Localized storms were unleashed as the ship tore through the winter clouds above Macross, orange thrusters aft propelling it swiftly toward the lake and the immobile fortresses.
The bolts crackled and hissed in the thin air as the bow began to open, revealing a network of blazing vertical shafts of power, fangs and incisors filed to gleaming points in the mouth of the beast. Ultimately, from somewhere deep within its black heart a cone of blinding light burst forth, spewing from the cruiser and fanning out to encompass the Earth itself, then narrowing and collapsing upon itself as it found its focus. It surged forward across the rooftops of the city, buildings collapsing in its wake, and struck the heart of the fortress, rending the fabric of spacetime on impact and opening gaps into antiworlds.
Colors reversed themselves; what had been light was now darkness, and what had been blackness glowed with an infernal radiance. The heavens rolled and gyrated as though the very stars had been thrown into chaos by the force of the explosion.
“SDF-2 has taken a direct hit!” a hurried and frightened male voice informed Rick over the tac net. “We’ve lost communications!”
Rick looked over his shoulder, dropping the Veritech’s left wing as he turned. Below him Lake Gloval was a caldron of fire and smoke, less a reservoir of water than a volcanic cone. The new fortress was in ruins, holed through and through by the annihilation ray.
“They’re listing!” the voice updated. “They’re sinking, Captain!”
“Come in, SDF-2,” Rick shouted into his helmet mike. “Lisa, do you read me?! Captain Hayes?!” His commo screen was a grid of black and white static, then a vertical column of blue and white bands. “Answer me!” he shouted once again.
Approaching Skull Team from twelve o’clock came an angry flock of Zentraedi mecha, pursuit ships, tri-thrusters, and Battlepods.
Rick locked onto his targets and pulled home the Hotas.
“You’ll pay for this!” he snarled through bared teeth.
The rain was harsh but blessedly cool against her raw skin. Why hadn’t she thought to include sunscreen in the beach basket? And was Rick as burned as she?… The wailing of tortured seabirds was taking her rapidly to the surface of the world, the roughhouse voices of beachgoers at play …
Lisa opened her eyes to a close-up view of her console keyboard and touch pads, water cascading between the tabs and puddling on the floor. Her hands were under her face, and the screen in front of her was blank and silent. She raised her head, pushed wet hair from her face, then struggled to her feet to ascertain the extent of the damage to the bridge.
On the floor below the flyout balcony, Sammie and Kim lay sprawled near their duty stations, seemingly dazed but uninjured. Klaxons were sounding throughout the ship, and the overhead fire control system had drenched everyone and everything in the hold. Lisa turned to check on Vanessa before opening the comlink to request assistance.
“Fire control teams needed on levels four through twenty,” she managed.
Back at her station, Kim put in a call for medics.
“All section commanders file status reports as soon as possible,” Lisa heard Vanessa say.
“Tell ’em we need more help on the flight deck!” a paramedic shouted from the floor.
Kim was working frantically at her controls. “Computer’s dead!” she told Lisa. “No manual override. We have no control whatsoever!”
“Losing power, Captain,” Vanessa said behind her. “Recommend we abandon ship!”
Lisa’s mouth dropped open as she felt the impact of those words and understood what it meant to lose a ship. She swept her eyes across the bridge: The fortress had taken a direct hit some floors below the control center, but secondary missiles had razed the bridge as well. There were huge holes in the bulkheads behind her, acrid smoke was coiling from the ventilation systems, and for the first time Lisa was aware that the ship was listing hard to starboard.
Think! she screamed to herself, as if to chase the demons of defeat from her mind. What would Admiral Gloval do in a situation like this?
She pictured him sitting in the command chair on the SDF-1 bridge, his white cap pulled low on his brow, the tobacco-stained fingers of his right hand gently tugging at the ends of his thick mustache … She could almost hear him:
“Lisa, you know that you’ll always be able to find me right here.”
