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by Jack McKinney

  Edwards forced out a breath and returned his attention to the forward screens, Optera a golden crescent now. Things had been worse, he decided, recalling a few low spots in times past. Especially toward the end of the Global Civil War, what with the Neasians steadily losing ground and his feeling like just another merc with no war to pay the rent. But the Visitor had rescued him from the breadline then. Edwards grinned: that first helo ride to Macross Island with his old foe Fokker. His subsequent rise through the ranks under Russo’s tutelage, from a simple fighter jock to someone who could hobnob with the execs of the UEDC. If he’d done it once, he could do it again, even if that meant riding the Regent’s waves for a time.

  Besides, hadn’t he already managed to win the Robotech War’s grand prize?

  Minmei had been taken from the bridge, but the wooden cross she had been shackled to was still there. Edwards had to laugh. It had been an operatic gesture, no denying that, but it was just the sort of thing needed to get to her. To penetrate those damn songs of hers and reassert his control. And yet it wasn’t songs but shrieks that had landed her in his quarters, sedated. It got so that everyone on the bridge was beginning to feel like a Zentraedi, eyes rolling, hands pressed to their ears. So he had her removed; three men to restrain her. Cursing, spitting, clawing … Edwards loved it.

  He was thinking about going downship to have his way with her when a tech announced that transmissions were being received from brightside Optera. “Not transmissions exactly, sir. I’m reading severe atmospheric thermal disturbances, energy levels well in the red.”

  “The planet’s under attack,” Major Benson said from an adjacent station.

  Edwards made a panicked turn in the chair, certain this time … “Pull us in,” he said after a moment. “I want signatures.”

  “On-screen, sir. Invid troop transports, Pincer and skirmish ships.”

  Edwards watched displays take shape, outlining the mollusk form of the troopships, the crablike details of the Pincers. Tesla, he told himself. He had tried to kill the Regent once; now he had the backing of a small army. Edwards shot a good-news grin to his aide.

  “Looks like the Regent’s got troubles of his own, sir.”

  “Indeed,” Edwards said. But the smile only lingered for a moment. He was tempted to sit this one out; but what if it was the Sentinels who had sent Tesla in? Could they have forged a separate peace; could Hunter have agreed to allow Tesla to lead the assault, soften things up?

  Edwards called for more data and studied the screens in silence. The ship had yet to be scanned, which meant that Tesla wasn’t even aware of their presence. And there were only three transports, yawning like opened oysters … It would be a duckshoot, Edwards thought, just like that first day in Fantomaspace.

  “Secure to General Quarters,” he told Benson.

  “Shields are up, weapons primed,” a tech updated as klaxons sang their mad songs throughout the ship. “Launch bays report two squadrons standing by.”

  Edwards made a slight adjustment to his skullplate and hooked long blond hair behind his left ear. “Ahead on my mark. This’ll be our little arrival gift to our new partner.”

  Aboard the Valivarre, in stationary orbit above the ringed giant Fantoma, Commander Breetai welcomed his guest to the bridge. “I understand you’re leaving for Haydon IV,” he said, directing his booming voice toward the Micronian balcony that ran across the astrogation hold opposite the command center.

  “And I understand you are leaving for Optera,” Exedore said into a binocularlike audio pickup.

  Breetai grunted and folded his thick arms across his chest, his half-cowl skullplate reflecting amber light into the hold. He was dressed in tight-fitting trousers and a Zentraedi campaign cloak adorned with REF insignia patches. Seated beside him and similarly attired was former Quadrano, Kazianna Hesh, Breetai’s mate.

  Exedore couldn’t get over the two of them, sitting there like living-room hosts. He was aware of just how far he had moved away from his own conditioning; but there were areas where Breetai had surpassed him, emotional realms he might never experience. He was glad for his former commander nonetheless, and in some ways envied him his newfound treasure.

  “Yes, m’lord,” he continued after a pause. “Commander Grant is taking the Tokugawa, and I will be accompanying him. I proceed in the hope of finding some solution to our dilemma on Haydon IV. All my studies suggest that that world holds the answers.”

