“So this is how they answer my demands!” he said, suddenly getting to his feet. “Well, it seems as though our little songbird has outlived her usefulness—to them and to us!”
Khyron ordered his troops to their pods and began to suit himself up in Zentraedi armor, bandoliers, and hip belt. Azonia approached him cautiously.
“Khyron, may we please continue the … demonstration?”
“Just as soon as I return,” he told her firmly. “But why don’t you come with us? The Micronians won’t stand a chance with you by my side! We’ll enjoy a moment’s pleasure with them.”
Azonia hesitated; it was certainly an inviting notion, but she had been trained to lead, not to follow. Besides, it would mean that one of the troops would have to give up his mecha, and they were looking forward to battle to the last man.
“And what about Minmei?”
Khyron glanced over at the cage he had fashioned and spat.
“We’ll deal with her later.” He put his arm around Azonia and offered to find her a Battlepod, as if offering to take her on a vacation.
“That would be wonderful!” Azonia gushed.
“We’ll share the experience our people love most!”
“Yes, we’ll go into battle together!”
“Good.” Khyron smiled. “I sense a great victory!”
Outside the hangar theater, the Zentraedi commander lowered himself into a harness seat astride an Officer’s Pod, which had been modified to support four top-mounted cannons. The mecha was piloted by a three-man crew of micronized warriors. Somewhat below him, Azonia clambered into one of the standard versions. “Show no mercy!” she shouted to the troops lined up behind them.
Khyron kicked the side of the Officer’s Pod to signal the pilots to move out. Inside, one of the crewmen asked whether one kick meant “forward” or “reverse.”
“Neither, you fool!” said a second. “It means advance to the left.”
“What does it matter?” asked the third. “We better do something or he’ll start screaming at us again.”
Sure enough, Khyron opened the hatch to the control room and snarled: “Get moving, you idiots!”
Zentraedi war cries filled the air as Khryon’s alliance of troops and mecha charged into the night.
Undiscovered by Khyron’s sentries, two members of an RDF long-range reconnaissance team witnessed the charge from their position atop a granite outcropping not far from the hangar theater. They were outfitted in sensor-reflective antirad suits, complete with jetpacks, full helmets, and survival gear. The radio man had raised SDF-2 control.
“Pelican Mother,” he whispered. “This is Eyes-Front. The Dark Star has fallen; repeat: The Dark Star has fallen …”
“Roger, Eyes-Front, we copy you loud and clear,” returned Lisa Hayes. She then switched over to the com net
“Skull Team, you now have green light, over.”
Winging his way toward New Denver in Skull One, Rick copied the message.
“Roger,” he told Lisa flatly. “We’re going in.”
There was so much more she wanted to say, so much more.
Khyron’s forces crested a small rise and dropped into a barren hollow in time to see three of their comrades locked in hand-to-hand combat with three RDF Battloids.
“Micronians!” Khyron snarled from his seat. “Prepare to meet your doom!”
Vastly outnumbered, the Battloids turned and fled as expected, but the sight of the three Zentraedi giants fleeing along with them came as a complete surprise. Khyron began to shout: “Where are you going?! We have come to save you!” He didn’t bother to repeat himself, though. His warrior sense told him that he’d been led into a trap. Ordering his team to a halt, Khyron spent a moment puzzling out Gloval’s move.
Of course! he said to himself. Gloval had managed to infiltrate his unit with Zentraedi traitors! Khyron turned in his seat and regarded his forces warily. But there was no time to pick out the good from the bad: On the high ground all around them, Micronian mecha were popping into view.
“Fire!” ordered Khyron, barely getting the command out before the enemy guns opened up. Six of his Battlepods were taken out in an instant, and an explosive close call almost toppled him from his seat.
“Fire!” he yelled again, hearing the immediate report of friendly cannons. “Charge!”
“Skull Team, this is Pelican Mother: The trap is sprung! Over!”
“Roger, Pelican Mother,” Rick’s wingman radioed Lisa. “Approaching assault objective.”
