The Final Nightmare

by Jack McKinney

  "What're you all staring at? Let's go!"

  Zor looked to the Flowers of Life that would no doubt be detected by the Invid. He still couldn't recall everything, but one thing, he knew.

  The Masters' power must be broken. The original Zor was not altogether responsible for what had happened once he beguiled the Invid Regis. Perhaps I am not either, though I am him and he is me.

  But it lies within my power to do what must be done. Let this be the lifetime when at last I accomplish it!

  The fighting raged around the five great surviving mother ships of the Masters' fleet. The Humans were proving to be enemies even more terrible

  than the teeming Invid.

  But that was not the worst news. Optical relays showed an invader in the realm of their Protoculture masses, a thing to be feared more than any Invid or Battloid.

  It was small and white, yipping and chasing its own bedraggled tail among the storage canisters. A Pollinator.

  The Masters knew better than to waste time attacking it. Try to stab the wind; shoot a bullet at the sun.

  The Masters accepted the devastating news with the same emotionless reserve they had always displayed. To say it was stoicism would have been inaccurate. It would have implied they had some other mode of behavior.

  The dissipation of Protoculture made itself felt not only in the declining performance of the Masters' Robotechnology, but in the failure of judgment, dispiritedness, and lack of coordination of the clones themselves. Never had the Masters' own-the primary-Protoculture cap been so weakened.

  Even now, whole masses of Protoculture were transforming, all through the fleet, into the Flowers of Life, just as was happening below.

  Their unspoken conference was short. Shaizan gave the order. "Transfer all functioning clones and all Protoculture reserves to Our flagship. Set automatic controls on an appropriate number of combat vessels to land them on the Earth's surface, and fuel them for a one-way voyage. Process as many clones as is feasible to serve as mindblank assault troops."

  The Scientist bowed his head, swallowing his objection. The clones were mere plasm, subject to the dictates of the Masters. Who dared declare things otherwise?

  Even if it meant genocide...

  Allegra and Octavia had not so much adjusted to their reduced status as gone into a sort of lasting shock that insulated them from it. Even though they were Muses, Musica and her Cosmic Harp were the key to their triad's power and effect. Without her they were all but useless to the Masters. Since

  being interned, they had seen the horror of reduced Protoculture and the dissonance of Musica's absence all around; they had become desensitized to it.

  But a new flurry of activity roused them a little. The most ambulatory of the malfunctioning clones were being injected by guards, shunted along in a torpid line, at the end of which was a door. None who were passed through that door returned.

  Antipain serum, the words came quietly among the despondent prisoners near them; Allegra looked to Octavia. They both knew what that meant: clones who would be all but immune to normal sensation once the drug took effect-who would be aggressive, terrible antagonists. Their minds would be blanked to anything but fighting, until they were blasted apart or until the drug burned up their physiology completely.

  "Mindblanked assault troops," a voice said. Octavia turned to see who it was, and gasped.

  In the advance stages of Protoculture deprivation, the clone had become a crone, witchlike, nodding out the last moments of her life.

  She gazed, glassy-eyed, at the other clones being injected. "Sacrifices on the altar of war. That is the Robotech way."

  Resistance from the mother ships seemed to be failing, but Marie Crystal kept herself from any hope or distraction, dodging through enemy fire and preparing for another run. At Emerson's order, she began to consolidate elements of the various shattered TASC units.

  But we better get some help soon, she thought, or that's all he wrote.

  "General, you have to commit all your reserves now," Emerson's image said to Leonard.

  The supreme commander kept his face neutral. "Current tactical trends preclude that at this time."

  So much easier than saying "screw you, " Emerson thought, as his flagship shook to a Bioroid assault and the guns pounded.

  "There'll be no other chance!" he roared at Leonard. "Move now, you fool!"

  Leonard's wattles shook with his anger. "You dare give me orders?

  Carry out your mission!"

  He had barely broken the connection, and was picturing Emerson's imprisonment for insubordination under fire, when an aide leaned close to say, "Enemy assault ship descending for landing, sir, about five miles outside the city limits."

  Leonard turned back to raise Emerson again. There must be no more penetration of Earth's defensive forces, whatever it took.

  Predictably, Emerson claimed that the order was unworkable was simply contradictory to reality. Leonard let him go on, and then hit him with a blow he had been saving until the battle was over.

  "Carry on! Oh, and it may interest you to know that your ward, Private Grant, has deserted in the company of an enemy agent. The GMP is hunting him even now."

  Emerson wanted to cry out in grief, to insist that it had to be a mistake or that Bowie had been brainwashed. But he saw Leonard was enjoying it too much to be persuaded of anything Emerson might claim.

  Emerson broke the commo connection and began redeploying his remaining forces for a direct assault on the only remaining mother ship.

  On Earth, Leonard exulted that he bad managed to give Emerson such agonizing news when the man couldn't even spare a moment for regret or memory or worry.

  But he didn't have long to enjoy it. An appalling new enemy teemed from the assault ships that were slipping through, to wreak havoc in Monument City.

