Devil's Hand

by Jack McKinney

  You need some rest, we’re all frazzled.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he allowed.

  The door tone sounded just then, and Max entered.

  “Rick, Lisa. Sorry to barge in.”

  “It’s all right, Max,” Rick said, getting to his feet. “What’s up?”

  Max hesitated for a moment. “Rick, why are we ignoring the GMU’s requests for backup?”

  Rick stared at Max blankly. “What are you talking about?”

  “They’ve been sustaining heavy losses down there.”

  “Why wasn’t I informed of this? Who’s in the Situation Room now?”

  “Edwards.”

  Rick cursed under his breath. He gave Lisa a brief kiss and grabbed hold of Max’s arm, tugging him from the rim.

  The two men burst into the Tactical Information Center a few minutes later. Rick glanced once at Edwards and demanded an update from a tech.

  “Colonel Wolff and Commander Breetai have pulled out of Tiresia with scarcely half their command, sir. Latest reports shows them in sector November Romeo-”

  “Admiral!” a second tech shouted from farther along the threat-board console. “Priority transmission from the GMU.”

  “Go ahead,” Rick told him.

  The tech listened for a moment, then swiveled to face Rick again. “They say they’re receiving transmissions. From Tirol, sir-from somewhere in the city. The message is in Zentraedi, sir.”

  “Have they identified themselves?”

  “Negative, sir, other than to say they are Tiresians, and that they have important intelligence for our forces.”

  “A trick,” Edwards spat. “An Invid trick. They’ve been sending in false messages all morning.”

  Rick regarded him a moment, then turned to Max. “Scramble the Skull, Commander. Get down there and lend support.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Max saluted, leaving the room in a rush.

  “Tell Commander Grant to continue monitoring transmission,” Rick instructed the tech. “I want them to patch us in so we can hear it for ourselves.” Rick slapped his hand down on a mike switch. “Notify Exedore and Dr. Lang to meet me in the briefing room. I’m on my way now!”

  Rick ran for the door, already considering the decisions he would have to make.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Cabell’s age was incalculable, as had been the case with Exedore, Breetai, and several other Zentraedis who’d permitted Zand’s team to study them. But whereas the warrior clones had been “birthed” full-size and ageless, Cabell had enjoyed an actual childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. His decision to undergo the Protoculture treatments that fixed his age was a conscious one. It has yet to be demonstrated how DNA and Protoculture combine to allow this miracle to occur. Like the Micronization process, it remains a complete mystery.

  Louie Nichols, BeeZee: The Galaxy Before Zor

  “My name is Cabell. I am Tirollan scientist. Our people are being held prisoner by the Invid in structures throughout the city. The Invid ships and Inorganics are receiving their orders from a computer that has been placed in Tiresia’s Royal Hall. To defeat them, you must destroy the computer. And you must do this quickly. The Invid are many and merciless.

  Reinforcements will arrive if you do not take immediate action. My life is now forfeit; but I place the future of this world in your hands. Act swiftly, Humans, and be equally as merciless. For there is much more at stake than this tiny moon.”

  Cabell repeated the message twice more, then shut down the com device and turned to Rem. “Well, that does it, my boy. We have compromised our location.”

  Rem answered him in a determined voice. “But we may have saved Tirol, Cabell.”

  The old man began to look around the room, his face a mixture of rapture and longing. He ran his long fingers over the console. “Such a waste…What wonders we had at our disposal, what miracles we could have worked in the Quadrant.”

  Rem raised his eyes to the ceiling, as a sound like distant thunder shook the lab. This was followed by the sibilant burst of faraway energy beams. “It’s too late for dreams, Cabell.”

  “I fear you’re right. Their search has commenced.”

  Rem reactivated the communicator and gestured to the console audio pickups. “Repeat your message. We have nothing more to lose.”

  “The transmission is being repeated,” the Invid brain informed Obsim.

  “Pinpoint the source, computer.”

  A wiggling current coursed over folds of computer cortex. “Below this very chamber. There are vaults and corridors, a mazelike complex.”

  Obsim swung to an Enforcer lieutenant. “I want the Inorganics to flush them out. Tell your troops to stand by.”

