Jack McKinney - Robotech 16 - World Killers

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Robotech Sentinels: World Killers
Book 16 of the Robotech Saga
Copyright 1988 by Jack McKinney
CHAPTER ONE
They were the New Paladins, riding forth to answer the trumpet call to a nightmare war.
They were mortals caught up in events that transcended anything they had ever expected.
Many of them were career military people who had learned that wars were often won by those who
made the fewest screwups.
But they also knew that everybody screws up sometime.
Le Roy la Paz, The Sentinels
"Everybody stay sharp! Looks like we're gonna have to go to guns!"
Jack Baker trimmed the mated Veritechs he was flying-the sleek Alpha fighter was now
joined like a vaned nose cone to the bigger, burlier Beta ship. A quick glance over his weapons
status displays revealed that the other two Alpha-Betas of his raiding party were still in tight
formation behind him.
"Jack, no!" yelled Janice Em. She was in the second ship along with Burak, Lron, and
Tesla. "You heard what Veidt and Sarna said: this world's defenses will respond to any hostile
action!"
Actually, Veidt had said the legendary protective systems of the planet responded to the
mere intent of intrusion or provocative act. And that certainly seemed to be the case today, even
though the fighters had gone in with weapons and shields down.
"I got a news flash for you: we've already got Haydon IV PO'd at us, kiddo," Jack snorted.
"Or d'you think this planet's surface usually twitches and then starts spitting sparklers at
people? Get ready; like it or not, it looks as if we're in for some turns 'n' burns."
One part of him registered the fact that the terrain of Haydon IV wasn't actually
twitching; it was changing shape, like something from one of those old-time clay-animation flicks.
And the things shooting up at the incoming Veritechs were more like swirling vortices or sheets of
flame than sparklers.
Whatever they were, they were traveling at such high velocity that Jack saw the VTs had no
chance of running for it.
"Activate shields and weapons." Jack tried to sound calm. "And stay close to me." It was
too late to go back, so there was nothing to do but drive on.
Only he wished there were experienced combat fliers in the other two combined VTs. Janice
had been through training, and so had Learna, but neither of them had any dogfighting experience
to speak of. He would have preferred to have Max and Miriya Sterling flying at his wingtips.
But Miriya had been stricken, like Rick Hunter and his wife Lisa, by the strange
microorganisms of Garuda. And so had another Sentinel, one whose possible death filled Jack with
feelings and impulses that bewildered and shocked him...
He tried to put that out of his mind; what was happening to the famous Baker cool and
concentration? Damn!
From the cockpit's rear seat, where she was strapped into the copilot's station, Bela
reached forward to clap him on the shoulder. "That's the lad! Kick their flaming arses! I'll loan
you the boot!"
The vortices of fire came darting and circling, changing shape and roiling-like silken
scarves on the wind. All Jack's sensors were in alarm mode, but none of them could tell him what
he was facing.
Fire with fire, he told himself fatalistically, and put a burst of pumped laser into the
first one to come into range.
Somehow Tesla got on the tac net. "No, you fool! You're signing our death warrants!"
"Don't bother me; I'm workin'," Jack growled.
The cannonfire seemed to have no effect; the vortice changed course a bit and came
straight for him. He shot it again. The other VTs chose targets of opportunity and opened up, too.
The vortices flared angrily, and some were jarred, but they kept coming. More came from
what seemed to be an opening in the countryside below, like flecks of incandescent paint falling
upward.
Jack was still firing when the first vortex hit him. It flared angrily against his
shields, sending the indicators toward the danger zones, and it seemed he could feel the infernal
heat right through the fuselage. More swarmed after.
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The other VTs were struck, too. The vortices spread across them, coating them in a
blinding radiance.
"Wake up! Come, come; I have no time for this nonsense! Wake him!"
Rem heard the thick, moist rumbling voice, loud enough to echo and shake the walls. He
associated it with the sensation he felt now: bonds still holding his raw, bleeding wrists and
ankles, and the cottony blur the Invid psy-scanners had left in his brain.
At the Regent's command, Invid officers applied brief pain to speed up the effects of the
reviving injections they had given him. Rem squirmed and moaned, shaking off part of the fog, and
opened his eyes.
Rem saw the throne room that the Regent had decreed for himself high in a Haydon IV tower.
It was a minor mercy to see the light of Briz'dziki, the local sun, rather than the cold insides
of the Invid's nearby hive.
Rem tried to recall what he was doing there, and it came back in a confused, horrifying
rush. Capture by the Invid on Garuda; exposure to Garudan atmosphere-why wasn't he dead, or mad?
Or, perhaps he was-perhaps he was both.
No, he wasn't dead; the pain of his shackles was a branding-hot clarity too sharp for
that. But mad...
As he struggled feebly, he heard a low, mosquitolike humming that quickly built until it
shock-waved from one side of his skull to the other. The shackles seemed to grow teeth and gnaw at
his wrists, promising to devour their way up his arms and legs, ripping and savaging.
