He kicked a bit of dirt. "Don't worry. Roy'll take care of it. As usual."
She put her hands on hips. "How come you're always talking about Roy's flying? You're just as good a pilot as he is, any day!"
He looked away at that, up to the ceiling lights. Alarms wailed, and he wondered what Big Brother was doing.
Just then, Roy was leading Skull Team in the most furious dogfight he'd ever seen, as wave after wave of pods came in at the SDF-1. Zentraedi energy blasts and missiles flashed in all directions as the dimensional fortress's defensive batteries blazed away. The special Veritech autocannon ammo, designed to fire in airless space, was even more powerful and accurate there than in atmosphere.
There were explosions and more explosions, all in the eerie quiet of vacuum. Except the tac nets weren't quiet; if the explosions emitted no sound, the screams of dying men made up for that.
Every Veritech squadron rehearsal and drill went out the window; in the utter madness that swirled around the SDF-1, the pilots found that they could keep tight with their wingmen and engage the enemy only as the opportunity arose. It was a cloud of dogfighting like nothing that had ever gone before it in human history-fireballs created by exploding spacecraft, perhaps a half dozen of them at a time, and the relentless lancing of beam weapons and autocannon tracers.
"These aliens area lot better up here than they were back on Earth," Roy told Skull Team, although they were all painfully aware of that already. "Looks like a real rat race this time."
He led his wingman onto a new vector and headed for a cluster of pods that threatened to break through SDF-1's defenses at a spot where two gun turrets had been knocked out.
Pods began erupting in flames as the VTs' shots rained on them; the sally was turned back, but in the meantime three more cries for help came in. Roy told himself to ignore the big picture and just tend to his flying.
"Our special decoy vessel is now within their firing range," the report came to Breetai.
Exedore stood next to him, watching the same tactical display monitors. "I find it strange they haven't fired their main gun yet."
Breetai, arms folded across his immense chest, contemplated the screens. After a lifetime of soldiering, after uncountable contests in battle, he'd come to appreciate a shrewd enemy, and he'd begun to conclude that this enemy commander was either quite shrewd-or insane.
Still, a warrior fought to win. To meet a foe worthy of respect was a thing to be wished for but also a thing to ignite caution in any wise commander.
The metal and crystal of his headpiece caught the light. "What are you planning, my dear Micronian friend?" Breetai murmured.
"Perhaps we should offer them another enticement and see what they do," Exedore suggested.
"Mmmm." Breetai's metal-sheathed head inclined.
"Very good idea. Tell the recon ship to open fire, but it is not to do serious damage to the battle fortress. Is that clear?"
Exedore bowed and hastened to obey.
Out in the lead of the armada's main body, the recon ship opened up with all batteries. At that distance, it was impossible to be sure an energy bolt wouldn't hit a dogfighting pod; the battling Robotech machines were in constant motion.
But the Zentraedi overlords cared little about that; their warrior code held that lives were expendable. Without warning, a terrible volley hit friend and foe alike and holed the battle fortress.
A pod was blown apart just before two converging VTs could make the kill themselves; another Veritech was singed along a wing surface by the barrage. Attempting to switch to Guardian mode so it could cope better with damage to itself, it was hit by another blast, flying to pieces in a bright globe. Secondary explosions blistered from the SDF-1's hull. Wreckage flew, and precious atmosphere puffed into space.
Lisa was thrown against her console by a direct hit to a reactor subcontrol unit several decks below the bridge. Gloval rose halfway from his chair. "Are you all right?"
She righted herself, nodding. "I'm okay, but what about the hull?"
He came to his feet, studying the damage reports pouring in all around him, gazing out the forward viewport at the eruptions of destroyed pods and VTs, and the blue hail of incoming cannon bolts.
"Just pray," Gloval said tightly.
A call came in from the engineering officer, the shouts of his men and the crackle of fire mixed with the hiss of firefighting foam in the background. "There's been some damage to the reactor subcontrol, Captain, but we'll manage."
