From the bridge of the SDF-1, Gloval and his crew had a clear view of the ongoing massacre. Brilliant strobelike flashes of explosive light spilled in through the forward and side bays as the enemy continued to pour fire at the ship. The fortress rocked and vibrated to the staccato beat of battle. The Martian landscape had become an inferno.
"The sixth and eighth Spartan divisions have been wiped out, Captain," Claudia reported. "Veritech squadrons are sustaining heavy casualties."
Gloval paced the deck, fingers of one hand tugging at his thick mustache. "There must be a way out of this..." He turned to Vanessa. "Put the seismic schematic on the screen again."
Gloval studied the computer graphic display as it came up. The source of the induced gravitation that held the ship captive was located some three kilometers beneath the surface. Gloval now had Kim project a schematic of the underground power center that fueled Sara Base. He stepped back to take in both screens, folded his arms across his chest, and nodded.
"It's just as I thought. There is a reflex furnace beneath Sara." Reflex power was one of Robotechnology's first by-products-back in more peaceful times. "If we were to overload it, the explosion that would result might take out the enemy's gravity mines as well."
Gloval instructed Vanessa to run a computer simulation based on the available data. Then he turned to Claudia: "Contact Lisa, immediately."
Lisa was trying to figure a way out of Sara Base when Gloval's call came through. With what she recalled from her engineering courses and the
technical assists the SDF-1 onboard computers would provide, there was a good chance that she'd be able to shut down the reflex furnace as Gloval requested. He instructed her to keep her radio tuned in to the bridge frequency so that they could monitor her location and position.
The first step would be to get herself safely from the communications center to the main power station, which meant an unescorted trip through the thick of the fighting. There was one other option, though, and it would require her to be out in the open only for a short time. The power center was linked to the barracks building through a system of underground tunnels and access corridors. And the barracks was just a short hop through hell.
Lisa poised herself on the threshold of the communication building's blown hatch. Ground-shaking explosions were going off all around her. Alien pods, hopping nimbly through the devastation, were leveling everything in sight. Hundreds of missiles Corkscrewed overhead, converging on what was left of the supply line and the fortress itself. Lisa's dream was finished, and Sara Base was finished with it. She pushed herself from the front entry like a parachutist leaving an old-style aircraft and flung herself into the firestorm. She ran a slalom course, jagging left and right through fields of fire, and made it to the safety of the barracks just short of a violent blast that took out the area she'd left behind. The concussion threw her off her feet, but she was unhurt.
Inside, she accessed information from the SDF-1 to locate the main shaft elevators. There was auxiliary power here, so she would be able to ride down to the underground room.
The descent was a long one. It felt as though she were traveling into the very bowels of the fiery planet. Each level lessened the effects of the overhead bombardment until the world seemed silent once again.
Stepping out at Sublevel Fifteen, she made her way to the control room. There was an uncommon, low-level vibration down here, and she was forced to move with more exertion, almost as though she'd been returned to Earth gravity. She reasoned that the enemy gravity mines were responsible for this.
It took Lisa several minutes to locate the furnace controls, a confusing array of switches, dials, and meters, antiquated and needlessly complex. There were redundant systems and far too many command switches and manually operated crossovers. But instructions from the onboard computer simplified her task. Finally she had the reflex computers programmed for overload. The control systems that allowed excess charge buildup to be safely shunted into runoffs were now damped down, and all backup outlets were similarly closed. Next she instructed the CPUs that operated the furnace to bring the power up to maximum, canceling out the safety programs with override commands.
Warning lights were starting to flash on the console, and she thought she could detect the sound of warning sirens and klaxons going off somewhere. The sequence, however, had kicked in several other built-in safety systems that were unanticipated: Hatchways were beginning to lower throughout the room. According to an overhead digital clock, she had less than fifteen minutes to get off the base.
Lisa returned to the main elevator and rode the car back to ground level. The sounds of battle had increased. She tried to retrace her path to the entrance, but the barracks had taken several hits, and debris now blocked the corridor. There was an unobstructed second corridor that led to the officers' quarters; a hatchway there would allow her to exit on the other side of the building. She entered this and was making for the hatch, when the corridor suddenly sealed itself off. Iron doors dropped from overhead vaults at both ends, trapping her inside.
Hatchways to individual quarters lined both sides of the corridor, and while she was opening each of these looking for some way out, a terrible thought occurred to her: What if one of these rooms had belonged to Karl?
In the dim light, Lisa's fingers traced the letters of raised name tags on the doors, and it wasn't long before she found RIBER, KARL.
Slowly the will to survive began to abandon her. All she could feel now was a terrible sadness and a pain from long ago, as though her body was recalling the hurt and bringing it up to the surface.
She hit the button that opened the hatchway to Karl's quarters and stood at the threshold, afraid to enter, supporting herself against the doorjamb. "Oh, Karl," she said to whatever ghosts were lurking there.
Lisa entered, mindless of the countdown to self-destruction.
"The destruct sequence has been initiated, Captain," Claudia said. "T minus ten minutes and counting."