Rem screamed. The Invid stench coagulated with evil glee in his chest-he was sure he would
suffocate.
Not mad, then-but even more terribly, a victim of hin, the Garudan altered-reality or
transcendent state.
Kami and Learna and their people thrived that way-in hin-as a matter of symbiotic course,
interacting with their environment on a microorganic, even subatomic, scale. Stranded from the
synergistic biota of their planet, they would not even be sentient beings.
But to outside life-forms, exposure to the atmosphere of Garuda and to hin was a sentence
of death by insanity.
Rem fought to hold onto some last shred of reality. The seemingly endless memories of the
Optera of long ago, and the paradise it had been-but had he only dreamed them? Images of the
Regent's estranged mate, the Regis, and her passion for Zor, whose biogenetic material had been
made manifest in Rem's cloning-were they fever-dreams of the hin? But they had seemed so real, not
hallucinatory; more ordered and in focus than any dream or nightmare.
The Invid officers hoisted Rem to his feet with a clanking of his chains. To Rem's addled
and tormented senses, the cold tiles felt like white-green frost that burned the soles of his feet
and froze them at the same time.
The Regent loomed before him, twenty feet high, massive and terrible, his mantle spread
like a cobra's hood as he gazed down through liquid black eyes as big as manhole covers. Rem felt
the hin seize him again, making the breath in his lungs congeal and refuse to move.
Rem heard his own whimpering, felt his self-control about to slip from his grasp. He had
the abrupt impression that there were things in the shadows waiting to pounce upon him and feast
on his marrow, then take his mind and steal his soul. And though a remote part of his intellect
could recognize it as the mind-wrenching effect of hin, he couldn't find the strength of will to
fight it.
"Stand him up straight," the Regent said, when Rem would have pulled himself into a
weeping fetal ball. "Hold his head up."
When Rem was standing up and staring, as wild-eyed as an animal with its leg in a trap,
the Regent went on. "You're a very difficult fellow, Tiresian. Or should I say, `Clone'? Or better
yet, `Zor-clone'?"
He held up four-fingered fists on wrists several times thicker than Rem's waist. "Whatever
you really are, here's something that might interest you. Your Sentinel friends are coming."
Rem couldn't hide a wretched whimper of disbelief and despair mixed with crazed hope. The
Regent caught it. "That's right: they are coming directly into my hands. To be imprisoned like
you, to be put to the Inquisition like you, and to go through all the pain and mind-probing you've
gone through."
Rem was nearly in tears, but the Regent was leaning forward in the colossal throne,
drowning him out. "But it needn't happen that way! You can save them, Zor-clone, and save yourself
as well! The Haydon IV healers can cure them and cure you, too, this very hour; you can leave with
them-if you'll simply say a few paltry words and give me what I want."
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Rem was broken. Courage and conviction and strength and faith-and even love-are overrated
when it comes to defense against torture. Yet the Regent failed to incorporate one thing into his
equations-the one factor that no agony could overcome: ignorance.
"Tell me where the last Protoculture matrix is," the Regent hissed. "Tell me where the
original Zor sent it-hid it! You have many of his memories-how, I'm not sure. But that one must be
there, it must!"
But it wasn't. If it had been, Rem would have yielded it up in a moment. That escape was
closed to him, though.
Rem laid his head to his chest and sobbed. Deep in the hin, he felt the sunlight jeering
at him, his fear-sweat turning to acid against his skin, panic closing off his windpipe.
He heard the creak as the Regent rose from his chair. "Above all things, I despise
stubbornness. That, I punish."
Lynn-Minmei tried to stop the passageway from spinning as she lurched along, her hand held
by the mysterious VT pilot; she was barefoot and disheveled, sick with the drinks she had downed
but sicker still with her latest and worst glimpse of Human nature.
Not that she'd meant to drink a lot; she had nothing but contempt for drunkards. But life
as the consort of General T. R. Edwards was a little easier to bear after a round or two. And then
there was the drink itself-from Edwards's private bottle-something she had heard the top-echelon
officers jokingly call weed-whacker.
It was a 150-proof vacuum distillate that had been soaked in fibers from a plant related
to the Flower of Life, and strained out again. Brackish; deadly. But oddly smooth and warming.
Best taken by the slow shot glass.
But, she had needed something to fortify her as she sat there and listened to Edwards-the
man Minmei had thought she loved, the man to whom she had given herself-reveal himself as a devil
incarnate.
She was dizzy, and thought she might lose her balance, or her lunch-she had had no dinner.
"Wait, wait," she puffed, breathless. Her head spun, and she tasted bile in the back of her
throat.
The VT pilot stopped and turned to her, gesturing in a way that made it clear he was
concerned about her. Minmei brushed her hair out of her eyes yet again, to study him. "Do I know
you? Who are you?"
He was tall and lean, and demonstrated a supple strength. Behind the tinted facebowl of
his flight helmet, all she could discern was the dark, thick beard. He regarded her for a moment,
then answered, "It says right here: REF Service # 666-60-937."
