Devil's Hand

by Jack McKinney

  “We have yet to find any trace of the Flower,” their spokesman said in a modulated voice.

  “And most of the population is too old and sickly to serve as slave labor. I’m afraid there is very little of use to us here.”

  “Perhaps it will simply take more digging to find what we seek. Come,” the Regent instructed their overseer, Obsim, “there is something I wish to discuss with you.”

  As they walked-through an enormous hold lined top to bottom with Shock Troopers, Pincer and Command ships, and inward toward the very heart of the flagship-the Regent explained his position.

  “Just because the Regis is somewhat more evolved than I am, she treats me like I just crawled from the swamp. I fear she’ll try to undermine my authority; that’s why this mission must succeed.”

  “I understand,” Obsim said.

  “I’m placing you in charge of the search on Tirol. The Inorganics will be your eyes and ears. Use them to uncover the secrets of this place.”

  Obsim inclined his head in a bow. “If this world holds any clue to the matrix’s whereabouts, I will find it.”

  “See that you do,” the Regent added ominously.

  A transparent transport tube conveyed them weightlessly to the upper levels of the ship, where the Invid brain was temporarily housed. The brain was just that, a towering fissured and convoluted organ of Protoculture instrumentality enclosed in a hundred-foot-high bubble chamber filled with clear liquid.

  The Regent’s attempt to emulate the Masters’ Protoculture Caps: his living computer.

  King and scientist stood at the chamber’s pulsating, bubbled base.

  “The invasion is complete,” the Regent directed up to the brain. “I have brought Tirol to its knees.”

  A synaptic dazzle spread across the underside of the instrument brain, tickling what might have been the pituitary body, the pons varolii, and corpora albicantia. The brain spoke.

  “And yet your search for the matrix continues.”

  “For a while longer, yes,” the Regent confirmed in defense of his actions, the chamber effervescence reflected in his glossy black eyes.

  “Find Zor’s ship and you will have what you seek. Not until then.” The brain seemed to aspirate its words, sucking them in so that its speech resembled a tape played in reverse.

  “You’ve been talking to the Regis again!” the Regent growled. “You expect me to search for a ship that could be halfway across the galaxy?”

  “Calculations suggest that such a journey would constitute a minor drain on existing Protoculture reserves when compared to these continued assaults against the Masters’

  realms.”

  “That may very well be,” the Regent was willing to concede, “but conquest is growth.

  Conquest is evolvement!” He turned to Obsim. “My orders stand: section the brain.

  Transport the cutting to the surface to guide the Inorganics. Bring me what I seek and I will make you master of your own world. Fail, and I will leave you to rot on this ball of dust for an eternity.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  What with all the major players from the RDF and the Southern Cross in attendance (at the Hunters’ wedding), one would have expected at least one newsworthy incident; but in fact the only negative scene was one touched off by Lynn-Minmei’s song, which provoked exclamations of disapproval from a few members of the Sisterhood Society. “We’ll be together,” the chorus went, “as married man and wife.” Here was Lisa Hayes, first officer of the SDFs 1 and 2, admiral of the fleet, and commander of the entire SDF-3, suddenly reduced by Minmei’s lyric to Rick Hunter’s wife!

  Footnote in Fulcrum: Commentaries on the Second Robotech War by Major Alice Harper Argus (ret.)

  Rick watched the Earth as it swung into view feeling a little like he imagined the starchild did in that old science fiction classic. He knew it was stretching things a bit to feel that way, but in a very real sense the future of the planet was in the hands of a council of ordinary men and women. Human beings, not superheroes or protectors, or starchildren who had already crossed over.

  Earth looked unchanged from up here, its recent scars and still-open wounds concealed by a mantle of white swirls and dense fronts. But Rick had walked Earth’s scorched surface for six years and knew the truth: his world would never be the same. And it took a new kind of strength to accept this fact, to overcome the inertia of age and surrender a host of childhood dreams.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Lisa said from behind him.

  He hadn’t heard her enter, and swung around from the viewport with a guilty look on his face.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  He smiled at her and shook his head. “A penny, huh…Is that all they’re worth?”

