Force of Arms

by Jack McKinney

  It was Minmei on every page, glamour poses and home snapshots, portfolio glossies and PR photos. Lisa got angrier and angrier as she thumbed through them.

  Why do I have the impulse to strangle this girl?

  Along with the anger came a pain so sharp and cold, it took her off guard. Lisa had assumed she and Rick were solidifying something, strengthening the ties between them. But the thought of his keeping this album, taking it out when Lisa wasn't there and fantasizing over it-that was too much to bear.

  Having his companionship and friendship without his declared love was something she had accepted, albeit always with a secret hope. But the photo album made her feel she had been taken for granted, a kind of emotional consolation prize. Her self-respect simply wouldn't allow that.

  Lisa slammed the album shut, tore off the apron, and strode for the front door. As the door rolled shut to lock, she tossed Rick's spare house key onto the living-room rug, leaving it behind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  We won? When you hear some military moron say that to you, spit on him! Point out the graveyard that is Earth! When he tells you how the military's going to make all that well again too, hold up the ash that used to be your home.

  They won, all right, and they'd just love to win again. And every time, it's you and I who lose.

  From Lynn-Kyle's tract, Mark of Cain

  Rick Hunter sat in the cockpit of the grounded Guardian and watched white spores take to the wind like miniature parasols. Meanwhile, he wrestled with his thoughts.

  The truth was that Earth was a dead end for a pilot. Oh, there was the problem of the rebellious Zentraedi, to be sure, and the various fractious human communities. But the war was over, and there were no flying circuses. Maybe it would be easier to put up with the growing boredom of peacetime life if bigger things weren't brewing out beyond Earth's atmosphere.

  Breetai and Exedore seemed to be at the source of it, and Gloval, Dr. Lang, and Dr. Zand. Only everything was so secret that a mere squadron commander couldn't find out a thing. Even Lisa professed not to know anything. But scuttlebutt and the few hints Rick could get from his intel debriefings made him believe that the SDF-2 was slated for a big, big mission.

  He was pretty sure that the SDF-2, and such Zentraedi warships as Breetai could get fully functional again, were going to carry the war to the Robotech Masters. Humans and Zentraedi would go out and end the threat forever or die trying.

  How could he not go? Only...that was a voyage and a military operation that might make their previous campaign look like a weekend vacation by

  comparison. It would probably mean he would never see Earth and Minmei again.

  Not that he'd seen much of Minmei in the last two years, but signing on for a trip to far-off star systems would strip away any hope.

  But what else was there for him except flying? He wished and prayed that there could be Minmei, but Minmei was so bound up in her glittering career that he rarely saw or heard from her. On the SDF-2 mission, at least he would be with Lisa, and he was becoming more and more convinced that that was where he belonged.

  Of course, the odds against surviving would be very high, but that was a combat pilot's lot. And what better cause was there to serve, and die for, if it came to that? He had a sudden vivid recollection of something Roy Fokker had told him.

  An American president once said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, Rick.

  It was on a "day" in SDF-1, out someplace by Pluto's orbit, when Rick joined the RDF There's no more flying for fun, Roy told him, stern and grave. From now on you fly for the sake of your home and loved ones, Rick.

  "My home and loved ones, huh?" Rick muttered to himself. He flicked a switch, and the canopy descended on whining servos.

  "All right; time to go flying, then." He eased the throttle forward. The Guardian's foot thrusters blew soil away and lifted it. Rick was careful to skirt the patch of dandelions as he rose. But the backwash sent hundreds of thousands of spores wafting into the air in hopes of finding some other kind plot of ground.

  Rick tucked a single dandelion blossom into a seam of his instrument panel, mechamorphosed his ship to Fighter mode, and went ballistic, climbing toward the sun. He set the commo rig to search for local traffic, part of the recon mission. The equipment scanned the band and stopped at a transmission that carried a female human voice.

  -here by my side,

  Here by my side.

  He jolted against his safety harness, reaching to get a stronger signal. "Minmei!"

  There was applause in the background. Another voice he knew well came up. "You're listening to the beautiful Lynn-Minmei, broadcasting live and direct from Granite City! This area is slowly rebuilding through the combined efforts of many wonderful people who are ceaselessly devoting their time and labor to a project that many considered hopeless."

  Lynn-Kyle. He sounded more like a pitchman than a costar now, but he still had that same hostility in his tone.

  Granite! Rick realized. Not far away! He was already checking his nav computers.

  "People Helping People is the theme of our tour," Kyle went on. "And we don't consider the project hopeless at all! How do you people feel about it?"

  Clapclapclapclap, from the audience, and a few yays. Those shill questions always worked. Rick's expression hardened, and he brought his stick over for a bank.

  Granite City lay in the shadow of a Zentraedi flagship rammed like a Jovian bolt into the red dirt. The outskirts of the place were still haphazard rubble from the war, but a few square blocks in the center had been made livable.

  There were weakened foundations and angled slabs of paving and fractured concrete everywhere, but at least the streets were clear.

  This most recent stop in what was to have been the triumphant Minmei People Helping People tour had attracted something under three hundred people in Granite, plus several Zentraedi who loomed over the crowd even when sitting and squatting.