She could see that, and his flight officer's insignia and unit flash. But his name tape,
stitched over his left breast pocket, was unfamiliar: Isle, L. His voice, coming through the
helmet's tinny external speaker, was unrecognizable.
Her mystery savior was wearing the unit patch of one of the outfits from Dr. Lang's
research facility. Lang had managed to ram through the council an authorization for his own
security forces, but Edwards had fought the seconding of pilots to the Robotech scientist. So,
this was almost certainly one of the fliers who had been selected from the lower ranks and trained
on Tirol to fill the cockpits of Lang's personal army.
But what was he doing on SDF-3?
Minmei swayed slowly from side to side, closing one eye in an effort to focus on him.
"C'mom, c'mon; I mean, why're y'doing this?" She still wasn't sure he wouldn't drag her back to
Edwards-maybe to claim some kind of reward or favor.
She was also waiting for the alarms to go off.
Surely, by now, Edwards had realized that she hadn't simply fled his embrace and his
bedroom for some fresh air. Even vain, cold Edwards must have admitted to himself by now that
Minmei had made a break for freedom.
"You said you want to go to Tiresia, didn't you?" the VT flier was saying. "And perhaps to
Garuda, or Haydon IV? I'll see that you get to wherever you want to go, Minmei. But Tiresia's the
obligatory first stop."
There was some resonance in his voice, even over the speaker, that she thought she
recognized. Minmei sighed and ran her hand through her fine black hair again. Plainly, no VT could
make a star-jump; and the few remaining REF vessels that could go superluminal were scarcely the
kind of spacecraft you could sign out like a borrowed fanjet.
But there was something in the man's tone, something steely and yet compassionate, that
didn't sound like it brooked failure.
She vaguely remembered saying to him, outside Edwards's quarters, that she wanted to go to
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Tiresia or Garuda, but the beginning of their adventure was an alcoholic mini-blackout. She was
not sure what her plan had been, though, except that Jonathan Wolff and Rick Hunter were out there
someplace.
She shook her head slowly. "I don't-I don't..."
He took her hand again. "Don't worry, Minmei."
Then he led her off again. Minmei lost track of things for a while, but Wearily realized
at one point that he was shoving oversize deck slippers onto her bare feet. At another point, she
felt something sting her arm and saw that he had given her a shot with a medikit ampule.
"Antinausea," REF # 666-60-937 explained. "It makes it tough to see out the cockpit canopy
if you heave your cookies."
"Cockpit?" she repeated, trying to figure out what he was getting at. Then she realized
that he had her standing near a hatch that led to a hangar deck. There were the distant whines of
VTs being readied for flight.
"Wait right here," he said after he led her into the vast, mostly darkened hangar deck.
Minmei did not get to ask what he was doing; he was gone.
The antinausea drug settled her queasiness and brought her around a bit, too. She was
drawing deep breaths and burping a bit, sitting on the deck, when he caught her hands and pulled
Minmei upward.
"All set; just follow me. That's our ship over there."
"Wh-"
And then they were walking among the parked mecha of the hangar deck. Welding sparks leapt
and humming maint-crew machinery made noise in the distance, and she could hear men and women
yelling or cursing or cajoling or laughing as they sweated to keep the REF's fighting forces
operational.
He was leading her toward an armored Alpha, a lusterless gray fighter trimmed in olive
drab, bulked by its augmentation pods. It was one of the most formidable ships in the REF
inventory, and she didn't think it likely that it had been assigned to one of Lang's "six-month-
wonder" pilots.
Minmei saw the boarding ladder before her and it brought back a flood of memories. She was
a non-tech person; why did mecha insist on playing such an overwhelming part in her life?
Then somebody yelled from the distance, and more voices took up the cry. She realized
woozily that the voices were coming her way. She had both hands on the boarding ladder and one
foot on the first rung when she became aware of a ruckus behind her.
By the time she turned around, there were three or four flight-deck personnel laid out
flat, unconscious. Minmei blinked at them owlishly. What-
Then REF # 666-60-937 was pushing her up the ladder, loading her into the copilot's seat,
and then belting her in. Apparently he knew all the right codes; the launch-cat airlock accepted
the powerful Alpha fighter and flung it out into space.
Green, looming Fantoma cast its light on them and their ship, and Tirol was a gibbous
splotch of orange-brown-gray not far from it. The VT pilot turned his craft toward Tirol.
Suddenly his instruments were squealing and beeping for his attention. "Hot scramble from
SDF-3, of course," she heard him mutter. "They want you back. They're coming to get you."
"Then-"
"Sit tight." He hit the auxiliaries for full military power and dove toward Tirol. Eager
pursuers formed up for the hunt.
Minmei, pressed back in her seat, looking out at the unknowable stars, felt tears pressed
from her eyes by acceleration, to wet the headrest behind her.
"Here they come," said REF # 666-60-937.
