Jack McKinney - Robotech 12 - Symphony of Light

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Robotech: Symphony of Light
Book 12 of the Robotech Series
Copyright 1987 by Jack McKinney
CHAPTER ONE
I am intrigued by these beings and their strange rituals, which center around this plant their
language calls "the Flower of Life." This world, Optera, is a veritable garden for the plant in
its myriad forms, and the Invid seem to utilize all these for physical as well as spiritual
nutrition-they ingest the flower's petals and the fruits of the mature crop, in addition to
drinking the plant's psychoactive sap. The Regis, the Queen-Mother of this race, is the key to
unlocking Optera's mysteries; and I have set myself the goal of possessing this key-if I have to
seduce this queen to make that happen!
Zor's log: The Optera Chronicles (translated by Dr. Emil Lang)
It was never Scott's intention to make camp at the high pass; he had simply given his okay for a
quick food stop-if only to put an end to all the grousing that was going on. Lunk's stomach needed
tending to; Annie was restless from too many hours in the APC; and even Lancer was complaining
about the wind chill.
Oh, to be back in the tropics, Scott thought wistfully.
He had always been one for wastes and deserts-weathered landscapes, rugged, ravaged by
time and the stuff of stars-but only because he knew of little else. Here he had been to the other
side of the galaxy and remained the most parochial member of the team in spite of it. But since
their brief stopover in the tropics, he had begun to understand why Earth was so revered by the
crew of the Expeditionary Mission, those same men and women who had raised him aboard the SDF-3
and watched him grow to manhood on Tirol. In the tropics he had had a glimpse of the Earth they
must have been remembering: the life-affirming warmth of its yellow sun, the splendor of its
verdant forests, the sweetness of its air, and the miracle that was its wondrous ocean.
Even if Rand had insisted that they try that swimming!
Scott would have almost been willing to trade victory itself for another view of sunset
from that Pacific isle...
Instead, he was surrounded by water in the forms more familiar to him: ice and snow. The
thrill the team had experienced on reaching the Northlands and realizing that Reflex Point was
actually within reach had been somewhat dampened by the formidable range of mountains they soon
faced. But Scott was determined to make this as rapid a crossing as was humanly possible.
Unfortunately, the humanly possible part of it called for unscheduled stops. It was Lunk's APC
that was slowing them down, but there was that old one about a chain being only as strong as its
weakest link.
The land vehicles were approaching the summit of the mountain highway now. Rook and
Lancer, riding Cyclones, were escorting the truck along the mostly ruined switchback road that led
to the pass. The ridgeline above was buried under several feet of fresh snow, but the vehicles
were making good progress on the long grade nonetheless.
Scott was overhead in the Beta, with Rand just off the fighter's wingtip. Short on fuel
canisters, they had been forced to leave Rook's red Alpha behind, concealed in the remains of a
school gymnasium building in the valley. Scott planned to retrieve it just as soon as they located
a Protoculture supply ripe for pilfering. Down below, Annie and Marlene were waving up at the VTs
from the back seat of the APC; Scott went on the mecha's tac net to inform Lunk that a rest stop
was probably in order.
The two Robotech fighters banked away from the mountain face to search out a suitable
spot, and within minutes they were reconfiguring to Guardian mode and using their foot thrusters
to warm a reasonably flat area of cirque above the road and just shy of the saddle. By the time
they put down, the sun had already dropped below one of the peaks, but the temperature was still
almost preternaturally warm. The weather was balmy enough for the two pilots to romp around in
their duotherm suits, especially with the added luxury of residual heat from the snow-cleared
moraine. There was a strong breeze rippling over the top of the col, but it carried with it the
scent of the desert beyond.
The rest of the team joined them in a short time. Lunk, Rook, and Lancer began to unload
the firewood they had hauled up from the tree line, while Rand went to work on the deer he had
shot and butchered. Moonrise fringed the eastern peaks in a kind of silvery glow and found the
seven freedom fighters grouped around a sizzling fire. The northern sky's constellations were on
display. Scott had developed a special fondness for the brilliant stars of the southern
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hemisphere, but Gemini and Orion were reassuring for a different reason: They reinforced the fact
that Reflex Point was close at hand. He had to admit, however, that it was foolish to be thinking
of the Invid central hive as some sort of end in itself, when really their arrival there would
represent more in the way of a beginning. He wondered whether the rest of the team understood this-
that the mission, as loose as it was, was focused on destroying the hive, or at the very least
accumulating as much recon data as possible to be turned over to Admiral Hunter when the
Expeditionary Force returned to Earth for what would surely be the final showdown.
Glancing at his teammates, Scott shook his head in wonder that they had made it as far as
they had, a group of strangers all but thrown together on a journey that had so far covered
thousands of miles.
Scott regarded Lunk while the big, brutish man was laughing heartily, a shank of meat
gripped in his big hand. He had done so much for the team, yet he still seemed to carry the weight
of past defeats on his huge shoulders. Then there was Annie, their daughter, mascot, mother, in
the green jumpsuit that had seen so much abuse and the ever-present E.T. cap that crowned her long
red hair. She had almost left them a while back, convinced she had found the man of her dreams in
the person of a young primitive named Magruder. It wasn't the first time she had wandered away,
but she always managed to return to the fold, and her bond with Lunk was perhaps stronger than
either of them knew.
