Force of Arms

by Jack McKinney

  Max had pulled the lever that sent the ship into Battloid mode, thinking the mecha through its change. The VT shifted to Battloid, looking like a futuristic gladiator in bulky, ultratech armor, bristling with weapons. Two pods drove in at him, cannon blazing.

  CHAPTER THREE

  That undisciplined showoff? That wet-nosed civilian joystick pilot? What a waste of time and effort!

  Remark attributed to Lisa Hayes upon being informed that trainee Rick Hunter had qualified as a VT pilot 2009 A.D.

  The pods fired away with the primary and secondary guns that protruded from their armored plastrons, but the blue bolts converged on utter vacuum. Max's Battloid wasn't where it had been a split second before. The Battloid had its autocannon in its metal fists, riding its backpack thrusters with the agility of a gymnast, darting like a dragonfly. It whirled

  on one pod, opening up.

  The chain-gun was loaded with depleted transuranic rounds, big as candlepins and much heavier-high-powered, extremely dense projectiles that delivered terrific amounts of kinetic energy. The pod's armor flew like shredded paper; it exploded in an outlashing of energy and debris.

  Max was still dodging with blinding speed, turning his sights on the second pod. He riddled it before the enemy pilot could draw a bead on him, putting a tight shot group of holes in the center of the egglike alien mecha. The pod became a brief fireball.

  No system of manual or computer controls could have come up with such astounding maneuverability, such instantaneous responses and deadly shooting. Only the "thinking cap," the interface of mind and mecha, could work the seeming magic of the RDF.

  Other VTs had already paired off against the foe. The mecha swirled and pounced; their missiles corkscrewed and sizzled while energy bolts and powered gatling rounds lit the darkness. But the pods had the advantage of numbers by more than two to one, enough to occupy every Veritech and leave more pods to go after the shuttle.

  The shuttle pilot was taking evasive action and running for safety at full emergency power. But there was no safety; the shuttle was no match for the pods' speed, and the Zentraedi closed in, firing. The shuttle's light armaments and lack of maneuvering ability made it easy prey, but the shuttle skipper did his best, trying to evade. He was hoping he could eventually make a dash for the tantalizingly nearby Earth, knowing that the UEDC would never allow any of its forces to intervene or otherwise risk turning the Zentraedi wrath on Earth itself. He could hope for no help from that quarter.

  A Zentraedi cannon burst stitched holes in the shuttle's port wing in a line of three, ringed by molten metal. Lisa felt the ship rock in her armored cocoon, and gripped the padded armrests, waiting to see what the outcome of the battle would be.

  The attacking pod was a modified standard type, carrying augmentative particle-beam cannon for added firepower. It turned to come back for the kill, but just then Max arrived, his Battloid diving headlong into the fight. The Battloid knocked the pod aside like a football player, driving a huge, armored shoulder into it.

  Then the Battloid that was Max Sterling flipped neatly on foot thrusters and fired. The rain of armor-piercing slugs punched a dozen holes in the enemy, and it was driven back like some wounded living thing. There was no secondary explosion-very unusual, since the enemy mecha's power systems usually turned them into firecrackers once their armor had been pierced.

  Two more pods came in at him, one with extra missile racks and another with the strange rabbit ears of a Zentraedi signal-warfare ship. Max went at them, juking and evading to stay out of their cross hairs, his Battloid firing short bursts from the autocannon.

  One of the escort VTs had been lost, another damaged by the first onslaught. Several more were still engaged in combat, but the rest, like Max, had come through their first duel and were taking on new opponents. Some help arrived, and Max began to feel confident that he could keep the pods

  away from the damaged shuttle.

  But just then, Elkins yelled over the tac net, "More pods! We've got more pods coming at us-half a dozen!"

  Max's mouth became a thin line as he drove in to deal with his current opponents as quickly as he could. He thought back with a certain pilot's superstition on what he had said to the men in the alley. Perhaps the taboos were right and it was lethal bad luck to talk about not coming back.

