Invid Invasion

  Invid Invasion

  By Jack McKinney 1987

  For K. A. and the Kahlua Kid, who have heard little else this past year

  PROLOGUE

  Somewhere a queen was weeping...her children scattered; her regent a prisoner of the blood lust, at war with nature and enslaved to vengeance.

  But dare we presume to read her thoughts even now, to walk a path not taken-one denied to us by gates and towers our senses cannot perceive and perhaps never will?

  Still, it must have seemed like the answer to a prayer: A planet newly rich in the flower that was life itself, a profusion of such incredible nutrient wealth that her Sensor Nebulae had found it clear across the galaxy. A blue and white world as distant from her Optera as she was from the peaceful form her consciousness once inhabited.

  And yet Optera was lost to her, to half her children. Left in the care of one who had betrayed his kind, who had become what he fought so desperately to destroy. As she herself had...

  All but trapped now in the guise that he had worn, the one who lured the secrets of the Flower from her. And whose giant warriors had returned to possess the planet and dispossess its inhabitants. But oh, how she had loved him! Enough to summon from her very depths the ability to emulate him. And later to summon a hatred keen enough to birth a warring nature, an army of soldiers to rival his-to rival Zor's own!

  But he, too, was lost to her, killed by the very soldiers her hatred had fashioned.

  Oh, to be rid of these dark memories! her ancient heart must have screamed. To be rescued from these sorry realms! Garuda, Spheris, Tirol. And this Haydon IV with its sterile flowers long awaiting the caress of the Pollinators-this coq fused world even my Inorganics cannot subdue.

  But she was aware that all these things would soon be behind her. She would gather the cosmic stuff of her race and make the jump to that world the Sensor Nebulae had located. And woe to the life form that inhabited that world! For nothing would prevent her from finding a home for her children,

  a home for the completion of their grand evolutionary design!

  News of the Invid exodus from Haydon IV spread through the Fourth Quadrant-to Spheris and Garuda and Praxis, worlds already abandoned by the insectlike horde, worlds singled out by fate to feel the backlash of Zor's attempt at recompense, nature's cruel joke.

  The Tirolian scientist had attempted to foliate them with the same Flowers he had been ordered to steal from Optera, an action that had sentenced that warm world's sentient life-form to a desperate quest to relocate their nutrient grail. But Zor's experiments had failed, because the Flower of Life proved to be a discriminating plant-choosy about where it would and would not put down roots-and a malignantly loyal one as well.

  Deriving as much from the Invid as the Invid derived from it, the Flower called out from Zor's seeded worlds to its former guardian/hosts. Warlike and driven-instincts born of the Robotech Masters' transgression-the Invid answered those calls. Their army of mecha and Inorganics arrived in swarms to overwhelm and rule; and instead of the Protoculture paradises the founder of Robotechnology had envisioned, were planets dominated by the beings his discoveries had all but doomed.

  And now suddenly they were gone, off on a new quest that would take them clear across the galactic core.

  To Earth...

  Word of their departure reached Rick Hunter aboard the Sentinel's ships. He was in the command seat on the fortress bridge when the communique was received. Thin and pale, a war-weary veteran of countless battles, Rick was almost thirty-five years old by Earth reckoning, but the vagaries of hyperspace travel put him closer to fifty or two hundred and seventy, depending on how one figured it.

  The giant planet Fantoma, once home to the Zentraedi, filled the forward viewports. In the foreground Rick could just discern the small inhabited moon called Tirol, an angry dot against Fantoma's barren face. How could such an insignificant world have unleashed so much evil on an

  unsuspecting galaxy? Rick wondered.

  He glanced over at Lisa, who was humming to herself while she tapped a flurry of commands into her console. His wife. They had stayed together through thick and thin these past eleven years, although they had had their share of disagreements, especially when Rick had opted to join the Sentinels-Baldon, Teal, Crysta, and the others-and pursue the Invid.

  Who would have thought it would come to this? he asked himself. A mission whose purpose had been peace at war with itself. Edwards and his grand designs of empire...how like the Invid regent he was, how like the Masters, too! But he was history now, and that fleet he had raised to conquer Earth would be used to battle the Invid when the Expeditionary Force reached the planet.

  Providing the fleet reached Earth, of course. There were still major problems with the spacefold system Lang and the Tirolian Cabell had designed. Some missing ingredient...Major Carpenter had never been heard from, nor Wolff; and now the Mars and Jupiter Group attack wings were preparing to fold, with almost two thousand Veritechs between them.

  Rick exhaled slowly and deliberately, loud enough for Lisa to hear him and turn a thin smile his way. Somehow it was fitting that Earth should end up on the Invid's list, Rick decided. But what could have happened there to draw them in such unprecedented numbers? Rick shuddered at the thought.

  Perhaps Earth was where the final battle was meant to be fought.