  The soldier saluted and left the nave for an adjacent room where several Invid were watching an armored Shock Trooper bring its annihilation discs to bear on a stretch of ceramiclike floor. Already a wide wound several yards deep and as many wide had been opened.

  “Continue,” the Enforcer’s synthesized voice commanded. “Locate and destroy.”

  “What does he mean by ‘Inorganics’?” Rick wanted to know.

  Lang leaned back from the briefing-room table and steepled his fingers. “I think he must be referring to the fiendish drones Colonel Wolff faced in the city. Certainly the ships we salvaged are anything but inorganic.”

  Lang tried to keep the excitement from his voice, but he was sure Rick and the others caught it. He had passed the better part of twenty-four hours in the laboratory dissecting those ships and the remains of one of the alien pilots. And what he’d uncovered about the Invid had been enough to send him into a veritable delirium. Thinking back even now to those hours of experimentation and discovery was like some wild roller-coaster ride. The very shape and form of those beings! As though they existed outside any rules of evolution. And the incredible similarity their brain patterns had to the emanations of Protoculture itself! The green nutrient the pilots bathed in inside their crab-ships, the myriad mysteries of the ships’ propulsion, communication, and weapons systems, the integrity of pilot and ship that rendered Robotechnology’s advances primitive and childlike by comparison…It had all sent him running-literally running!-to the Council to sue for a course other than the warlike one they had embarked on…

  “Dr. Lang,” Rick was saying. “I asked you if this message will be enough to change the Council’s mind about leaving Tirolspace.”

  Lang started to reply, but Exedore’s late entry interrupted him. The Zentraedi ambassador apologized and seated himself at the table between Lang and General Edwards, who was plainly disturbed by Exedore’s arrival. Rick had the transmission replayed for Exedore’s benefit and waited for his evaluation.

  Exedore was silent for a long moment. “I…hardly know what to say,” he began. Rick had never seen the Zentraedi so, well, moved.

  “Cabell,” Exedore uttered. “He was a contemporary of Zor, a mentor, I think you would say.

  And to me, as well. He…he made me.”

  Lang and Rick exchanged astonished looks while they listened to Exedore’s explanation.

  This Cabell had apparently been instrumental in the creation of the first biogenetically engineered clones. “Then this message is on the level, Exedore?”

  “No one would use the name Cabell to evil purpose, Admiral. Of this much I am certain.”

  “Bullshit,” barked Edwards. “This is another Invid trick. They’re trying to lure us to this…`Royal Hall.’ Why? Because they have some sort of weapon there. They’re playing with us.”

  “What about it?” Rick asked the table.

  One of Lang’s techs spoke to that. “Scanners indicate the source of the transmission is subterranean-perhaps beneath the very structure we’ve identified as the Royal Hall.

  Colonel Wolff described it as…” the tech checked his notes, “`a flat-topped pyramid as big as a small mountain, crowned with some kind of columned shrine.’ We’ve picked up intense energy readings emanating from the structure.�
�

  “A weapon,” Edwards interjected.

  Rick tried to puzzle it out. “Suppose it is legit. Would Cabell knowingly call a strike down on his own head, Exedore?”

  “Without question, if Tirol could be saved by his actions.”

  “Then the Robotech Masters may still be alive. Is it enough to convince the Council, Doctor, yes or no?”

  “I think they’ll listen to reason. But if we can possibly achieve these ends without destroying-”

  “Raise the GMU,” Rick instructed one of his aides. “Inform Commander Sterling that I want a recon flyby of that pyramid. I don’t want anybody trying anything stupid. Tell Grant to keep the GMU dug in and wait for my word to move in.”

  “And Cabell?” said Exedore.

  “Yes,” Lang seconded. “Surely a rescue team-”

  “I’m sorry, Doctor,” Rick broke in. “You, too, Exedore. But I want to know what we’re dealing with before we send anyone in.”

  Edwards snorted. “We’ll say some kind words over his grave,” he said loud enough for Exedore to hear.

