Jack McKinney - Robotech 11 - Metamorphosis

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Robotech: Metamorphosis
Book 11 in the Robotech Series
Copyright 1987 by Jack McKinney
CHAPTER ONE
How could so many of the principals in this vast struggle be so blind to the reason that one
planet was at the center of it all? That is a secret we shall never know.
On blighted Earth, arguably the most warlike planet in the Universe, the Flower of Life had taken
root like nowhere else before-except for Optera (which may or may not have been its world of
origin). And in so doing, it set the stage for Act Ill of the Robotech Wars.
And yet, inventively oblivious, Invid and Human alike attributed that to the vagaries of a plant.
Zeus Bellow, The Road to Reflex Point
Never has the Flower of Life wrought more strangely! it occurred yet again to the Regis, empress/
mother of the Invid species. Earth, your fate is wedded to ours now!
How strange it was that Zor had chosen Earth, she thought, as she poised there in the
center of the stupendous mega-hive know as Reflex Point. Or, more aptly, how well he had chosen by
sending his dimensional fortress to the planet so long ago. Of all the worlds that circled stars,
what had made him pick this one? The thought of Zor made her seethe with a passion that had long
since turned to austere hatred.
Did he know that Earth would prove so fantastically fertile for the Flowers of Life, a
garden second only to the Invid race's native Optera in its receptivity to the Flowers? It was
true that Protoculture could bestow powers of the mind, but even so, what had drawn Zor's
attention across the endless-light years to the insignificant blue-white globe?
But Zor's decision didn't matter now. All that was important was that the Invid had
finally found a world where the all-important Flower thrived. At long last, they had conquered
their New Optera.
Of course, there was an indigenous species-the Human race-but they did not present any
problem. The first onslaught of the Invid had left Human civilization in ruins; the aliens used
many of the survivors to farm the Flower of Life.
A few Humans cowered in and around the shattered remains of their cities or prowled the
wastelands, preying on one another and dreading the moment when the Invid would finish the job.
The only use in letting the Homo sapiens survive a little while longer was to use them to further
the Invid master plan.
Then the Humans would be sent into oblivion forever. There was no room for them on Earth
anymore. And from what the Regis knew of the Human race's history, their absence would improve the
universe as a whole.
And it would be done. After all, the last of the Regis's real enemies were dead. There was
no one to oppose the might of the undefeated and remorseless Invid.
The Alpha Fighter bucked but cut a clean line through the air, its drives flaring blue.
Wickedly fast, heavily armed, and hugging the ground, it arrowed toward the snowcapped mountains.
Lieutenant Scott Bernard eased back on his HOTAS-the Hands-on-Throttle-and-Stick controls.
With so much power at his disposal, it was tempting to go for speed, to exercise the command of
the sky that seemed like the Robotech fighter's birthright, and his own.
One reason not to speed on ahead was that there were others below, following along in
surface vehicles-his team members. It would take them days, perhaps weeks, to cover mountain
terrain he could cross in a few minutes. And he didn't dare leave them too far behind; his Alpha
was the team's main edge against Invid hunter/killer patrols. The Alpha slowed until it was at
near-stalling speed, its thrusters holding it aloft.
Another reason not to give in to the impulse to roar triumphantly across heaven was the
fact that Humans didn't own the sky anymore.
He opened his helmet mike. "This is Alpha One to Scout Reconnaissance."
A young male voice came back over the tac net, wry and a bit impatient. "I hear you,
Scott. What's on your mind?"
Scott controlled his temper. No point in another argument with Rand about proper commo
procedure, at least not now.
"I'm about ten miles ahead of you," Scott answered. "We'll never be able to make those
mountains before nightfall. I'm turning back; we'll rendezvous and set up camp. "
He looked wistfully toward the mountains. There was so far to go, such a long, perilous
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journey, between here and Reflex Point. And what would be waiting there? The battle for Earth
itself, the showdown of the Robotech Wars. The destruction of the greatest stronghold of the Invid
realm.
But this group of oddly met guerrillas and a stranded Mars Division fighter pilot were not
the Earth's sole saviors. Scott hadn't let his new companions in on it, but Humanity had a much
more formidable ace-in-the-hole than them. And soon, soon...the demonic Invid would be swept away
before a purging storm of Robotechnology.
He increased speed and took the Alpha through a bank, watchful for any sign of Invid war
mecha that might have detected the fighter's Protoculture emissions. The fighter complained a bit;
he would have to give its systems a thorough going-over with Lunk, the band's tech straw boss.
Scott was less proficient at flying in atmosphere than he would have liked. He had grown
up on the SDF-3 expedition, and most of his piloting had been done in vacuum. There was an
ineffable beauty, a rightness, to flying in Earth's atmosphere, but there were also hidden
dangers, especially for a combat flier.
Still, he didn't complain. Things were going better than he had expected. At least the
supplies of ordnance and Protoculture Scott's team had lifted from the supply depot of the
turncoat Colonel Wolff would last them for a while.
