Doomsday: The Macross Saga

by Jack McKinney

  “Our worst fears are realized!” yelled Harding.

  Minmei clutched Kyle’s arm, eyes shut tight, mouth wide in a silent scream.

  Khyron’s troops were bent on nothing less than extermination; they had had two years to work up to this, two unrelieved years, just waiting for an opportunity to make the Micronians pay for all the hardships they had been forced to endure. Now all the tension and hatred left them in a frenzied rush, with New Detroit left to reap that violent harvest.

  Everything was a target, and no one was spared—human or citified Zentraedi.

  “Fight to the end!” the Backstabber yelled into his comlink. “Find that chamber! No sacrifice is too great for a cause dearer than life itself!”

  Still, the Earth forces would not surrender; courage and valor were the words of the day, although few remained by battle’s end to sing the praises of those who died.

  A Gladiator went hand to hand with one of the alien berserkers, dropping the Zentraedi with a left uppercut when its own cannons were depleted of charge, only to have the downed enemy blow it to smithereens with a blast from its top-mounted gun.

  Another of Khyron’s elite paused before a parking lot simply to incinerate the vehicles and huddled groups of humans inside.

  “I’m getting high reflex-activity readings,” Khyron announced, his suit displays flashing. Locators were helping him zero-in on the exposition hall. “All troops converge on my signal immediately!”

  Minmei and Kyle, wrapped around each other in the theater’s entrance alcove, watched as enemy troops made for the hall, the streets vibrating to the crash of their metalshod boots.

  What have I done?! Kyle asked himself, close to panic.

  Inside the hall, the RDF sentries received word that the first defenses had been overrun; the enemy was headed their way. A battloid raised its chain gun at the sound of pounding on the hall’s foot-thick steel door. The three-member crews of the Gladiators readied themselves.

  Mayor Harding had left Kyle and Minmei and rushed to the basement of the building. He and an unfortunate office worker were looking in on the hall and sizing chamber now, a Permaglass shield the only thing separating them from fire, as the door was suddenly blown open and Khyron’s troops poured in.

  One of the Gladiators stepped forward to engage a Zentraedi, spitting harmless machine gun fire into the face of its enemy as the two of them grappled. Khyron’s soldier got hold of the media’s face plates, swung it clean off its feet, and sent the hapless thing crashing through the building’s reinforced concrete wall.

  The second Gladiator was similarly engaged, one-on-one and winning his close-in fight … until a Zentraedi appeared without warning overhead, blasting his way through the ceiling and descending on the mecha forcefully enough to split it wide-open, crown to crotch.

  All this time, the Battloid was emptying its gatling against a Zentraedi wall of armor. When the pilot saw the Gladiator take that terrible overhead blow, he ran his mecha forward, autocannon raised high like a sledgehammer, only to receive a paralyzing spin kick to the abdomen by an enemy with eyes behind its head.

  “That finishes it!” exclaimed the mayor, turning away from the carnage. “We’ve lost the sizing chamber!”

  “Chances are, no matter how much they are exposed to humans, the Zentraedi are still a war-loving race,” Exedore told the admiral after the session. He, Gloval, and Claudia had walked together from the briefing room to one of the fortress’s enormous supply holds.

  “But many of your people have discovered an entirely different kind of life here on Earth, Exedore,” Gloval argued. “You shouldn’t be so … hard on yourself.”

  “Admiral Gloval’s right,” Claudia added. “Many of your people supported peace as soon as they were exposed to the possibility, and most still do.”

  “I agree that many want it,” Exedore countered, unmoved by their obvious attempts to put him at ease. After all, it wasn’t a question of feeling this way or that way about it; it was simply a fact: The Zentraedi were warriors. Exedore wondered sometimes if humans didn’t carry the emotional mode too far. “It’s just that I now worry about those who still want to fight. Surely you understand that, Admiral.”

  “Yes,” Gloval admitted, lifting his pipe to his lips, uncertain where this discussion was headed.