  "The escorts are outnumbered," Kim called over her shoulder without taking her eyes from her instruments.

  "More pods closing in on them!" Vanessa added. "Cutting off the shuttle's escape."

  Gloval sat slumped in his command chair with his cap visor pulled down low over his eyes. A Veritech flight couldn't possibly get there in time, and he didn't have them to spare. But...

  "How long would it take the armored Veritech prototype to make it there?"

  Sammie already had the figures. "Approximately four minutes from launch at max boost."

  Claudia bit her lower lip, watching Gloval. The captain's head came up. "Prepare it for launch!"

  Claudia relayed the order, sending up a silent prayer, while Sammie asked, "Who'll be flying it, sir?"

  "Get Lieutenant Hunter to the hangar deck at once. Tell him we don't know how much longer Sterling can hold out."

  The ship's PA and a few seconds on a comcircuit had Rick on his way, anxious and very intense, in a commandeered jeep he flagged down in the middle of a Macross boulevard. The enlisted driver was a capable man who liked having an excuse to break all traffic laws.

  Rick suited up virtually on the run, and minutes later the aircraft elevator was lifting the humpbacked-looking armored VT to the flight deck.

  "Lieutenant, your destination is Lambda thirty-four," Sammie told him over the command net.

  "Lambda thirty-four? What're you talking about?"

  On the bridge, Claudia turned to Sammie. "Didn't you see to it that all pilots had the new map-reference codes?"

  Sammie looked devastated. "I was so swamped-I didn't think he'd need one until he went on duty later."

  Aircraft status was relayed; the armored VT was boxed and ready for launch. Sammie gritted her teeth, ignoring the silent stares of the rest of the bridge watch, especially the ominous quiet from Gloval. She couldn't let her mistake spell Lisa's death!

  Sammie opened the mike again, concentrating, eyes shut, matching coordinates and codes by memory. "Coordinates in superseded code are at Weasel twenty-one!"

  Rick launched without taking time to acknowledge. The armored VT poured on speed like nothing any other human-produced mecha had ever demonstrated. A single man in an untested ship, flying out against terrible odds-and if he lost, the woman who was humanity's best hope for peace would die too.

  From the first, Max had known that the chances of help arriving from the SDF-1 were slim. Now he was resigned to the fact that there would be no help, though he didn't let on to the dwindling survivors of the escort flight.

  The other VT pilots had flown well and bravely; their kill ratio was high, but still they went down to oblivion, one by one, in the silent globular explosions of a space rat race-a mass dogfight. Max Sterling flew like no pilot before him, a grim reaper, a deadly wraith, an undefeatable mecha demon in the form of a Battloid.

  The Battloid changed vectors and zoomed out of a pod's salvo, jamming some of its missiles with ECM equipment and dodging the rest, a masterful performance. Max turned the gatling on it and hosed it with a tracer-bright stream of heavyweight rounds, blowing it away.

  But still the enemy came, and more were arriving. It looked like a day for dying.

  He turned to get back with Elkins, to stick together and protect the shuttle to the last. But Elkins's ship vanished in an ugly blossom of fire and shrapnel. The escort had been whittled down to five. Four times that number came in at them now.

  Hanging back from the action in his Officer's Pod, Khyron watched gleefully. He suspected that the enemy leader, the amazingly fast and deadly blue-trimmed Veritech, was the same one who had sent so many Zentraedi to defeat and death-had eve
n humbled the vaunted Miriya, female ace of aces of the Quadronos.

  Khyron was in no hurry to lead the attack and tangle with the Micronian devil in person; it would be enough to dispose of the rest of his command by attrition and pull the Veritech wizard to bits by sheer weight of numbers. Then, Khyron would have a boast to fling in Miriya's face and the faces of all the others who secretly laughed at him!

  More pods converged. But at that moment a newcomer arrived.

  "Only one," a pod pilot reported, and Khyron dismissed the matter coldly. One more Veritech wouldn't matter now.