CHAPTER TWO
In the case of Garudan evolution, there can be no question that a wide spectrum of intracellular
organelles developed through the cannibalistic warfare among bacteria that led to an amazing
degree of symbiosis. The interactions of the entire Garudan ecosystem, the planet's dominant
species included, give weight to those who argue that the evolution of multicellular organisms
resulted from the extracellular symbiosis of monocellular organisms.
Like ours, a Garudan's body is composed of about ten quadrillion animal cells and another one
hundred quadrillion bacterial cells. But the range of microorganic activity and variety is far
greater, and the interaction of the symbionts far more complex.
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The upshot is that a Human who is exposed to Garudan atmosphere is like a pocket calculator
plugged into a mainframe: it is not designed for it and will quickly burn out.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in light of recent research, the Garudans have a simple explanation for
the extraordinary nature of their planet's ecosystem: "Haydon wished it so."
Cabell, A Pedagogue Abroad: Notes on the Sentinels Campaign
Vince Grant's hand covered Lisa Hunter's forehead and then some. He drew it back, moist with her
perspiration. "She's still feverish." He struggled with himself for a moment, not sure if he could
or should say what else he was thinking.
Jean, Vince's wife, nodded slightly. The patients were all that way: Rick and Lisa, Karen
Penn and Miriya Sterling. They were comatose and failing fast, as a result of their exposure to
the Garudan atmosphere. They were tied down on gurneys to help control their intermittent
seizures.
The shuttlecraft's deckplates vibrated under Vince's boot soles. "Jean, what if Veidt's
wrong, or the Invid double-cross us?"
Somebody had to ask the question. The fate of worlds was riding on what the Sentinels
would do. Moralists would say that the lives of four individuals were as important as the life of
a planet or the outcome of a war, but Vince didn't have the luxury of dealing with the abstract.
He wiped the perspiration from Lisa's brow with a cloth and pulled the blanket back up
under her chin. He looked at the other stricken Sentinels.
Here were four lives that would come to an end unless the virtually miraculous Haydonian
healing crafts were brought to bear. But what might the survival of the Hunters and the others
cost?
The Invid sounded so accommodating-it could only be some sort of trick. Vince drew a
breath and smoothed out his uniform tunic. Given his size, no one-least of all, an XT-was likely
to notice the bulge of the Badger assault pistols he was wearing in shoulder rigs under each
armpit. If this was a trap, the Regent's hordes would find out how expensive a pricetag such a
seemingly simple skirmish could carry.
Vince was not particularly afraid of death. He had long since figured out his attitude
about dying, and other people sensed his inner calm. As the shuttle started to cut into Haydon
IV's atmosphere, Max Sterling appeared in the hatch, knotting his fingers together, and looked to
Vince.
Max had left his place at the controls, permitting Wolff to take over, and come aft to
check on his wife yet again. "Veidt's gotten final landing approval," Max told them. He hesitated,
then added, "They'll keep their word, don't you think? The Invid, I mean?"
Jean Grant, attending her patients, avoided eye contact with Max; she didn't want to lie,
and she didn't want to voice her doubts. Secretly, she thought it was only a fifty-fifty
possibility that Miriya or any of them would be cured-or that anybody on the shuttle would survive
the visit to Haydon IV.
Vince turned to Max and said, "they'd better."
The shuttle came in low over Glike, the principal Haydonite population center. The city
looked like something out of the Arabian Nights-so fabulous that they momentarily forgot their
fears. Some of the architectural styles had been borrowed from other worlds-Tiresian columns and
friezes; Spherisian crystal palaces; Praxian statuary and totems. But most of Glike was uniquely
Haydonite: slender minarets and spires, fantastic white-frost gingerbread mansions, lacy elfin
halls that seemed to shine with an inner light.
Besides flying craft like Veidt's, there were machines from the various worlds that traded
with Haydon IV, and different forms of Haydonite ship. Jean spotted one, on a scope, that reminded
her of a pilot whale with great, flipperlike wings-all curves and a bulging transparent passenger
compartment.
There were also flying carpets, or what looked enough like them to make her think of
Scheherazade.
Just then Veidt and Sarna appeared from the flight deck, where they had been guiding Wolff
in his landing approach. They looked as unearthly and remote as ever, robed and floating a few
inches off the deck, their faces as featureless as those of unfinished mannequins.
"We'll be landing soon," Veidt said in that weird, whispery, processed-sounding voice. "I
think you would do well to prepare yourselves and your patients."
Max returned to the pilot's seat and handled the touchdown with an assist from Colonel
Wolff. Cabell and Sarna looked on. Haydon Control had directed them to a landing stage in the
middle of the city, one of a number of platforms of smoky blue glass sprouting from a central
tower.
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A reception committee had already appeared to meet them, standing together on a flying
carpet that hovered a few yards above the landing surface. As Vince, Max, and Wolff opened the
hatch, the carpet floated toward them and stopped a foot or so off the platform.