"I'm counting on you," Gloval told him, wondering how long the ship could withstand the barrage.
Out in the savage killing ground of the dogfight, pod preyed on Veritech and Veritech upon pod. All was swirling combat, blazing weaponry, max thrust, and desperate maneuvers. The pods, like the VTs, often moved in a way that suggested atmospheric constraints, despite the fact that they were in deep space.
The Zentraedi recon ship continued to pour heavy fire into the SDF-1's general vicinity, though the dimensional fortress sustained less damage than it might have. The alien gunners weren't making it obvious, but Breetai's orders regarding the battle fortress's survival were being followed to the letter. Still, carefully placed rounds seared through the ship's shields and armor, blowing apart a turret here, a radome there. A nearby hit shook the bridge gang around like dice in a cup and threw Gloval headlong out of his chair, his hat skittering across the deck.
"Thundering asteroids!"
Vanessa was back to her station before he got to his feet.
"Captain, damage control reports that the second and fifth laser turrets have sustained heavy damage. They'll be out of action for seven hours minimum."
"Number four thruster is almost completely destroyed," Claudia declared grimly.
"Subcontrol systems report heavy damage and heavy casualties," Lisa added.
Another close hit jarred the ship, lifting a missile-launching tube away from it and scattering wreckage and pieces of human bodies.
Gloval reared up angrily. "That's the last straw! We're firing the main gun!"
Lisa heard herself gasp along with the rest of the bridge gang.
Gloval was stone-faced. "Stand by; upon my command, we will execute Dr. Lang's designated modular transformation!"
Kim couldn't keep herself from protesting. "But if we do that, it means the whole town might-"
"Yes, that's right, the damage-" Sammie agreed, breathless.
Gloval glared at them. "I either take this risk or see the SDF-1 completely destroyed. I have no choice! I have to do it.
Outside, the sinister festival of lights grew more intense. Another nearby hit shook the bridge again. Lisa whirled back to her duty station. "All systems attention, all systems attention! Begin preparations for firing the main gun!"
Her voice rang through the rest of the ship, through engineering compartments and fire control centers and living quarters alike. "Modular transformation will be initiated in three minutes, mark!"
An engine room tech looked to his squadmate. "They can't be doing that crazy transformation now."
"They're outta their minds," the other agreed.
"Two minutes, fifty seconds and counting," Lisa's steady voice echoed.
The two looked at each other for a moment, then dove for their emergency suits.
The traffic had halted in the city streets below, but otherwise Macross looked the same. Rick and Minmei glanced up at the nearest PA speakers as the voice he'd come to so dislike said, "Attention, all citizens! This ship will be undergoing modular transformation in two minutes. This operation is dangerous; please take all safety precautions.
"Move outdoors at once. Beware of possible quake damage. If possible, evacuate to a designated safety area." There was a slight pause before the echoing voice added, in a softer tone, "And-good luck."
"Transformation? What's that?" Minmei wondered. She and Rick had stayed where they were once the fighting started because it seemed as safe a place as any.
"I dunno; mayb
e something they came up with while we were-while we were stranded."
"I guess that Roy must be out there in the middle of the fighting," she said sadly, looking out at the city.
"You mean-you think I should join the defense force?"
"No, I didn't mean that at all. It's just that airplanes are your dream, aren't they?"
He could see that the war didn't matter very much to her; that wasn't the way her mind worked. But she'd seen that he was sad and saw what she thought to be a remedy to that sadness.
"I guess so. But if I go and join the defense forces, Minmei, I won't be able to see very much of you anymore." Painful as seeing her under present circumstances was, he wasn't willing to give it up.
She was suddenly smiling. "Rick, we're on the same ship! On your days off or furlough or whatever it is, we can see each other whenever we want to."
"If I survive."
"Oh, how can you talk that way? All the soldiers who come to the restaurant are in exactly the same position!"