Rand and Rook, who could almost have passed for siblings, had had their moments of doubt
about the mission as well. They had formed a fiery partnership, one that seemed to rely on strikes
and counterstrikes; but it was just that unspoken pact that kept them loyal to the team, if only
to prove something to each other.
More than anyone, Lancer had remained true to the cause. Scott had grown so accustomed to
the man's lean good looks, his lavender-tinted shoulder-length hair and trademark headband, that
he had almost forgotten about Yellow Dancer, Lancer's alter ego. That feminine part of the
Robotech rebel was all but submerged now, especially so since the tropics, when something had
occurred that had left Lancer changed and Scott wondering.
But the most enigmatic among them was the woman they had named Marlene. She was not really
a member of the team at all but the still shell-shocked victim of an Invid assault, the nature of
which Scott could only guess. It had robbed her of her past but left her with an uncanny ability
to sense the enemy's presence. Her fragile beauty reminded Scott of the Marlene in his own past,
killed when the Mars Division strike force had first entered Earth's atmosphere almost a year
ago...
"You know, just once I'd like to sit down and eat steak until I pass out," Lunk was
saying, tearing into the venison like some ravenous beast.
"Just keep eating like you're eating and you might get your wish," Rand told him, to
everyone's amusement.
"I've never met anyone who had such a thing for food," Rook added, theatrically amazed,
strawberryblond locks caught in the firelight.
Scott poured himself a cup of coffee and waited for the laughter to subside. "You know,
Lunk, we've still got a full day left in these mountains, so I'd save some of that for tomorrow if
I were you." Always the team leader, he told himself. But it never seemed to matter all that much.
"Well, you're not me, Scott," Lunk said, licking his fingertips clean. "Sorry to report
that I've eaten it all."
"You can always catch a rabbit, right, Lunk?" Lancer told him playfully.
Annie frowned, thinking daunt just how many rabbits they had dined on these past months.
"I'm starting to feel sorry for rabbits."
Rand made a lace. "They like it when one of them gets caught, Annie. It gives them a
chance to go back to the hutch and-"
Rook elbowed him before he could get the word out, but the team had already discerned his
meaning and was laughing again.
Even Marlene laughed, eyes all wrinkled up, luxuriant hair tossed back. Scott was watching
her and complimenting Rand at the same time, when he saw the woman's joyous look begin to
collapse. Marlene went wide-eyed for a moment, then folded her arms across her chest as though
chilled, hands clutching her trembling shoulders.
"Marlene," Annie said, full of concern.
"Are you feeling sick or something?" Lunk asked.
But Lancer and Scott had a different interpretation. They exchanged wary looks and were
already reaching for their holstered hip howitzers when Scott asked: "Are the Invid coming back,
Marlene? Do you feel them returning?"
"Form up!" Rand said all at once, pulling back from the circle.
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"Weapons ready!"
Annie went to Marlene's side while the others drew their weapons and got to their feet,
eyes sweeping the snow and darkness at the borders of the firelight. "Anyone hear anything?" Rand
whispered. No one did; there was just the crackling of the fire and the howl of the wind. Rand had
the H90 stiff-armed in front of him and only then, a few feet away from the fire, began to sense
how cold it was getting. There was moisture in the wind now and light snow in the air. Behind him,
he heard Rook breathe a sigh of relief and reholster her wide-bore. When he turned back to the
fire, she was down on one knee alongside Marlene, stroking the frightened woman's long hair
soothingly.
"It's all right, Marlene. Believe me, you don't have a thing to worry about. We're safe
now, really."
Marlene whimpered, shaking uncontrollably. "What's wrong with me, Rook? Why do I feel like
this?"
"There's nothing wrong with you. You just have to understand that you had a terrible
shock, and it's going to take a while to get over it."
Lancer put away his weapon and joined Rook. "Maybe I can help," he told her. Then, gently:
"Marlene, it's Lancer. Listen, I know what you're going through. It's painful and it frightens
you, but you have to be strong. You have to survive, despite the pain and fear."
"I know," she answered him weakly, her head resting on her arms.
"Just have faith that it'll get better. Soon it'll get better for all of us."
Still vigilant, Rand and Scott watched the scene from across the fire. The young Forager
made a cynical sound. "That sounds a little too rich for my blood."
"Optimistic or not, Rand, he's right," Scott returned.
Rand's eyes flashed as he turned. "I only wish I felt that confident."
Not far from the warmth and light of the fire, something monstrous. was pushing itself up
from beneath the snow-covered surface. It was an unearthly ship of gleaming metals and alloys,
constructed to resemble a life-form long abandoned by the race that had fashioned it. To Human
eyes it suggested a kind of bipedal crab with massive triple-clawed pincer arms and armored legs
ending in cloven feet. There was no specific head, but there were aspects of the ship's design
that suggested one, central to which was a single scanner that glowed red like some devilish mouth
when the craft was inhabited. And flanking that head were two organic-looking cannons, each
capable of delivering packets of plasma fire in the form of annihilation discs.
