“Breetai,” he said into the mike, his voice a harsh croak. “That display gained you nothing.”
Breetai looked exulted nonetheless, ready to lay down his trump card now.
“Reno has discontinued transmission,” a tech informed him.
Then Claudia relayed that the Veritechs were approaching their mission objective.
“Contact in three seconds …”
Reno was just regaining his composure when a fiery explosion breached the starboard hull of the astrogation hold, the force of it throwing several of his goliath crewmen clear across the vast chamber. He cursed and at the same time complimented Breetai for the brilliant execution of his plan; his diversionary tactics—those Micronian secret weapons—having completely disarmed his crew. Regardless, he had the presence of mind to bellow:
“Attack alert!”
On Breetai’s ship, Claudia updated that the Veritechs had made a successful entry.
“The baby is with Max and Miriya,” Lisa said worriedly to a still dazed and confused Rick.
“Huh?!” he stammered in response, promising this was the last time he’d permit himself to be so far removed from mission planning.
When the smoke and fire had been sucked from the hold of Reno’s ship, the hull self-repaired, and two Micronian battle mecha, one red, one blue, rested side by side on the deck, fully encircled by Zentraedi troops wielding pulsed-laser rifles.
“All units prepare to destroy Micronian fighters on my command!” Reno growled, his troops snapping to and arming their weapons. He asked himself just what Breetai was hoping to gain by the insertion of such a small strike force, then directed his orders to the pilots of the Veritechs, using what little he knew of their language. “Micronians! You are completely surrounded! Surrender immediately and you will be allowed to live!”
The augmentation packs of the fighters elevated.
“This is it, Max,” Miriya said over the net. “Wish me luck.”
“You’ve got it,” Max returned. “Everything’ll be fine—I’m right here.”
From the observation bubble high above the deck, Reno watched as the canopy of the red fighter went up. The Micronian pilot stood up and removed its helmet, shaking its long green mane free. Reno’s mouth fell open when the Micronian spoke.
“I am not a Micronian,” Miriya announced in Reno’s own tongue, “but a micronized Zentraedi warrior.”
Reno didn’t doubt it for a second; in fact, he recognized her. “You are Miriya Parino!” he said in disbelief. “You were second in command under Azonia!”
Miriya pointed to Max’s Veritech. “Allow me to present Lieutenant Maximillian Sterling, an officer with the Earth forces … and my mate.”
Max removed his thinking cap and stood up in the cockpit.
“What is this thing, “mate’?” Reno was asking. “He is merely a Micronian.”
Max said loud enough for Miriya to hear: “Show him the baby.”
And Miriya did just that, lifting Dana from the cockpit and raising her into view. The infant was cradled in her arms, wearing the same helmet and Dr. Dentons EVA suit.
For a moment Reno didn’t know what he was looking at, but there was something about the thing that filled him with fear nonetheless. From his vantage it appeared to be some sort of … micronized Micronian!
“But this is impossible!”
His rough and ready troops were similarly nonplussed.
“What is that thing?” one asked.
“By the twelve moons—it’s deformed.”
“Look—it moves!”
“A mutant!” someone insisted.
In an effort to rub her eyes, Dana had brought her tiny gloved fists up to the helmet faceshield.
Miriya resumed, “In the Micronian language, this is what’s called an ‘infant’—actually created inside my own body. By both of us,” she hastened to add, indicating Max.
Max nodded, humbly, and smiled.
“It is love that is the basis of Protoculture,” Miriya continued. She lifted Dana over her head, the baby smiling and cooing in response. “You cannot conquer love!”
Reno’s face began twitching uncontrollably at Miriya’s mention of the shibboleth—Protoculture!
Still holding Dana aloft, Miriya pivoted through a 360-degree turn, preaching to the full circle. “Observe the power of Protoculture—the power of love!”
“It’s a mutation,” one of the troops shouted, letting his weapon fall and fleeing the hold.
“It’s contagious!” said another, also fleeing.