"The same position?" He smiled bitterly. "You'd be the one to know, now, wouldn't you?"
She started as if she'd been slapped. "What?"
Up on the bridge, Claudia watched her monitors. "Ten seconds to transformation."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
And so, my preliminary conclusions lead me to believe these creatures harbor certain unpredictable impulses of a nature as yet unknown to us. It seems obvious that this irrational side to their nature will impede their war-making ability and work in our favor, assuring us the ultimate victory.
Preliminary findings summary transmitted by Breetai to Dolza
"All sections on execution standby?" Gloval demanded.
"D and G blocks are running a bit late but they'll manage," Kim sang out.
"Good; continue," the captain said.
"Counting four seconds," Claudia resumed. "Three… two…"
"Commence full-ship transformation," Gloval ordered.
The bridge crew took up the quiet, critical exchanges of the transformation, listening to their headset earphones and speaking into their mikes. What would have been soft-spoken bedlam to an outsider was instantly intelligible to Gloval.
Sammie: "Commence full-ship tranformation. J, K, and L blocks, stand to."
Kim: "Number seven reflex furnace, power up. Seven-eight section start engines. Not enough power, J block!"
Vanessa: "Activate main torque-sender units."
And the ghostly voices came back, complaining of trouble with substrata plasma warps, of injuries in a hundred different locations, of machinery that was being asked to do too much, of overtaxed components that simply could not do their jobs, and of civilians who, confused and disoriented, were not prepared for the upheaval that was about to take place. Through it all, the bridge gang worked selflessly, concentrating on their jobs and their responsibilities.
Gloval knew that no matter what was about to happen, he was proud of them, proud to serve with them.
"Full-ship transformation under way, sir," Claudia relayed.
With the ship trembling and vibrating all around him, Gloval drew on his reserves of inner calm, clasping his hands behind his back. Now, what would happen would happen; he'd done all he could, and the odds of numbers or the vagaries of engineering or happenstance or some higher power-or all of the above-would make the final judgment.
"Very good," he told Claudia.
Rick looked down at the city. People had streamed from the buildings, racing this way and that, with no clear destination or purpose. Some seemed to be headed for designated shelter areas, but others darted aimlessly, unable to bear another catastrophe so soon after the last.
Rick didn't particularly care, didn't feel any urge to find refuge. "Y'know, Minmei, sometimes I wish they'd never found us."
"I can't believe I'm hearing that from you! How can you be so spiteful? Oh, I hate you!"
He looked back at her. "The same goes for me. If it doesn't mean anything to you that you and I were-"
The vibration had reached a level that nearly knocked him off his feet as enormous pylons, each as wide as a city block, began descending from the gigantic compartment's ceiling. The grinding of the monster servomotors that moved them became deafening.
Rick and Minmei barely had time to get an inkling of what was going on, barely had time to begin to cry out, when the ground at their feet split apart, he on one side and she on the other.
The tower on which humans had so tentatively begun a garden had functions none of them had foreseen. In answer to the reconfiguration order, the tower halves swung away from each other.
Minmei lost her balance and fell, barely catching the brink of a metal ledge that jutted out a few inches below the soil level. The tower part to which she clung pivoted on its supports out over the roofs of the city; screaming, she kicked and scrabbled for purchase against a sheer cliff face of technical components, systemry, and equipment modules.
"Minmei!" Rick fought for balance as the tower segment on which he was standing shook, moving into place with a grinding of massive gears. The gap between the halves was growing wider. He took a running start and hurtled out over empty air, barely making the other side.
Rick knelt to where Minmei hung, legs kicking, hundreds of feet above the roofs of Macross. She'd lost one hand grip, and her fingers were slipping from the other.
He threw himself prone at the brink of the abyss and grabbed her wrist with both hands just as she let go. He gritted his teeth and pulled, but the leverage was difficult, and he hadn't had time to get a firm hold.