Now all they needed was some luck. Somewhere, Scott's Mars Division comrades were getting
ready for the assault. Telemetry had told him that a good part of the Mars Division had survived
the orbital combat action and planetary approach in which his squadron had been shot to pieces,
leaving him the only survivor. Scott still lived with the sights and sounds of those few horrible
minutes, as he lived with memories even more difficult to endure.
Reflex Point waited. There the Invid would be repaid a millionfold-an eye for an eye.
From high overhead, Reflex Point resembled a monstrous spiderweb pattern. The joining
lines, glowing yellow-red as though they were canals of lava, were formed by Protoculture conduits
and systemry. The accessways were traveled by mecha and by the Regis's other servants.
At the center was the enormous Hive Nucleus that was Reflex Point proper. It was a glowing
hemisphere with a biological look to it, and a strange foam of bubblelike objects around its base
like a concentric wave coming in from all sides. The Nucleus was more than twelve miles in
diameter. To Human eyes it might have resembled a super-high-speed photograph of the first instant
of an exploding hydrogen bomb.
At the various junctures were the lesser domes and instrumentality nodes, though some of
those were two miles across.
Deep within Reflex Point, at its center, was a globe of pure Protoculture instrumentality.
This veined bronze sphere, with darker shadows moving and Shaping within it, responded to the will
of the Regis. A bolt of blazing light broke from the dark vastness overhead, to create an enormous
Protoculture bonfire.
The Regis spoke and her "children", half the Invid race, listened; there was so much to
tell them. With the incredible profusion of Flowers of Life that the Earth had provided, the
Regis's children had increased in number, and the newly quickened drone zygotes must be instructed
in their destiny. From within the huge globe, her will reached forth to manipulate the leaping
Protoculture flames. "The living creatures of this world have evolved into a truly amazing variety
of types and subtypes."
Images formed in the flames: spider, platypus, swan, rat, Human female. "Many of these are
highly specialized, but extremely successful. Others are generalized and adaptable and many of
those, too, are successful.
"Earth is the place the Flower of Life has chosen, and that is a fact that brooks no
argument. And so it is the place where the Invid, too, shall live forevermore. For this, we must
find the ultimate life-form suitable to our existence here and assume that form."
All across her planetary domain, the Invid stopped to listen. A few could remember the
days long ago on Optera, before Zor, when the Invid lived contented and joyous lives. Other,
younger Invid had access to those days, too, through the racial memory that was a part of the
Regis's power.
On Optera, by ingesting the Flowers of Life, the Invid had experimented with self-
transformation, and with explorations in auto-evolution that were part experiment, part religious
rite. And, with the power of the Protoculture and its Shapings, they strove to peer beyond the
present and the visible, into the secrets of the universe-into transcendent planes of existence.
Those days were gone, though they would come again when the Flowers covered the New Optera-
Earth. For the moment though, evolution would be determined and enacted by the Regis.
"In order to select the ultimate form, the form we will assume for our life here, we are
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utilizing Genesis Pits for our experiments in bioengineering, as we did on Praxis."
More shadows formed in the otherworldly bonfire.
"We have cloned creatures from all significant eras of this planet's history and are
studying them for useful traits at locations all across the globe. We will also study their
interaction with the once-dominant species, Homo sapiens."
Her disembodied voice rose, ringing like an anthem, stirring Invid on every rung of her
species' developmental ladder, from the crudest amoeboid drone gamete to her most evolved
Enforcer.
"Long ago, the Invid made the great mistake of believing alien lies; of believing in
trust, of taking part in-" Her voice faltered a little; this final sin had been the Regis's alone.
"In love."
And the love Zor had drawn from her had been mirrored by her male mate, the Regent, as
psychotic hatred and loathing. This had caused the Regent to fling himself-purposely and
perversely-down and down a de-evolutionary path to monstrousness and mindlessness, to utter
amorphous primeval wrath. But the other half of the Invid species, his children, worshipped him
nonetheless.
The Regis steeled herself. Her mind-voice rang out again.
"But we have paid for those failures for an age! For an age of wandering, warfare, death,
and privation! And once we have discovered the Ultimate Form appropriate to this planet, we shall
assume that form, and we will secure our endless new supply of the Flower of Life. Our race will
become the supreme power it was meant to be!"
But she shielded from her universe of children the misgiving that was never far from her
thoughts. Here on Earth-the planet the Flower itself had chosen-the once-dominant life form was
cast in the image of Zor.
And again the Regis felt herself fractured in a thousand ways, yet drawn in one direction.
What affliction is more accursed than love?
Rand bent over the handlebars of his Cylone combat cycle as Annie yelled, her face pressed
close so he could hear her over the mecha's roar, the passage of the wind, and the dampening
effect of his Robotech armor.
"Look, there's Scott, at ten o'clock!"