Originally a race of shapeless, protoplasmic creatures, the creators of the ship, the
Invid, had since evolved to forms more compatible with the beings they were battling for
possession of Earth. This creative transformation of the race had its beginnings on a world as
distant from Earth as this new form was distant from the peaceful existence the Invid had once
known. But all this went back to the time before Zor arrived on Optera; before the Invid Queen-
Mother, the Regis, had been seduced by him; and before Protoculture had been conjured from the
Flower of Life...
The Regis had failed in countless attempts at fashioning herself in Zor's image but had at
last succeeded in doing so with one of her children-the Simulagent Ariel, whom the Humans called
Marlene. Then, upon losing her through a trick of fate, the Queen-Mother had created Corg and
Sera, the warrior prince and princess who were destined to rule while the Regis carried on with
the experiment that would one day free her race from all material constraints.
It was Sera's ship that surfaced next, the heat of its sleek hull turning the glacial ice
around its feet to slush. Purple and trimmed in pink, the craft was more heavily armed than its
companion ship, with a smaller head area sunk between massive shoulders and immensely strong arms.
Momentarily, four additional ships of the more conventional design surfaced around the Humans and
their windblown fire.
Sera heard the Queen-Mother's command emanate through the bio-construct ship that had led
the squad to the high pass.
"All Scouts and Shock Troopers: you may move into your attack positions at this time!
Sera, you will now take command. You are personally responsible for the elimination of these
troublesome insurgents."
Sera signaled her understanding with a nod of her head toward the cockpit's commo screen.
She had dim memories of a time not long ago when she had fought against these Humans in a
different climate, and accompanying this was a dim recollection of failure: of Shock Trooper ships
in her charge blown to pieces, of an inability on her part to perform as she had been instructed
by the Regis...But all this was unclear and mixed with a hundred new thoughts and reactions that
were vying for attention in her virgin mind.
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"As you command, Regis," she responded as confidently as she was able, her scanners
focused on the seven Humans huddled around the fire. "We now have them completely surrounded. And
with our superior abilities, we will succeed in carrying out your...your orders." Somewhat more
mechanically, she added, "Nothing will stop us."
Had the Regis heard her falter? Sera asked herself. She waited for some suggestion of
displeasure, but none was forthcoming. It was only then that she allowed herself to increase the
magnification of her scanner and zero in on the Human whose face had caused her lapse of purpose.
It's him! she thought, once again taking in the fine features of the one whose strange,
seductive, and achingly beautiful sounds had drawn her to that jungle pool; the one who had
surprised her there, stood naked before her, holding her in the grip of his strong hands and
assaulting her with questions she could not answer. And it was this same Human she had glimpsed
later during the heat of battle when her own hand had betrayed her...
"Sera! You're waiting too long!" the Regis shouted through the bio-construct's comlink.
Sera felt the strength of the Queen-Mother begin to creep into her own will and force her
hand toward the weapon's trigger stud, but one part of her struggled against it, and at the last
moment, even as the weapon was firing, she managed to swing the ship's cannon aside, so that the
shot went astray...
Lancer was just commenting on the beauty of the snowfall when the first enemy blast
struck, flaring overhead and erupting like a midnight sun in the snowfields near the grounded VTs-
a single short burst of annihilation discs that had somehow missed their mark. Scott was the first
to react, propelling himself out of the circle into a tuck-and-roll, which landed him on his knees
in the perimeter snow, his MARS-Gallant handgun raised. But before he could squeeze off a quantum
of return fire, a second Invid volley skimmed into the team's midst, sending him head over heels
and flat on his face. He inhaled a faceful of snow and rolled over in time to see a series of
explosions rip through the camp, brilliant white geysers leaping from plasma pools of hellfire. On
the ridgeline he caught a brief glimpse of an Invid Trooper before it was eclipsed by clouds of
swirling snow.
The rest of the team had already scattered for cover. Scott spied Lancer hunkering down
behind an arc of moraine slide and yelled for him to stay put as Invid fusillades swooshed down
into a gully below the ridge, throwing up a storm of ice and shale. Rand, meanwhile, was closing
on the Alpha Fighter, discs nipping at his boot heels from two Invid Troopers who had positioned
themselves just short of the saddle. Running a broken course through the snow, he clambered up
onto the nose of the Veritech and managed to fling open its canopy. But the next instant he was
flat on his back beneath the radome of the fighter, a Shock Trooper towering above him.
Frantically, Rand brought his hands to his face, certain the Trooper's backhand pincer swipe had
opened him up. But the thing had missed.
Now, he thought, all I've gotta do is keep from being roasted alive!
Radiant priming globes had formed at the tip of the cannon muzzles; as these winked out,
platters of blinding orange light flew toward him like some demon's idea of Frisbee. Rand cursed
and rolled, thinking vaguely back to that deer he had killed down below...
Two hundred yards away Scott was on his feet, blasting away at the Invid command ship
positioned on the ridge. Unless his eyes betrayed him, it was the same ship that had been sent
against them during their ocean crossing to the Northlands. And that was a bad sign indeed,
because it meant that the Regis had finally gotten around to singling the team out as a quarry
worthy of pursuit. He squinted into the storm and fired, uncertain if the ship was still there.