Minmei's wrist slipped through his grasp a fraction of an inch. She stared up into his eyes, terror consuming her. "Rick, help me!"
Again the monster cam devices rotated SDF-1's forward booms apart in preparation for the firing of the main gun. But other alterations were taking place, too; and the ship, particularly the stupendous hold where the refugees had rebuilt their city, was filled with devastation, injury, and death.
A hull structure the size of a billboard moved to one side like a sliding door to reinforce the new configuration; out through the gap in the ship's side poured a tidal wave of air, ripping up everything in its way, hurling cars and people and trees into space. An inner curtain of armor dropped to close the gap in moments, but not before part of the city had been sucked away to utter destruction.
Elsewhere, more pylons were in motion, this time rising from the floor, climbing up and up, crushing the buildings atop them flat against the hold's ceiling. Debris rained everywhere; the thousands who hadn't sought shelter or hadn't been able to find it were crushed or injured. Falling signs, toppling light poles, vehicles careening out of control, ruptured power lines, and tons of plummeting concrete and steel claimed as many lives as the Zentraedi had.
Roy bagged another kill, a pod that had very nearly bagged him, and brought his fighter around to locate Captain Kramer, his wingman, and get his bearings. Then he saw the SDF-1. "What in the…"
The Daedalus and the Prometheus were in motion, swinging on the giant elbow moorings that joined them to the dimensional fortress. In the blizzard of explosions and ordnance and fighter drives, the supercarriers swung from positions more or less alongside the SDF-1's stern, port and starboard, to a deployment that left them angled out from the hull.
Roy got a confused impression of movement along the hull, of realignment, of major structural features disengaging and then reshaping themselves. The entire midships area was turning. The great forward booms that constituted the main gun were on the move, and the bridge itself was shifting position. And the overall effect was-Roy stared, trying to believe it-the overall effect was of a human figure, a giant armored warrior something like a stylized Battloid.
The flattops resembled pincer-equipped arms, the tremendous aft thrusters were like legs and feet, and the bridge and the structures around it were a blank-visored helmet. And standing high above either shoulder, like uplifted wings, were the booms; with the shifting of the entir
e midships section, they were now in position to receive energy.
Somehow, Roy found himself accepting the strange apparition as a logical thing; Robotechnology seemed to have, as a primal component, a quality involving shape shifting, and anthropomorphic structures.
"So, that's the transformation," he breathed. Now, if it only works!
"Right wing section, modification percentage seventyfive," Kim relayed to Gloval.
"Left wing section, modification percentage at eightythree. Main gun up," Sammie added. There was more booming and reverberating as the last components were mated and the final connections made.
"Modular transformation completed, sir," Lisa announced. "SDF-1 is now in Attack mode."
"Captain, another enemy assault wave is approaching from one-zero-niner-three."
"Disregard," Gloval ordered. "Fire main gun at designated targets."
"Yes, sir." Claudia thumbed the safety cover off a red trigger button and pressed it with her forefinger. There was a fateful little acknowledging click.
Out between and around the forward booms, the red flash flood of energy began building again, just as it had that day on Macross Island. A wash of energy a quarter mile in diameter sprang across space, instantly destroying all the alien pods in its path as well as pods on the periphery of the beam, out to a radius of a mile and more. They lit up, superheated by the eddy currents, their shields overpowered in seconds, armor heated to cherry-red and then white-hot before the occupants could take any evasive action or retreat.
They simply blazed in the stream of the main gun's volley for an instant, giving off trails like meteors, then disappeared.
The beam hit the decoy reconnaissance vessel and its escort ships, making them pop open like chestnuts in an arc furnace, then run like quicksilver and vaporize.
The glare of it lit Breetai's command post. "What's happening?"
Exedore looked out on the carnage, thinking of the strictures from the Zentraedi ancients. Try as he might, he couldn't fathom the workings or the strategies of these Micronians. He was intrigued, as he always was when he found something new to study, but he was also beset by doubts and misgivings.
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