  Breetai showed him a tolerant smile. “It’s a Human talent you’ve perfected—this quest for cause and effect. But I’m afraid we are created of different stuff, my friend. I was made to act and react, and so I shall.”

  “Perhaps,” Exedore allowed, eyeing the two of them. “But battle and warfare need not be your only pursuit, m’lord. We have not thrown off the Masters’ yoke simply to wear another’s.” He approached the balcony rail and looked up into Breetai’s rugged face. “Let the REF wage its own fight against Edwards. Why involve yourselves in this—especially when that course leads to Optera?”

  Breetai patted Kazianna’s thigh and stood up. “Answers, Exedore.”

  “Then we are not so different.”

  Breetai nodded his head once.

  Exedore hesitated, then said, “I have misgivings, m’lord.”

  “The same you had when we volunteered for Fantoma, no doubt. The same you had when we left with the ore. It is another Human talent, an eye for the future I seem to lack.” He touched the eyelike cabochon of his alloy prothesis. “It has been a circular route for us, Exedore, our search for Earth, our return to Tirol and Fantoma’s mines. And Optera is the final arc of that journey—a necessary one, I think.”

  Exedore bowed his head, overcome in a way that was new to him. He understood what Optera represented, more than he cared to admit; but he didn’t know what to do with the feelings Breetai’s decision had stirred up. “It is difficult for me, m’lord. I … I will miss you.”

  Breetai fell silent.

  “And I you, my friend,” he said at last.

  “And how is Haydon IV’s only biological mother feeling this fine morning?” Cabell asked as he stepped into Max and Miriya Sterling’s high-towered quarters in Glike, the planet’s principal population center. Briz’dziki was up, spilling warmth and golden light into the room. “Difficult to be anything but ecstatic here, eh?”

  Miriya gave him a smile from the window wall that overlooked the spires and domes of the city; gave him a peck on the cheek as the old wizard came over to her.

  “Well,” he said, blushing clear up to his bald pate, “I should stop by more often.”

  Miriya laughed and poured him a tall glass of exotic fruit juice. The apartment was different from any other on Haydon IV, transformed by the planet’s ultratech decorators into a fascimile of the one Max and Miriya had shared in New Macross after the war. The Haydonites had done as much for her with the delivery room and she and Max had opted to enlarge on the idea here.

  Cabell took a sip of the drink and set it aside, playfully dabbing at his chin with his nearly-meter-long beard. “Where’s our child?”

  Everyone was saying this lately—our child—as if the entire planet had participated in the conception. “Max and Jean took her over to see Vowad,” Miriya told him. “Although if they’d waited an hour, Aurora probably could have found her way there without them. Take out one of these flying rugs …”

  Cabell continued to smile, unwilling to confront the confused tone in Miriya’s voice. “Vowad seems very fond of her.”

  “There must be a better word, Cabell.”

  The Tiresian tugged at his beard. “Mystified, then.”

  Miriya seated herself opposite him and forced him to meet her gaze. “What does it mean, Cabell? Walking at a month old, talking now. All these warnings about spores … Does it have something to do with Garuda? Was I infected somehow?”

  Cabell reached for her hand. “With Garuda, and with Haydon IV, and perhaps with your time on Earth. We simply don’t kno
w, child. In many ways Aurora is a normal, healthy infant. But there are certain accelerations occurring we’ve not been able to explain. As to this warning directed toward the child you and Max left behind …” Cabell threw up his hands. “I’m sorry I can’t be more comforting.”

  Miriya gave him a forgiving look and heaved a sigh toward the light. “Max tells me the Tokugawa is returning.”

  “Soon.”

  “Then what?” Her eyes back on him now. “Back to the front for all of us? I just don’t know whether I can be a part of it anymore, Cabell. Max and I refused to take Dana on this mission for fear of a war. Now we find ourselves where we would have been in any case, and I won’t risk any harm coming to Aurora. I know it must sound strange to you, hearing this from a Quadrano, but this is my heart speaking, Cabell. Not the conditioning of the Imperative.”

  “No,” he tried to assure her, “it sounds anything but strange, child. I understand your fears.”

  “Did you have children, Cabell, before the Transition?”

