McKinney, Jack (Brian Daley & James Luceno) - Robotech 18 - The End of the Circle

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Robotech: The End of the Circle

Book 18 of the Robotech Series

FOREWORD

The publication of The End of the Circle, the eighteenth book of the series,

concludes the Robotech saga. The story now spans five decades, from 1990 to

2040 or thereabouts, save for a period of "lost years," covering the rise of

Mon-ument City and the Army of the Southern Cross, an account of which may yet

see the light of day. Some of this material is in fact already being covered

by other sources.

With nearly one million words of print in the Ballantine/Del Rey series

alone, eighty-five episodes of powerful ani-mation, an equal number of comic

book adaptations, numerous art and role-playing books, and supplemental source

material—including several college theses—it should be clear that Robotech has

traveled a great distance since "HAL," Haruhiko Mikimoto, sat down at his desk

one day and inked the first sketch of raven-haired songbird, Lynn-Minmei.

As most readers of Robotech are aware, the eighty-five "continuous"

animated episodes (which still show up in U.S. television markets) were

actually a complete reworking—in terms of music, dialogue, and storylines—of

three separate anime series that appeared in Japan over the course of several

years: Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeda. Credit for this unique

accomplishment goes to Carl Macek, as well as Harmony Gold U.S.A. Inc.

Together with a talented team of writers, voice-over artists, and production

personnel, Robo-tech Master Macek found an overall grand visual theme in the

Japanese series and redefined both Robotechnology and Protoculture.

It is a source of continuing disappointment that the project, as

envisioned by Mr. Macek, was never brought to completion. The result would

have been an additional sixty-five ep-isodes of animation detailing the

exploits of the Sentinels, and who knows how many more devoted to the material

cov-ered in this final book, presented here for the first time.

But perhaps Robotech's most important contributors have been the fans

themselves, who have kept this project vital for five years running. More than

seventy thousand strong have been aided and abetted in their efforts by the

following, to whom the author wishes to express his heartfelt gratitude:

Comico Comics, especially Markalan Joplin, who died shortly before completion

of the illustrated series; Eternity-Comics, which has inherited the mantle and

is currently pub-lishing twice-monthly issues of the Sentinels; Kevin Siem-

bieda and the staff at Palladium Books for their role-playing games; Kay

Reynolds and Ardith Carlton, creators of the Starblaze Robotech Art Books;

Kevin Seymour of Books Nippan; and a special thanks to Claude Pelletier,

Michel Gareau, Alain Dubreuil, and the staff at Protoculture Addicts, the

official Robotech fanzine.

We should all do it again sometime.

PART I

WHEEL IN SPACE

CHAPTER ONE

"Beware the skies, for the cerulean raiments of that sweetscented realm mask a

darkness and evil that know no bounds. And do not look to heaven for peace,

for there resides hell. And beware all who descend from those skies, for they

are the harbingers of death and destruction."

Dogma of the Church of Recurrent Tragedy as quoted in Weverka T'su's

Aftermath: Geopolitical and Religious Movements in the Southlands

The starship Ark Angel hung in geosynch, 36,000 kilometers above Brazilas in

the Southlands. Recently returned from a distant campaign, it alone had been

spared the wrath of the Invid's transubstantiating departure, one ship among

scores in that moment of victorious defeat.

Scott Bernard had yet to decide whether its survival constituted a curse

or a blessing.

He could just make out the warship's underbelly through a small oblong

viewport set high' up in the curved hull of the chemical shuttle's passenger

cabin. A soft-soled boot, freefloating, drew his attention forward, and he

watched it for a moment, thinking: Weightless. Hugged to the padded contours

of an acceleration couch by web belts and Velcro straps, as if on some

nostalgia-steeped theme park ride.

Although restrained might have been a better word to describe his

present circumstance, as in temporarily prevented from doing harm to himself

or others. Not that he would. But there were half a dozen G2 analysts

planetside who thought differently.

Scott sniggered aloud, unperturbed by the curious glances his self-

amusement had elicited. He returned the looks with interest until one by one

each of his fellow passengers in the cramped cabinspace turned away.