“Commander Hunter,” said Lisa. “That’s your signal to begin.”
“Roger.”
The heck with rules, she told herself. “Be careful, Rick. Khyron left several Battlepods behind to guard the hostages.”
“Going in low,” he replied, Lisa’s last words to him echoing in his mind. Don’t lose your perspective. But Minmei’s voice was running at the same time in wishful daydream thoughts.
It can’t end this way, Rick, she was telling him lovingly. Soon we’ll be together.
Rick’s face had a determined look as he nosed the Veritech still lower, the target looming into sight.
Inside the hangar, three Zentraedi giants were playing cards, trying to shake off the buzz from that premature celebration bash. The fork cage was beside them on the table. Before they had time to know what hit them, a Veritech had blown its way into the building, swept-back wings bringing down two soldiers in its flight path.
Three Battlepods guarding the entrance had already been blown to smithereens.
The hangar was pure chaos; every soldier with an autocannon or assault rifle was loosing fire and bolts of deadly energy against the fighter, a bird of prey streaking overhead.
Rick circled the stage, looking for Minmei and Kyle while he dodged steady bursts of ground fire, blinding searchlights in the dark building. In Guardian mode now, he nosedived his mecha to within twenty feet of the floor and made a pass between two Zentraedi, bowling them over with the Veritech’s wings. When he put down, a third giant wielding a depleted autocannon rushed at him, connecting once with a blow that narrowly missed the cockpit canopy before Rick dispatched him with a savage thrust of the mecha’s metalshod left fist. The warrior was propelled a good three hundred feet to his final resting place.
Rick walked the mecha forward to the cage, pulling off the lid as he dropped the Veritech’s radome to the tabletop.
“Minmei, are you all right?!” he called anxiously through the external speakers.
She was standing inside the fork enclosure, somehow tidy-looking and effervescent despite the ordeal she’d suffered through.
“Yes, Rick! I knew you’d come for me!”
“Of course I would.”
Looking up at him in the cockpit, she felt her heart suddenly swell with love and longing. Rick was like some guardian angel in her life, always there when she needed him—for support, protection, affection. And in that moment, she vowed to act on the strength of these renewed feelings, to demonstrate to him how much he meant to her.
“It’s been a … long time,” she said softly.
But it was doubtful that Rick heard her over Kyle’s shouts.
“Will you get us outta here!” he was demanding.
Rick thought the mecha through a series of motions that allowed him to rip open the remainder of the cage, flattening the forks like a hurricane wind. As Minmei and Kyle clambered up the mecha’s left hand and arm, Rick raised the base:
“This is Skull Leader, Operation Star-Saver … Mission accomplished!”
Lisa Hayes was already on her way to New Denver’s theater when word arrived that the two hostages were safe and sound. But no sooner had her plane put down than she began to get an earful of complaints from an infuriated Lynn-Kyle.
“I’m telling you,” he was hollering in her ear, “he came blasting in without any regard for our safety!”
Lisa could never figure Kyle out, but she had no patience with anyone who criticized a successful mis
sion—especially when that mission had saved two lives.
Kyle thrust his forefinger at her like a weapon. “That maniac almost got us killed!”
“We executed the mission to the best of our abilities,” she countered, angered beyond control. “If Commander Hunter’s conduct was unacceptable, then file a report.”
“A report?!” Kyle screamed, flexing his hands. “Just lemme get my hands on him!”
Suddenly Minmei was between them, holding her arms out like a crossing guard—a living cross to Kyle’s vampire. “Stop it!” she shrieked. “Can’t you see that all of these people risked their lives for us, you ungrateful oaf!”
Lisa waited for Kyle to deck his cousin, but Rick’s equally sudden appearance caught Kyle off guard. The Skull Leader came walking out of the night shadows cast by his crouched Veritech, helmet cradled in his right arm.
“I did it for you, Minmei,” he said, approaching the three of them. “I sure didn’t do it for Kyle.”