And suddenly she understood why he had told her this; she understood why he had been absent so often these past months while the SDF-2 was nearing completion, why he had given her command of the fortress …
“Of course!” she yelled. She beckoned her bridge crew to follow her and hurried from the control room.
A winding service corridor still connected the two fortresses, a dark and spooky place now, but the four of them barely took notice of its sinister elements as they ran toward the mother ship, Lisa in the lead. Barely breaking stride, she hit the control switch for the bridge hatch, and they rushed in, surprised to find the overhead lights on and the display boards lit. They were equally surprised to find Claudia standing at her forward station, already initiating the lift-off sequence.
“Welcome aboard, ladies,” she said calmly and with a hint of humor. “What took you so long?”
“Don’t just stand there,” Gloval barked from the command chair. “We have a job to do. Battle stations—everyone!”
Lisa smiled to herself while she and the others hastened to their consoles and screens. So it was true: Gloval had half expected an attack of some sort. He had sworn to Khyron (and the entire crew, for that matter) that the SDF-1 was nonoperational, when in fact it was not only spaceworthy but armed to the teeth. Robotech crews had to have carried out the top-secret reconstruction months ago, purposely leaving the battered exterior of the fortress untouched.
“What about the main gun, sir?” she asked Gloval.
“Enough power for one firing. We’ll have to make sure it’s effective.”
“Computer countdown is already programmed, sir,” Claudia reported.
Gloval called for maximum power on all thrusters.
“Antigrav power levels at optimum capacity,” Sammie updated.
“All systems go,” said Kim. “Ready for immediate lift-off on commander’s mark!”
Claudia tapped commands into her overhead control board.
“Drive system is operational, and the chronometer is running. Four seconds to ignition. Three! Two! One!…”
“Take her up!” shouted Gloval, almost rising from his chair …
Minmei, her aunt and uncle, Mayor Tommy Luan, and thousands of others were pressed together in Macross’s main shelter, an enormous aboveground structure of steel and reinforced concrete that also housed the city’s communications system and data storage networks. Minmei had been entertaining everyone with songs and stories. They were all maintaining, despite the despair they felt when word of the destruction of the SDF-2 had reached them. Recent arrivals to the shelter described how that Zentraedi dragon had belched a flow of irresistible force and how the new fortress had slipped like a corpse beneath the frothing surface of Lake Gloval. The crowds in the shelter had keened and offered up their prayers.
But now incredible news had arrived: The SDF-1 was lifting out of the lake! And people all over the city were beginning to leave their shelters, heedless of the burning buildings and ravaged land, the death wind that blew like a gust from hell through the deserted streets. Their guardian was resurrected, and this was all that mattered. Even annihilation itself held no sway.
Minmei, too, left the shelter in time to see the fortress liftoff, parting the water as it rose from the lake, still a gleaming techno-knight despite its sorry appearance. The supercarriers that were its arms were held out in that characteristic gesture of supplication, and already the main guns were elevating into position above the knight’s visored helmet …
Khyron’s cruiser was continuing its deadly descent, disgorging blast after blast of white light from its unholy gullet. Streaks of blue li
ghtning shot from pinpoint gun turrets, while power-armored Zentraedi troops steadfast along the warships’s rusted hull loosed cannon fire against the Earth Forces mecha.
Rick skimmed Skull One along the cruiser’s organic-looking surface, offing missiles as he broke and climbed across its bow. When the recipients of those Stilletos and Hammerheads exploded beneath him, he threw the fighter into another dive, reconfiguring to Guardian mode as he dropped. The skies were alive with tracer rounds, hell flowers, and annihilation disks. Veritechs and Zentraedi pursuit ships were locked in crazed dogfights amid it all, adding their own slugs and rounds to the chaos, their own deaths to the escalating body count.
In Battloid mode now, legs splayed on the sickly-colored hull and the autocannon at the ready, Rick’s mecha emptied his rage at barbed turrets and solitary troops alike. Explosions encircled him, filling the air with white-hot shrapnel. But the great ship held to its course, hurtling toward the lake undeterred.
