Before the Invid Storm

by Jack McKinney

  Sean and Louie returned just then, each of them carrying crates of emergency rations. Dana hadn't seen Louie since the meeting with the Shimadas, and by the look of him—in coveralls, goggles, and jester cap— some of Tokyo had worn off on him.

  "Guess who I was just talking to?" Louie said after giving her a stiff hug. "Miho Nagata."

  "One of Kan Shimada's captains or bosses or whatever they call themselves," Dana told Bowie and Angelo. "What did he want?"

  Louie grinned broadly. "Seems that the Shimadas might be willing to let us in on what his scientists have been up to these past couple of years, after all."

  Dana's eyes widened in surprise. "Louie, that's great news!"

  "It is. But there's an 'if' attached to the offer. Miho hinted that we'll get to evaluate their research if the powers that be can be persuaded to allow Gibley and his team access to the fold core of Wolff's ship."

  "Why?"

  "To determine whether the fold generators can be revitalized." "Is that possible?" Angelo asked.

  "Gibley and I think so." "Gibley and you?"

  Louie crossed his arms over his narrow chest. "That's the other part of it. The Shimadas want me to come to work for them."

  "What kind of crap is this?" Angelo said angrily. "You can't leave us now. We need you here."

  Dana stepped between them. "Yes, he can, Angelo. In fact, he has to." She looked over her shoulder at Louie. "I saw it that first day in Tokyo. You belong with them. You'll make a difference there."

  Louie loosed a relieved exhale. "Thanks, Dana. But what about the terms of Shimada's deal? Do Gibley and I have a shot at examining that ship?"

  Dana took her lower lip between her teeth. "All I can do is propose it to Aldershot and the members of the oversight committee. But I don't see how they could refuse if there's even an outside chance of revitalizing the fold generators. Establishing contact with the SDF-3 has to take precedence over everything else. We've got to find out what happened on Tirol, and the REF has to be told what's happened here."

  "Dana, I just had a crazy thought," Bowie said a moment later. "Let's say Louie and this Gibley succeed, and the ship is programmed to return to Tirol. How about our making sure that the Tiroleans are part of the cargo?"

  Dana beamed at him. "We'll do it—even if it means taking everyone upside ourselves."

  CHAPTER TEN

  Wolff and Carpenter were cut from different cloth. From the start, Wolff had been out to make a name for himself, in Cavern City during the Uprisings, and later as the flamboyant commander of the Wolff Pack. Carpenter, on the other hand, while a respected officer, had the kind of self-effacing, quiet strength that didn't draw attention to itself. Brought together at the start of the Third Robotech War, they would make a good team for a time, but suffer an eventual falling out, from which their relationship would never recover. A loner who never married, Carpenter—who would survive the Invid—claimed that he might have tempered his judgment of Wolff had he understood what Wolff was going through with his wife and son. But he never absolved Wolff for absenting himself from Nobutu's attack on Reflex Point, for the sake of a "harebrained" rescue attempt. If there was some measure of hero worship on Carpenter's part before the Invid Invasion, there was nothing but disillusionment afterward.

  Mizner, Rakes and Rogues:

  The True Story of the SDF-3 Expeditionary Mission

  "Wolff!"

  "Hello, Carpenter. Good to see you again." Wolff extended his hand, but Carpenter brushed it aside and pulled him into an embarrassingly lengthy embrace. Fortunately it was just the two of them in the subterranean briefing room of the GMP's new headquarters, a hundred miles south of Denver. Nova Satori, the ravenhaired deputy director of intelligence, had arranged for them to have a couple of minutes together before the briefing began.

  "I can't believe you're here," Carpenter was saying, with a tight grip on Wolff's upper arms. "I was beginning to think I'd never see any of you again."

  Wolff eased out of Carpenter's hold and grinned. "Lang thought the

  same about you. But I had a sense you'd made it home. It was a courageous act, Major—agreeing to pilot that retrofitted Ikazuchi."

  Carpenter's dark eyes shifted. "Some of what we did might have been courageous. But some of it was just plain stupid."

  Wolff assumed that he was referring to his frontal attack on the Masters' flagship. "Not that it matters, I suppose, but I would have done the same thing."