More discarded weapons crashed to the deck.
Dana, innocent, continued to wave her arms and smile.
Overcome, the troops began to desert their posts.
Beads of sweat pouring from his face, Reno was ranting into the mike: “Stay where you are, you cowards! Come back! It must be a trick!” Ultimately he backed away, turned, and ran from the observation bubble.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Love, like size, had lost all meaning—love was a battle maneuver, kissing a diversionary tactic. The only one among us who seemed to know anything about that elusive emotion was Miriya, wedded to the infant she’d given birth to as much as she was Max.
The Collected Journals of Admiral Rick Hunter
Reports from Max and Miriya verified the success of the third stage of the ruse.
Breetai reasoned (correctly, as it would unfold) that Reno would retreat just far enough from the cruiser’s command center to restabalize himself and sound general quarters. It was possible that the three-act tactic had convinced him to surrender—and indeed, Breetai was more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt before mounting a full-scale assault on the heavily guarded satellite—but unlikely.
At her duty station well below Breetai’s thoughtful look, Claudia Grant laughed. “I can’t imagine why Reno’s crew reacted like that,” she was telling Lisa Hayes. “I think Max and Miriya’s baby is pretty cute, don’t you?”
“Oh, stop it, Claudia,” said Lisa.
Breetai noticed that Commander Hunter appeared somewhat debilitated by the kiss he performed with Lisa before he had rushed from the bridge. It was no wonder that Hunter had expressed such initial reluctance, Breetai thought. Obviously, kissing is something not to be taken lightly.
“None of you should underestimate the opposition’s capability,” Breetai warned the humans now, putting a quick end to the jokes. “Inform your mecha pilots to stand by.”
Claudia followed through immediately, ordering Blue, Green, and Brown teams to their launch platforms. And not a minute later Max reported that Reno had called for a counterstrike; he and Miriya were going to make a break for it.
Dana! Claudia recalled, suddenly full of concern.
“Launch all mecha!” Breetai bellowed.
Human and Zentraedi mecha launched themselves from the warship’s bays while the vessels of Reno’s fleet massed for attack.
Rick led his small squad of seven Veritechs against them, side by side with the Zentraedi’s ostrich-like Battlepods, trithrusters, and pursuit ships. Two years had passed since he had engaged any enemy in deep space, but it suddenly felt like no time had elapsed. The silence, the zero-g spherical explosions that bloomed in the night like flowers of death, the eerie glow of thruster fire, the disinterested shimmer of starlight, the cacophony that poured into his helmet through the tactical net—a hallucinatory symphony of panicked commands, frenzied warnings, and final screams.
He knew that he would need to clear his mind of all thoughts, righteous and otherwise, to come through this unscathed. Out here thoughts were a pilot’s number one enemy, because they invariably impeded productive interface with the Veritech. So he let it all go—the questions still there after four years of combat, the faces of those left behind—and the mecha picked up that vibe transmitted through the sensor-studded gloves and “thinking cap” to its Protoculture heart and led him once more through hell’s gates.
“I don�
��t want your excuses!” Reno screamed, slamming his fist down on the substation console—an elaborate control center even by Zentraedi standards, salmon-colored and organic in design with no less than a dozen circular monitor screens. “Now order your troops to battle stations! Do you understand?!”
The face of Reno’s red-haired lieutenant seemed to blanch in the projecbeam. He raised his shaking hands into view.
“But sir, our troops are terrified of Micronian contamination!”
“Nonsense!” howled Reno. “You have your orders: Destroy the infected mecha at once! I have spoken!”
* * *
“We are within range, m’lord,” Exedore reported calmly.
Breetai regarded the projecbeam. Reno’s fleet had foolishly formed up on the commander’s own cruiser, now itself bracketed in Breetai’s deadly sights. So much the easier, then, he said to himself.
At one time the strength of Breetai’s conditioning would have made such a thing impossible, but the Zentraedi imperative had been altered beyond recognition by the campaign directed against Zor’s dimensional fortress. To remain on the side of the Robotech Masters was to be Breetai’s enemy.