  His opinion changed a moment later. The fighter accelerated to unprecedented speeds, maneuvering more nimbly than any Micronian mecha ever had. Its humpbacked profile didn't match any computer ID.

  Then the strange new machine let forth a storm of fire: murderously fast and accurate missiles of some new type; autocannon rounds with even greater velocity, delivering far more kinetic energy on impact; phased-array laser blasts as powerful, at close range, as any plasma bolt.

  The new arrival, faster than the escort leader, was in and out among the pods, striking and vanishing, blowing two Zentraedi mecha to smithereens and going on to take out another while the first two explosions were still ballooning.

  Suddenly, the pods were like so many fat pigeons before the attack of a

  rocket-driven hawk.

  Rick's initial success was so overwhelming, so pronounced and irresistible, that he got careless.

  After seeing a dozen and more of the ambushers go up in flames, he began the switch to Guardian mode. But he'd forgotten what a hot ride he had, and the ship's sudden retro thrust almost put his head through the instrument panel and split his thinking cap down the middle.

  He barely recovered, shaking his head, the breath knocked from him by the strain of the safety harness across his torso. Trembling, he got control of himself and his ship and pressed the fight again.

  And once more the Zentraedi pods were fat targets at his mercy. He went swooping in at them, the VT laying out a staggering volume of fire, skeeting pods as if they were clay targets.

  Khyron had seen enough; he had no desire to go up against this bewilderingly fast, fearsomely armed intruder. He made sure his own withdrawal was well under way before he ordered his troops back.

  It didn't mean his thirst for revenge was slaked, of course; if anything, it was worse. It was a constant torment now; it would be until he destroyed the enemy insects once and for all.

  Max's report came over the bridge speakers. "The enemy has broken contact and withdrawn. The shuttle has sustained minimal damage and is continuing on.

  "With your permission, I am returning to the SDF-1 with the remaining escort ships, due to damage suffered during the attack. Lieutenant Hunter will escort the shuttle to Earth."

  Gloval granted permission. To Claudia's doubtful look, he responded, "That armored Veritech has so much speed and firepower, it's the equal of ten regular fighters."

  And a thousand more like it wouldn't put us on an equal footing with our foe, he thought to himself. Still, we must have as many as we can, as fast as we can!

  Sammie stretched and yawned. "I'm exhausted! I wish Commander Hayes was back."

  Claudia glared at her. "We almost lost her permanently with that code snafu of yours!"

  Sammie looked dismayed, young and tearful; she was even more upset by the danger to Lisa than by Claudia's temper, which could lead to very serious problems for anyone who angered the bridge officer.

  But Claudia softened after a moment. After all, Sammie had pulled things out of the fire.

  "That's okay, kiddo," Claudia said, turning back to her console. "Everybody learns from mistakes."

  Gloval thought about that, silently gazing through the forward viewport.

  Did that apply to the Zentraedi, too? And the UEDC rulers?

  Could they all be convinced the war was a catastrophic mistake?

  The protective shielding swung back to show Lisa a passenger compartment that seemed unaffected by the battle. She was still a little winded and bruised from the tossing around she had taken in the padded, armored cocoon.

  The shuttle pilot had kept her abreast of the battle and she felt a bit limp with relief. It was so vital that she get to Earth, that she speak for peace-long ago she had resigned herself to the likelihood that she would die in war, but to have died at that moment was a tragedy too vast to contemplate.

  "Commander Hayes," the pilot's voice came over the intercom. "We have a commo call for you from Lieutenant Hunter, who's now flying escort for us. I've patched it through."

  So Rick was the one who had ridden to the rescue in the armored VT;

  she had hoped it was and yet had feared for his life all through the fight. She picked up the handset.

  Armored panels were sliding back from all the viewports. She was looking out at the humpbacked new-generation Veritech. "Lisa, are you all right?" she heard him say.

  "Yes. Because you came to help." She saw him through the VT's canopy, looking at her worriedly.

  I was never cut out for emotional drama, she thought. I should have known I couldn't get away with a rehearsed exit speech.