  Carpenter showed him an intent look. "It does matter, Wolff. It matters a great deal."

  They hadn't known each other well, either before the launch of the SDF-3 or on Tirol. When the Hunters, the Grants, the Sterlings, Wolff, and so many others had agreed to throw in with the aliens who comprised the Sentinels, Carpenter—at Lang's behest—had volunteered to remain in Tirolspace, as a precaution against possible acts of sedition by T. R. Edwards and his Ghost Squadron.

  Carpenter's elation notwithstanding, the real reunion was taking place elsewhere on the GMP's base, between members of Carpenter's crew and those of Wolff's who had once been attached to Carpenter's command. Those dozen or so would have been home all the sooner had they not assisted in the hijacking Lang and Wolff had staged. That heroic act had provided the Sentinels with a replacement ship for the Farrago, which had been lost to the Invid above Praxis.

  Carpenter had suffered a nervous breakdown after his fiery return to Earth, and had spent the final months of the War with friends in Portland, corning to terms with the destruction of his ship and the displacement of ten years of his life. As a consequence of that breakdown and the loss of the data stored in the ship's computer, much of what he told Leonard's staff and the GMP had met with unvarnished skepticism. That Wolff and The Homeward Bound had provided corroboration for Carpenter's earlier claims about the Invid and the Sentinels figured strongly in Carpenter's delight in seeing him.

  "Wolff, I've got a million questions," he started to say.

  But Wolff held up his hands. "I don't have the answers, Major. I'm sure you've read the reports. In the scheme of things, we launched right behind you. And that was five years ago."

  Carpenter fell silent and wearily lowered himself into a chair at the foot of the briefing room's plastic laminate table. "I still can't get used to this," he said after a moment. "When I saw my friends in Portland, it came home to me. Ten years . . . People see me and they say how terrific I look, and I want to grab them by their shirtfronts and tell them that it feels more like I lost ten years than gained them. Forget what the stress has done to me." He looked up at Wolff. "How are you and your people handling things? You left a wife and kid back home, didn't you?"

  Wolff concealed his pain. By the time Catherine and Johnny had left the hotel suite, he had at least gotten her to consider giving him a second chance, but he was hardly encouraged. Johnny had remained brooding throughout, and Wolff suspected that Catherine's apparent thaw was nothing more than an attempt to bring their reunion to a quick conclusion. When he spoke of visiting them in Albuquerque, Catherine had told him not to rush, because she didn't want to feel pressured. You've made another wrong choice . . . He was tempted to admit to Carpenter how it had crushed him to hear her say that; how it had undermined the grandiose plan he had outlined for the future. But he held back.

  "Some of us are taking it better than others" was what he finally said. Carpenter nodded knowingly.

  "What about your people, Major? Are they still a unit?"

  Carpenter took a breath. "Not so you'd notice. More than a third have resigned from service. I refuse to see it as desertion—not after what they've been through. I know where some of them are. Hell, there's a group of them living not too far from here in the husk of a depleted Garfish. Veterans of the war against the Zentraedi. So who am I to tell them they have to fight the Invid? All of us went a little crazy, I guess. Don't be too surprised if the same thing takes hold of your crew, Colonel."

  "I'll keep that in mind."

  Carpenter regarded Wo
lff for a moment, formulating his thoughts about something. "The ship, Colonel—it can't refold?"

  Wolff shrugged. "Maybe someday."

  "I only mention it because, well, I'd be honored to have a place on your crew—in the event you were thinking about taking her back to Tirol, I mean."

  "For the moment, that ship isn't going any further than the Sensor Nebula," Wolff said firmly. "But I'd be glad to have you aboard on that mission, if it falls to me."

  "Can the Nebula be destroyed? You've had more experience with those things than I've had—and with the Invid."

  Wolff took a breath. "It can't hurt to try."

  The center-pull doors opened just then, and Nova entered the room, trailed by Dana Sterling, Alan Fredericks—now a colonel—and several members of the UEG's oversight committee. Accompanying them was a lantern-jawed civilian, wearing outsize, tinted goggles.