Gloval nodded his head in approval. "Good. I knew Lisa could do it. Now, issue a recall order to our remaining Destroids and Valkyries. But I want them to pull back slowly: With a little luck we'll catch the enemy in our trap this time."
"Nine minutes and counting, Captain." "Contact Lisa; let's see how she's making out."
Claudia tried, but there was no response. The radio transmitter was still on, but Lisa wasn't answering the call.
"Lisa, come in, please," Claudia said. "She's not responding, Captain."
Gloval rose from his chair. "If she's still on-line, we should be able to get a fix on her position."
Kim already had it up on the screen.
"She's in Barracks C. But she's not moving."
"She could be hurt, or trapped," said Gloval. "Claudia, quickly, contact the Skull Leader."
Rick released two rockets and dove under the Battlepods. White-hot shrapnel impacted against his fighter, and the shock wave threw him into an involuntary sink.
He narrowly missed buying it at the hands of an enemy Officer's Pod that leaped into view out of nowhere. It was the same one he had seen on and off throughout the battle. And whoever piloted it was someone to fear. Rick had seen the pod take out three Veritechs in one pass, and later he had seen that same pilot blow away two of his own men to get to one of the Robotech Valkyries.
Roy pulled alongside Rick, gesturing to the enemy mecha. His face was on twenty-three's left screen.
"You wanna watch that one, Rick. He means business." "Let's gang up on him, buddy."
"Negative, Rick. We've got new orders. Seems that Commander Hayes has gotten herself stranded on the base and it's up to us to rescue her."
"Hey, like we don't have more pressing matters at hand?"
"Come on, I thought that damsels in distress were your stock 'n' trade, Little Brother."
"One damsel at a time, Roy. One at a time."
Roy's face became serious. "Patch your system into the SDF-1 mainboard and home in on the signal they tr
ansmit. I'll be covering you."
"Roger," Rick said. "One rescue coming up."
He pushed the fighter into a shallow dive that brought him into and through a group of alien pods. Those that didn't take each other out in an effort to bring him down, Rick dispatched with close-in laser fire directed at the pods' fuel lines. Roy was running interference up ahead, diverting some of the pods positioned between Rick and the base.
Rick dropped the fighter to ground level, relaxed back into his seat, lowering his mind into transitional alpha and directing the Veritech's transformation to Guardian mode. The fighter was soon tearing along the ground in a sort of combat crouch, gatling cannon held out front by the huge grappling hands of the mecha. Rick rode out a cluster of explosions in this form, then hit his thrusters and brought the mecha into full Battloid mode to deal with several pods along his projected course.
Upright, the Battloid swung the cannon in an arc and trap-shot two of the pods. A half twist and Rick beat another to the draw.
Rick let Roy deal out justice to the rest and shifted his attention to the homing signal. Info from the SDF-1 bridge told him precisely where the commander was located: inside the barracks building, just on the other side of the wall in front of him.
In four minutes the entire base was going to be a memory. And that
didn't leave him enough time to use the doorway. He retransformed to Guardian mode and readied the massive metalshod fists of the mecha.
Now it was Lisa's turn to play the ghost.
She had walked through Riber's quarters, insulated from the harsh atmosphere by her suit, arms extended, gloved fingers reaching out and touching everything in the small room, expectant, in search of something she couldn't identify or name. What was it she hoped to find here? she asked herself. It was as if Karl's clothes, still in the wardrobe closet, his bed, reading light, and phone held clues to some mystery she hoped to unravel.
And now as she sat at his desk, paging through his notebooks and reading the titles of the books stacked there-The Martian Cronicles, Mankind Evolving, Gandhi's Truth-Lisa realized that she would never get over his loss; she would never be able to leave this place. Her life, along with Riber's, had ended here six years ago.
She fell forward onto the open notebooks and began to weep. Claudia was desperately calling to her through the headset, but Lisa already felt disconnected from that present. She switched off the radio transmitter. She was about to raise the faceshield of her helmet when she heard her name called out through a speaker phone of some sort.
On the other side of the room's thick translucent window. she could discern the shape of a Veritech fighter-a veiled Guardian behind a Permaglass gate.
"Commander Hayes," the voice called out. "Please stand back. I'm going to crash my way in."
Quickly, she switched her radio back on.
"Whoever you are, stay away from here. Return to the ship. That's an order."
The fighter pilot paid her no mind.
"Stand back. My orders are to get you out of here."
Before she could speak again, the Guardian's huge hand had smashed through the window and the pilot-Rick Hunter!-was staring at her from the
cockpit.
"Climb aboard-quickly! We don't have much time left!" "I'm not leaving this room!"
"One minute and counting, Commander."
"I don't care! Go on, do you hear me, save yourself!" She saw him shake his head.
"I don't know what's going on here, but you're coming with me."
And in an instant Lisa was held fast in the grip of the Guardian's hand. It was useless to struggle; the Veritech was already backing away from the barracks building and preparing for takeoff.
She found herself reaching out toward Riber's room nevertheless, clinging to it with all the strength she could summon, screaming out his name as the fighter launched itself and sped from the burning base.