Rand had already seen the hovering blue-and-white Alpha settling for a VTOL setdown. There
weren't many useful-size clearings in the thick forest in this region. Certainly, there was
nothing like a suitable airstrip for a conventional fighter craft within a hundred miles or more.
The designers who had given the fighter Vertical Takeoff and Landing capability of course
knew how important that would be in a tactical situation in a conventional war. But Rand sometimes
wondered if they had foreseen how helpful the VTOL would be to a pack of exhausted guerrillas who
were Earth's last committed fighting unit.
"I see 'im," Rand yelled back to Annie, rather than pointing out that he had been tracking
Scott both by eye and on the Cyc's display screen. Rand didn't like to admit it, but he had
developed a soft spot in his heart for the winsome, infuriating bundle of adolescent energy who
had insisted on being a part of the team.
Annie had insisted on coming along with him on point, too. She was determined to do her
share, take her risks, be considered an adult part of the team. Rand saw that a lot of her self-
esteem was riding on the outcome and grumblingly admitted that he wouldn't mind some company.
Scott and the rest had given in, perhaps for the same reason that they never questioned the pint-
size redhead's outrageous claim that she was all of sixteen.
You could either accept Annie for her feisty self or risk shattering the brave persona she
had forged, with little help or support, to make her way in a dangerous, despair-making world.
Now she banged Rand's armor. "Turn there, turn there!"
"Pillion-seat driver," Rand growled, but he turned down the game path, the cycle rolling
slowly, homing in on Scott's signal. "We're about ten minutes ahead of the others, Scott."
Scott's voice came back over the tactical net. "Good. Still no sign of the Invid, but we
can run a sweep of the area before the others get here."
None of them saw it or registered it on their instruments, but in the dim forest darkness,
massive ultratech shapes moved-two-legged, insectlike walking battleships.
Just like armored monsters from a madman's nightmare.
CHAPTER TWO
Oh, great! We been shanghaied aboard Charon's Ark!
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Remark attributed to Annie LaBelle by Scott Bernard
Following the path their scout team had taken, Lancer, Rook, and Lunk rode down the long,
dangerous road toward Reflex Point. Lancer was riding his Cyclone in the lead, wearing full techno-
armor, the masculine, warlike side of his divided personality clearly present. He was sure and
confident, Rook Bartley thought to herself, a practiced mecha rider and a deadly warrior.
Rook, also in full Robotech panoply, had just caught up on her red-and-white Cyc, having
made sure that the team wasn't being followed and it was safe to leave the rear guard. She let
Lancer hold the lead, glancing over to make sure all was well with Lunk.
Things always seemed to be well with the big, burly ex-soldier when he was on the road,
riding in his beloved all-terrain truck. Taking one look at Lunk, it was easy to jump to the
conclusion that there wasn't much going on upstairs. His low forehead and the thick sideburns that
curled around and up under his eyes made him look like a comic-strip caveman.
But anyone who had talked to him, or looked closely into those soulful eyes, or seen him
do the things Rook had seen him do, understood why conventional wisdom counsels against drawing
quick conclusions.
As for Rook, she still found it strange to be riding with a gang again, even though Scott
insisted on calling it a team, and everybody else kept insisting that they had their own agenda
and that the alliance was temporary. She still wasn't sure how she had teamed up with them. It was
too easy to say that she had shared danger, hardship, triumph, and defeat with them; she had done
that with others before. She kept looking toward the time when she could ride as a loner once
again.
Of course, there was Rand...
Screw Rand! she snarled to herself.
From their places in the shadows of the great trees, the Invid Shock Trooper mecha kept
watch, making sure the Humans were moving the right way. So far, the Troopers noted, these life-
forms hadn't needed any herding.
The location of the nearest Genesis Pit was logical, situated along the easiest passageway
through the mountains. The Entrapments were well deployed; the routine specimen collection was
going well. The mecha floated along quietly and slowly, their thrusters muted as they awaited
their moment.
"Heads up, Annie!" Rand's voice sounded a bit tinny through his helmet's external speaker.
"Scott's right on schedule, of course."
Of course; what else? Would Scott Bernard, the rules-and-regs sole survivor of the
massacre of his squadron be even a few seconds off?
Annie leaned out from the Cyclone and saw Scott's Alpha settling in the clearing. She
pulled the bill of her trademark baseball cap, with its huge emblem that read E.T., lower "Um-
hmm."
She tried not to let her relief sound in her voice. Although she had insisted on taking a
turn at riding point, she was much more at ease riding next to Lunk in the truck (or APC, as Lunk
insisted on calling it, since it was Armored and was indisputably a Carrier of Personnel). Annie
wasn't even armed. Weapons made her a little queasy.
But now she didn't have, to worry, because everything was going well. The Alpha had
switched to Guardian mode for the VTOL landing.
The cockpit canopy slid back. Scott, armored in Robotechnology, stepped out, walked out to
the forward edge of the swing-wing's fixed glove, and hopped down.