  “Doesn’t it seem strange, then, that no matter how far even superior civilizations have progressed, there never seems to be a solution to the problem of aggression and warfare?”

  “How true, my friend.”

  “That applies to humans, too,” Exedore continued. “In fact, there is no known species in the whole of the Fourth Quadrant that has ever turned its back on war.”

  “Regrettably so,” Gloval said.

  A comtone sounded, and the admiral reached for a handset, grunting yesses and noes into it, his nostrils flaring. He recradled it with a slam and barked at Claudia:

  “Find Hunter immediately!”

  Claudia stepped back somewhat. “Sir?”

  “Zentraedi have attacked New Detroit!”

  “A toy of destruction,” Rick was repeating to Lisa. “That’s what he called himself, right?”

  The two of them were standing in one of the SDF-l’s open bays, twenty feet above the shimmering lake, staring into orange and pink sunset clouds.

  “Genetically programmed for fighting … it’s pretty sad.”

  “If you ask me, it sounds a lot like us,” said Lisa.

  Rick frowned at her.

  “Aren’t we always fighting?” she asked him.

  “That’s not fair, Lisa.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be … Just making a point.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Rick! Lisa!”

  They turned together to find Claudia striding toward them.

  “I’m glad I found you two,” she said, out of breath. “Zentraedi forces have attacked New Detroit!”

  Rick’s eyes went wide. “Forces?! What d’ ya mean? Who—malcontents?”

  Claudia shook her head. “Not from the sound of it. Their communication signal was lost about ten minutes ago, but one of our recon ships spotted the fighting. It looks like a coordinated attack. At least a dozen Zentraedi in power armor.”

  Lisa watched Rick go livid. He clenched his fists and cursed.

  “Rick, it’s not your fault!” she said quickly, reaching for him. But he was already through the doorway in a run.

  “Who?!” Lisa demanded of Claudia. “Who?!”

  The reinforcements from New Macross arrived on the scene too late. Rick, in Skull One, had a bird’s-eye view of the battle’s aftermath: fire, smoke, and several square blocks of total devastation. New Detroit’s central avenues were torn up and cratered; civil defense mecha lay smoldering in the streets, while rescue crews worked frantically to free trapped crew members. The area around the exposition hall was unrecognizable. The main buildings had been reduced to rubble.

  Rick blamed himself.

  It had been his assignment to secure the Protoculture chamber, he told himself, but he had let Kyle and those easily influenced Zentraedi take charge.

  Below him now, cranes and bulldozers worked to haul a damaged Excalibur MK VI to its feet; the mecha’s twin cannons had been blown from the body. Elsewhere, the hulk of a Gladiator was being towed from an intersection; it looked as though it had been split down the middle by an ax.

  Though Rick was shouldering the blame, he couldn’t very well charge himself with the attack, and this was what began to concern him. The only incident that approached the level of destruction here was the raid on New Portland some weeks earlier. There, renegade Zentraedi had broken into one of the armories, commandeered three Battlepods, and indulged themselves in a brief orgy of terror. But that was the isolated case; most often, the trouble was confined to fighting—the recent fistfight in the streets of Macross was a perfect example. But now, within twenty-four hours, there had been two major raids.

  The recon pilots who had witne
ssed the attack saw no battlepods; Zentraedi power armor, they said. Rick thought about it: Many of the warships that had crashed on Earth had been stripped of weapons during Reconstruction two years ago. But of course it was possible that a band of outlaw giants had chanced upon a ship and found the power suits … but what would they want with the sizing chamber? A blow for independence? Furthermore, the attack on New Detroit had been too well coordinated: It was purposeful, nothing like the sprees of random violence Exedore was worried about—the resurgence of the Zentraedi programming.

