Neither of them heard Minmei approach. Reflexively, they separated when she spoke; but Rick, in a rush, began to stammer an explanation.
Minmei spared him that.
“You’re in love with Lisa,” she said quietly. “I knew that.”
“I would have told you sooner, but … I don’t think I knew until today.” Rick reached for Lisa’s hand. “Forgive me, Minmei.”
Now Minmei faltered. “Well, uh, only if you can forgive me, Rick. For trying to make you into something you’re not. And, uh, for pretending to be something I’m not.” Rick and Lisa looked confused, so she continued. “You see, I wasn’t really that eager to get married. I realized that my music means as much to me as the service does to you.”
Lisa seemed to stiffen, somehow able to locate just a hint of anger through her heavy sadness. “Oh, really?” she said flatly.
“My life is music,” Minmei said innocently.
Lisa smiled to herself and gave Rick’s hand a squeeze. Minmei couldn’t bear to admit that she had lost Rick; and why bother to think that when it was so much easier to rearrange the facts? Looking around, Lisa wondered if she could do the same: just pretend all this hadn’t happened, see blue skies instead of storms ahead.
“Good luck on your mission, Lisa,” Minmei said straight-faced.
As though all this hadn’t happened!
“I know you’ll be a bigger star than ever by the time we return,” Lisa told her, willing to give Minmei’s blinder game a try.
Rick, too, wore a slightly puzzled look. But this began to fade when Minmei turned to him, wishing him well and kissing him lightly on the cheek.
“Don’t forget me, Rick—you have to promise me you won’t!”
“I’ll never forget you,” he said, meaning it.
She spun on her heel in an almost weightless turn and walked away, stopping once to wave to him before rejoining the crowds of survivors, already welcoming her with open arms.
Snow was beginning to fall. Lisa put her arm through Rick’s elbow and snuggled up against him.
“What about our mission, Rick? Is there a chance—even without the SDF-1?”
Rick nodded slowly. He had already given it some thought.
“There’s still the factory satellite and Breetai’s ship. With his help, and Lang’s and Exedore’s, we’ll make good Admiral Gloval’s assignment. We’ll reach the Robotech Masters’ homeworld before it’s too late. This time peace comes first.”
Mesmerized, Lisa watched the snow begin to blanket the devastated city, the ruined warships that were to be its massive grave markers.
Perhaps Max and Miriya would sign on, she said to herself. Even Minmei! What did she care now? It was going to be a diplomatic mission, a proper meeting of two cultures bound to each other by a mysterious past and separated by nearly the breadth of a galaxy.
She looked over at Rick and managed a smile, which he returned though tears filled his eyes.
And if their plan failed for some reason, if it wasn’t possible for Breetai’s ship to undertake the journey … then other solutions would present themselves. Earth would rebuild itself and prevail. Perhaps, she speculated, the Robotech Masters would come here instead …
And it turned out, new solutions would present themselves. Earth would rebuild and prevail. And as for the Robotech Masters … come they would!
FOR SHOJI KAWAMORI AND THE ’80s GANG AT STUDIO NUE; HARUHIKO MIKIMOTO; IPPEI KURI AND KENJI YOSHIDA OF TATSUNOKO: ROBOTECH MASTERS THE LOT OF THEM—ALTHOUGH THEY DIDN’T REALIZE IT AT THE TIME.
APPENDIX
Thanks to the magic of electronic publishing, it has become practical to update the classic Robotech novelizations. Many of these changes are simple spelling and grammar corrections while others are minor continuity corrections which were made to more closely match the events of the television episodes. Such continuity updates were made where we felt it could be done without too much disruption to the original prose, and left alone in other instances where we felt the disruption would outweigh the benefit. For those of you curious about the specific changes made, we offer the following list of updates and errata:
UPDATES:
This Page: Changed the year of the SDF-1’s low-level flyby tour around the world from 2012 to 2010 to more closely fit the timeline of the television series.
This Page: Changed the length of SDF-1’s trip around solar system from 2 years to 1.
This Page: “Lynn and Minmei are dating” changed to “Kyle and Minmei are dating”.
This Page: Added a scene break between “aimed and ready.” and “Inside one of the pods”.
This Page: “At ease, Mister Hunter” changed to “At ease, Lieutenant Hunter” since military personnel would not normally refer to one other as “mister”, especially during such an important meeting.
This Page: Typical Zentraedi height revised from 50-60 feet to 30-40 to more closely match scale of animation model sheets.
This Page: Location changed from “Weasel 21” to “Delta 5” as per the TV series.
This Page: Lisa’s mother’s name changed from Andrea to Sara as per the new comic books.
This Page: Lisa’s rank corrected from Commander to Lieutenant Commander.
This Page: Dolza’s ship corrected from 1000 miles long to “almost 900 miles”
This Page: “Skull Six” corrected to “Skull One” since that is Rick’s callsign.
This Page: The original text states Earth will never be 3/4 water again, when TV series footage shows that the Earth’s environment eventually recovers from Dolza’s attack. Wording is softened to “might never” and removed “forever”.
This Page: Battloid height corrected from 60 feet to 40 feet per scale of animation model sheets.
This Page: Scene break added between “grim shadow over both of them” and “Rick was breathing hard, pushing himself into a sprint”.
This Page : Zentraedi height corrected from 60 feet to 40 feet.
This Page: “Readying” corrected to “reading”.
This Page: “Yeses and nos” changed to “yesses and noes”.
This Page, This Page, This Page, This Page: Rick’s rank corrected from Commander to Captain to match the television episodes.
This Page: Minmei’s song lyrics corrected.
This Page: “Can could somehow” corrected to “could somehow”.
This Page: “Ray Fokker” corrected to “Roy Fokker”.
This Page: “Picture” changed to plural because Lisa gave him several.
This Page: November 2014 changed to November 2012 to match the timeline of the television series, prior to the events of the Season’s Greetings episode.
This Page, This Page, This Page: Khyron was after a protoculture cell, not a protoculture matrix.
ERRATA:
This Page: In the text of the novelization, Exedore fears that the Protoculture Matrix was lost with the missing space fold engines, when the television series otherwise assumes that the Protoculture Matrix was still hidden within the SDF-1.
— list compiled by Douglas Wooten and Steve Yun
Published by Ballantine Books:
THE ROBOTECH™ SERIES:
GENESIS #1
BATTLE CRY #2
HOMECOMING #3
BATTLEHYMN #4
FORCE OF ARMS #5
DOOMSDAY #6
SOUTHERN CROSS #7
METAL FIRE #8
THE FINAL NIGHTMARE #9
INVID INVASION #10
METAMORPHOSIS #11
SYMPHONY OF LIGHT #12
THE SENTINELS™ SERIES:
THE DEVIL’S HAND #1
DARK POWERS #2
DEATH DANCE #3
WORLD KILLERS #4
RUBICON #5
ROBOTECH: THE END OF THE CIRCLE #18
ROBOTECH: THE ZENTRAEDI REBELLION #19
Jack McKinney has been a psychiatric aide, fusion-rock guitarist and session man, worldwide wilderness guide, and “consultant” to the U.S. mil
itary in Southeast Asia (although they had to draft him for that).
His numerous other works of mainstream and science fiction—novels, radio and television scripts—have been under various pseudonyms.
Doomsday: The Macross Saga Page 56