Oh, he had it, all right: what Rand had once called the look of the

lost.

Scott inclined his head to one side to get a better angle on the ship,

her dark symmetry obscuring a narrow sweep of stars. Built and christened on

the other side of the Quadrant, she was the very ship Colonel Wolff had

pirated from Tirol orbit years before. The ship that had become the Sentinels'

own.

Running lights illuminated an array of weapons and sensor ports dimpling

her underside-retrofitted sometime during the three years since Scott had last

seen her-along with a swath of heavily blistered alloy, where angry tendrils

loosed from the Invid's mindstuff phoenix had brushed her just three months

before. She rested alone in gravity anchor, save for the countless metal

fragments that drifted above and below her: the lingering debris clouds of

Dolza's fleet; of Little Luna, the Zentraedi factory satellite; of the

hapless, goosenecked ships of Mars, Venus, and Jupiter Divisions; of the

Robotech Expeditionary Force's tri-thrusters and Karbarran manufactured

boilerlike monstrosities.

Earth was in fact haloed by death and destruction. But liberated-or so

it seemed.

A Tiresian-accented voice cautiously interrupted Scott's painful

reverie.

"Colonel Bernard," the woman repeated as Scott turned from the view. She

stood wavering in the narrow aisle, Velcroed in place, strands of auburn hair

wafting out from under a pearl-gray shuttle bonnet. The smile, too, seemed

fastened there, detachable with the slightest tug.

"What is it?" Scott asked, masking his thoughts.

"Sir, General Grant wishes you to be informed that he'll be on hand to

meet the shuttle. Mrs. Grant and Senators Huxley and Penn are with him, sir."

Scott nodded and put on a pleasant face, certain it read as a twisted

malicious grin. But the woman only broadened her smile in response and asked

if there was anything he needed before docking. He told her he was fine and

leaned over to watch her space-step down the aisle, a child learning to walk.

So much to relearn, he told himself. So much to forget.

The chemical shuttle itself was symbolic of the change. Launched from a

twenty-five-year-old reconstructed base in Venezuela Nueva, the ferry and a

handful of others like it were humankind's only existing links with near

space. There was the Angel, of course, but she had remained in geosynch ever

since the disastrous finale to the assault on Reflex Point, the Invid queen's

hivelike stronghold on the North American continent. Word had it that a small

portion of the REF's mecha-Alphas and Shadow fighters, principally-was still

functioning, but most of the older generation Cyclones and Veritechs had

simply given up the ghost.

No one knew what to make of the events that had occurred at Reflex

Point. In the wake of the Invid departure all sorts of reports had reached

Scott and his team of freedom fighters. The REF fleet had been destroyed; it

had survived. The Invid had exited the solar system; the Regis had relocated

her horde in the Southlands. The SDF-3 had been destroyed; it had manifested

from fold and been swallowed up by the Invid phoenix; it had failed to appear

at all . . . Eventually, Scott learned that the fleet had indeed been

vaporized and that the flagship had failed to emerge from hyperspace. He had

not bothered to wait around for verification. With an assist from Lunk and

Rand, he had managed to commandeer and make serviceable an anni-disc-ravaged

Beta, only to find that the VT was not much good outside the envelope and that

the Ark Angel had removed herself to stationary orbit over the Southlands.

It had begun to make sense after the initial anger and disappointment

had washed through him. Much of the northern hemisphere was devastated, and

where else would reconstruction commence but in the south, where several

cities had actually flourished during the occupation. Norristown, once the

site of a Protoculture storage facility, was fast emerging as the leader of

the pack, and it was there that Scott had ultimately set down. Like a fly on

lacquered paper. Mired in red tape for close to two months before Provisional

Command had okayed his request to be among those shuttled up to the starship.

The question he had heard most often those two months had been: "Scott

who?"

It seemed that Mars and Jupiter Divisions were filed away in Command's

mainframe as having gone down with all hands, and so the person claiming to be

Lieutenant Scott Bernard of the 21st Squadron, Mars Division, had to be a

ghost, a zone loonie, or an ambulatory case of what the neurometrics were

calling Post-Engagement Synaptic Trauma-PEST, for short.