Annie looked around at the trees and the darkness they shed in the waning light, as Rand
pulled up next to Scott in a spray of sand and gravel, some of it rattling and hissing off Scott's
armor. "I guess this means we're staying here, huh?" She was tough despite her age, but she had
done most of her surviving in settlements and cities. The wilds unnerved her.
Scott had gone around to the rear of the Guardian's portside leg to open a hidden
compartment. "I'll get my Cyclone and we'll run a security sweep of the area before the others get
here."
He pulled forth and activated the compact package that turned into his Cyclone, unfolding
and reconfiguring. He thought about ordering Annie to wait in the cockpit of the fighter, but she
had a special gift for getting into trouble, and so he discarded the notion. "Let's go."
Scott and Rand sped away, following the dry streambed, looking for an opportunity to leave
it and move cross-country. Scouts seldom learn anything worth knowing on the main road, except
when it's too late.
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Acting as a scout for its unit just as Scott had done for his, an Invid Shock Trooper
closed in on its target.
Normally the Invid were slow to detect Humans unless the prey had been specifically
targeted, or there had been a sizable expenditure of Protoculture. This time, however, the Regis's
fearsome war machines had been sent to guard a specific area and herd specimens into the Genesis
Pit. The Humans had come into their territory. By some oversight, there were no specific orders of
any kind concerning Humans, and so the Troopers simply evaluated, the interlopers as they would
any other life-form, and decided they too would be worthwhile subjects of experimentation.
The Trooper kept its distance from the Humans, but some trick of the last filtering light
of sunset piercing the dense trees betrayed it. Or perhaps Scott Bernard just had a feeling that
they were being followed.
Scott slid to a side-on stop, ready to trigger and image the change that would meld his
Cyclone and his armor into a Robotech killing machine. Rand stopped, too, Annie clinging close,
white-faced. "What's wrong, Scott?" Rand's voice came over the tac net.
Scott shook his head slowly. "I'm sure I saw something moving. Back there."
But how could it be an Invid? Scout or Shock Trooper, their instant reaction was to
attack.
"Don't tell me we're being watched!" Annie snapped at Scott, her lower lip trembling. "The
Invid can't be everywhere!" She tried to get her arms all the way around Rand's armored
midsection.
Contrary to its genetic programming, the Shock Trooper drew back-in accordance with the
special instructions given to the sentinels of the Genesis Pits. Here were more samples from
present-day life-forms to interact with the Regis's replicated marvels.
And an Entrapment intake waited near.
"Calm down, Mint," Scott was saying in that strangely relaxed tone he took on when other
people's neck hair was standing on end. He had used Annie's team nickname-"Mint," from her ongoing
affair with peppermint candy-to calm her.
"We've got to make sure the area's safe before the others get here. Or d'you want to see
them ride into an ambush? No? Good. Rand, stay close. And cover me on the left."
The Cycs moved out, Protoculture engines gunning.
The Trooper floated back, almost delicately, close to the ground but leaving no print. As
it circled it left its prey a clear path. All through this area, the Entrapments, a living part of
the Genesis Pits, were growing in profusion, waiting to gulp down specimens.
Scott suddenly wondered if they should pull back; if he should send Annie and Rand
hurrying for safety and cover their retreat with a barrage of Cyclone firepower.
But he realized that he and his companions had been led off to one side. Time had passed
and Rook, Lancer, and Lunk were already near. It would be better to warn them first and then
carefully withdraw.
He couldn't raise the other three over the tactical communication net, though, and
couldn't tell if it was his position among the terrain features or whether the Invid were jamming
the system. He spied a spot of high ground ahead and headed towards it, hoping for a clear commo
link.
Then a shadow seemed to move across the hilltop-a shadow much larger than a bear or
anything else that walked Earth's surface. It was going the other way, apparently oblivious to the
scouts-heading for a point that would intersect Lancer and the others.
Ambush! Scott had no doubt. He revved his superbike, giving Rand a hand signal so that the
Invid could not intercept a transmission. The sand felt a little treacherous, but that didn't
matter under the circumstances, the two Cycs were fully armed, and for once, it seemed, the team
had caught the Invid mecha with their iron trousers at half-mast.
He was about to order Rand to drop Annie off where she could take cover, then follow him
on a stealthy approach-for-attack. But just then the ground opened up.
All Scott could see was that a flap of thick, brown-mauve stuff-like a flap of canvas
twenty yards wide and seven yards thick-had been drawn back. It was thickly edged with long purple
hairs, or perhaps they were feelers because in that horrible instant Scott could see that they
were moving in different directions.
It seemed as though a monster's mouth had opened up in the Earth, ready to swallow them.
But although Rand was extremely frightened and disgusted, he knew what this was. A pit! Oldest
trap of 'em all!
The Entrapment's mouth was gruesome, bending inward at all four midspans rather than from
the corners.
