moon of the giant planet Fantoma, itself one of seven lifeless wanderers in an otherwise undistinguished yellow-star system of the Fourth Quadrant, some twenty light-years out from the galactic core. Prior to the First Robotech War, Terran astronomers would have located Tirol in that sector of space then referred to as the Southern Cross. But they had learned since that that was merely their way of looking at things. By the end of the second millennium they had abandoned the last vestiges of geocentric thinking, and by A.D. 2010 had come to understand that their beloved planet was little more than a minor player in constellations entirely unknown to them.

  Little was known of the early history of Tirol, save that its inhabitants were a humanoid species—bold, inquisitive, daring—and, in the final analysis, aggressive, acquisitive, and self-destructive. Coincidental with the abolition of warfare among their own kind and the redirecting of their goals toward the exploration of local space, there was born into their midst a being who would alter the destiny of that planet and to some extent affect the fate of the galaxy itself.

  His name was Zor.

  And the planet that would become the coconspirator in that fateful unfolding of events was known to the techno-voyagers of Tirol as Optera. For it was there that Zor would witness the evolutionary rites of the planet’s indigenous life form, the Invid; there that the visionary scientist would seduce the Invid Regis to learn the secrets of the strange tripetaled flower that they ingested for physical as well as spiritual nourishment; there that the galactic feud between Optera and Tirol would have its roots.

  There that Protoculture and Robotechnology were born.

  Through experimentation, Zor discovered that a curious form of organic energy could be derived from the flower when its gestating seed was contained in a matrix that prevented maturation. The bio-energy resulting from this organic fusion was powerful enough to induce a semblance of bio-will, or animation, in essentially inorganic systems. Machines could be made to alter their very shape and structure in response to the prompting of an artificial intelligence or a human operator—to transform and reconfigure themselves. Applied to the areas of eugenics and cybernetics, the effects were even more astounding: Zor found that the shape-changing properties of Protoculture could act on organic life as well—living tissue and physiological systems could be rendered malleable. Robotechnology, as he came to call this science, could be used to fashion a race of humanoid clones, massive enough to withstand Fantoma’s enormous gravitational forces and to mine the ores there. When those ores were converted to fuel and used in conjunction with Protoculture drives (by then called reflex drives), Tirol’s techno-voyagers would be able to undertake hyperspace jumps to remote areas of the galaxy. Protoculture effectively reshaped the very fabric of the continuum!

  Zor had begun to envision a new order, not only for his own race but for all those sentient life forms centuries of voyaging had revealed. He envisioned a true mating of mind and matter, an era of clean energy and unprecedented peace, a reshaped universe of limitless possibilities.

  But the instincts that govern aggression di
e a slow death, and those same leaders who had brought peace to Tirol soon embarked on a course that ultimately brought warfare to the stars. Co-opted, Robotechnology and Protoculture fueled the megalomaniacal militaristic dreams of its new masters, whose first act was to decree that all of Optera’s fertile seedpods be gathered and transported to Tirol.

  The order was then issued that Optera be defoliated.

  The bio-genetically created giants who mined Fantoma’s wastes were to become the most fearful race of warriors the quadrant had ever known—the Zentraedi.

  Engrammed with a false past (replete with artificial racial memories and an equally counterfeit history), programmed to accept Tirol’s word as law, and equipped with an armada of gargantuan warships the likes of which only Robotechnology could provide, they were set loose to conquer and destroy, to fulfill their imperative: to forge and secure an intergalactic empire ruled by a governing body of barbarians who were calling themselves the Robotech Masters.

  Zor, however, had commenced a subtle rebellion; though forced to do the bidding of his misguided Masters, he had been careful to keep the secrets of the Protoculture process to himself. He acted the part of the servile deferential pawn the Masters perceived him to be, all the while manipulating them into allowing him to fashion a starship of his own design—for further galactic exploration, to be sure—a sleek transformable craft, a super dimensional fortress that would embody the science of Robotechnology much as the Zentraedi’s organic battlewagons embodied the lusts of war.

  Unbeknown to the Masters, concealed among the reflex furnaces that powered its hyperspace drives, the fortress would also contain the very essence of Robotechnology—a veritable Protoculture factory, the only one of its kind in the known universe, capable of seducing from the Invid Flower of Life a harnessable bio-energy.

  By galactic standards it wasn’t long before some of the horrors the Masters’ greed had spawned came home to roost. War with the divested Invid was soon a reality, and there were incidents of open rebellion among the ranks of the Zentraedi, that pathetic race of beings deprived by the Masters of the very essence of sentient life—the ability to feel, to grow, to experience beauty and love.