The wind had picked up now, and icy flakes of biting snow were adding to the chaos. From somewhere
nearby he heard Lancer shout: "Behind you, Scott!" and swung around to face off with a Trooper
that was using the Veritechs for cover. Scott traded half a dozen shots with it before a deafening
explosion threw him violently out of the fray; he felt an intense flashburn against his back and
was eating snow a moment later. Coming to, he had a clear view of the ridge, of the pastel-hued
command ship standing side by side with a somewhat smaller Trooper. The Trooper had lifted off by
the time Scott scrambled to his feet; it put down in front of him, sinking up to its articulated
knee joints in the snow. Scott stumbled backward, searching for cover, while the Invid calmly
raised its clawed pincer for a downward strike.
A short distance away, Rook sucked in her breath as she witnessed Scott narrowly escape
decapitation. Fortunately, the snow beneath his feet had given way and he had fallen backward into
a shallow ravine at the same moment the Trooper's claw had descended. But now the thing was poised
on the edge of the hollow, preparing to bring its cannons into play. Rook turned her profile to
the ship, the H90 long gun gripped in her extended right hand, and fired two blasts. Given the
near-blizzard conditions, it was too much to ask that her shots find any vulnerable spots-although
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her second burst almost made a hole through the ship's eyelike scanner. The Trooper swung toward
her, almost the impatient turn one would direct toward a mischievous child, and loosed two discs
in response, one of which tore into the earth twenty yards in front of her with enough charge to
blow her off her feet.
By now, five Invid Troopers had put down in the cirque; their colorful commander was still
on the ridge monitoring the scene. The team, meanwhile, had been herded toward the steep glacial
slope at the basin's edge. Scott leapt up out of his hollow after Rook took the heat off him and
waved everyone toward his position. "Everyone over the side!" he yelled into the wind. "Slide,
down the slope back to the tree line!"
"But the mecha!" Rand returned, gesturing back to the basin.
"Forget it! We've gotta make for the woods!"
Scott saw Annie go over the side and ride down the chute on her butt, trailing a scream
that was half fear, half thrill. Lancer and Marlene took to the slope next, then Lunk and Rand.
Scott waved them on, yelling all the while and triggering the handgun for all it was worth against
the Invid who had nearly taken his head off a few moments before. He managed a lucky shot that
blew the thing's leg off, and it settled down into the basin snow and exploded.
Only Scott and Rook remained in the cirque now, along with the four undamaged Troopers
that were moving toward them with evil intent.
"Rook! Are you all right?!" Scott yelled.
She gave him the okay sign and started to make her way toward his position, pivoting once
or twice to get a shot off at her pursuers. The Invid were pouring a storm of discs at them, so
they had to flatten themselves every so often as they attempted to close on the chute. Scott
continued to send out what his blaster could deliver and wasn't surprised to see the enemy split
ranks and head off for a flanking maneuver. Rook was a few yards in front of him when the two of
them went over the side. Scott tried to dig his heels in, then realized why the rest of the team
had disappeared so quickly. Under a thin layer of snow the chute was a solid sheet of glacial ice.
Sera saw the apparent leader of the group whipping down the slope and lifted off to pursue
him. She paused briefly on the edge of the slide to issue instructions to her troops, then engaged
the thrusters that would send her down toward the tree line along the Humans' course.
Although Lancer might have given Sera pause, she had no bonds with the rest of the team.
She came alongside Scott, realizing that he could see her through the command ship's transparent
bubble, and trained her cannons on him. But at the last minute, Scott's heels found a bit of
purchase and he suddenly ended up somersaulting out of harm's way, each of Sera's shots missing
him as he rolled down the slope.
The Invid princess came to a halt at the bottom of the chute where the others had taken up
positions behind groupings of terminal moraine boulders. Lunk was loosing bursts against the
cockpit canopy that made it impossible for Sera to tell in which direction the leader had headed.
Sera allowed the brutish Human to have his way for an instant, then turned on him, aware
of the blood lust she felt in her heart. But all at once one of the Human's teammates ran from
cover and pushed the big one off his feet and out of the path of her shots. Angered, Sera
traversed the command ship's cannons to find him, realizing only then that it was the lavender-
haired Human.
Her hand remained poised above the weapon's ovalshaped trigger, paralyzed.
Elsewhere, the rebels and Shock Troopers continued to trade fire.
Marlene cowered behind a boulder as lethal packets of energy crisscrossed overhead, her
hands pressed to her head, as if she were fearful of some internal explosion.
"Fight or die!" she screamed, her words lost to the storm. "There must be another
way...another life!"
Then, a moment later, the fighting itself surrendered. Scott heard an intense rumbling
above him and looked up in time to see enormous chunks of ice fall from the buttresses surrounding
the cirque, avalanching down into the basin, scattering the Invid Troopers and burying the
Cyclones and Veritechs under tons of crystalline snow.