“On my command, Exedore …” said the commander.
Skull One’s lateral thrusters edged the Veritech out of the arena—momentarily. There were still half a dozen Battlepods on his tail crosshatching space with angry bolts of cannon fire, and these guys were on his side! The non-allied pods were of course a concern, but the crazed random firing of Breetai’s troops was life-threatening! From the sound of the shrieks and comments coming through the net, Rick knew that he wasn’t alone in his fear.
Now, with no advance warning from the bridge, the warship’s main cannon had been armed. Pinpoints of dazzling light had erupted across the blunt nose of the battlewagon; in a moment, Rick knew from previous battles, a lethal slice of orange death would streak from each of these, holing their targets with an immeasurable force.
Breetai’s ship was within point-blank range of Reno’s, taking aim at the bow of the smaller ship where the bridge and astrogational section were located. Rick went on the tac net, warning his fellow pilots to steer clear, and voiced a prayer that Max and Miriya had escaped safely.
The Robotech factory satellite, its secondary modules like small moons, spun slowly on its axis—a small world unto itself, barely visible now in the blinding light of a thousand small novas.
Miriya held Dana in her lap, her right hand gripping the Veritech’s Hotas. Flashes of stroboscopic light threw flaming reds and blazing yellows into the cockpit. In no other battle (and there had been many) had she been possessed by such fury. Even that on-and-off dogfight she had waged against Max couldn’t measure up to the intensity and need she now felt. It was as though her entire body was rallying to the cause; as though the small life she held in her arms was a treasure more precious than any the universe could offer, a life worth preserving at all costs …
She and Max had blasted free of Reno’s ship, but they were far from safe.
“Enemy projectiles bearing 977L!” Claudia told her through the com net, the alarm in her voice unmasked. “Two triple-fins attempting interception!”
“Watch it, Max!” said Miriya, as concerned for his safety as she was for Dana’s. “I’ve got them!”
She thumbed the trigger button on the Hotas, releasing four white-tipped heat-seekers, which tore from the Veritech’s missile tubes. They found one of the tri-thrusters, blowing it to pieces, while the second craft disappeared beneath Miriya’s own. She engaged the underside lasers as the enemy made its pass, the intensified light searing open the cockpit of the triple-fin, decommissioning it.
Miriya heard Max breathe a sigh of relief and thank her.
She returned the sign and clutched Dana more tightly to herself, the infant waving her arms joyously at the fiery spectacle.
“Fire!” said Breetai.
A rain of supercharged energy ripped from the nose of the warship, converging on Reno’s ship, individual bolts tearing through it as if it wasn’t there. And in scarcely a second, it wasn’t—its superstructure flayed and bow blown open beyond self-repair.
Like a whale swallowing a stick of dynamite, Rick decided. He imagined Reno’s swift death: energy brilliant as blizzard snow wiping him from life …
“Dead ahead!” one of his wingmen said through the net.
Rick looked forward into a swarm of Officer’s Pods, triple-fins, and tactical Battlepods.
“Fire all proton missiles on my command,” he told his squad. “Now!”
Hundreds of missiles dropped from their pylons and fuselage tubes, blowtorching into the midst of the enemy cloud, taking out fighter after fighter.
Meanwhile, Breetai’s dreadnought had loosed follow-up fusillades against two more warships in what had once been Reno’s fleet. Explosions lit local space like a brief birth of suns, Robotech husks drifting derelict in the perpetual darkness. On the observation balcony, Breetai stood rigid with his hands behind his back, impassively watching projecbeam views of the battle. Victory was assured: one more blow struck against the Masters. But he was aware that this was a minor triumph in the war that would someday rage at Earth’s gateway; and as bright as this moment might seem, he would be powerless when that day arrived—
“Squadron leader requesting assistance in the Third Quadrant,” one of his officers interrupted.
“Is the neutron cannon ready?” Breetai asked.