Kyle took a step forward, threateningly. “I’d expect that from you, Hunter.” Now, Lisa said to herself. Now all hell is going to break loose. Things had been building to this showdown for three years …
But thankfully, the argument didn’t escalate to violence. Quite the opposite: Minmei stepped out from between Kyle and Lisa with a warm “Thank you” for Rick, and he smiled. “I was happy to do it.”
She seemed to stand there staring at him for a moment, then broke out into a run that led her straight into his arms.
Lisa heard Rick tell her: “You must know that I’d be willing to risk my life for you again and again.” And as Lisa’s mouth dropped open, the two of them began twirling around together, sobbing with joy like long-lost lovers.
Just that, in fact.
Elsewhere, Khyron’s troops and the Earth Forces were annihilating each other. The last thing the RDF commander had expected was a charge; but then, he had never faced the Backstabber in battle.
Battlepods and Gladiators met head-on, going at it with a ferocity neither side had experienced before. Here, a pod rammed itself into a MAC II cannon, self-destructing on impact, while close by two pods down on their backs and cracked open like eggs fought their assailants with blasts of heat and fire sent blowtorching from their foot thrusters. Azonia, the Protoculture charges of the Officer’s Pod weapons system depleted, windmilled the mecha’s hand-guns against its Battloid opponent. Zentraedi infantry troops armed with control rods torn from ruined Battlepods dueled Excaliburs, swinging autocannons like baseball bats.
Khyron was still astride his undamaged cannon pod, directing rotating fusillades of fire against ridge guns and attacking mecha. Battloids challenged his position, charging in from all sides and scaling the four-cannon machine to engage him one on one.
He wrestled a gatling away from one of these would-be heroes and turned the gun on it, blowing off the top of the pod. As the Battloid hit the ground and exploded, Khyron emptied the gun on a new wave of Micronian mecha, laughing maniacally, as was the Zentraedi way to welcome death.
Khyron was cursing the depleted gatling when one of his micronized crewmen appeared briefly in the cockpit hatchway to inform him that the cannon’s Protoculture charge was likewise used up. Distracted, the commander didn’t see a second Battloid that had reached the top of the cannon until it was almost too late. He sidestepped the mecha’s lunge and knocked it off balance with a gatling blow to the abdomen. But now a third had suddenly appeared behind him, and again he twisted and swung the gun, nailing the mecha with a shot to its chest.
Grel had also survived the initial surprise attack and was contributing his blood lust to the kill zone. Out of weapons charge, he ran his Battlepod at full throttle into the swarm of Battloids attacking his commander’s position. But a miscalculation inadvertently brought him crashing against one of the mecha’s hand-guns, setting loose the cannon’s final charge. The force of the blast threw Grel’s Battlepod into a back flip, while the slug itself ripped from the muzzle and blew away the arm of Azonia’s Officer’s Pod.
Khyron saw her go down in a fiery fall and leaped from the cannon seat to run to her aid. Bolts of energy criss-crossed overhead and explosions erupted around him as he ran, a broken-field runner in hell. A Battloid thought to stop him, but he felled it with a gatling blow to the thing’s head.
He lifted the plastron hatch of Azonia’s smoldering pod and called out to her, the first time he had ever demonstrated such feeling for one of his own kind. She was lying injured inside, on the brink of unconsciousness, until she saw him and felt the light return to her.
Was she all right? he wanted to know.
She smiled slightly, even though there was nothing good to report; oh, she was unhurt, but the pod’s weapons were empty. And it didn’t matter, she wanted to tell him, because she had at least lived to experience the joy of battle and the knowledge that he had cared enough to come to her side.
But Khyron surprised her by ordering a retreat.
She got the pod to its feet and scooped Khyron up in its one good arm, running away with him into the dawn light, a badly beaten band of Battlepods trailing behind.
* * *
Lisa and Kyle stood silently side by side, identical scowls on their faces, while the happy reunion continued. Lisa was thinking: We must look like twins.
She wasn’t aware of the female flight officer who approached her from the shuttle plane until she felt the light tap on her shoulder.
“Khyron is in full retreat,” the woman reported.