  The crowd was composed of sad-eyed people doing their best to believe they had a future. Most were ragged, all were thin, and there were signs of

  deficiency diseases and other medical problems among them.

  But at the urging of Lynn-Kyle and others in the loose-knit network of antigovernmentalists, Granite persisted in refusing to drop its status as an independent city-state or allow military relief teams in.

  The Zentraedi were in better shape than the humans; the rations in the spiked ship could sustain them, though for some reason those seemed to have no nutritive value for Homo sapiens. There had been a fine cordiality and hopefulness among the people of Granite at first, but now there was growing despair in this dissident model program. Thus, this morale appearance by Minmei.

  "Yeah! Let's hear it!" Lynn-Kyle yelled, working the mike at center stage, making beckoning motions with his free hand. The crowd clapped again, a little tiredly.

  "And Granite doesn't need any outside interference, either!" he yelled.

  He had spent fewer than four hours there in his entire life.

  "The good people here will take care of themselves and make Granite the great metropolis she once was!"

  The applause was even weaker this time around, and the more theatrically knowledgeable in the front rows could detect beads of flop-sweat on Kyle's brow.

  "But let's forget, for now, what the military warmongers have brought us to," he said, almost scowling, then catching himself and flashing a bright smile. "As we listen to the song stylings of the marvelous, the incomparable Lynn-Minmei!"

  Recorded music came up, and Minmei hit her mark right on cue, mike in hand. She sang her latest hit.

  I've made the right move at the right time! We're on our way to something new!

  Just point the way and I will follow! Love feels so beautiful with you!

  Rick followed the song, entranced, until a transmission cut through Minmei's singing. "Commander Hunter, come in, please."

  It was Ransom. Rick switched to the tac net. "What is i
t?"

  "You all right, skipper? I've been trying to reach you for some time; thought you might've run into trouble."

  Rick let a little impatience slip into his tone. "Is anything wrong?"

  Ransom looked at him out of a display screen next to the yellow dandelion, speaking precisely. "Nothing specific, boss. Just wish you'd take your rover radio with you when you leave your ship to look around. I worry, y' know?"

  Rick bit back the rebuke he had been putting together. Of course he knew; he would have chewed out a subordinate for doing the same.

  He sounded contrite, and it was real. "Sorry, Lieutenant. But I came across something miraculous today."

  Ransom stared. "Trouble with renegade Zentraedi? Boss, what is it?"

  Rick took the dandelion from its place and held it close to the optical pickup. "Look what I found. An entire field of them."

  Ransom considered the flower. "Wait a minute. Your zone wasn't inside the natural recovery planning zone."

  Rick was ecstatic. "That's right! But lemme tell ya, there are flowers in the northwest quadrant!"

  The usually morbid Ransom cracked a very slight smile. "I suppose we should have known the Earth would be starting her own recovery program. Great news, huh, skipper?"

  "Roger that. Look, continue your patrol according to mission plan, Ted."

  "I copy, but aren't you coming with us?"

  "Not right now," Rick answered. "I'm dropping over to Granite City. If anything serious comes up, give me a yell."

  Ransom nodded and hedged. "And, uh, boss..."

  "Don't sweat it, Lieutenant! When I leave the ship, I'll take my rover!

  Out!"

  Rick did a barrel roll for the hell of it and opened his throttle wide for Granite City.

  If she wonders,

  It's you who's on my mind. It's you I cannot

  Leave behind...

  Rick followed Minmei's voice as someone else might have trod a yellow brick road. From overhead the Zentraedi battlewagon dominated the landscape, but a closer look at the ground showed that the rusting metal peak was a monument to defeat and that the teeming victors were still in turmoil.

  Rick left his VT at the edge of town under the care of the local militia CO, who was well disposed toward RDF fliers even if the populace wasn't. Rick got to the concert and missed, by a fraction of a second, getting flattened by the hand of a Zentraedi leviathan who was sitting at the edge of the crowd, shifting his weight.

  "I'm so sorry," the alien tried to whisper in his resounding bass. Everybody around them went Shhhh! Rick gave the big fellow a nod to let him know it was no offense taken.

  It's me who's lost,

  The me who lost your heart The you who tore my heart Apart...

  She's come a long way, but it's the same girl I spent those awful, wonderful two weeks with somewhere in the belly of the SDF-1. My Minmei.

  When the song was over, the crowd applauded. Rick applauded loudest of all.

  Near a sidewalk cafe in Monument City, with the SDF-1's shadow coming her way like a sundial, Lisa stared dully at people passing by and ignored her cooling demitasse. The meetings had been delayed, giving her some unexpected free time. Idle hours were more a curse than a blessing.

  As she watched, two down-at-the-heels boulevardiers ogled a very pert young blonde whose hemline came nearly to her waist. The two did not quite slobber.

  "My man, the women were dealt all the aces in this life. They can have anything they want," opined one, a beefy kid who looked as if he stood a fair chance of growing up to be normal. "They can have anybody they wanna have."