Ask Dr. Lang about Scott Bernard, he had pressed. I'm his godson, for

chrissake!

Only to hear: "We're sorry, er, Lieutenant Bernard, but Doctor Lang is

not available at this time."

Later, Scott would learn that his godfather and mentor had been aboard

the ill-fated SDF-3 when it had jumped from Tirol. But in the meantime he

suggested that Captain Harrington might be able to vouch for him. Harrington

had commanded the first wave of Cyclone ground teams the REF had directed

against Reflex Point.

After all, it wasn't like he was asking for medals, Scott had assured

the analysts. But the least Command could do was acknowledge what he had

achieved on the yearlong road to Reflex Point or applaud his one-on-one with

the Invid Corg in the seasonally shifting skies above the hive cluster. Why,

some of Harrington's team had even seen the Invid simulagent's flame cloud,

had even seen Scott go into the central dome!

He was sorry he said it even before the words had left his lips.

"Now, uh, what was that you were saying about talking to the Regis,

Lieutenant?" the boys from G2 had asked. "You did say something about her

being, let me see here, `a bald-headed column of light twenty feet high.'"

And so he had played the PEST for them, steering clear of any mention of

Marlene or Sera or any of the mind-boggling time-space displacements he'd

experienced inside the hive chambers.

In retrospect, he had to ask himself whether pulling out all the stops

would have brought the med teams' debriefing reports to Jean Grant's attention

any sooner, but they had reached her on their own momentum in any case, and

Scott had finally been granted permission to come aboard.

And issued a battlefield commission to full bird, to boot.

For Scott it was something else to snigger at: a promotion, in an armed

force without ships or soldiers, defenders and liberators of a world that

wanted little part of them even now.

The shuttle docked in one of Ark Angel's starboard bays just as Sol was

flooding the eastern coast of the Southlands with morning light. Scott drank

in the view that had been denied him when Mars Division had approached a year

earlier: Earth's characteristic clouds and swirling weather fronts, its deep-

blue water oceans and healing landscape. And for the first time in years he

found himself thinking about Base Gloval, his father's forefinger thrust

upward into the Martian night, pinpointing a homeworld. Huddled afterward in

the prewarmed comfort of his sleep compartment, he would grapple with the

notion-that faint light, a home. But even after his family had been

transferred to the factory satellite to work on the SDF-3, Scott could not

regard Earth as such. And he had so few memories of those years that he called

Tirol home now and perhaps always would.

Only a week ago he had learned that his parents were still there.

The memories surrendered to more recent recollections as Scott and the

rest of the shuttle's privileged boarded a transfer vehicle that ferried them

into the ship proper, Ark Angel's artificial gravity settling on him like

oppression itself. Nearly every component of the ship was different from what

he remembered, from the illumination grids that checkered the holds to the

persistent foot-tingling basso of the dreadnought's internal systemry.

He soon caught sight of Vince Grant, towering walnut-brown and square-

shouldered over a small gathering of civilians and military personnel

bottlenecked at the arrival hold's security gate. There were hands in the air,

salutes, a welter of voices that brought to mind vid-scenes of turn-of-

the-century airport arrivals, and it was obvious to Scott all at once that the

REF was as altered as the Angel herself. He sensed something cool but

determined in the ship's slightly sour air, a single-mindedness at work he had

not experienced since Tiresia.

A male aide appeared out of the crowd to escort him through security,

and a moment later he stood facing the Grants and the two Plenipotentiary

Council senators. "Colonel Bernard, reporting as ordered," Scott said with a

crisp salute. "Permission to come aboard, sir?"

"Granted," Vince returned, working the muscles of his massive jaw into a

tight-kipped smile. "Welcome home, Scott. "

"Oh, Scott," Jean said, rushing forward to embrace him. "God, let me

look at you."

He took a step back to allow for just that, extending a hand at the same

time to Justine Huxley, then Dr. Penn. Vince and Jean were outfitted in

modified REF uniforms, collarless now but with flared shoulders and simleather

torso harnesses retained. The senators wore loose-fitting jumpsuits of a

design that had originated on Garuda.