CHAPTER TWO
Scott had assumed that the "waning" [sic] of Yellow Dancer had something to do with Lancer's
infatuation with Marlene; but while Scott was certainly on the right track, he had the wrong cause-
a fact that contributed to the rivalries that arose later on. Had the two men sat down and talked
things out, perhaps they would have realized that Marlene was not the amnesiac Scott wanted to
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believe she was, nor Sera the Human pilot Lancer assumed her to be. Time and time again this
failure to communicate would undermine the team's movement toward unity, right to the end.
Zeus Bellow, The Road to Reflex Point
It was Scott's idea that they separate into three groups. The avalanche had indeed buried the VTs
and Cyclones, but at the same time it had forced the Invid out of the basin area and bought some
breathing space for the team. Reunited, they had picked their way farther down the mountainside,
splitting up when they reached the tree line. There they left obvious evidence of their separate
paths in the snow, hoping the Invid commander would similarly redeploy her Troopers. This way,
Scott hoped, his irregulars would stand a better chance of circling back to the chute and
retrieving the mecha.
Somehow.
The squall had moved through, but the temperature had actually risen a couple of degrees.
Nevertheless, the freedom fighters were soaked to the skin and feeling the chill. Annie felt it
more than the others-her jumpsuit had little of the thermal protection afforded Rook by the
Cyclone bodysuit, and she simply wasn't as inured to the cold as Rand. As a result, she had ridden
piggyback into the woods, her shaking arms draped around Rand's neck.
"It'll get better when we get into the trees," Rand had assured her. "I can't promise you
a fire right away, but at least you'll be out of this wind."
At this point Rand had no real plan beyond finding temporary shelter where they could
regain some of their strength. All of them had taken a beating, and Rook had some severe facial
burns. Rand didn't imagine that Scott and Lunk were in much better shape, and even though Lancer
had been spared real harm, he had Marlene to look out for, which was in some ways worse than being
out there alone. Rand had berated himself for having left his survival pack in the Alpha. For the
past few weeks he had been complaining to Scott that everyone was becoming too reliant on the
mecha systems for survival, and now here he was out in the woods with nothing more than a handgun
and his fenceman's tool. But a few steps down the, forest's wide trail his attitude began to
improve considerably, especially after he spied the snare.
Evidently at one time the place had been occupied by others who were less than sympathetic
to the Invid. There were three small, almost igloolike shelters containing foodstuffs, tools, and
lengths of cord and cable, but more important, the trees along the trail had been rigged to repel
intruders.
Rand left Annie in Rook's care in one of the shelters and went off into the moonlight to
investigate. That the designers of the traps had been after big game was immediately obvious, but
each of the tree and cable mechanisms was in need of attention, and Rand realized that he was
going to have to work fast if the snares were to serve their purpose. So while Rook and Annie
warmed themselves, he went to work replacing worn cables, resecuring counterbalances, and
sharpening stakes. He had to fell several medium-size trees, but he had been careful to select
only those that would topple with the least amount of noise. And thus far there had been no sign
of the Invid.
He was busy on a final piece of handiwork now, down on his knees in the snow using cutters
on the cable that guyed the central snare.
"Aren't you finished yet?" he heard Rook ask behind him.
He turned from his task to give her a wry look. She was ten feet away, arms folded and a
smirk on her face. "Hope you and Mint have been comfortable," he answered with elaborate concern.
Rook made an affected gesture. "Oh, we'll manage until the servants arrive. Have you been
having fun with your cat's cradle?"
Rand twisted a final piece of cable around itself and stood up, regarding the contraption
in a self-satisfied way.
"Sometimes I amaze myself."
Rook walked over and gave the wire a perplexed tug. "This is the better mousetrap you
promised us?"
"You two just stay put in the shelter and leave the metal nightmares to me, okay?"
She scowled. "Your confidence is underwhelming."
"Pretend to believe in me," he quipped.
Just then Annie ran into the clearing, breathless and pointing back toward the foot of the
chute.
"They're coming!"
Rand told Rook to see if she could do something about the tracks they had left in the
snow, so she and Annie went to work with conifer switches while he smoothed the snow around the
snare. He briefed his teammates on its workings and ran rapidly through the contingency plan he
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hoped they wouldn't have to resort to. Fifteen minutes later, he was climbing up into one of the
trees and Annie and Rook were back in the shelter.
Rand squirreled around a bit until he found a good place for himself in the upper
branches, then cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, "Help! Help me, I'm hurt!" directing his
false alarm along the trail that led to the base of the snowslide. Rook and Annie heard his call
and hunkered down in the shelter, peering out at the clearing through a narrow slot in the wall.
Soon they heard the sound of heavy footfalls, and a Trooper lumbered into the clearing, its blood-
red scanner searching the trees.
Rand drew his H90 and reminded himself to remain calm. He could see that the Trooper was
following the footprints they had purposely left intact on the trail.
"A little farther..." Rand encouraged, whispering to himself through gritted teeth.
The Invid took two more perfectly placed steps, which brought each of its cloven feet down
into the trap's ring mechanisms. Cables cinched and tightened, while others grew taut, straining
at turnbuckles and activating pulleys that had been concealed high in the surrounding branches.
Elsewhere, poles and trees began to spring loose, groaning as they straightened up, released at
last from their bowed bondage. The Trooper's feet were pulled out from under it, and suddenly it
was being hauled into the air, captive and inverted.