  He thought for a moment and said, “In a manner of speaking. You see … Rem is my child.”

  Miriya’s green eyes opened wide. “Rem?! But how is that possible—”

  “Oh, I don’t mean that I’m his father in any actual way,” he added in a faltering voice. “It’s a rather complex story, my dear, and I’m not sure, er, that is, I don’t …”

  “Tell me. Please.”

  Cabell turned away, deciding something for himself before he spoke. “I was one of Zor’s many teachers,” he began. “I knew him as a mere child—well before the Great Transition and the mass clonings. I loved him like a son. And I was never able to accept his death. When Commander Reno’s fleet returned his burned and disfigured body to Tiresia, I cloned a sample of healthy tissue before the Masters got to him with their psy scanners and neural replicators.

  “When they departed Tirol they had some fourteen clones growing in their deprivation tanks, and it was their aim to allow one of these to mature on its own. But on that one they would attempt to enforce the same Compulsion they had used against Zor—the one that sent him back to Optera for the Flowers. It was their belief that he would either surrender the secrets of the Protoculture matrix or lead them to the one he sent off to Earth secreted in the spacefold generators of his ship. But I fear, I pray, their plan will never come to fruition.”

  “And all the while you were raising Zor’s clone?”

  Cabell nodded. “I tried my best to duplicate Zor’s early upbringing, his studies and pursuits. But war was my opposition—something that had never entered into Zor’s education. Not until the Masters, that is, their dreams of empire.”

  Miriya made a puzzled sound. “But does Rem have Zor’s memories, his knowledge of Protoculture?”

  Cabell toyed with the sleeve of his robe. “In the same way we were able to strip the Zentraedi of their past and implant a new Imperative, a false history, our science allowed us to transfer both cellular and psychic memory. But it is a precarious business. Awakening those memories too soon can lead to irreparable damage. The Masters lost a dozen clones in their lust for Zor’s thoughts. The memories lie buried beneath the strata of the new self. Um, Dr. Lang mentioned an Earth concept called reincarnation—a cycle of birth and rebirth. It is something similar to this.”

  “Does Lang realize any of this?”

  Cabell smiled. “I have kept this from everyone, child, for the very reasons I mentioned. Lang is brilliant, but driven. He would have Rem in his lab before I could put a stop to it. That was what initially persuaded me to join the Sentinels—I had to keep Rem clear of Earth’s own Robotech Masters.”

  “But he must know some of this. Janice—”

  “Yes. His artificial agent.” Cabell shook his head in wonder. “She had all of us completely fooled. Lang is brilliant. And it is quite probable he learned about the Regent’s experiments with Rem from Colonel Wolfe or Commander Grant. I don’t seek to keep anything from them, but at the same time I did not raise Rem to be some laboratory animal, some cruel experiment.”

  Miriya started to say something but checked herself and began again. “His knowledge could put an end to the war, Cabell,” she said evenly.

  “I know, child. But it cannot be forced from him. Rem is nearing the age Zor was when he embarked on the technovoyage that led to the discovery of the Flower of Life on Optera.” Cabell stood up and moved to the window wall. “There is talk from the Terrans on Tirol of suing for peace with the Invid,” he said with his back to Miriya, “of giving them everything they need to refoliate Optera with the Flowers. The seeds from these worlds we’ve liberated, and the Pollinators essential to their maturation. It’s ironic that the Sentinels should now stand in the way of such a straightforward approach, but I’m afraid that is precisely the case. Life is sometimes an unforgiving place, and the Invid succeeded in stirring up a good deal of hatred throughout the Quadrant in their desperate quest for the nutrient stolen from their midst. They lacked the Masters’ finesse when it came to warfare, and in many ways outdid them.”

  “Then it’s up to us to convince the Sentinels to call a truce.” Miriya was alongside him now, her hands clasped around his upper arm.

  “The Hunters?” he said, looking at her. “Lron, Kami, Crysta … after so much suffering?”

  “We have to try. We’ll have the Tokugawa. We can stop them before they leave Spheris.”

  “Too late for that, child.”

  “Peryton, then.”