All at once there was a voice on the com net.
“Rick! Rick Hunter—is that you?!”
“Lisa!” Rick cried. “I must be hearing things!”
“You’re not,” she told him. “I’m aboard the SDF-1, and we’re preparing to fire the main guns. So I strongly suggest you get yourself out of there!”
He was already reaching for his mode selector stick. “You don’t have to tell me twice!” he exclaimed, running his mecha along the deck and lifting off.
Rick raised Max and Miriya on the tac net. Wing to wing the three fighters peeled away from the targeted cruiser …
“Main gun is in ready position,” Claudia announced. “Energy reading at present … niner-five-zero.”
Lisa ran calculations at the adjacent station, reporting the results. “The admiral was right—that’s only enough energy for one shot, so make it a good one!”
Vanessa gave the word: The cruiser was centered in the computer reticle.
“Now, fire!” yelled Gloval …
The two columnar towers of the main gun were set in position side by side, a continuous cat’s cradle of scintillescent energy uniting them running fore to aft. As Gloval issued the command to fire, the power web seemed to solidify itself for an instant; then the twin-boomed gun blowtorched.
A near hemisphere of incandescence erupted from the fortress, dematerializing the winter clouds and igniting the sky like a second sun. The collective force of an infinity of hyperexcited subatomic particles tore through Khyron’s approaching cruiser like a radiant stake driven into its icy heart.
But the cruiser’s forward motion was not yet arrested. Flayed of armor and superstructure and trailing a dense pillar of swirling black smoke, it continued to fall …
Khyron tasted blood in his mouth. In the dim illumination in the observation bubble provided by the cruiser’s auxiliary power system, he traced the blood’s course to a deep gash over his left eye. The eye itself was closed, swollen and hemorrhaging in its fractured socket. Azonia was in the command chair beside him, unscathed though the rest of the bridge was in ruin.
“All right,” he said, as though taken in by a minor trick, “they’ve had their fun, and now it’s our turn! I’ll show them!”
Behind him, both Grel and Gerao had met their deaths. Weapons systems and communications were out; likewise the computers and projecbeam screens. But the ship’s navigationals were alive—the ship itself could be used as a final weapon.
“Now what?” Azonia asked eagerly.
Khyron took the second chair. “They can’t erect a defense barrier without any power, correct?!”
“Right! They’re helpless! Get them!”
He turned to her and smiled. “We both will,” he rasped. “But it requires a sacrifice … are you willing to face it with me, Azonia?”
She reached out for his hand. “It will be glorious.”
“Yes … glorious. Locking on guidance systems, now.”
Its power systems depleted, the SDF-1 had dropped back in the lake, helpless.
Vanessa glanced up at the schematics on the threat board. The enemy hadn’t altered its course. “It looks like he plans to ram us, sir!”
Gloval turned to Sammie: “Do we have any power left?!”
“Not enough to activate the main gun again, sir.”
“Kim?” said Gloval.
“Same story here … I have no helm control!”
Claudia turned from her station: “Reserves and backups are out.”
Gloval stood up. “Ready the ejection modules,” he started to say. But Sammie was shaking her head, tears rolling down her freckled face.
“Only module C is operational. The rest are …”
Lisa felt her heart begin to race. Everyone looked at each other, saying more with their eyes than would have been possible through words alone. Sammie and Kim were crying, holding each other. Vanessa was tight-lipped, stoic, almost angry.
Lisa saw Claudia and the admiral exchange glances, then suddenly felt her friend’s graceful hand on her shoulder.
“Lisa …”
Lisa stepped aside and clutched at herself, feeling a wave of hysteria mount inside her. “No!” she screamed.
“Lisa, yes!” someone said—it could have been Sammie, or Kim, or Vanessa.
Claudia and Gloval took a step toward her.