  "I don't trust that one," Carpenter whispered of Nova as Wolff was dropping himself into the adjacent seat. "She's the one who debriefed me after we tangled with the Masters." He appended a choice epithet.

  "Something to report, Major?" Nova asked suddenly, regarding him from the far end of the table.

  "Nothing of relevance, ma'am."

  "Then I strongly suggest you save it for after the briefing." "I'll do that, ma'am."

  Nova cleared her throat. "I'd like to reverse the usual order of things by asking Colonel Wolff if he has any questions for us, now that he's had an opportunity to familiarize himself with our strengths and weaknesses— strategically speaking, of course."

  Wolff glanced around the table, trading covert smiles with Dana before beginning. "To put it bluntly, I think we're in for a world of trouble. Assuming that the figures I've been shown are accurate, we don't have

  sufficient mecha to engage the Invid, let alone mount a meaningful counteroffensive should their first wave be repulsed. Our stores of Protoculture are minimal and dangerously dispersed. And while some modicum of firepower is concentrated at ALUCE, warships are outnumbered ten to one by Veritech transports, which are worthless in a fight. So, my question to you is simply this: What stance do you plan to adopt when the Invid arrive?"

  The oversight committee chairman, Senator Pauli, took up the challenge. "Having learned something from Anatole Leonard, our initial position will be to adopt a policy of watchful waiting. With the Masters, we grasped, in due course, that they were coming for the Protoculture Matrix, but we didn't even realize that we had the damned thing until it was too late to sue for peace. But from what you and Major Carpenter, among others, have told us, the Invid are after these Flowers of Life that have been sprouting like weeds all over the world. So, it seems to me, straight off, that we have a bargaining chip at our disposal."

  "A bargaining chip," Wolff said, as if trying to comprehend Pauli's meaning.

  "Yes. In the interest of framing a peaceful accord, we'll allow the Invid free access to the Flowers, in return for their promise to respect our sovereignty over the planet itself. Some show of force may be necessary to convince them that we mean business, but that shouldn't be too difficult to stage, from ALUCE or some location downside."

  Wolff was very aware of Dana Sterling's gaze. "Senator, excuse my saying so, but you're way off the mark. The Invid are nothing like the Zentraedi or the Masters. Get those notions out of your head. We're talking about a race whose homeworld was defoliated, and who have wreaked havoc on every world where their Flowers took root and were detected. They don't announce their arrival, and they don't engage in negotiations or accords. They sweep in and lay waste to everything and anything that hints at resistance. Then, very unceremoniously, they establish themselves as the sovereign power."

  "Yes, Colonel, Major Carpenter has said as much," Alan Fredericks remarked in a patronizing tone. "But it seems to me that this scenario contradicts what you told us about the summit that took place aboard the SDF-3. Simulagent or not, that summit was doubtless an attempt at negotiation."

  "But we were dealing with the Regent," Wolff argued. "And from everything the Sentinels learned, he's a different order of being than his spouse or feminine counterpart or whatever she is."

  "This so-called Regis," Nova supplied.

  Wolff nodded. "For all his savagery, the Regent has—or had—a Human streak. He patterned himself on the Masters. He's acquisitive and manipulative. He dreams of having what they had: an empire. That's why he could be drawn into negotiations."

  "And this Regis?" one of the senators asked. "She's searching for a homeworld."

  "Then she'll have to look elsewhere," Pauli warned. In the event she attacks first, we'll hit back with everything at our command. No holding back, as we did with the Masters. Retaliatory strikes by our squadrons of Logans and Veritechs will keep them outside lunar orbit. Why, you yourself said, Colonel, that they were defeated on every world in Tirol's local group."

  "They were. But not by launching suicidal strikes."

  "I caution the colonel to remember his place," Nova interjected.

  Dana threw her a pointed glance. "With all due respect, ladies and gentlemen, Colonel Wolff and Major Carpenter are the only people in this room who have actually fought the Invid. They should at least be allowed to speak, without fear of censure."

  "All right, Wolff," Pauli said a long moment later. "Suppose you tell us what you would do."