  Reflexively, Cabell glanced in the direction of Peryton’s primary, concealed though it was by Briz’dziki’s golden splendor. “They are not going to have an easy time of it there,” he mused.

  Miriya thought back to what the Sentinels had been through on Praxis and Garuda, and said, “How could it be any worse than what we’ve been through?”

  Cabell exhaled slowly, fogging a small spot on the transparent wall. “There is sufficient data here to warrant my concerns,” he told her. “Peryton waits to be rescued from its curse. But it will take more than liberators to achieve that.” He shook his head in a dejected way. “No. What Peryton needs is martyrs.”

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  It was once believed that the effect of gravity was indistinguishable from that of acceleration. Did that mean that the more you got going the more you were rooted to the same spot? Because it sure seems that way sometimes.

  From the Collected Journals of Admiral Rick Hunter

  It was a sentenced world at the end of time, an aged wanderer moving through the collapsed light of a dying star. Peryton—fallen from grace, its inhabitants left to ponder their fate. No new worlds within their grasp to settle; no miracles left to coax from their science. Until Haydon chose to answer their appeals.

  The solution he offered them, the device itself, was capable of effecting a change in the planet’s axis of orientation. Not, however, through any physical means, but through a concentrated effort of collective will.

  Call it a thought experiment, Janice Em had suggested to Rem. They were in the Tiresian’s quarters aboard the Ark Angel, and Janice was wearing the more pleasant of her two faces. Rem was comfortable with her in either mode, but she had chosen the Human one in hopes of off setting the cool, analytical quality of her tone of voice. The Sentinels’ ship had been superluminal for some time now and was expected to reach the fringe of Umbra’s planetary system within twenty-four Standard Hours.

  “The device,” Rem said, just as evenly, and she continued.

  It could store, harness, and direct a current of mental energy. The impact of the elementary building blocks of psychism—on the material world. The notion worked a like surge on Janice’s cybernetic circuitry. For Rem it did little more than awaken new suspicions about Zor’s mysterious precursor, Haydon.

  Peryton, she explained, recounting some of the data gifted to her intellect by Haydon IV’s Awareness, had succeeded in realigning itself. But it was a short-lived paradise that followed the planet
’s resurrection. Rivalries soon found their way back into Perytonian society; rivalries born of a new leisure—metaphysical notions, celestial concerns upon which the priesthood of that world became divided. In the planet’s rearranged heavens the rival factions saw different things: evidence of the Law of One, a beneficent creator offering clues to lesser beings, signposts along a path of reascension. Or in those same stellar configurations, purposeful figures projected on a grand screen, a universe for the taking, a chance to attain freedom from elemental tyranny, what little remained of nature’s reign. And so war had broken out—an all-encompassing horror that left no outpost untouched. Peryton’s inhabitants hurled the stuff of stars against one another and died by the tens of thousands; each side leveled city after city in its lust for dominance; forests were burned, mountains moved in the mad press for victory, and firestorms sucked skyward the souls of the innocent dead.

  By then, Haydon had quit the Quadrant, but the device he had planted on the planet remained intact, a double-edged sword just waiting to be plucked from the ruins of the shrine Peryton’s inhabitants had erected to his genius. And the Macassar, hierophant of the Left-Hand Path, had been the first to reach it. But not before he had lost the last of his children to the war—a cruelty beyond his ability to comprehend, though millions lay dead at his feet. So it was not with thoughts to end the war that he entered Haydon’s shrine, but with a grief of such magnitude that Haydon’s psicon device took it up as its own.

  That this day would have never happened, his thoughts had railed to the shrine. That this battle should continue until they are returned to me …

  And so it did. Replaying itself diurnally, a loop of time excised from the normal laws that governed causality or physical space. The battle and its cast of players traveled the planet, erupting in Umbra’s light without warning as a kind of martial sore, plundering whatever resources it found available, sweeping new combatants into its midst, and visiting devastation where it took root. Materializing each day to enact the same scene, only to disappear each evening into some temporal split-second netherworld. Those Perytonians who survived passed the nights in constant fear of daylight, with almost everyone nomadic to one degree or another, on the move against Umbra’s rise or foraging through the battle’s aftermath for anything of value.