  “A nickel, then.”

  She came over to kiss him, and immediately sensed his remoteness. He turned back to the view as she released him. Sunlight touched the wingtips of dozens of shuttles ferrying guests up to the satellite for the wedding.

  “`The stars my destination,’” he mused. “I can’t help wondering if we’ve made the right choice. It’s like a crazy dream.”

  Lisa pursed her lips and nodded; Max had prepared her for Rick’s mood, and she wanted him to understand that her shoulder was the softest around. Still, she didn’t like his waffling and sudden indecisiveness. “It’s not a crazy dream,” she told him. “If we succeed, we’ll be insuring a future for ourselves.”

  “I know, I know,” he said dismissively. “I’m not as mixed up as I sound. It’s just coming down so fast all of a sudden. The mission, our wedding…”

  “We’ve had six years to think about this, Rick.”

  Rick took her in his arms; she linked her hands behind his neck. “I’m an idiot.”

  “Only if you’re having doubts about us, Rick.”

  “Not now,” he said, collecting on the kiss Max had interrupted earlier.

  In his small cabinspace aboard the SDF-3, Jack Baker was softly thumping his head against a computer console. There was just too much to learn. Not only did you have to prove yourself in air combat maneuvers, you had to know all this extra stuff! Ordnance specifications, drill procedures, TO&E nonsense, Zentraedi! for crying out loud…If he’d known that mecha piloting was going to involve all this, he would have just gone to college or something!

  The computer sounded a tone, urging him to enter his response to the question it had flashed on the screen.

  “Plot a course from A to B,” Jack read, “taking into consideration vector variants listed above…” Jack scanned the tables hopelessly and bellowed a curse at the ceiling.

  At the same moment, the cabin door hissed open and a VT lieutenant walked in. He took a long analytical look at Jack, then glanced at the monitor screen.

  “Troubles, Baker?” he said, barely suppressing a grin.

  Jack reached over and switched off the monitor. “No, no troubles.”

  The pilot sniggered. “Here, this oughta cheer you up.”

  Jack took the envelope and opened it: inside was a handwritten note from Admiral Hunter inviting him to the wedding reception. “`I hope you can make it,’” Jack read aloud three times, trying to convince himself that the note was on the level.

  “From Richard A. Hunter,” Jack said to the pilot, gloating. “My buddy, the admiral.”

  The hold chosen for the wedding was on the factory’s upper level, where a massive overhead viewport had recently been installed expressly for the event. The space could accommodate several thousand, but by three o’clock on the afternoon of the big day every seat was filled. Rick and Lisa had demanded a simple ceremony nonetheless, and in keeping with their wishes the hold was minimally outfitted. Two tiered banks of chairs had been set up to face a raised platform, behind which rose a screen adorned with a large stylized cross. The stage was carpeted and matched by a five-hundred-foot-long red runner that covered the center aisle. Large floral arrangements had been placed along the aisle and perimeter of the stage, and in the h
old beyond sat two rows of gleaming Alpha Veritechs, red on the right, blue on the left.

  The front rows had been reserved for close friends and VIPs, who sat there now in their finest gowns, pleated uniforms, service ribbons, and golden-epauletted dress blues. The hold was humming with hundreds of individual conversations, and organ music was wafting from a dozen theater speakers. Bowie and Dana, who were supposed to be waiting with the wedding party, were playing a game of tag among the rows, and Jean Grant was chasing both of them, asking her son if was too much to request that he behave himself just this once.

  “Can’t you act like a grown-up!” she screamed, at the end of her rope.

  “But I can’t, Mom,” the youngster returned to the amusement of everyone within earshot, “I’ve got the mind of a seven-year-old!”