  Lisa considered that, her chin resting on her interlaced fingers. "That's all you know about it, my fat friend," she murmured, watching the two would-be rakes go on their way. "Here's one woman who'd trade every other ace, knave, and king in the deck for one Rick Hunter."

  She drew a sudden breath as she looked across Monument City's main thoroughfare. Max Sterling strolled along there, looking as if he didn't have a care in the world, pushing a baby carriage. Miriya held his arm.

  They stopped, and Max hurried around the carriage to scoop up his daughter and pat her back, burping her on his shoulder. Miriya looked on serenely with a smile Lisa almost begrudged her.

  The very most secret eyes-only reports boiled down to the fact that nobody could quite figure out how Max and Miriya had had Dana, their baby girl. But as proved by exhaustive tests, the child was indisputably theirs.

  No Zentraedi male-female reproduction had ever been recorded, making the whole thing that much more extraordinary. The likelier explanations had to do with Miriya's consumption of human-style food as opposed to the antiseptic rations of the Zentraedi and her exposure to emotions that had worked subtle biochemical changes on her. The word "Protoculture" cropped up again and again in the reports, only nobody seemed to understand quite what it was, at least nobody outside the

  charmed, secretive circle of Lang, Exedore, and a few others.

  Like a lot of women and quite a few men, Lisa sometimes thought all that was a crock. Miriya and Max were in love, and so: little Dana.

  She looked at the three of them, and for a moment Max wore Rick's face, and Miriya wore Lisa's. The SDF-2 would soon be ready for space trials, but that didn't mean the First Officer couldn't have a family. The starship had been built for a long voyage, for children as well as men and women.

  Max and Miriya and their baby resumed their way, and Lisa watched them go. They look so happy. If only I could make Rick understand!

  Just then, though, two RDF boot trainees wandered up to the caf?with a street-blaster stereo. The well-remembered voice boomed,

  And the thrill that I feel Is really unreal.

  "Hew! That little mama sure can sing," the first one said, whistling. "I'd give a month's pay to meet her."

  The other blew his breath out sarcastically as the pair sat down a few tables away. "Sure, buddy. Then she takes you away and signs over the deed to her diamond mine to you, right?"

  The first one made a very sour face and signaled the waitress. On the eardrum agitator, Minmei sang,

  I can't believe I've come this far. This is my chance to be a star!

  There doesn't seem to be any way I can avoid you, Minmei!

  Lisa collected her purse and left her money on the salver, then rose and headed off down the boulevard.

  She was so caught up in her own thoughts, regrets, and preoccupations that she didn't realize-had never realized-how many admiring glances she drew. She was a willowy, athletic young woman with brown hair billowing

  behind her, a delicate complexion, and a distant look in her eyes. Her insignia and decorations were enough to make any vet, male or female, take notice of her.

  If there were an artistic competition for the concept WINNER, a simple photo of Lisa at that moment would have won it. Women in particular looked at her, her sure stride and air of confidence, and made various resolutions to be more like this self-confident superwoman, whoever she was.

  But that wasn't the way it felt to Lisa. She allowed herself a rueful half smile. I guess when the aces were dealt out, it just wasn't in the cards for me to get the one I want.

  It was near enough to a joke to make her smile cheerlessly. She quickened her pace, off to report to the SDF-2.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I've seen people like Lynn-Kyle before. I'm prepared to believe that he hates war; who among us does not?

  But he has the attitude, set in concrete, that virtue is measured by one's disaffection from the power structure under which one lives. Such a person builds a fortress of self-serving piety, resisting authority of any kind at every turn whether for good or ill.

  The RDF will continue to defend to the death the freedoms that make this possible.

  From the log of Captain Henry Gloval

  "What a crummy hole!"

  Lynn-Kyle threw his arms wide to take in Granite City, off to one side, and the wastelands all around it.

 
; Minmei sat despondently on a piece of rotting Zentraedi alloy, hugging her knees to her chest, a pink jacket draped over her shoulders against the evening chill, watching him take another slug from the bottle of brandy that seemed to be his constant companion these days.

  Things had gone steadily downhill since Vance Hasslewood had moved up in the world to become a booking agent and aspiring theater maven, leaving Minmei's cousin, costar, and lover to take over the duties of manager. Lynn-Kyle's interests went far beyond show business, and he had come to realize that his own fame and popularity were only a pale reflection of hers.

  Now he paused. "Lousiest booking so far!" Then he threw back another several ounces, making her wince.

  Kyle wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, staining the purple cuff of his suit. "Let's get out of this burg! It's disgusting!"

  He was red-eyed and close to the edge, but she said what was on her mind anyway; she had held it back long enough. "Do you have to drink so

  much?"

  "Listen, don't change the subject!" he slurred. "We didn't even get any money! This is our whole paycheck!"

  He toed over a wilted cardboard box; out spilled some canned goods, bath soap and so forth, a few vegetables-the same dole everyone else in Granite City was living on. Even though Granite refused to recognize the new Earth government's authority, the government gave what help it could; without it, the city couldn't have kept functioning.

  "A stinkin' handout from our military overlords!"

  "And what else do we need for survival?" she asked him, watching his eyes. Two years with Kyle had made her older, much older.