As had been agreed, Veidt and Sarna went first to greet the half-dozen Haydonites waiting
on the carpet-or, more precisely, floating just off it. Jonathan Wolff took advantage of the
moment to look the flying carpet over.
The carpet was thicker than the ones from the tales. It resembled an undulating judo mat,
yet it was textured and decorated with exotic, iridescent patterns. It was vaguely rectangular,
but he could see that it tended to shift and change conformation. Moreover, the other carpets,
sailing around over the city came in many shapes and dimensions, from one-passenger welcome mats
to dance-floor-size.
Veidt and Sarna exchanged ritualistic and dignified bows with their people. Since
Haydonites lacked arms as well as faces-and legs too, Wolff supposed (although nobody he knew of
had ever gotten a look under those hovering robe hems to find out what was underneath them)-the
whole ceremony had a reserved, inhuman look to it.
Wolff found that he could tell the males and females apart. The Haydonite men's faces had
angular planes, and saucer-size, gemlike things displayed on their robes.
The leader of the welcoming committee was a male, taller and more slender than Veidt. He
had a bulging cranium and a deep coppery tone to his skin. A shimmering symbol like a star
sapphire's light shone from the center of his forehead. "So, Veidt, you return to bring your
disturbances among us yet again?"
But it was Sarna who answered. "You know better than that, Vowad! Our friends are gravely
ill, and only Haydonite science can save them! You know the Law; we're obligated to help."
The one called Vowad made an irritated sound. "Yes, yes-and if it hadn't been this excuse,
it would have been some other, eh?"
The others behind Vowad shifted uneasily, and one of them intervened. "Enough! If lives
are in jeopardy, it is best the healing begin at once."
Wolff wasn't so sure he liked what he had heard, and he didn't know if he wanted to stake
his life on the Haydonites' good graces, but it was too late to back out. He surreptitiously made
sure the conventional weapons he had concealed under his clothes were secure, and regretted that
it was impossible to carry Protoculture weapons due to these planetary defenses everybody kept
talking about.
Sarna turned to the humans waiting by the foot of the shuttle's ramp. "Bring them forth.
We go to the Halls of Healing immediately!"
Jean Grant operated a small remote unit. The automated med gurneys on which Rick and the
others had been secured rolled forth. Vince was going to ask how the wheeled gurneys were going to
get up onto the flying carpet when a part of it extended like an upholstered tongue, at a gentle
incline, like a ramp. Max walked at his wife's side.
Once Vince had secured the ship, he joined Wolff, Jean, and the rest on the flying carpet.
It didn't give under his considerable weight and felt stable. More like a flying cloud than a
flying carpet, he thought.
At some invisible command, it rose and wafted away over the city. Though there was no
fairing or windshield, the humans felt only a vague stirring of air-despite the fact that the
carpet was traveling quite rapidly.
They looked down on a city busy with commerce and trade. As Veidt and Sarna had explained
it, Glike was similar to the old-time Hong Kong. It was a place of enforced truce, immune to the
military conflicts that had raged around it.
As the others gazed, enraptured, at the soaring beauty and exquisite elegance of Glike,
Sarna went over to Max. "You look tired, Maximilian. You must rest. Won't you be seated?"
He looked around as she gestured with a nod of her head, and saw that the carpet's surface
had bunched up to make a kind of lounge chair just his size. He had no idea how she had done that.
Heaven knew he was exhausted, but all he could think of was Miriya; he refused to leave
her side. Max gestured toward Veidt and the other Haydonites, now deep in conversation with
Cabell, no doubt discussing medical procedures.
"That guy-what's his name, Vowad? Why's he so angry at Veidt?"
Sarna looked at them. "Vowad believes, as many do, that we can coexist with the Invid
indefinitely. That any concession we make, any appeasement, is worth it. You already know how my
husband and I feel. When Veidt insisted on making his opinions known, the Invid managed to kidnap
us both."
Max felt sudden misgiving. "But-the Invid can't attack you here, isn't that what you told
us? The planet's defenses would react."
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Sarna inclined her head, a strange gesture from one who had no eyes and only contours
where a face should be. "Indeed. But there are other ways to bring pressure to bear-the threat of
a blockade, or strikes against our trading partners and customers. And, the Invid have attained
great influence over some of our folk-with economic leverage and other things."
She moved closer, spoke more quietly. "Vowad is perhaps the single most powerful
Haydonite, and I think that it was with his cooperation that Tesla kidnapped Veidt and me. We must
be wary of him."
As if he had heard, Vowad turned toward Sarna and called out, "Come, give us your opinion
of Cabell's proposed treatment regimen. Surely, my daughter has much to say? You always did when
you were younger."
"Yes, Father," Sarna said, and floated back to the group, to leave Max slack-jawed with
surprise.
Lieutenant Isle was no Rick Hunter or Max Sterling, but he handled the Alpha with cool
deftness, making the most of its brute power and amazing performance, as the hounds gave chase.