She began to shake her head wildly …
Max and Miriya, Rick and what remained of the Skull Team, had put several miles between themselves and Khyron’s warship. Circling out over the lake, they regrouped and headed home, the SDF-1 at twelve o’clock, now resettled in the choppy waters.
Rick had witnessed the counterstrike leveled against Khyron’s vessel and had naturally anticipated its complete destruction. But the cruiser had survived and was locked on a collision course with the dimensional fortress.
The Veritechs began to pour everything they had toward it: missiles, armor-piercing depleted transuranic rounds, heat-seekers, and the rest. Phalanx guns of the SDF-l’s close-in weapons system were similarly engaged, challenging the gods with their volleys of thunder and blinding light.
All at once Rick knew in his gut that all the firepower in the world wasn’t going to slow that skeletal ship’s suicide descent …
The cruiser was a fiery javelin in a ballistic fall, called by the Earth’s own inherent powers to deadly rendezvous with its techno-savior.
On the bridge of the Zentraedi ship, Khyron and Azonia stood hand in hand facing that divine wind in a way only warriors could, victorious in their final moments as much for destroying the object of their years-long pursuit as for the strength of their extraordinary bond, their marriage in death.
Gloval, in his place, hugged his crew to him, stretching his long arms around them all, courageous and loving father, while the Destroyer’s warship eclipsed the sky.
The mile-long cruiser rammed into the main guns of the fortress, splintering the twin booms as it continued its dive. Metal shrieked against metal, shafts, connectors, and joints snapping and roaring in protest.
The bow of the leviathan ship forced the booms apart and impacted against the main body of the SDF-1, shearing off the head and going on to crash and explode once, twice, and again. The fortress took the full power of these against its back and itself exploded, blowing the supercarriers from their mountings and ripping away the battle-scarred armor that had seen so much violence.
The lake boiled, releasing massive clouds of steam into the cold air, and lightning storms appeared spontaneously in the skies overhead.
A fireball rose and mushroomed there, announcing the event to the rest of the world …
When the smoke cleared, three ruins stood in the much shallower lake: the burned-out hull of Khyron’s cruiser, the remains of the ill-fated SDF-2, and the blackened, headless torso of the original dimensional fortress—monuments to madness.
Most of the city along the lakeshore had been obliterated.
Veritech teams swept the littered waters and frontage lands for survivors but f
ound none.
Rick made a pass over the leveled suburbs where his quarters had once stood—where Lisa and Claudia, Sammie, Vanessa, and Kim had lived; then he flew over the heart of downtown, where survivors were already leaving the shelters.
But there would be no rebuilding this time—not here at any rate. Rick guessed that the area would remain hot for decades to come. Evacuation and relocation of the thousands who had lived through the day would have to commence immediately. No simple task given the extent of the destruction, but there were nearby cities that would lend a hand, and the Earth would prevail, rid of its enemies at last.
He tried not to think about Gloval and the others; this was what waited for all of them at the end of the rainbow.
He piloted his fighter past the lake hulks, circled, and put down in Guardian mode at an intact landing zone not far from the shore. People were beginning to gather, many in shock, others staring at the fortress in stunned silence. He raised the cockpit canopy and climbed out, only to hear a ghost call him by name.
Lisa was walking toward his ship.
Rick approached her cautiously, more than willing to settle for hallucination but worried that real emotion might frighten it off. But the quaking shoulders he touched with his equally anxious hands were flesh and blood, and the feel of her brought him close to fainting.
“At the last moment,” Lisa was saying, “Admiral Gloval and … Claudia forced me into the ejection module.” She regarded the fortress for a moment, silent while tears flowed freely down her cheeks. “They wanted me to live …” She turned Rick and studied him intensely. “They said that I was the only one who still had something to live for!”
Rick held her while she cried, her body convulsing in his arms.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered. “Just when I realized how much you mean to me.” He tightened his embrace. “You do have something to live for—we both do now.”
Doomsday: The Macross Saga Page 55