  In the tradition of that apocryphal cavalry who were always arriving in the nick of time, the Skull Squadron tore into Tirol’s skies from the shuttles that had transported them to the edge of the envelope, and fell like wrathful birds of prey on the enemy’s Pincer Ships and Shock Troopers. Cheers from Hovertankers and mecha commanders filled the tac and com nets as the Guardian-mode VTs dove in for missile releases and strafing runs.

  Captain Miriya Parino Sterling led her team of red fighters against a group of blue-giant Command ships that were going gun-to-gun with Breetai’s Zentraedi cadre. The smoking remains of Battlepods and strike ships littered a barren, now cratered expanse of high plateau where the Invid had successfully breached the GMU’s forward defense lines.

  Miriya’s Alphas hit the massive twin-cannoned mecha where they lived, chattering undercarriage guns stitching molten welts across cockpit shields and torso armor, and red-tipped heat-seekers finding the ships’ vulnerable sensor mouths. Explosions geysered fountains of white-hot alloy into the waning light as ship after ship fell, leaking viscous green fluids into the dry ground. Renewed, the Battlepods leaped to regain their lost ground, trading energy salvos with the larger ships, their orange and blue bolts cutting swaths of angry ionization through the moon’s thin atmosphere.

  Elsewhere, Max’s blue team backed up the Wolff Pack’s devastated Hovertank ranks, reconfigured to Battloid mode for close-in combat, while overhead, solitary Veritechs went to guns with the less maneuverable Shock Troopers. Ships boostered and fell, executing rolls and reversals as they engaged.

  Even the GMU’s main gun was speaking now, adding its own thunderous punctuation to the battle’s murderous dialogue. A second and third wave of mecha burst from the base’s forward ramps-Mac II cannons, Excalibers, and drum-armed Spartans-but the Invid would neither fall back nor surrender.

  It was all or nothing, Max realized as he bracketed two of the alien ships in his sights.

  Missiles tore from the Battloid’s shoulder racks and found their mark; the ships came apart in a dumbbell-shaped cloud of flame and thick smoke. In the end, once the RDF’s debris was carted from the field, it would look like a slaughter had taken place; but in the meantime men and women continued to die.

  Max ordered the Battloid into a giant-stride run, pulled back on the selector lever, and imaged the VT through to fighter mode. He went ballistic, instructing his wingmen to follow suit, and was about to rejoin Miriya when Vince Grant’s face appeared on one of the cockpit commo screens.

  “You’ve got new orders, Commander, straight from the top.”

  “Uh, roger, Home. Shoot.”

  “Your team’s to recon the Triangle. Just a flyby with a minimum of sound-and-light. Do you copy, Skull One?”

  “Can do, Home. Waiting for your directions.”

  “We’re punching them in now,” Vince said.

  Max’s onboard computer came alive, stammering vectors and coordinates across the display screen.

  “And Mac,” Vince added. “Be sure to keep in touch.”

  Evening’s shadow was once again moving across Tirol’s face; a crescent of Fantoma loomed huge in the southern skies, its ringplane a shaft of evanescent color. The battle was over-for the time being, forever, no one could be sure, any more than they could be sure who had won. If it went by the numbers, then the RDF had been victorious; but there was no known way of conveying that to the five hundred who had died that day.

  Jack had been returned to his outfit and was out at the perimeter now, finally out on Tirol’s surface, where he felt he should have been all along. There was a good deal of activity going on around him-mecha tows and transports and AFCs barreling by, VTs flying recon sweeps-but he still wasn’t content. He had been assigned to take part in a mine-emplacement op, which meant little more than observing while Gladiators planted and armed AM-2 Watchdogs across the field. (These anti-mecha mines of high-velocity plastique had been developed by one Dr. R. Burke-who was also responsible for the Wolverine assault rifles-and came complete with an Identification Friend or Foe targeting microchip housing a library of enemy ground signatures, even those recently cooked up by the GMU’s computers to indicate Invid Scouts and Shock Troopers.) So instead of giving the Gladiator his undivided attention, Jack had slipped away to eavesdrop on a conversation that was in progress at one of the forward command posts. Jack understood that the enemy had been soundly defeated, but things were a still bit sketchy with regard to follow-up plans. He sensed that something important was up, and in a short time he had the astounding details.