Lisa glanced back at the lovers. The sun was up, and it would have made a pretty picture—the two of them embracing, the Guardian behind them against a powder-blue sky—if only Rick hadn’t been a featured subject. But this sudden news had presented her with a way to break it up. After all, it was Rick’s duty to go after Khyron, wasn’t it. He was the best there was …
If Lisa wrestled with the idea of using her rank to come between them, she didn’t show it. She turned to the woman officer and told her to notify Admiral Gloval that she was sending Captain Hunter in to mop up.
With that, she walked over to them, tapping Rick roughly on the shoulder to put a swift end to their lingering kiss. She demonstrated none of the nervous reserve Grel had shown earlier with Khyron and Azonia.
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything important, Captain, but Khyron is on the run, and Skull has been ordered to give pursuit.”
“Huh?” Minmei said, as if waking from a dream.
Rick shot Lisa an angry look. “I almost didn’t make it back the first time—isn’t that enough for you?!”
“Are you refusing orders, mister?!” she said, raising her voice.
Rick threw his helmet to the ground. “You’re darn right I’m refusing! You want Khyron so bad, you go out and get him!”
“Fine!” Lisa shot back, squatting down to retrieve the helmet. “I’ll go bring him in, and you can just go put yourself on report!”
Minmei made a startled sound, looking back and forth between them. Rick snatched the helmet away from Lisa’s grasp.
“Forget it! I’ve come this far—I might as well finish the job, Captain!”
Lisa berated herself silently. How could I allow myself to do this to him? She started to apologize, but he cut her off.
“It’s my duty, right?!” He turned affectionately to Minmei and told her that he’d be back soon.
“I know you will,” she sighed.
Lisa stood with her arms folded, her foot tapping the tarmac fitfully. She wanted to throw up, apologize again, scream, do something!
Rick donned the “thinking cap” and made an athletic jump to the lowered nose of the Veritech. As he was snuggling down inside the cockpit, Minmei saluted and said, “I’ll be waiting for you.”
He returned both her smile and her salute before bringing the canopy down.
The Guardian righted itself as Rick fired up the rear thrusters, and some sort of silent communication passed between Minmei and himself: words and
thoughts from the past, suddenly intertwined and confused with these renewed trusts.
Minmei stood unmoving while the Veritech initiated its launch, riding over the barren land on its own blasting carpet. But when it had reached the end of the field, she began to chase after it, shouting out Rick’s name, afraid all at once that she would lose him forever.
Lisa took off after her, concerned for her safety. She saw Minmei collapse a short distance off, burying her face in her hands.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
I don’t know who I want to strangle more—Lisa or her idiot flyboy. I only know that if something doesn’t put a quick end to this little duet they’re dancing, I’m going to get myself transferred to the factory satellite, and I’m going to see to it that Lisa Hayes comes with me.
The Collected Letters of Claudia Grant
The issue, Lisa decided afterward, was control. It had nothing to do with Minmei, Kyle, or even Rick. She couldn’t bring herself to blame him no matter how much effort she put into it; she couldn’t accuse him of deceit—he had been honest about his feelings for Minmei all along—lack of consideration, or outright selfishness. Nor was his behavior manipulative or controlling in any way. Damn him. That left only herself to blame, unless she could somehow pin the whole thing on Khyron!
This made her laugh: Here she was, sitting in the officer’s mess feeling like the world was about to end because she and Rick had had another tiff, when Khyron was on the loose, kidnapping people, demanding the return of the SDF-1, and threatening to wipe out what little remained of the human race. But her preoccupation with the little things didn’t surprise her. For what could one person do up against the big ones? She played her part, Rick played his; all of them, Minmei included, had roles to enact. Sometimes, though, it felt as if someone else had written the lines they all delivered with such force and passion. But in the end it all came back to control: how she was going to regain control of herself.
Lisa sat there sipping at lukewarm coffee, so wrapped up in replaying dawn’s events that she took no notice of Claudia’s arrival.
Doomsday: The Macross Saga Page 48