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All thoughts of proper commo procedure faded like dew in the sunshine, and all Scott and
Rand could hear over the tac net were one another's terrified howls; all they could hear over
their external pickups was Annie's scream.
We're not fated to win after all, it occurred to Scott, as the Cyclones spun down into a
deep, dark shaft that gleamed wetly like a gullet. The Cyc riders kept their seats by sheer
instinct; Annie clutched Rand's waist. They, fell into blackness, and what little light they had
was cut off as the quadripartite Entrapment flaps above them closed serenely.
"Switch to Battle Armor!" Scott hollered, too loudly, over the tac net. He operated the
gross hand controls on the Cyc, but more importantly, imaged the transition through the receptors
in his helmet. He knew Rand would be doing the same. But just then Rand felt Annie lose her grip
and drift free in the powerful air currents of the pit.
Mechamorphosis. That was the name Dr. Emil Lang had given these transitions so long ago,
even before the start of the First War-that techno-origami shifting of shape.
One moment, there were two young men in armor tumbling through the moaning air currents of
the Entrapment, and the next, there was something going on.
An onlooker might have thought that the Cycs were leukocytes destroying their riders,
sliding up around them, Cyclone components meshing with armor components. The machines broke down
into subunits to slide into their appointed places around the armor, as certain microorganisms
might whip some critical hurt on certain other microorganisms.
The Cycs' tires were up high and out of the way on the Cycloners' backs, allowing them
free play and unlimited fields of fire with their Robotech weapons. But even the thrusters in
their suits didn't help them against the enormous vacuum that drew them down. There was no way
back up.
Their armor flared anyway, to cushion the fall, and then somehow Rand heard a small,
plaintive cry and realized that not everybody was protected.
"Hold still, Annie!"
It was a precision catch, possible only through Robotechnology. They were falling very
fast, and simply rocketing armored arms under her would have only served to break the sweet,
loudmouthed, red-haired soul of the team into three or-more likely-more pieces.
But as it was, Rand matched velocities and made the save.
He opened his helmet, careless of what might happen to him, holding Annie close-her pale
face against his so that she could breathe the air his suit was pumping up in an effort to keep
positive pressure.
Her small fingers moved, clasping the lip of his helmet's chinguard...then she was still,
though she kept breathing. Rand hugged her to him, shielding her as much as he could. Neither
Rand's armor's thrusters nor Scott's could stop their fall; whatever was pulling them down, it was
more than just gravity and air currents. Scott wasn't even sure they were being drawn straight
downward.
Rand, who was falling head first, was first to see it. "Scott! Look down there at that red
glow coming right at us! Maybe there's a bottom floor after all!"
A lighted area on the shaft's floor? A lava pool? The light down there seemed to shift and
waver, but it had the glow of extreme heat.
"A lot of good that'll do us if we go splat! Hit your burners!"
Rand and Scott simultaneously hit their burners, while Annie moaned and cried. But the
retrothrusters did no good, and in another moment they plunged into the hellish fire.
CHAPTER THREE
Kraneberg, an oldtime historian of (North) American technology, once said-in the form of a First
Law-"Technology is neither positive, negative, nor neutral."
Indeed. It is all three.
And omnipresent.
Scott Bernard's notes
"Huh?"
Scott was amazed that he wasn't being boiled alive. Instead, orange-yellow light played
all around him, Annie, and Rand, reflecting off their armor and helmet facebowls.
The light seemed alive, moving like writhing eels. It seemed to knot together in places
with its ends exposed, like twists in snarled barbed wire. Elsewhere it had settled into layers,
like the colors in a sunset. The radiance brightened, enveloping them.
Their facebowls polarized to shield them, while poor little Annie squeezed her eyes shut
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and buried her head against Rand's armored chest. Scott checked his instruments, but the sensors
were not working. "I, I think we're in some kind of energy field."
"Unbelievable," Rand breathed. Then all at once the light was above them, and they were
plummeting through utter blackness-or so it seemed, their facebowls still darkened. "We went
straight through it! Are we near the bottom?"
"Y'got me," Scott said, straining to see as his facebowl slowly depolarized. The place
looked pitch black. The idea of a jagged rock floor racing up at them filled him with a cold
despair.
"Emergency power to retros-" he was saying, just as the Cyclone warriors hit the water
with a tremendous splash.
The first thing that Scott knew when he came to was that he had a monstrous headache. The
next thing was that his eyes wouldn't focus properly, even taking into account the fact that he
was trying to see through a helmet facebowl. He realized that he was sprawled out on his stomach.
Before him, he saw his Cyclone armor's gauntlet-hand.
He groaned, trying to flex his fingers. They barely moved. He saw that he was lying
on...on soil. Dirt.
He tried to see beyond the hand, his head trembling as he tried to lift it. His eyes were
responding a little better, but what he saw made no sense.
Those giant fern things we saw on Praxis? No; wait a second...'S not it...This's a
diffr'nt planet...Earth...