Grinning in delight, Rand moved out onto the branch to view the hapless thing's ascent.
But a moment later his smile was collapsing: the snare had been well engineered but underbuilt.
Either that or the lashed trees had seen too many seasons. One after another they were beginning
to splinter under the Trooper's weight; cables stretched and snapped, and pulleys were ripped from
their moorings. As the ship plummeted headfirst toward the snow, Rand armed his weapon and
squeezed off four quick shots, only one of which connected. But all that served to do was alert
the Invid to his presence. Before he could react, the Trooper's cannons came to life and
discharged a blast that connected squarely with the trunk a few feet below his shaky perch. The
tree came apart, and Rand and the upper section were blown backward by the explosion.
He and the Trooper hit the ground at almost the same instant, both of them knocked
senseless by their falls. But the Invid was the first to stir. As the Trooper rose slowly to its
feet, Rook and Annie saw the ship's scanner wink into awareness. Rand was still unconscious,
facedown in the snow, one outstretched arm hooked around the base of the tree he had slammed into
on his way down. Annie began to scream.
Horrified, Rook watched the Invid take three forward steps and position itself over her
fallen teammate. She barreled out of the shelter, yelling for Rand to wake up, raising her blaster
even as the Trooper was raising its claw. She had to put five shots into the alien's back before
it swung around, and when it did, it was clever enough to use its pincer as a shield. Undaunted,
Rook continued to fire until she saw those telltale globes of priming light form at the ship's
cannons; then she spun around and hastily tried to retreat. The Invid dropped her with a disc that
threw her into a headlong crash. She rolled over, struggling to regain her breath as the Trooper
approached, uncertain if she should be thankful that the thing had let her live. Suddenly she
heard Annie's taunting voice close by and watched amazed as her diminutive friend began to pelt
the towering ship with snowballs.
Rook raised herself and resumed fire, hoping to draw the Invid's attention before Annie
succeeded in enraging it. Rand had meanwhile come around and was contributing his own bursts, and
together they somehow managed to send the Trooper to its knees.
"Go, go!" Rand yelled, motioning Rook and Annie past him.
They both knew what he was up to and broke for the trail where Rand had rigged the second
trap. Rook turned around to see if he was following.
"I'm right behind you!" she heard him yell.
And so was the Trooper, looming up over them and the trees, monstrous-looking in the
moonlight, like the nightmare it was.
But it performed just as Rand had expected, stepping boldly along the path, unaware that
one area held a special surprise. And in a moment the Trooper was sinking to its waist through the
snow, down into a pit that had been dug underneath the trail.
"Cut your lines!" Rand shouted to the women.
Rook ran to the area he had indicated and drew her knife. She severed the cables as he
called out the numbers. Instantly, sharpened logs swung down toward the trapped Trooper from the
surrounding treetops. Thrusters blazing against the pit's hold, the Invid dodged the first two and
parried the third with its pincer targone, but the fourth punched through the ship's scanner and
immobilized it. The Trooper was lifted up out of the pit and sent flat on its back in the trail.
The sharpened log protruded out of its blood-red eye like a stake thrust into a vampire's heart.
"God...we did it," Annie said in disbelief.
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Rook wiped sweat from her brow. "Too close this time, just too close."
"Not bad." Rand smiled, striding over to the bleeding ship. "A bit primitive perhaps, but
I had confidence in it.
Rook scoffed at him. "Sure thing, Rand. And I suppose almost getting yourself killed was
part of the plan?"
"That's always part of my plan," he told her. "Just to impress you a bit."
"You're never scared?" Annie said, taken in.
Rook looked over at Rand, then down at Annie. "Only when no one's looking at him," she
told her.
Somewhat closer to the chute, Scott and Lunk were attempting to bring their own primitive
plan into play. They had skirted the edge of the woods, keeping themselves just above the tree
line, then worked back toward the western buttress of the cirque. As hoped, the Invid commander
had split its forces-her forces, Scott was now telling himself-but two of the four Troopers had
picked up their trail and were narrowing the gap.
The avalanche had touched off secondary slides in several of the tributary crevasses below
the basin, and in one of these, an exposed grouping of moraine boulders perched precariously above
the gully's narrow floor. Scott thought that if they could lure the Troopers into the ravine, then
somehow manage to loosen those boulders...
Lunk was skeptical, but he didn't see that there were any alternatives. The VTs and
Cyclones hadn't been completely buried by the snow, but they couldn't even think about reaching
them until they had cut the enemy down to size. So he volunteered to go up top and see if he could
pry some of the rocks free, while Scott set out to bait the two enemy ships.
Lunk had found what he considered to be a persuasive boulder that would force the entire
group into a slide, and he had his shoulder to it when Scott entered the ravine at a run, the
Troopers right behind him. The lieutenant reached the end of the ravine and turned to fire a few
shots at his pursuers, meant more to antagonize than to inflict any damage. But more than that,
Scott's short burst was aimed at keeping the Troopers at bay for just the few seconds Lunk needed
to send the boulder crashing down toward them.
"Hurry!" Lunk heard between H90 reports. "They're in position!"