“Eighty percent,” Claudia reported sharply.
“We have positive lock and focus on photon particle tracking beam,” Lisa added, her monitor schematic resembling a star map overlaid with doodles. “All Veritechs and pods have cleared the field of fire.”
“Neutron exchange complete,” Claudia updated.
Breetai’s lips became a thin line.
“Sanitize the area,” he ordered.
Rick led his squad—Max and Miriya among them now—to the safe coordinates Lisa had supplied him. Hearing the go signal for the neutron cannon given, he glanced back at Breetai’s ship, expecting to witness an outpouring of energy to make all previous discharges pale by comparison. But he saw no sign of fire, only the invisible particle beam’s awesome and horrific effect: Nearly every mecha in the cannon’s line of fire was disintegrated. Some exploded, others came apart, while still others simply vanished without a trace.
The number of dead was beyond his ability to calculate. And he found himself thinking about the Zentraedi on Earth—the micronized ones who were struggling to adapt to a new culture, the malcontents who wandered the wastes in search of new wars. With Reno’s defeat (according to Exedore), the race would be close to extinction.
It was as if they knew somehow that their time had come. They had honored their imperative; they had chased Zor’s fortress for their Masters and done their best to reclaim it. But in truth, they had traveled clear across the galaxy to fulfill a greater imperative: They had come to Earth to die.
“Lord Breetai,” said Exedore. “The remaining troops have agreed to surrender.” His voice gave no hint of sadness at the nearly total annihilation of Reno’s forces; if anything, it carried a suggestion of relief. His commander’s reign was now supreme—as it was always meant to be, with or without the Protoculture matrix.
Breetai was seated in the command chair. Regally, he stated, “Let the prisoners know that we will gladly accept all who wish to join us.”
Exedore spoke into the mike at his duty station. “Lord Breetai extends his greetings to all Zentraedi prisoners. Furthermore, it is his pleasure to extend a full pardon to those who wish to join the United Forces under his command.”
Standing now, Breetai announced: “Our victory may very well mark the dawn of a new era in galactic relations.”
His ship was already closing on the Robotech factory satellite, a bioluminescent mollusk in the blackness of space, strings of lights girdling it like some Christmas ornament. The prize had been won. And if those defeated troops on bended kn
ee weren’t testament enough to the win, one had simply to look out on that seemingly limitless field of mecha and cruiser debris through which his ship moved, the remnants of the last remaining Zentraedi fleet.
CHAPTER
NINE
The transport of the Robotech factory satellite to Earthspace was another one of the malign miracles visited upon us. Certainly Gloval and Breetai had only our best interests in mind, but shouldn’t it have occurred to them that if the Robotech Masters had been able to track Zor’s dimensional fortress here, they could surely do the same with the satellite? Like Zor before him, Breetai thought he was doing Earth a favor … This renders his comment (upon manifesting in Earthspace with the factory) doubly ironic: “We’ve made it,” he is quoted as saying. “It is good to be back home.”
Dr. Lazlo Zand, On Earth As It Is in Hell:
Recollections of the Robotech War
Armageddon played in full color on an oval-shaped viewing screen in Tirol’s central ministry, an organic room like those in the Masters’ space fortresses, cathedraled by columns that might have been living ligaments and sheathed neurons. Representatives from the Council of Elders, the Robotech Masters, the Young Lords, and the Scientists were in attendance—the Elders and the Masters in unvarying groups of three at their Protoculture caps. The Young Lords, a bearded trio, balding in spite of their relative youth, were intermediaries between the Masters themselves and the Empire clones. Three was sacred, three was eternal, the irreligious trinity ruling what remained of Tirol’s social structure—what remained of a race long past decadence. Such had been the influence of the tripartite Invid flower, the Flower of Life …
One of the Masters had the floor now: With Reno’s defeat at the hands of the traitor, Breetai, their hopes for reclaiming Zor’s fortress had been dashed.
Doomsday: The Macross Saga Page 42