It didn't look like any place he had ever seen or heard about on Earth. It
looked...primeval. Where are we, a swamp? What happened?
Scott saw Rand sprawled out a few feet away, along the little stretch of sandy bank where
they had landed.
Scott crawled over to him, groaning and hoping the pain he felt in his side wasn't a
cracked rib. "Rand! Rand, are you okay?" He shook the Forager's shoulder pauldron. "Come on,
fella, speak to me!"
Rand began to stir a bit. Through the external pickups, Scott heard a tiny moan. He looked
beyond Rand and saw Annie lying a few yards away along the bank. She was making feeble attempts to
sit up. "Annie, are you all right?"
She sat up suddenly, wide-eyed but apparently unafraid, blinking at the dawnworld
landscape. "What happened to me?"
"We must've hit the bottom of the pit," he told her. Just then, Rand started coming
around. "Take it easy, pal."
But Rand rose to his feet. "What, d'we miss a turn somewhere?"
He shook his head to clear it a bit. What he was staring at appeared to be seedferns.
Cycads; club mosses and horsetails. Big and huge; small and almost microscopic. Off in the
distance he could see what appeared to be conifers, ginkgoes, and more.
What is this, a damn coal forest?
Annie heard something that sounded a bit like a heavy-duty dentist's drill and ducked
instinctively as something flashed by her ear. In a moment there was a cloud of them going past,
though they seemed uninterested in the Humans. Their double wingsets were making silver blurs in
the strange light of the place.
"Dragonflies!" Rand burst out. But these were dragonflies the length of his forearm, with
enormous wings-slower than their modern counterparts.
Annie, seeing that they wouldn't hurt her, laughed with delight and skipped after them a
few steps, the water splashing around her ankles.
Scott and Ran had instinctively reconfigured their armor, the Cyclone combat bikes under
them once again. "And this water's nice and warm!" Annie was saying. She was wrinkling her nose,
though; the air of the place was thick and steamy-the heaviness of rotting vegetation, of
primitive life.
Annie's mood had turned to wonder, and she kicked up bright plumes of water. "Why don't
you guys come in and give it a try?"
She was still trying to get them to join her when the surface of the water broke behind
her, and something huge began to rise. "Annie! Behind you!" Scott shouted, his voice sounding a
bit strange and processed over his suit's external speaker.
Both men were off their cycles, groping for their sidearms. Annie stood rooted as a plated
head the size of a small fishing coracle reared, shedding water in all directions. It opened its
mouth and revealed rows of teeth like thick pegs. Rand's mind threw up a strange word, Eogyrinus?
Pieces of torn flesh still clung to the teeth, and it reeked of death and the marshes it
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hunted. Annie knew that through their helmets Scott and Rand couldn't even smell it.
Scott and Rand were jockeying for a clear line of fire. It was seemingly hopeless with
Annie standing frozen right in front of the thing, hypnotized like a mouse before a rattlesnake.
They were both armed with MARS-Gallant Type-H90s-the latest word in hip-howitzers, but that
firepower was of little use with Annie in the crosshairs.
The thing had gotten very close. Rand saw that it was wide and flat, like a big croc with
a bobbed, broad snout-no doubt an experienced shore hunter, just like the books said.
Scott hollered at Annie to get out of the way. She backpedaled and fell on her rump in the
wet sandy shore. She stared into hungry, merciless eyes that, she could see, saw her as nothing
more than another morsel of food. She threw herself flat on the ground just as the creature reared
up to lunge for her. Then the neon-blue blasterbolts flew, making a mewing sound.
As the H90s spat, the torrid air got even hotter. Rand fired with the modified two-hand
stance that Scott had taught him. The thing heaved up as the dazzling hyphens of energy hit it.
Pieces exploded from it as the furious heat of the shots turned the moisture in its cells into
superheated steam, blowing it apart. There was no blood from those wounds; instead, the gaping
holes in the thing had the look of broiled meat. The stench of it made the atmosphere that much
more repugnant.
The monster thrashed and twisted. Roaring and bellowing, it swiped at the air with thick
claws, snapping its jaws at the radiant bolts. Unable to understand what was happening, it
nevertheless knew that it was dying. Its rage shook the air, the primeval plant-forest, and the
sluggish lake waters. It fell back with a mighty splash, still quivering and contorting.
Annie kept screaming as Scott and Rand dragged her back to shore by her jacket. "Mint, he
didn't bite you, did he?" Scott asked anxiously.
That seemed to bring her around a little. "N-no, but almost. And don't call me Mint, okay
Scott?"
He held out his hand to her. "Sure thing. Come on; up you go." But even as she was
scrambling to her feet, Rand yelled and pointed, sounding thoroughly rattled.
"Here comes more company!"
Three more of the things had surfaced and began ripping away at the first, while it
spasmed. They tore out huge gobbets of flesh, snarling and whistling. Scott remembered hearing
somewhere that real Earthly gators usually left their prey to rot, if it was too small to swallow
in one gulp. That wasn't the case with this lunch crowd. In seconds, flesh, bones, blood, and
viscera surged and rolled in the oily waters.