Lunk shoved his bare shoulder to the stone, boots trying to find purchase in the snow.
Down below, one of the Troopers opened fire on Scott. The anni discs threw up a fountain of snow
that momentarily buried him, but Lunk saw Scott shake himself out of it. And perhaps it was the
sight of his friend's peril that gave him the extra push he needed, because all at once the
boulder was toppling over and commencing its slide and tumble toward the pack.
Scott heard the rock impact the mass and decided to help things along by training his
weapon on the ledge itself. The charges from his MARS-Gallant did what sheer momentum alone
couldn't, and in a moment the whole mass was avalanching toward the bottom of the ravine with a
ground-shaking, deafening roar. Scott threw himself up the opposing slope, figuring the Invid
would blast free of the ravine, giving him and Lunk a chance to reach the VTs. He never hoped they
would actually catch the Troopers unaware, but that was exactly what happened. They had both tried
to lift off, but the bounding rocks had shattered the ships' sensors, and in the confusion the
things got caught up in the slide and were overturned and buried.
When the snow settled, Lunk appeared at the top of the ravine, a triumphant look on his
face.
"Not bad, eh, Commander?!" he yelled down.
Scott surveyed the damage they had wrought and could only regard it in wonder. "Yeah,
great, pal," he called back. "Just like we planned."
Lancer and Marlene had run clear through a finger of woods. They were not far from Rand
and the others, but their trail had led them to the edge of a deep gully, with a river of snow
several hundred feet below them. They had no way of knowing that the one Trooper on their tail was
the last of the four.
Marlene seemed unaware of where she was or what it was they were running from. Lancer had
simply pulled her along like a helpless child, often shielding her with his body from debris flung
up by the Trooper's discs. But now all he could do was gaze hopelessly across the ten feet of
empty space that separated them from the gully's opposite face.
"Maybe if we hurry we can double back around," Lancer told her, trying to make it sound
feasible.
But as he took hold of her thin wrist again and prepared to set off, he saw the Trooper
emerging from the woods, closing in on them fast. Marlene understood that they would have to jump
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across the abyss. She nodded to Lancer, her forehead wrinkled up in apprehension.
They gave themselves several yards of runway and made a mad dash toward the ledge, hand in
hand as they soared across the chasm. And they almost made it. But they fell short by a foot,
catching hold of the edge-which was really little more than snow-and falling backward to what they
thought would be the chasm bottom. Instead, however, they landed on a narrow ledge approximately
ten feet below the lip.
Lancer was thinking that things couldn't get much worse, but of course they could. Above
them, the Invid command ship came into view. But to his surprise, he watched as the control
nacelle sprang open and a Human pilot jumped down from the padded cockpit. It was the same
brainwashed captive he had seen on the island: a slim female of medium height with punked out
greenblond hair and eyes as red as a Trooper's scanner. She wore a bodysuit of colored panels that
emphasized the body's major muscle groups in swaths of black, purple, and pink-like the colors of
the command ship itself.
"I know you," Lancer called to her as she peered down at them. "Why are you fighting for
the Invid?"
The woman's only response was to mock him with a short laugh.
Lancer pointed at her accusingly. "You're a traitor! Answer me: Why are you fighting for
them?"
Sera continued to stare at the Human, angered and confused at the same time. I should
destroy this thing called man, she thought. But for some reason I cannot.
The Trooper who had pursued Lancer and Marlene through the woods appeared on the opposite
ledge now, but it, too, held its fire.
Lancer regarded the ship warily, then swung back around to confront the woman, who was
obviously in command of the situation. "Can't you understand me?!" he demanded. When he failed to
get a response, he altered his tone to one of cynical surrender. "Then get it over with. But spare
this woman. She's done no wrong."
Marlene and Sera met each other's gaze. And during the exchange, which Lancer thought
brief, a wealth of racial memories was transmitted.
That face...thought Marlene. It's as though time has stopped and I can look into my past
and my future simultaneously...
Sera's face had dissolved, but Marlene seemed to follow those flashphoto eyes on a journey
through space and time. Cosmic vistas opened up before her, stains and weblike filigrees of
brilliantly hued clouds, swirls and spirals of galactic stuff strewn like diamonds on velvet. She
beheld a vision of Optera through Sera's eyes, of the Invid as they were before the coming of Zor,
of the Flowers before the Fall. Then Sera's unconscious unlocked for her the horrors of days
since. Marlene saw the quest for their stolen grail; the transmutation of the race to an army of
relentless warriors, burdened with a need for mecha and Protoculture that rivaled the Masters'
own; the trip across the galaxy to this planet they now called their own; and the dispossession of
its indigenous beings, just as they themselves had once been dispossessed...
And there was a voice in Marlene's mind-one that she could not identify but that at the
same time seemed to be her own:
"Reach into the cosmic consciousness of your race, Ariel," the voice told her. "And
although you feel you are dreaming, watch send observe the beauty of your home. For we are a race
of powerful beings destined to control the universe with our intellect and power, and you, Ariel,
are a part of that power. Come back to us, my child; come back, Ariel, and rejoin the hive..."
Marlene stared at Sera as her face took form once again, the journey through space-time
concluded, and thought: I know her: we're like sisters somehow...