Ghost Riders flying patrol between SDF-3 and Tirol, hampered by the fact that Minmei was
aboard the quarry, found themselves at a profound disadvantage. Minmei's rescuer fired warning
bursts that didn't miss by much, making it plain that he was at no great pains to spare anybody
who pressed him too hard.
The sentries yielded, but as the armored Alpha plunged for Tiresia more bogeys appeared on
the screens, scrambled from SDF-3. Minmei could hear Isle's breath rasp. "I thought Edwards would
be distracted getting the pursuit of the Zentraedi under way," he admitted. "Thought we'd have a
little more lead time."
She gave a scornful laugh, shaking her head wearily. "You think T. R. Edwards is going to
go after Breetai personally! And take a chance that things here will get away from him? You've got
a lot to learn, Lieutenant."
The kind of thing I've learned the hard way, she thought. "So, what now?"
He wasn't sure; the decision to help her escape Edwards's sadism had come rather on the
spur of the moment. "We'll get you to REF Base Tirol, to Lang's bailiwick, for a start."
"Why? So The Great General has an excuse to kill Lang? Why don't you save everybody the
trouble and just drop me off right here?"
He felt at a loss, but brought the fighter onto course for Base Tirol anyway, for want of
anything better to do. One plan had been to try to link up with Breetai, but the Valivarre, the
hijacked Zentraedi mining op ship loaded with the all-important monopole ore, was already beyond
the VT's range.
"Stop feeling sorry for yourself," he said in an odd monotone. "It never does anybody any
good. Now, tell me what you want."
"I-I want Jonathan." She was trying to hold back more tears, because she knew he was right
about feeling sorry. "Jonathan Wolff! Just to be with him!"
"So." The word had a hollow, final sound, the way he said it. "Getting to Lang and the
council is still a first step. Hang on." He increased power again.
"Y-you still haven't told me why you're doing this," she strained to get out, as the mecha
thundered under her.
She didn't have a flight helmet, so she could still only hear him over his own helmet's
tinny external speaker. "I don't like seeing people pushed around, Minmei."
Just when he should have been enjoying his triumph, Edwards had to suffer the galling news
of Minmei's escape.
At first he had thought it was just another of her temper tantrums, set off by news that
he had permission to send a contingent after the fleeing Zentraedi and their stolen ore. He
realized now, though, that she still thought she loved that idiot Jonathan Wolff.
The half of T. R. Edwards's face that wasn't hidden under his gleaming metal cowl burned
red. She was his property, and he had no intention of losing her-not to Wolff and not to anyone
else.
Of course, it was out of the question to admit publicly that she had left him. The word
was put out, to a limited number of key people, that she had been kidnapped. Minutes later, news
reached him of the chase after the armored Alpha.
Apparently the pilot, whoever he was, was neither a Ghost Rider nor some rogue Skull, but
rather one of the detached-duty fliers serving the R&D people and council-liaison offices. That
hadn't kept him from knocking out several crewmembers and stealing a VT. Edwards looked forward to
exacting a fearsome revenge.
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But he had no time to waste monitoring the pursuit of the Alpha. There was his flotilla to
put into motion, and every second counted, since Breetai was already under way. The ore the
Zentraedi had taken with them was the key to a fleet that would let Edwards return to Earth in
glory and conquer it.
Once the Zentraedi had been eliminated, it would be time to do away with the bothersome
Sentinels. And soon, Minmei would be his wife and rule at his side, an empress over whole planets
but his own obedient chattel.
CHAPTER THREE
The place was called Haydon IV, but nobody was able to explain why. It was the third planet out
from its primary, so that explanation was null and void. There was no record or myth that gave a
clue.
Odd, though; it was the fourth planet the Sentinels were to fight on-Tirol being an REF show.
Oh well. Coincidences were for the scientists; we troopies were just there to shoot V salute.
Susan Graham, from the narration to her documentary film, Protoculture's Privateers: SDF-3,
Farrago, Ark Angel, Sentinels, and the REF
Like schools of deadly fish, the fiery defensive vortices of Haydon IV plastered themselves to the
Veri-tech, glowing brighter and brighter, burning fiercely at the fighter's shields.
"They mean to roast us alive!" Bela said grimly; Jack knew that tone in her voice, the one
she took when she had her hand on her sword hilt.
He doubted that the energy defenses would actually do that, though; once the shields went
down, the end would be rather swift and spectacular. Even now, the VTs were beginning to lose
power; the final fall would be soon.
"Jan, can you spot any large bodies of water downstairs?" Maybe a swan dive into a lake or
ocean would short-circuit the vortices, or something.
But she was replying, "Negative. Jack, I'm losing flight control. My instruments say these
things are melding with the shields, becoming part of them and making them rigid. Control surfaces
are becoming immovable."
It was happening to him, too, and to Learna's ship. The energy was forming a shell, and
unless they could break it...
Then he yelped as a last, desperate solution occurred to him. "Listen up, everybody!