  Seating hadn’t been prearranged along any “familial” lines, but a curious breakdown had begun from the start. On one side sat Field Marshal Anatole Leonard and most of the Southern Cross apparat-T. R. Edwards, Dr. Lazlo Zand, Senator Wyatt Moran, and dozens of lesser officers and dignitaries-and on the other, the RDF contingent: Vince and Jean Grant, Miriya Sterling, Drs. Lang and Penn and the rest of the Plenipotentiary Council, Jonathan Wolff, the Emersons, and others. In a tight-knit group behind the council members sat Exedore, and Dana Sterling’s three deathly-ill Zentraedi godfathers, Rico, Konda, and Bron. Breetai’s micronized troops were farther back, along with some of the Wolff Pack, the Skull and Ghost Squadrons.

  Up front, on the sunny side, were Lynn-Minmei and her singing partner, Janice Em. Lisa’s response to Minmei’s offer that day in the gown shop had been straightforward: she had asked her to sing at the wedding.

  Janice Em was something of an enigma to the media. Word had it that she was Dr. Lang’s niece, but rumor linked her to the wizard of Robotechnology in more intimate terms. In any case, she seemed to have appeared on the scene out of nowhere two years earlier, only to become Lynn-Minmei’s much needed tenor and constant companion. She was a few inches taller than Minmei, with large blue eyes set in a somewhat pale but attractive face.

  Her hair color changed every few months, but today it was a delicate lavender, pulled back in a rose clasp behind one ear. She had chosen a yellow spaghetti-strapped gown to complement Minmei’s blue halter and offset it with a necklace of ancient Egyptian turquoise.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time Rick and I got married?” Minmei was saying just now.

  Janice heard the sadness in Minmei’s voice, but chose to react to the statement. “Maybe you should be telling Lisa,” she suggested. “Or are you saving it for when the chaplain asks if anyone can show `just cause’?”

  Minmei reacted as though she had been slapped; then she let out her breath and laughed.

  It was so typically Janice to say something like that. When the press grilled her for the scoop on Janice and Dr. Lang, Minmei would often reply,” Well, if she’s not related to him, she’s certainly got his sense of humor.”

  “It was a fantasy wedding, Janice,” Minmei explained. “When we were trapped together in a hold in the SDF-1.”

  “And here you are trapped with him in another hold.”

  Minmei ignored it. “I just can’t stop myself from thinking about what might have been.”

  “`The saddest are: it might have been,”’ Janice quoted. “But forget it, Lynn. The past is only an arrangement of photons receding at lightspeed.”

  “That’s very romantic, Janice.”

  “Romance is for storytellers.”

  “And what about our songs-you don’t call them romantic?”

  Janice turned to her straight-faced. “Our songs are weapons.”

  Above the would-be chapel, on an observation balcony Max had christened the “ready-reaction room,” Rick stood in front of a mirror trying to tie a knot. His tux was white with sky-blue lapels.

  “The balloon’s about to go up,” Max enthused, bursting in on him.

  “I can’t do it, Max. You’re going to have to do it for me.”

  It took Max a moment to understand that Rick was referring to the tie; he breathed a sigh of relief and went over to his friend. “Here, I’m an expert with these things.”

  Rick inclined his head to the view below while Max went to work on the tie. He felt as though his stomach had reconfigured itself to some entirely new mode.

  “There,” Max said. “It’s a matter of finesse.”

  Rick thanked him. “A man couldn’t have a finer best man or best friend. I mean that.”

  Max blushed. “Hey, I was saving that for the toast.”

  “Okay,” Rick said in a determined voice. “Let’s move.”

  He reached up to give a final adjustment to the tie only to have it slip and loosen up.

  Max looked at it and shrugged. “Well, maybe you’ll start a trend.”

  In the end you go it alone, Rick was saying to himself ten minutes later as he turned to watch Lisa come down the aisle. Breetai, in his helmet-mask and Ironman getup walked beside her, and Rick couldn’t help seeing them as some kind of whacko father-and-daughter tag-team couple. Max’s daughter was one step behind them. But as Lisa drew nearer the image left him, and so did the nervousness. She had roses and baby’s breath in her hair, a choker of real pearls, and she looked radiant. Behind Lisa’s back, Dana made a face at ringbearer Bowie and curled her fingers at her mom.

  Max and Breetai left the platform soon after, and the chaplain began to read the short service Lisa had written. A few minutes later Rick and Lisa were joining hands, exchanging rings and vows, and suddenly it was over.