Then without warning, explosions were rocking the ledge and erupting around the base of
Sera's command ship. Scott and the rest of the team had positioned themselves on the ridgeline
above the gully and were firing bursts against the command ship and its sole minion.
Momentarily confused by the renewed fighting, Sera broke off her contact with Marlene and
returned to the cockpit of her ship, lifting off at once and joining her charge on the opposite
side of the chasm. But no sooner did she touch down than the ledge gave way and the two dropped
together, impacting rocks and outcroppings as they fell.
Lunk and Rand pulled Lancer and Marlene to safety. It seemed unbelievable that they had
all survived and that all their crazed plans had worked. But even more unsettling was the Human
pilot who had once again demonstrated a bewildering ambivalence. Scott refused to believe that the
woman had purposely stayed her hand; he pointed out how she had fired on him earlier without
compunction. Lancer, however, knew better than to accept Scott's explanation that the woman had
been distracted by their sudden fire. And he also saw that something inexplicable had transpired
between the woman and Marlene. Both Rand and Annie had been touched by the Invid consciousness in
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the past, but their psychic encounters had been brief and transient. Marlene, on the other hand,
had been profoundly affected.
"I don't belong with you," Marlene told Lancer later, when the others had moved off in the
direction of the buried mecha. "Please, Lancer, I'll just bring trouble for all of you..."
He tried to comfort her as best he could by offering himself as her protector. And that
did seem to calm her a bit. But it brought him little succor.
Who would be next to feel the enemy's mind probe? he wondered, shivering as he led Marlene
away from the abyss.
CHAPTER THREE
In quieter moments I find myself wondering about the men and women I have served with during these
long campaigns. I think about the ones left behind, like Max and Miriya, and the ones sent away,
like John Carpenter, Frank Tandler, Owen, and the rest. The list goes on and on. Would I have
joined that crew had it not been for the Sentinels; abandoned these dark domains for even a chance
at seeing Earth's blue skies once again? I think: Absolutely. But what can my homeworld offer me
now? Certainly not peace, that endangered species. Retirement, perhaps. How Lisa would laugh!
Admiral Hunter, as quoted in Selig Kahler, The Tirolian Campaign
Freeing the Veritechs and Cyclones from the snowslide proved to be a greater challenge than anyone
had expected. The team brought the collective heat of their MARS-Gallant H90 hand blusters to bear
against the massive chunks of ice that had been loosed during the avalanche, by sunrise they had
succeeded in defrosting the Alpha Fighter. Tango-9 explosive and the VT's thrusters did the rest
of the work in a tenth the time, but Annie and Marlene sustained mild cases of frostbite
nonetheless. And despite Scott's optimistic projection, it took the team several false starts and
another two days to cross the Sierra range. But waiting for them was the desert with those warm
highland winds, and with it came a renewed sense of purpose and determination.
This was the same arid expanse crossed by pioneers and adventurers during North America's
push toward its western horizon, but few would have recognized it as such. Over the course of the
last two decades the region had seen periods of devastation to rival those of its geoformative
years. Dolza's fleet of four million had not overlooked the cities that had grown up here, and
neither had Khyron after New Macross had risen to the fore. Vast stretches of the territory were
cratered from the thousands of annihilation bolts rained upon it, host still to equal numbers of
rusting Zentraedi dreadnoughts, thrust like war lances into the ravaged land. Just north of the
team's present route were the remains of Monument City, which had played such a pivotal role in
the Second Robotech War.
Population centers had grown up in some of the craters, but most of these were abandoned
now, their onetime residents returned to life-styles more befitting the territory's original
nomadic tribespeople than the Robotechnologists who had once tried to breathe new life into the
wastes.
Scott had listened intently to Lancer and Lunk's information; he of course had read and
heard accounts of Macross and Monument, and the team's propinquity to those legendary cities
filled him with an awe usually reserved for sacred places and archeological power spots. It made
him think about the long road that had taken him back to this land of his parents' birth and the
treacherous one that lay ahead. The team was close to Reflex Point now-the presence of an Invid
tower assured him of this much-but he had to wonder how many more twists and turns they would have
to negotiate before they stood at the portal of the Regis's central hive, how many Invid stood in
their way, and how many more deaths their journey would entail.
There were many such communication towers placed around the hive complex, and Scott knew
from past experience that the team's further progress toward Reflex Point would depend on how many
of these they could circumvent, or better still, destroy. Options were discussed while the team
made temporary camp near a meandering river where cottonwoods and conifers provided a narrow green
ribbon of safety and shade. In the end it was decided that Scott and Rand would recon the outlying
area; nearby were the ruins of a deserted city and what appeared to be an inhabited town. Annie
insisted on tagging along, hoping they would run across a cowboy or two.
The three freedom fighters set out on Cyclones, Annie in her customary place on the
pillion seat behind Rand. Only Scott was suited up in battle armor. Rand had tried to talk him out
of it but soon recognized that Scott fancied himself the only law and order between here and
Reflex Point.
A short ride brought them into the town they had glimpsed from the Veritechs, a curious
combination of high-tech modular buildings and wooden structures fashioned after centuries-old
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