Khyron pressed the attack, urging his forces onward with calls to glory and promises of promotion; when those failed, he resorted to simple threats and imprecations. Several times during the exercise he had decided to deal out punishments on the spot, and occasionally he had been forced to sacrifice the innocent. But this was all part of the warrior's life, not regrettable but expected behavior.
It had been a glorious battle-up until now.
The Micronians had begun to retreat toward Zor's ship, a retreat with at least three-quarters of their original forces still occupying the arena. He was confused and angered. Were the Micronians such spineless creatures that they would choose surrender over death in battle? Zor's ship, held fast by the gravity mines, wasn't going anywhere, so what did these fools expect to gain by a retreat? It would only mean a nastier mop-up operation for Khyron's troops. The space fortress would have to be stormed, or perhaps he would decide to starve them out; but in either case the end result would be death, so why not go out fighting?
Gerao was reporting certain anomalies in the gravity mine field-some sort of pressure buildup the sensors had yet to identify-but with the
Micronians on the run, this was hardly the moment for caution or indecisiveness. Khyron would have the enemy captain's head before nightfall!
The Zentraedi forces had routed the enemy from the base, and their commander was about to join them there, when the surface of the planet began to quake with unnatural force. Some massive explosion deep below ground level was working its way upward. And when it broke the planet's skin, it was greater than anyone-Zentraedi or Earthling-might have expected.
In an instant, the base and most of Khyron's occupying army were obliterated as a tower of raw unleashed energy shot from within the planet. Through the blinding glow of the initial explosion, Khyron could see Zor's ship lifting off, just moments before a second explosion of equivalent force atomized what was left of the area.
Khyron's Officer's Pod was far enough away to withstand the blast, heat, and follow-up shock waves and firestorms.
Madness, Khyron thought. Madness!
He raised the cockpit shield of the Battlepod and sat for a moment in stunned silence. Thick clouds of rust-colored dust were being sucked into the area. Zor's ship was just a preternatural shimmer in the Martian sky. The Micronians had surprised him.
Unpredictability was something to fear and respect in an opponent.
But failure in battle was something that could not be tolerated.
He vented his anger by smashing his fists into the console of the Battlepod, then collapsed back into the seat, spent. He reached out for the dried leaves of the Flower of Life, ingesting several of these and urging their narcotic effect to wash over him. Ultimately Khyron smiled maliciously. He gazed up at the dwindling space fortress and said aloud:
"We'll meet again, Micronians. And next time I will give you no quarter."
CHAPTER SEVEN
I admit it: In those early days I had trouble playing by the rules. Of course, ultimately I learned to return salutes, use the proper phrases, demonstrate respect for my superior officers, and generally behave like a model Robotech soldier. But I continued to have real problems with the system of promotion. If it had been up to me, medals would have been handed out to everyone who went out there. There wasn't one among us who wasn't deserving; not one among us who wasn't qualified to lead.
The Collected Journals of Admiral Rick Hunter
There was a special data chamber in Breetai's flagship that was off limits to all but the highest-ranking officers of the Zentraedi elite. In here were stored the historical records of the Zentraedi race: documentation of past victories, military campaigns, great moments in the lives of great warrior leaders. In addition to these were banks of information relating to the Invid and several dozen other sentient life forms that inhabited the Fourth Quadrant of the galactic local group. As chief science officer and transcultural adviser on all issues dealing with interracial contact (more frequently, conquest), it was Exedore's duty to commit to memory a vast amount of this accumulated lore and knowledge. I
ndeed, this room belonged more to the misshapen Zentraedi than to any other. And the more he delved into data pertaining to the Micronians, the more apprehensive he became. The pursuit of Zor's ship, and this continued contact with the ship's Micronian warriors, was destined to end in unprecedented failure-an undoing of all that had been carefully laid down and preserved for millennia. Try as he might, Exedore could not put this thought from his mind. If the Zentraedi were defeated, what then could stand in the way of the dreaded Invid?
He had mentioned these misgivings to Breetai, careful to couch his phrases in such a way that no fear or cowardice could be inferred; he had
even gone so far as to quote some of the documents to the commander, pointing out the specific warnings about contact with the Micronians. Legends which spoke of a Micronian secret weapon that would be used against any invading race. But his words fell on deaf ears. Breetai was, after all, a military tactician; like most of his race he lived and breathed for battle and warfare-the Zentraedi were born to this. Moreover there was some unspoken fascination at work here, as if in some half-understood way Breetai too was aware of Exedore's thoughts about destiny and undoing.
Just now the two Zentraedi were standing together in the observation bubble of the bridge. The SDF-1, in high relief against a starlit crescent of this system's fourth planet, filled the forward screen. Khyron's forces, though unsuccessful in capturing the ship when it had been lured into Breetai's trap, had nonetheless prevented the Micronians from gaining any distance to their homeworld.
"It amazes me that they have managed to come this far," said Breetai. "Yes, Commander, and they will fight more fiercely as they near their
planet. I fear that the ship itself may be destroyed long before we can enforce a surrender."
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