Separate fighters and go to Guardian-correction! Go to Battloid mode, I say again, separate
fighters and go to Battloid mode! Maybe we can hatch outta these energy shells!"
The fighters were beginning to tumble and wobble; the mere act of separating them under
these conditions bordered on the suicidal. But Kami followed Jack's countdown from her place in
the Beta's pilot-seat and at his mark they disengaged. The drubbing they got from the atmosphere
almost smashed the two ships into each other, but Jack and Kami fought their controls, imaged
through their thinking caps, and managed to get clear.
The fighters fought a terrible battle against the cocooning energy fields-like chicks
trying to break through their shells. The ships strained to mechamorphose, to follow that central
and perhaps most amazing trait of Robotechnology.
Come on, come on, Jack urged his mecha silently. And at last there was the sliding of
components as the Alpha began folding and reconfiguring, its shields following suit.
All at once the blazing inferno burst away from the Alpha in all directions like an
outlashing nova. The VT had become a Battloid, Humaniform, like a knight in armor, fists cocked,
riding ribbons of thruster fire.
Jack gasped, trying to catch his breath. He checked around and saw Kami's Beta, and
Janice's Alpha, with Lron's Beta close-by. All were in Battloid, shimmering with heat waves but
still intact and under control.
Jack spotted Learna-a little rocky but apparently getting things under control. But...
"Crysta!"
He heard the ursine growling of the female Karbarran, more angry than afraid, as her Beta
whirled and tumbled groundward. It was still in fighter mode, its power failing. Jack imaged his
systemry and went after her like a high-diver.
Something came into his field of vision and he realized that Janice Em was nearby, her
Alpha in Battloid, too, plummeting alongside him for the seemingly doomed effort to save the
falling Beta.
"Don't touch it unless your shields are up!" Jack yelled; Crysta's mecha was still aglow
with the energy "antibodies." He took a deep breath, and imaged his command to his Battloid. It
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reached out and seized the Beta.
It was like trying to bulldog a whirlwind. The heavier Beta spun and tumbled, nearly
shaking the Alpha loose, the Alpha's amazing Robotech strength notwithstanding.
But Jack clung and, bracing his feet against the fuselage, began prying at the wings,
straining to help it go into mechamorphosis. At least, to his relief, the Haydon antibodies that
were infused with the Beta's protective mantle didn't attack him or slide from Crysta's shields
over to his own.
Then Janice grabbed the Beta from the other side, and together they fought to save their
companions. "Crysta, try for Guardian, do you copy?" Jack had to strain to get out his words as he
was thrown around against his harness. "Guardian!"
Jack figured that the Beta might be able to achieve the intermediate mode between Fighter
and Battloid, and perhaps it would be enough to save those within. Crysta had only recently
completed her pilot training, but she kept her cool with bearish Karbarran fatalism, and did her
best to obey.
The attempt to mechamorphose didn't appear to be having any effect, though the Beta's
components were straining against one another and seemed ready to fly apart. The efforts of the
two Battloids had slowed its fall, though, and Crysta had a bit more control.
Lron, who had been pacing the others in a steep dive, along with Kami and Learna, called
out, "Jack, I see water, a large body of it!" There was panic in his voice, but he was calming
himself because that was the only possible way to help his mate.
There might be hope yet. "Where?" Jack barked.
"Over in the opening in the terrain, where those energy things came from."
Jack swore: salvation in the lion's den? Not likely. "Crysta, you're gonna have to try to
eject. Right now!"
She growled, "I cannot, Jack; ejection mechanism won't respond." There was a kind of
abject keening noise in the background of her transmission-the Invid scientist she was carrying,
no doubt.
Though the two Battloids had slowed the Beta's fall, they couldn't stop it. "Okay then: we
shoot craps. It's bath time, Crysta! Brace for a splashdown!"
Lron, Learna, and Kami closed in, too, applying all thrusters to help slow Crysta's fall
and shove her ship into position over the large underground lake or sea that Learna had spied. The
distant sparkle of the water pinwheeled up and up at them with frightening speed. In the last
seconds, they were able to reduce the speed of their fall-then the water smashed into them.
Jack felt as if his neck had been snapped, and he was aware of water bubbling and surging
against his canopy. Any conventional aerospace craft would have broken or sprung a thousand leaks,
but somehow the Alpha held. Jack broke the surface to see Lron's Beta still fighting desperately
to keep Crysta's afloat.
Jack hit his burners and lifted clear of the water on trails of blue flame. Crysta's ship
was no longer encased in the energy antibodies, but its fuselage looked broken, and it was no
doubt taking on water. Janice Em's Alpha appeared next to it, helping Lron try to keep it from
sinking, the water boiling and hissing from the blast of their thrusters, but it was a losing
battle.
"Just hold on a second more!" Jack yelled. "Crysta, I'm getting you out of there!"
His Alpha extruded the special manipulator tentacles that were built into all VTs. In
another moment, they had stretched forth to open access plates on one of the damaged Beta's
nacelles. It only took a moment for them to work the manual controls for the emergency-rescue
system.