Rand gulped. "They passed on the salad course, I guess."
"Just look at them," Annie breathed.
Just then one of the three paused in its gorging to hiss a piercing whistle at them,
giving them that same hungry, pitiless stare.
"They're looking at us!" she cried.
If we shoot, these three, do nine more show up? he wondered. Even Robotech weapons had
their limits. He grabbed Annie's arm. "Let's get out of here! Move, move!"
In another moment the armor had mechamorphosed, and the two Cyclones leapt away, Annie
clinging to Rand once more, the tires automatically adjusting to travel over the soft soil. The
Eogyrinuses came swarming up at them moments too late.
"Guess we lost 'em," Annie reported, glancing back over her shoulder to be sure. "I don't
think they're built for long-distance events."
"But where did they come from?" Scott murmured.
Rand gazed upward. The sky held no sign of the energy field; instead there was a low gray
haze. They sped up another dry watercourse, past tall, odd-looking conifers and cycads and some
bennettitaleans.
"The Lost World, " he said softly.
Lancer looked at Rook hopefully as he hopped down from the cockpit of Scott's abandoned
Alpha fighter. Let it be good news! Let her have found something!
But as Rook slid her cycle to a stop, Lancer was already listening to negative results
over the armored suits' tac net. "I followed the path north and cut a circle for a mile around.
There wasn't a trace of them."
As she finished her report, Lunk showed up in his olive-drab APC truck. "If they circled
back, they weren't leaving tracks," he reported.
That left another question. Scott's Cyclone was gone, and there were no tire marks
anywhere. But why would they have gone straight to full armor and flown away, without leaving a
message or trying to make commo contact with their teammates?
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Maybe the tire tracks had been obliterated by someone? That would be easy enough to do in
this kind of soil.
Lancer yelled out, "They know better than to do this to us. " Rand might be a bit
impetuous, and Annie was flighty to say the least, but Scott, a trained officer and team leader,
would never simply ignore his responsibilities.
There was only one explanation that might make some sense of the situation, and that was
the appearance of Invid.
"Shouldn't one of us scout ahead?" Rand asked as the two Cyclones sped through the eerie
landscape of the subterranean world. "I've had enough surprises for one day."
"We'll stick together for now," Scott ordered.
"Well, do you have any idea where we're headed?" The instruments were all useless.
"No, Rand. But anywhere away from those reptiles will be fine with me-hey, power down!
There's something up ahead-the end of the trail, maybe.
They stopped in an open part of the water course. What they saw ahead of them was a
rampart of stone some hundreds of yards high, running away to the left and right with no breaks.
"A dead end!" Annie wailed. "And the cliffs and ceiling come together."
It was true. The overhead haze was broken by the downward sweep of the gigantic cavern's
stone ceiling, which met the walls of the place in a tight seal. "No exit here," Scott observed.
"Maybe; maybe not," Rand corrected. "See up there?"
It was an opening of some kind, the mouth of a tunnel or cave, set high above the floor of
the cavern. "That could be our rabbit-hole," Rand declared. "It's worth a look."
Scott couldn't argue with that. Their engines howled.
Elsewhere, the Regis noticed that something was amiss in one of her Genesis Pits. From
Reflex Point, her consciousness reached out to join with the evolved mind of a Shock Trooper who
was following the movements of the three Humans.
The Trooper's single, cyclopean optic sensor flashed red as she mindspoke. /Contaminants
in the pit!/ her angry thought reverberated through that trooper and the others assigned to the
place. /Unless these intruders are contained ant neutralized, the experiment will be ruined!/
But she paused, seeing the reasoning of her guards. Certainly these were Earthly biota,
and under the Regis's broad guidelines they were valid candidates for inclusion in the pits. But
these were Human, and they were armed with weapons and mounted on vehicles. A counterproductive
anachronism here in the cavern of monsters!
Still, the introduction of machines and weapons might provide some instructive insights
about the capabilities of the creatures she had bred here beneath the Earth. Their worth as
contributors to the Invid's final, Evolved Form would be tested.
Yes; let it continue for now, at least until more observations had been made. The
creatures of the cavern would probably cleanse the place of outsiders by themselves, and that
would be most informative, too. Or if not...
There were other ways.
CHAPTER FOUR
Fay Wray can have it!
Remark attributed to Annie LaBelle
There are important insights to the story in Rand's recounting of it in his voluminous Notes on
the Run:
"I got even more worried when I saw that that tunnel through the bedrock was artificial.
It had a low arc of roof, but the flat, level floor made it easy for us to go to cycle mode and
race along."
"The obvious fact that someone had drilled the tunnel made me nervous, but let's face it:
everything about that underground Lizard Lounge had me nervous by then. Scott had noticed it, too,
I assumed, but we didn't mention it because we didn't want Annie hysterical."