  A message had been received from Tirol’s occupied citysent by some sort of rebel group, from the sound of it-giving the location of the Invid’s central command. The Skull had been ordered to recon the site, but nothing was in the works to save the rebels themselves, who were apparently holed up in the very same neighborhood. Having seen a crude map of Tiresia, Jack knew the place would be easy enough to suss out. And if a small team-even one man-could infiltrate, the rebels would be as good as free. All it took was the right man.

  But chief among the things Jack didn’t know was that his actions over the past hour had been observed at rather close range by Karen Penn. And she stuck with Jack now as he began to angle his way behind the command post and into the forward supply area. He waited until the sentries were preoccupied, then moved in and grabbed hold of a Wolverine and an energy-pack bandolier. Karen drew her hand weapon and decided it was time to confront him.

  Taken by surprise, Jack swung around with his hands raised, prepared to assume the position. But realizing it was Karen, he simply shook his head and shouldered past her.

  Karen armed the handgun, which came to life with a shortlived but unmistakable priming tone. It stopped Jack in his tracks.

  “Now, you want to talk to me, Jack, or the unit commander?”

  “Look,” he said, turning around carefully, “there’s something I’ve got to do.” He explained what he knew about the communiqu?and the rebel group, and how a small group could get in and out unnoticed.

  Karen listened without comment, then laughed shortly and deactivated her weapon.

  “You’re certifiable, you know that?”

  Jack made a face. “I’m going in alone, Karen.”

  “Oh no you’re not,” she said, grabbing a Wolverine from the rack. “‘Cause I’m coming with you.”

  Jack showed her a grin. “I know where there’s a coupla Hovercycles.”

  Karen pulled the bandolier’s straps taut. “Lead on, hero,” she told him.

  Obsim peered into the trench the enforcers had opened in the floor of the Royal Hall. Fifty feet down they had broken through the roof of a narrow corridor, a stretch of the mazelike subterranean works the brain had discerned.

  “The Inorganics will locate the Tiresians within the period,” the brain informed Obsim when he reentered the Hall’s central nave.

  “I am pleased,” Ob
sim said, trying on a regal tone.

  “There are other concerns…”

  “Prioritize.”

  “A group of airborne mecha are closing on our position.”

  Obsim glanced at the communicator sphere, where a holo-image of six blue Veritechs was taking shape.

  “Advise, computer.”

  “Protect the brain. Activate the shield.”

  Obsim tried to calculate the resultant energy drain. “You are so instructed,” he said after a moment of reflection.

  Bubbles formed, percolating in the brain’s tank.

  “It is done.”

  Max had his team complete two high-altitude passes over the city before dropping in for a closer look. Schematics of Skull’s topographical scans had revealed that Tiresia’s Royal Hall was an enormous structure indeed, a truncated pyramid almost a thousand feet tall capped by a classical Roman-like shrine. It dominated the city, which was itself a kind of circular mandala set into Tirol’s bleak surface. Scanners had also picked up dusk activity in the city’s street; but whatever was moving around down there was smaller than the Invid ships the Skull had thus far gone up against.

  “All right, let’s stay alert,” Max said over the net as the team followed him down. “Keep an eye on each other. Blue Velvet, you’ve got the number-one spot.”

  “Roger, Skull Leader, I’m on my way,” the mechamorph responded.

  Max watched him peel away from the group, roll over, and drop in for the run. They were all closing on the Hall, scarcely five hundred feet above it, when a translucent envelope of scintillating energy suddenly mushroomed up in front of them. The envelope expanded to encompass the entire Hall, and with it, Blue Velvet’s lone Veritech. The rest of the team broke hard and climbed.

  “It’s a force field of some kind,” Max said. “Blue Velvet, get yourself out of there!”

  “No can do, Skull One, my systems are down! Reconfiguring and going for touchdown…”

  Max was heading back toward the Hall again, and could see the Guardian-mode VT

  falling. But all at once there were three bizarre shapes on the shrine steps-headless, demonic-looking bipedal mecha, with dangling arms and orifice-dimpled weapon spheres.