  Or just beginning.

  They kissed and a thousand strobe lights flashed. Cheers and applause rose from the crowd above a flourish of strings and horns; and outside the viewport, teams of Veritechs completed a series of slow-mo formation flybys. A fanfare sounded as local space came to life with starbursts, roostertails, and fountains of brilliant color.

  Rick and Lisa shook a thousand hands and kissed a thousand cheeks; then they danced together to Minmei and Janice’s song. Spotlights found them in the hold as they moved through gentle arcs and twirls across the floor. Rick held her lovingly and caught the glint of teardrops in the corner of her eyes. He squeezed her hand and felt a wave of sadness wash through him. It was the song perhaps, a love song to be sure, but one sung with a sense of implied loss, an awareness of the ephemeral nature of all things.

  A world turns to the edge of night,

  the moon and stars so very bright;

  your face glows in the candlelight,

  it’s all because tonight’s the night…

  Now hold my hand and take this ring

  as we unite in harmony.

  We can begin to live the dream,

  the dream that’s meant for you and me.

  To be together,

  For the first time in our lives,

  it’s us together.

  As married man and wife, we’ll be together

  from now on, until death do us part;

  and even then, I hope our love lasts forever.

  “Oh, Rick,” Lisa whispered in his ear, moved to tears by the Voice that had conquered an army. “How I wish Claudia and Roy could be here.”

  Rick led her through a turn that kept her back to the guests. And Ben, he thought. And Gloval and Sammie and Vanessa and Kim and the countless millions sacrificed to war’s insatiable thirst…

  I promise to be always true

  until the very end’s in view.

  In good times and the bad times, too,

  I know that we can make it through.

  As one united we’ll be strong;

  because together we belong.

  If I could sing to you a song,

  I’d sing of love that won’t go wrong.

  If we’re together,

  we’ll make a brand new life for us together,

  as married man and wife, we’ll stay together…

  Couples began to join them on the dance floor
, and when the song finished, the party began in earnest. Happily, Rick found himself with some free moments while Lisa was off circulating table to table. Oddly enough, members of the Southern Cross and RDF were mingling without incident, and everywhere Rick looked he saw people having a good time.

  Except perhaps for Jean Grant, who was looking a little frazzled after having spent most of the ceremony chasing Bowie and Dana around.

  A photographer brought Rick and Lisa back together for the cake cutting, but Rick drew the line at that, and refused to take part in any of the archaic dances the band insisted on playing. Instead, he wandered around with a smile frozen in place that misrepresented his true inner state. He had realized, as though waking from a dream, that there was only the mission now. No wedding to absorb his concerns, no higher priority than the SDF-3 and his command.

  It was a frightening realization.

  Elsewhere, Jonathan Wolff was zeroing in on Minmei.

  “This has got to be the biggest reception I’ve ever played,” Minmei was exclaiming to Janice as Wolff came over.

  “You sang beautifully,” he began on a confident note.

  Minmei recognized a certain look in his eye and began to glance around for an escape route. “Uh, thank you,” she said in a distracted way.

  “The name’s Wolff. And do you know how long I’ve wanted to meet you?”

  Wolff! Oh, terrific, Minmei was saying to herself, when Janice suddenly blurted out, “Try humming a few bars.”

  Wolff’s smile collapsed and he began to look back and forth between the two women uncertainly. “I, uh-”

  “Oh, right, you were talking to Minmei, not me,” Janice said. “Look, I’ll relocate and you can give it a second try.”

  Minmei and Wolff watched her walk off.

  “Don’t mind Janice, she’s got a very peculiar sense of humor.”

  Wolff cleared his throat meaningfully and was about to say something, but Minmei excused herself and wandered away.

  “There’s someone over there I want to talk to,” she said over her shoulder.

  Undaunted, Wolff straightened his torso harness-in case anyone was watching. He saw Minmei talking to Exedore and three other Zentraedi men. But then Wolff noticed something else: a man about his own age standing nearby was also watching Minmei.