The entire cockpit module of Crysta's Beta slid free from the rest of the ship; Jack took
it up in his Battloid's armored hands even while his manipulators were retracting. "Okay, get
clear! I've got her!"
Lron and Janice released their hold on the Beta, and it sank from sight in a fountain of
bubbles and froth, steam rising from the water. Jack had risen clear and was sliding the cockpit
module into a special fitting on the underside of his Battloid's right forearm.
"Just relax and enjoy the ride." Jack tried to sound light-hearted, but he was scanning
his new surroundings and checking out his sensors, expecting another attack. He wasn't so sure the
VTs could survive another fight.
"I cannot fathom it," Bela was saying. "Why would this Haydon IV of Veidt's have an
underground sea? Is it not, as he and Sarna have told us, a-what was their phrase?- an artificial
world!"
"That's what they said, all right," Janice Em added. "Only, personally, this wasn't what I
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pictured."
Nor had Jack. He had imagined a more elaborate kind of O'Neill colony, perhaps, or even a
miniature Dyson sphere, but not something truly planet-size.
But it was indisputably an artifact of some kind. Beginning at the shores of the lake,
fantastic underground mountains reared, looking to Jack like living instrumentality-inorganic
versions of living forms and ecosystems.
Veidt and Sarna and the few other Haydonites among the Sentinels had been either unable or
unwilling to give exact explanations as to how things worked here, and Jack began to curse them
for it now.
Jan was continuing, "If the whole place really is an artifact, one of their biggest
problems would be managing atmosphere and climate. It makes sense that they'd have huge reservoirs
of water and ways of moving it around-under the surface and on it and even over it, as
precipitation and clouds-"
"What we should be giving thought to is whether any of those fire-demons still lurk down
here," Bela broke in.
"I see none, nor detect any," Lron reported. The others concurred.
"Perhaps the machines cannot see or smell us when we're down here," Gnea, the younger
amazon, suggested. "After all, they're used to adversaries coming at them from outer space, not
stepping inside their very gates."
Like flies hiding on an upraised flyswatter, Jack realized-which was only a good idea
until the swatter's operator discovered the flies' whereabouts.
The opening overhead seemed to be shrinking, and some members of the team cried out,
preparing to lift off and escape. Jack yelled for them to stand fast. "You want those air defenses
to nail us for good? We're safe for now, and it looks like we discovered a back entrance."
He was less sure than he sounded. The Haydonite defense systems hadn't been challenged in
two thousand years (although, granted, they allegedly had cost some local warmonger a few hundred
ships that time). Jack had difficulty believing that planetary defenses so outdated could be any
match for Robotech mecha. After all, how much trouble would Wolff Pack Hovertanks have with Earth
weapons even twenty years obsolete?
"Now, we've got a transponder fix on the shuttle, and an inertial track," Jack went on.
"It looks to me like there's plenty of room for Battloids to make their way along underground.
That's how we're gonna get to Glike."
There was a muted commotion and then Lron's voice came up over the net. "It seems Tesla
doesn't agree with your idea, Jack Baker, but a pistol waved at his snout has him quiet once more.
"I for one think this is a good plan you have. We can remain out of sight beneath the
city, and if we encounter trouble, we always have the option of blasting our way back to the
surface."
Jack bit back his own dark conclusions on what an unfortunate recourse that would be.
"Jan, you take the point. Lron, drop back and walk drag. I'll be slack man, then Learna, then you,
Kami." Jack took up his position at the head of the main body, keeping Janice in sight as she
picked out their route.
He had thought about walking point, but he was in command and responsible for looking
after his tiny unit from a more appropriate place. Besides, Jan had proven herself to be amazingly
capable-adept at military sciences, mecha piloting, small arms, and hand-to-hand. She even
excelled at the archaic weapons of the Praxian amazons.
These excellent military abilities, coming from a woman whose former claim to fame was as
a female vocalist, didn't make a lot of sense to Jack, but just now he was grateful to have her
there. Jack watched as, far overhead, the last of the opening in Haydon IV's surface closed out
the last few rays of Briz'dziki.
The VTs waded up from the underground reservoir, shedding waterfalls, as the last of the
bubbles rose from Crysta's VT. Jan found a route through a thing that they took for a spillway,
some twenty yards in diameter. Though there were some light sources in the labyrinth of living
instrumentality, the Veritechs brought up all their wing-lights and spotlights to cut through the
gloom.
Jan scouted several conduits and accessways. Twice, the team pulled back to the brink of
the sea to start over again because the route had narrowed to a squeeze so tight that the
Battloids couldn't get through. The third try was a washout due to extremely high radiation
levels; the VTs would protect their occupants for quite a while, but Jack had no idea how long the
journey would take, and had no desire to end up as a human night-light.
The fourth try brought them into a sort of pipeline all aglow with the colors of the
rainbow. The sensors couldn't determine what the light effects were, but they didn't seem harmful,
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