  Rick found himself thinking about the Zentraedi’s raid on Macross City, when it was still located in the belly of the SDF-1. As he looked over New Detroit, he began to feel that there was something familiar about this patterned ruination, almost as if it bore the earmarks of someone thought to be dead—someone whom the Zentraedi themselves had feared …

  While Rick was dropping the Veritech in for a closer look, searching for an uncluttered stretch of street to put down on, Kyle and Minmei were preparing to flee the city. The black sports car, which had been parked near the theater entrance, had miraculously survived the destruction, and Kyle was behind the wheel now, twisting the ignition key and cursing the thing for not turning over. Above the sleek vehicle towered the lifeless body of an Excalibur, spread-eagle in a death pose against the theater facade.

  “You crummy no-good pile of junk!” Kyle shouted at the car, pumping the accelerator pedal for all it was worth.

  “Hurry, Kyle!” Minmei yelled from the street. “They might be coming back!”

  “I’m doing the best I can!” he told her angrily.

  Minmei was wringing her hands and pacing, a victim of fear and self-torment. Like Rick, she was blaming herself for the tragedy.

  I could have stopped Kyle, and none of this would have happened! How could I let him do that to Rick?! If I had just stepped in when Rick looked at me like that …

  The sports car’s engine fired, and Kyle hurrahed.

  “Minmei, get in! Let’s go!” She was either in shock or lost in thought, he decided, because he wasn’t getting through to her. “Minmei!” he tried again.

  She turned to him as if they had all the time in the world, pure loathing in her eyes. She reached for the handle of the back door and threw it open.

  Rick spotted her.

  He had the Veritech reconfigured to Guardian mode and was setting down on the theater street several blocks behind Kyle’s sports car. Kyle was revving the engine, too preoccupied to take notice of the mecha’s descent, but Minmei caught sight of it in the rearview mirror and spun around in her seat.

  She sucked in her breath. “Kyle, please don’t leave yet—it’s Rick!”

  Skull One had landed. The radome of the Veritech was on the ground, tail up in the air like some mechanical bird searching the earth for worms. Rick had sprung the canopy and was climbing out of the cockpit.

  Kyle said, “We’re late already!” and gunned it, patching out on the pavement.

  Rick was chasing them on foot, and Minmei could read his lips: He was calling her name, asking them to stop.

  “Turn around, Minmei!” Kyle yelled at her from the front seat. “It’s too late!”

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Good-bye,” she said softly to the small figure in the distance. It’s too late!

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  The Zentraedi are not inferior beings, nor should they be treated like second-class citizens. They should enjoy the same freedoms the rest of us do—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! No one can say for sure that some of them won’t turn to crime or evil purpose, but at least we won’t have repressed their right to express themselves—we won’t have acted like fascists!

  From Lynn-Kyle’s Pamphlets on Pacificism

  “The line forms to the right!” one of Khyron’s shock troopers bellowed, gesturing with his massive hand.

  Forty feet below the giant’s angry face, a micronized Zentraedi, recently returned to the fold, wondered whether he had made the right decision in joining the Backstabber’s battalion. It had been an arduous journey from New Detroit to reach these snowbound wastes. And now there was a certain hostility in the cold air …

  But all at once the shock trooper was grinning, then laughing and slapping his knee. Other soldiers were, too, and all along the line of micronized Zentraedi the laughing was spreading.

  “Well, that’s what the Micronians are always saying, isn’t it?” the shock trooper asked his diminutive counterpart. “‘Line forms on the right,’ ‘no parking,’ ‘no smoking’ … I mean, we Zentraedi warriors have learned something from the Micronians, haven’t we? We want to do things orderly from now on—peacefully!”

  “Yeah, we’re all for peace!” said a second trooper, brandishing his laser rifle.

  A third added: “We love their homeworld! So much that we’re just gonna take it from them!”

  And everyone laughed and threw in comments of their own, giants and micronized Zentraedi alike.

  The line led to the sizing chamber, back where it belonged in Khyron’s command ship now, where one by one, Zentraedi were doffing their Micronian outfits and being returned to full size in the conversion tank. It was a slow and tedious process, but no one seemed to mind the wait.

  Khyron least of all.