  Wolff asked Nova to call up the data that had been downloaded from The Homeward Bound to the GMP's computers and to make it available to the keyboards and screens that were set into the table at every seat. Wolff typed in a flurry of commands, summoning high-resolution opticals of the

  huge, dimpled hemispheres that were the Invid's "dome hives."

  "To begin with," he said, "we don't show the Regis our hand. We permit her to come and set up shop—in hives like the ones on-screen. She and her brood aren't bloodthirsty killers by nature. Like ants or vespids, they attack when provoked."

  Wolff placed his hands flat on the table. "That's not to say that there won't be heavy casualties during the first couple of weeks of their occupation, regardless of our response. After her encounters with the Zentraedi and the Masters' Bioroids, she's going to figure that she has to pound us into submission. But we can minimize our losses by evacuating the cities—particularly those within a thousand miles of Monument—by withholding fire, and by insisting that everyone remain in the shelters until we've issued an all clear. They'll fashion their farms and hives where they find the choicest Flowers. And it's likely that anyone who puts up a resistance is going to end up a worker on one of those farms. But that's inevitable, in any case."

  Pauli was aghast. "Are you seriously proposing that we sit by and allow ourselves to be turned into slaves?"

  "Only for a time, Senator," Wolff answered calmly. "Once the Invid have full access to the Rowers and the nutrient they derive from them, some of the anger and fight will go out of them, and we can begin to make our move."

  "We counterattack," Fredericks said.

  But Wolff shook his head. "We fight them guerrilla style, hive to hive, from a series of small bases, until we've so disrupted their communication network that an attack on the main hive is warranted."

  He called up opticals and schematics of Invid Scout ships, Armored Scouts, Troopers, and Shock Troopers—hulking, bipedal, insectile things, ten to twenty feet high, with Cyclopean eyespots and pincerlike arms. "They're easy to kill once you get the hang of it. Drones, basically, with little initiative, typically fighting in small groups."

  "And just where do you propose we hide our mecha while they are

  'setting up shop?'" Fredericks asked nastily.

  We keep most of our Alphas on the moon, which the Invid will ignore because it can't support the Flowers. Then, when the Regis has built her central hive, we begin to move mecha down the well to predetermined locations from which the hive can be attacked, but aren't close enough to present an overt threat."

  "And these fortified locations would be ignored?" Pauli
said in disbelief.

  "Deals can be cut with the hive Enforcers. Each hive—whether a dome or a stilt—is responsible for delivering a quota of Flower nectar to the central hive. By helping the small hives meet those quotas, we'll be able to fortify our bases without too much interruption."

  "By providing the hives with slaves, you mean," Nova said.

  Wolff rocked his head. "I choose to call them volunteer field operatives."

  Pauli snorted in derision. "Colonel Wolff, you could probably sell your idea of 'volunteer field operatives' in Tokyo, judging by what Lieutenant Sterling has told us of the climate there. Perhaps in some areas of the Southlands, as well. But I suspect we will be hard-pressed to convince the UEG, Defense Force command, and the people who support us to embrace such a . . . such a humiliating plan." He studied Wolff for a moment. "Do you have anything further to add before we move on?"

  Wolff made his lips a thin line. Fools, he thought. Earth's only hope rested with the REF. The Homeward Bound would have to fold for Tirol as soon as possible. "How long before we attack the Sensor Nebula?" he asked.

  Pauli glanced at Nova. "I believe that Miss Satori has something to say on that matter."

  "Colonel, we want to take a close look at your ship before sending it against the Nebula," Nova began. She gestured to the goggle-wearing civilian. "Mr. Nichols, along with a group of researchers who have been working in Tokyo, have proposed that the drives of The Homeward Bound can be made foldworthy."

  Despite his best efforts, Wolff shot to his feet. "You're going to allow a bunch of techs to tamper with the only warship we have?"

  "Who said anything about tampering?" Louie asked. "We just want to have a look at the drives to see if anything can be done to reconfigure them."

  Wolff started to reply, but faltered. Would Nichols be able to determine that the ship was, in fact, foldworthy? With Lang and Penn on Tirol, and Lazlo Zand and his people dead, was there anyone on Earth who possessed that depth of knowledge?