  "No problem," he was saying. "Now, what's all this about you not coming back?"

  "There are reasons, Rick."

  "Even though your father's on the UEDC?"

  "Especially because of that. Besides, they aren't going to like what I'm going to tell them."

  There was a choppy sensation as the shuttle entered the Earth's atmosphere. He fumbled for something appropriate to say, knowing he had to turn back in seconds. "I hope you'll be safe" was all he could come up with.

  "Thanks. I'm sure I'll be fine."

  "Um." He knew the call was patched through the shuttle's com system, accessible to the pilots-presuming they weren't busy with their atmospheric entry maneuver. There's something else-sorta private. Here; look."

  He had fallen back, out of the pilots' line of vision, up close to the shuttle. She could see him clearly, watching her. She was confused. "What is it?"

  "Prosigns." He began flashing his VT's running lights in prosigns-brief dot-dash combinations that represented whole words, for quick manual Morse code communications. Lisa was a little rusty but found that she could read it.

  LIKE YOU MUCH. COMPLAIN SOMETIMES BUT BELIEVE IN YOU. MISS YOU MUCH IF YOU DON'T RETURN. PLEASE RETURN SOONEST.

  He could read her lips, so close were VT and shuttle. I'll try. So long, Rick.

  He threw her a salute-a joke between them, given his lack of military discipline when they had first met and clashed.

  The armored VT peeled off and vectored for the SDF-1, the blue vortices of its thrusters shrinking to match flames, then disappearing. The shuttle jostled more as it hit the denser atmosphere.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I have familiarized myself with the enemy's culture, to better carry out my espionage mission. What a repulsive, contemptible thing it is!

  All seems to revolve around their grueseome, sadistic method of reproduction, and it obsesses them constantly. The humans—Micronians— even make up false legends about it! They immerse themselves in stories where males and females poison one another or stab themselves or simply expire from some unexplained thing called "pining away." Or else the imaginary couples go off together and spend all their time in revolting, pointless intimacies.

  Our enemies languish in these falsehoods the way we might enjoy a hot soak at the end of a long campaign.

  What perversion! Truly, this is a species that must be exterminated!

  Miriya Parino, from her interim notes for an intel report

  to the Zentraedi High Command

  She was striking enough to draw stares even in the crowded Macross plaza, where people were usually in a hurry and some of the more attractive women in the dimensional fortress were to be seen.

  Boots clicking on the swirling mosaics of the plaza, the green-dyed hair flowing with the speed of her walk and t
he light air currents of the ship's circulation blowers, she looked neither right nor left. People made way for her; she was barely aware of their existence, even that of the men who looked at her so admiringly.

  Miriya, greatest combat pilot of her race, exulted a bit. I've finally discovered one of the reasons these Micronians have developed such amazing skill in handling their mecha! It wasn't the reason she had come to the SDF-1 as a spy, but it was a step in understanding her quarry, and that was elating. The intelligence data would also be of interest to the Zentraedi High Command, another coup to her credit.

  Not that Miriya needed one. As a demigoddess of battle, she was without equal, her kills and victories far outnumbering her nearest rival's. She had lost only once in her life, and had submitted to micronization and come to the SDF-1 to make amends for that.

  Miriya left the street and its EVE noonday, entering the dark and blinking world she had only recently discovered. All through the media-game arcade, people stood or sat hunched toward the glowing screens, playing against the machines.

  The screen-lit faces of the players were so intent, their movements so deft and quick-what could account for it other than military indoctrination and the hunger for combat? What other motive could there be for the Micronians' relentless practice? They were so highly motivated that they even subsidized their own training, feeding money into the machines.

  The young ones were the best and most diligent, of course. By the time they reach maturity, they wild be superb warriors! she thought. This, even though the very concept of human reproduction, the parents-child-adult cycle, made her feel queasy and dizzy. The discovery of that vileness, as she thought of it, had rendered her inert and dazed when she first stumbled on the truth of it. But in time, bravely, she had shaken off the horror of human reproduction and resumed her search.