  He and Azonia were sitting some distance from the tank, sipping at tall glasses of an intoxicating drink one of the former micronized Zentraedi had introduced to the growing outlaw battalion. Khyron had taken a fancy to sipping straws, and his consort humored him by having one in her glass also. Close by, Grel watched them nervously.

  Word had spread quickly through the wastelands that Khyron had captured the sizing chamber and was ready to make good his promise to return to full size any who would join his army. Each day the lines of micronized Zentraedi males and females grew longer, and Khyron was reveling in his victory. He had instructed his spies in the population centers to make it known just who had taken the chamber.

  Let them know that Khyron had returned!

  Laughing hysterically, the warlord lifted the glass in a toast to a soldier who stepped from the chamber, naked and powerful once again.

  “Now that Khyron is in possession of the chamber, he will rebuild his army and crush the Micronians! This wretched world will have known better days!”

  With that, he heaved his glass at the line, shattering it against the interior hull of the ship and showering those waiting with glass and liquid.

  Azonia looked at her lord and grinned proudly. She was half in love with his insanity, though “love” was hardly the word she would have used.

  But suddenly Khyron wasn’t smiling.

  He made a guttural sound, stood up, and began to pace back and forth in front of her, his clenched fists at his hips holding the campaign cloak away from his scarlet uniform.

  “Not enough,” he said at last. “Not enough!” He whirled on her without warning, devilish fire in his eyes. “We must have the Protoculture matrix itself—Zor’s factory. It’s somewhere still in that rotting fortress, and we will have it!”

  “But m’lord, surely the Micronians—” Azonia started to say.

  “Bah!” he interrupted her. “Do you think they would even bother to guard this chamber if they had the factory in their possession?! No, I don’t think they’ve found it yet.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Khyron smashed a fist into his open palm. “We will do what we should have done all along. We will take something from them—something they deem precious. And we will hold it in exchange for the dimensional fortress. There is a Micronian word for it …” He turned to Grel and said, “The word, Grel—what is it?”

  “‘Ransom,’ m’lord,” came the speedy reply.

  “Ransom, yes …” Khyron repeated softly. He gestured to the sizing chamber and instructed Grel to speed things along. “We’re going to be leaving here shortly,” he told him. “But we must not forget to leave a little
surprise for our Micronian friends …”

  New Detroit had been placed under martial law. There was little reason to expect a follow-up attack, but the theft of the chamber had the resident Zentraedi up in arms. Some of them believed that the Earth Forces had staged a Zentraedi raid in order to gain possession of the chamber. Reconstruction crews and civil defense reinforcements had been flown in from New Macross, and a field headquarters (with Lisa Hayes in command) had been set up outside the city limits.

  Whether a band of malcontents from the wastes were responsible for the assault had yet to be confirmed, but reconnaissance flights north of the city had revealed the existence of a base of some sort, hastily constructed around the remains of a crashed warship whose towering presence dominated that snowy region. A squadron of Veritechs under Rick Hunter’s command was on its way to the site now, Lisa Hayes monitoring their progress from field HQ.

  Her screen had indicated no activity at the base, but when the Cat’s-Eye recon dropped in for a closer pass, the displays had lit up: Enemy missiles had been launched at the approaching fighter group. Lisa went on the com net to warn them.

  “Uh, we roger that, control,” said one of Rick’s wingmen. “Enemy projectiles maintaining tracking status. Onboard computers calculate impact in twenty-three seconds.”

  “Evasive!” Lisa heard Rick say over the net.

  Lisa watched her screen: The missiles were altering course along with the fighters.

  “They’re still on your tail, Captain Hunter.”

  An elisted rating at the adjacent duty station turned to her suddenly. “Picking up a sudden heat emission.”

  Lisa was already back on the net. “The projectiles have activated protoboosters.”

  “All units,” said Rick. “Send out ghosts.”

  Lisa studied the screen once more. The missiles had gained on the group, but the false radar images had confused them. Only momentarily, however. “They’re swung around, Captain.”