  Assault ship hatches dropped open, even as Leonard watched from his tower, and the mindblanked assault troop clones charged forth like insane demons.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It's ironic that the SDF-3 expedition was on its way to find the Robotech Masters to strike a diplomatic accord, at exactly the time the Masters were on their way to Earth. Ships passing in the night, in truth.

  There are those who lament the fact because they believe the second war could have been averted. I do not share this view. Do Humans, mining for precious gems, make deals with the monkeys whose jungle they invade?

  The Masters were arrogant in a way that, in Humans, would certainly be diagnosed as psychotic. They were as single-minded as the mindblanked clone troops they were forced to use in their final offensive.

  Major Alice Harper Argus (Ret.),

  Fulcrum: Commentaries on the Second Robotech War

  "Doesn't even faze 'em," an infantryman gritted over his tac net. He put another burst into the alien, and this time the raving, long-haired wildman in offworld uniform went down.

  But not for long. The thing got up again, hollow-eyed, skin stretched tight across its face, leering like a skeleton. It raced at him with unnatural speed and dexterity, firing some kind of hand weapon. The grunt flicked over from tefloncoated slugs to energy and held the trigger down, until the zombie was burning chunks of debris.

  But all at once another zombie reared up, grinning, to bear him over and grapple hand to hand, not skilled but as unrelenting as a mad dog. They pressed rifles against one another. Only the infantryman's armor kept him from having his throat bitten out.

  Everywhere it was the same. Only a few Southern Cross units had been deployed here to Newton, to guard against a landing at the outmost perimeter of Monument City. The grunts were badly outnumbered by the Living Dead. What had happened among the defenseless civilians, the soldiers could not bring themselves to think about.

  The zombies kept coming even after their weapons were exhausted, trying to grapple hand to hand, wanting only to kill before they themselves died from the supercharged overdoses they had been given. In time, the Human survivors rallied near th
e town's central plaza. They formed a tiny square of fifteen men and women, one rank standing and one kneeling.

  Like something from a nineteenth-century imperialist's fantasy, the square fired and fired on all fronts as the damned rushed in at them. Time and again the tremendous firepower of modern infantry weapons cleared the area, and each time more mindblanked assault clones stormed forth, some still firing but most not, their weapons exhausted.

  At times it was hand to hand; body armor gave the infantry a powerful edge. But each time they drove back their foes, a new wave came to crash against them.

  The square shrank to a triangle, eight desperate men and women. And then, high above, cross hairs fixed on them.

  It was regrettable that two assault ships' cargoes of mindblanked clones had been mistakenly disembarked in the target population center. But such things were unavoidable, given the haste of the operation and the unreliability of some of the crew clones.

  Still, the demonstration of Robotech Master power had to be made as ordered, even at the cost of a few expendable null sets.

  From a third assault ship, a beam sprang down and the entire middle of Newton disappeared in a thermonuclear inferno. Friend, foe, civilian-all vanished instantly, as blast and shockwaves spread holocaust.

  Leonard heard the news without showing any response, cold as a Robotech Master. The technical officers clamoring at him with their assorted explanations of how the alien ray worked, some claiming it was a new development, others disputing it, were of no importance, and he waved them aside.

  Two towns had been utterly destroyed, but that was of no importance

  to him; Leonard knew as well as anyone that Monument City might very well be next, and it had no defense. There was no time to consolidate forces in the UEG capitol, but he gave the command that it be done nevertheless.

  An aide tapped his shoulder tentatively, "We're receiving a communication from the Aliens!" The face of Shaizan appeared on the primary display screen before him, Bowkaz and Dag standing behind and to either side.

  They knew his name. "Commander Leonard, we are now capable of destroying your species with very little effort. You will therefore surrender and evacuate your planet immediately."

  Leonard looked at the screen blankly. Evacuate? He had once read a war college projection that if spacecraft production were to continue at full speed and the birth rate were suddenly to drop to zero, such a thing might be possible in another ten years or so. As it was, the aggregate space forces of Terra before the current battle wouldn't have had a hope in hell of carrying out such a mission.

  But where was the Human race supposed to go? A few frail Lunar and Martian colonies, and several orbital constructs were the only alternatives, unless the Masters meant to help, which they manifestly did not.

  That left an instant for Leonard to marvel at how the Masters overestimated the Human race in assuming homo sapiens could pull off such a miracle. But again, it was more likely that the Masters simply didn't care; maybe "evacuation" only meant, to them, the escape and preservation of the power structure-the government.

  Thoughts and evaluations boiled in Leonard's mind then: perhaps it would be possible to take the very most essential personnel-himself chief among them, of course-and thus avoid total annihilation.

  As he was studying the Masters' sword-sharp faces he heard Shaizan say, "Within thirty-eight of your hours. Else, we shall have no option but to slay you one and all."

  Leonard's fists shook the desk with a crash, as he stood. "Now you listen: this world has been ours, from the time our species stood up straight

  to use its hands and its brains! Through every disaster and our own wars and the ones you and your kind waged on us! This world is ours!"

  He was shaking his bunched fists in the air before him, speaking an unprepared speech for once. Then he realized, with surprise, that a few of the men and women around him were nodding their heads in agreement. He had come to think of himself as a man who could never have the heartfelt support of those around him.