"Good to see you, my boy," Penn said with paternal sincerity. "I only

wish Emil and Karen could be here with us." There was no mention of Karen's

lover, Jack Baker; certainly there was no love lost between Dr. Penn and

Baker, in any case. Karen, like Bowie Grant, had elected to ship out aboard

the SDF-3. Let them all have better luck than Marlene and I had, Scott

thought. Even if that means dying together. The scientist's words had thrown a

curtain of silence around the five of them, a spot of stasis amid the bustling

activity in the hold. "Is there any word?" Scott asked, hoping to break the

spell.

Jean shook her head, her dark honey complexion paled by the exchange.

Her hair was pulled back into a tight chignon, imparting a touch of severity

to what was normally the warmest of faces. "We've received some garbled

subtrans from Tirol. The ship folded soon after Rheinhardt and the others were

away. There's been no word from the SDF-3 since. "

"I think we should have this discussion elsewhere," Vince said with a

hint of suggestion in his voice. "We all have a lot of catching up to do. "

"Colonel," Huxley said before everyone set off, "I do want to apologize

for this somewhat subdued welcome." She gestured around the hold with a

quivering, aged-hand. "As you can well imagine, we've all been trying to

adjust to the loss of our friends and compatriots."

Scott could see that she was referring to the destruction of the fleet

rather than the presumed loss of the SDF-3. "I understand, Senator," he told

her. "No need for apologies."

"Besides, Colonel," Huxley continued after a deep breath, "what with the

Council trying to set up summits with our planetside counterparts and Jean's

medical teams doing what they can . . . Well, I'm certain you do understand,

Colonel Bernard."

Scott did not envy either group but thought it might be particularly

rough going for the Council itself. To the last they had been respected

members of the United Earth Government. But that was before the ascendancy of

the Army of the Southern Cross, the arrival of the Robotech Masters and the

Invid, and the factionalism and isolationalism that had thrived during the

occupation. Those would-be leaders below barely trusted their neighbors, let

alone a council of lawmakers and theoreticians absent for fifteen years. Scott

was not sure whether Huxley, Penn, and the rest had grasped the fact that

Earth was a changed world.

Scott found Vince Grant studying him when he looked up. "I know the

promotion might not seem like much, Scott, but we haven't gotten around to

honoring individual effort just yet."

Scott was taken aback. "Excuse me, sir, but if you're talking about

medals or citations-"

"You've certainly earned them, Scott," Jean said hurriedly, glancing up

at Vince before showing Scott an uncomfortable look. "We just want you to

know-"

Scott held up his hands to stop her from saying anything further. It was

a sham, and everyone knew it-or at least they should have. There were no

heroes this go-round, Scott said to himself, as he had so often the past three

months. No matter who had done what at Reflex Point or anywhere on either side

of the envelope.

There were only survivors.

CHAPTER TWO

There isn't a man or woman aboard the [Ark Angel] that wasn't thinking about

the SDF-1 when Dr. Penn announced our intention to make a trial jump to the

moon. But do we have a choice? Doesn't it make more sense to strand the ship a

safe distance from Earth rather than strand her in Martian orbit as some have

suggested out of sheer superstitious fear of repeated misfortune? All this, of

course, presupposes that the fold generators will fail, which I am inclined to

believe will not be the case. As for our inadvertently ending up near Pluto or

some such celestial locale, I can only pray that doesn't occur. Should it,

however, I might as well state now that I have always regretted missing the

jump that landed Claudia and the rest at the frozen edge of our home system.

Perhaps I'm bound by destiny to follow her now.

General Vincent Grant, ship's log of the Ark Angel

See you on the dark side of the moon.

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Robotech:TheEndoftheCircleBook18oftheRobotechSeriesCopyright1989byJackMcKinneyFOREWORDThepublicationofTheEndoftheCircle,theeighteenthbookoftheseries,concludestheRobotechsaga.Thestorynowspansfivedecades,from1990to2040orthereabouts,saveforaperiodof"lostyears,"coveringtheriseofMon-umentCityandtheArmyof...

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McKinney, Jack (Brian Daley & James Luceno) - Robotech 18 - The End of the Circle

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