"So we barreled down the tunnel. The Cycs' headlights cut the darkness, but only showed us
the rock walls, the rock ceiling, and the rock floor. I would even have welcomed some motel art by
that time. I had long since outgrown my graffiti stage, but I was tempted."
"I fibbed to Annie. `Hang on tight! I've got a real strong feeling about this tunnel; in
fact I'm sure it's gonna be our way out of this place!' If she knew I was bulling her, she was
kind enough not to say so."
"But she did point to a bright light that was coming up before us. `Hey, look at that!'"
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"Scott's voice sounded real relieved over the tat net, `We made it!' That sort of
surprised me; I figured a guy raised in starships most of his life wouldn't feel the
claustrophobia as badly as I was feeling it, but I guess the weight of all those strata above us
had been working at him."
"So I said, tempting fate a little, `I knew it! Our troubles are over now!'"
"All of a sudden the floor of the tunnel seemed to slope down. The next thing we knew, the
Cycs were out in the open air and falling toward the lush vegetation down below."
"But we were pretty used to our mecha by then, although it had taken me some time to learn
the ropes on a Cyc and Scott hadn't had much practice operating in an environment like Earth until
he had crash-landed, a coupla weeks before. Mox nix; we hit our burners. I did my best to see that
I didn't lose Mint, and somehow I made that landing on sky-blue, umbrella-shaped thruster flames."
"The terrain we landed on seemed okay at first, with boulders and some kind of fanlike
growths coming from the ground. It was a little precarious but nothing those amazing Robotech
scoots couldn't handle. If I had had my helmet open, maybe I would have noticed the smell; Annie
was, I suppose, too strung out to."
"We were congratulating ourselves on making it When the ground beneath us began to move.
We had landed in the middle of a bunch of big sail-backed things! Just before we thruster-jumped
the hell out of there, I got a look down the maw of one of the things and saw it had two quite
large front choppers. I guess it was a Dimetrodon, but I wasn't doing much note-taking and really
couldn't tell you for sure if you asked me."
"Scott was howling something about `more dinosaurs' but we were safe. The herd had re-
settled for the night."
"We were all watching them to make sure that they weren't thinking about a bedtime snack,
but I just happened to be looking off to one side when I caught the flash of movement. `Hey,
Invid!' I blurted out. But whatever it was had already ducked."
"Scott thought I was crazy, and we got a little sore at each other. Being that far
underground and in a situation so insane had him kind of frayed. But then he backed off a bit,
looking around thoughtfully. `Maybe they are involved in all this. I suppose-'"
"Scott interrupted his thought when he noticed that Annie was off an another caper, waving
to us from a few yards away. She was balancing, with a lot of windmilling of her hat and shuffling
of shoes, on a big, mottled, offwhite ovoid thing that rolled under her. She was giggling and
yelling, `Watch me!'"
"It was a typical Mint reaction to what we had just been through, driving it from her mind
by clowning around. When I saw what she was doing, I could only think, Oh, my god! and I started
to reach for my '90. Scott was yelling at her to get down off of there."
"Annie laughed right up until the second she realized that something big was coming up
behind her-fast! I got my gun out. Maybe that Daspletosaurus actually wasn't the size of two
Battloids one on top of the other, but that was how it looked to me at that moment."
"Certainly it was a little surprised to see Annie playing around with its eggs. I can only
surmise that it had just laid them and hadn't had time to cover over its nest. It was fast and
agile and brilliantly colored. It was just like the oldtime revisionist paleontologists said: a
tower of bone and muscle in metallic blues and reds and pinks. Its teeth looked like sharpened
baseball bats."
"I opened fire at it, and then Scott did, too. I have to give the lieutenant credit: he
stood his ground and just kept shooting H90 rounds at it, even though it didn't look like he was
doing any damage to the thing."
"If you're sitting someplace safe and reading this, I'll tell you something: It feels a
lot different when you're there, and an animal bigger than any mecha is bearing down on you and
you can smell it, and the best shots you can lay out don't seem to be making any difference. It
takes a lot not to bolt, but I didn't have to make the choice because Scott Bernard was slightly
in front of me, straddle-legged, whamming away. So I stood my ground, too."
"Then you live from microsecond to microsecond, and events all fuse together, because when
you're about to die your life is suddenly an infinitely precious thing, no matter how lousy it's
been to you."
"It was our good luck that the thing had a lot of ground to cover. I was aiming for the
skull, hoping I might put its eyes out of commission or even get its brain somehow. It roared and
staggered at us. But H90s were developed for use against Invid mecha, and no living organism, even
one the size of that tyrannosaurid, could survive the kind of punishment we were giving it."
"We chopped away at its feet, legs, chest cavity, head-all while it was shrieking and
snapping. Then Annie had the presence of mind to leap clear, as the Daspletosaurus fell across its
own eggs, crushing some, dying and charred, never understanding what had killed it."
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