  He was thinking along new lines when Bowkaz, speaking up, dashed his hopes. "Leonard, this is an ultimatum-a fact of life-not a suggestion or a mere threat. The Invid, our bitter enemies, have already detected the presence of Protoculture on your planet."

  "They will be here soon," Dag said. "And, it seems, there will be more war. You can leave or you can be crushed between; there is no third way. Go, and leave this matter to us."

  Leonard resisted the urge to duck offscreen to consult with his advisers and image-makers, or break the connection. But pride made him stand there, as the Masters knew by now that it would, protecting to the last his Lone Warrior, his Gunfighter-Patton-Caesar persona.

  But the self-preserving side of his mind was making very, very fast calculations. If only a portion of the Human race were to survive, it was his duty to rule them.

  "Impossible" he told Shaizan, hoping the word didn't sound too tremulous. "More time!" Leonard added. He grabbed a figure from the air, "At least seven days!" There was something Biblical about it, but nothing workable.

  Shaizan raised his arm, but Leonard couldn't see that he, like his triad mates, was touching the Protoculture cap.

  "Forty-eight of your hours, and no more," Shaizan decreed. He cut off Leonard's objections. "And after that, no life on Earth."

  The screen de-rezzed, then went clear. Leonard turned to his nearest subordinate, saved from an agonizing decision because the Masters had insisted on the impossible. "Reconsolidate all units in the area of

  Monument City and prepare for an all-out assault."

  There were only a few tentative hesitations; all of them jumped-to when he bellowed, "Do it now! On the double!"

  They were compliant because no other attitude was tolerated in Leonard's inner circle, and so there was no contradiction. They scurried.

  Leonard reflected, We whipped the Zentraedi and we can whip these Robotech Masters! And the Invid, whatever in hell they are!

  Men and women prepared as best they could. Some children were shielded or remanded to shelters by their elders, but many found a weapon and got ready to be part of the final battle.

  There was a brief calm in the wake of the beams, something to savor even though it wasn't meant to be savored. Soon, the sky split apart again.

  The holding action fought by the Tristar, Emerson's flagship, was the sort of thing children's stories and patriotic poetry are made of. Emerson himself would have given anything not to be there, or at least not to be the last living crewmember among the dead.

  But that was how it had happened. An enemy blast took out virtually all the bridge systemry and killed the senior gunnery commander who had been standing between him and the nearest explosion. But he had taken shrapnel and the command chair under him was stained with his blood. His head had been rocked against his headrest at an angle where the padding was of little help, dazing him.

  Emerson felt infinitely tired and regretful-regretful that he had never spoken his heart to Bowie; that he had lost the battle; that he had made such a mess of his marriage. More than anything, he was regretful that so many lives had been or were about to be sped into the blackness.

  Smoke roiled from the control panels in a bridge that would soon be a crypt. Emerson's head lolled back and he had only an instant to recall something he had read in Captain Lisa Hayes-Hunter's war-journal, Recollections.

  It was getting harder to think, but he pulled the quote together by an

  act of will. Why are we here? Where do we come from? What happens to us when we die? Questions so universal, they must be structured in the RNA codons and anticodons themselves, it seemed to Emerson.

  He had no answers, but expected to shortly. He was pretty sure those answers would be as surprising to the Robotech Masters as they would be to dead Terran generals.

  Then he was blinking up at Lieutenant Crystal and Lieutenant Brown. Emerson couldn't imagine how they could have landed their craft on the critically damaged Tristar
. He couldn't decide if they were real or not. But the agony he felt as they dragged him over to an ejection module convinced him it was all real, and even revived him a bit.

  Dennis Brown didn't quite know what to say to Marie; the whole Emerson rescue had been so improvised, and they had only gotten to know one another as unit commanders. Sitting crowded into the little alloy-armored ball with the injured general made things different, somehow awkward. But there had been no time to get back to their mecha, and anyway both craft were so badly damaged that the ejection capsule was the better bet.

  "Looks like we made it," he ventured, as the Tristar began to blow to pieces behind them, jolting the metal sphere along on its shockwave.

  She considered that. "Yep," Marie hedged.

  But then they saw that they had been premature; the maw of an enemy cruiser, one of the last still functioning, came at them like the open mouth of a shark, like something out of a nightmare.

  They were swallowed up.

  At point, Dana looked down and the Pollinator was no longer frisking along behind; she was used to those sudden disappearances, but wondered if she would ever see him again.

  The 15th and its friends and allies, having made it to the top of the mound that buried the SDF-1 and every vital secret of Protoculture, looked down at a circus of light and sound. The GMP appeared to have gotten there

  first, with troop carriers, giant robots, and crew-served weapons. There was an energy cordon farther out, and a lot of activity at the foot of the mound. In the distance, cities burned and smoke went up in mile-wide clouds where the enemy had struck. For some reason the GMP troops, following Colonel Fredericks's orders to recapture the aliens at all costs, were forgotten or couldn't be reached by Southern Cross brass desperate for reinforcements.