  Ravaged by the Robotech Masters and their gargantuan agents, the Zentraedi, it was a miracle that Earth had managed to survive at all. Looking on the planet from deep space, it would have appeared unchanged: its beautiful oceans and swirling masses of cloud, its silver satellite, bright as any beacon in the quadrant. But a closer look revealed the scars and disfigurations those invasions had wrought. The northern hemisphere was all but a barren waste, forested by the rusting remains of Dolza's ill-fated four-million-ship armada. Great cities of gleaming concrete, steel, and glass towers lay ruined and abandoned. Wide highways and graceful bridges were

  cratered and collapsed. Airports, schools, hospitals, sports complexes, industrial and residential zones...reduced to rubble, unmarked graveyards all.

  A fifteen-year period of peace-that tranquil prologue to the Masters' arrival-saw the resurrection of some of those things the twentieth century had all but taken for granted. Cities had rebuilt themselves, new ones had grown up. But humankind was now a different species from that which had originally raised those towering sculptures of stone. Post-Cataclysmites, they were a feudal, warring breed, as distrustful of one another as they were of those stars their hopeful ancestors had once wished upon. Perhaps, as some have claimed, Earth actually called in its second period of catastrophe, as if bent on adhering to some self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. The Masters, too, for that matter: The two races met and engaged in an unspoken agreement for mutual annihilation-a paving of the way for what would follow.

  Those who still wish to blame Protoculture trace the genesis of this back to Zor, Aquarian-age Prometheus, whose gift to the galaxy was a Pandora's box he willingly opened. Displaced and repressed, the Flower of Life had rebelled. And there were no chains, molecular or otherwise, capable of containing its power. That Zor, resurrected by the Elders of his race for their dark purposes, should have been the one to free the Flower from its Matrix is now seen as part of Protoculture's equation. Equally so, that that liberation should call forth the Invid to complete the circle.

  They came without warning: a swarm of monsters and mecha folded across space and time by their leader/queen, the Regis, through an effort of pure psychic will. They did not choose to announce themselves the way their former enemies had, nor did they delay their invasion to puzzle out humankind's strengths and weaknesses, quirks and foibles. There was no need to determine whether Earth did or did not have what t
hey sought; their Sensor Nebulae had already alerted them to the presence of the Flower. It had found compatible soil and climate on the blue and white world. All

  that was required were the Pollinators, a missing element in the Robotech Masters' equations.

  In any case, the Invid had already had dealings with Earthlings, having battled them on a dozen planets, including Tirol itself. But as resilient as the Humans might have been on Haydon IV, Spheris, and the rest, they were a pathetic lot on their homeworld.

  In less than a week the Invid conquered the planet, destroying the orbiting factory satellite-an ironic end for the Zentraedi aboard-laying to waste city after city, and dismissing with very little effort the vestiges of the Army of the Southern Cross. Depleted of the Protoculture charges necessary to fuel their Robo-technological war machines, those warriors who had fought so valiantly against the Masters were forced to fall back on a small supply of nuclear weapons and conventional ordnance that was no match for the Invid's plasma and laser-array superiority.

  Even if Protoculture had been available to the Southern Cross for their Hovertanks and Alpha Veritechs, there would have been gross problems to overcome: the two years since the mutual annihilation of the Robotech Masters and Anatole Leonard's command had seen civilization's unchecked slide into lawlessness and barbarism. Cities became city-states and warred with one another; men and women rose quickly to positions of power only to fall even more swiftly in the face of greater military might. Greed and butchery ruled, and what little remained of the northern hemisphere's dignity collapsed.

  Though certain cities remained strong-Mannatan, for example (formerly New York City)-the centers of power shifted southward, into Brazilas especially (the former Zentraedi Control Zone), where growth had been sure and steady since the SDF-1's return to devastated Earth and the founding of New Macross and its sister city, Monument.

  Unlike the Zentraedi or the Tirol Masters, the Invid were not inclined to destroy the planet or exterminate humankind. Quite the contrary: Not only had the Flower found favorable conditions for growth, the Invid had as

  well. The Regis had learned enough in her campaign against the Tirolians and the so-called Sentinels to recognize the continuing need for technology. Gone was the blissful tranquillity of Optera, but the experiment had to be carried forth to its conclusion nonetheless, and Earth was well suited for the purpose.

  After disarming and occupying the planet, the Regis believed she was more than halfway toward her goal. By utilizing a percentage of Humans to cultivate and harvest the Flowers, she was free to carry out her experiments uninterrupted. The central hive, which came to be called Reflex Point, was to be the site of the Great Work, but secondary hives were soon in place across the planet to maintain control of the Human sectors of her empire. The Regis was willing to let humankind survive until such time as the work neared completion. Then, she would rid herself of them.

  There was, however, one thing she had not taken into account: the very warriors she had fought tooth and claw on those worlds once seeded by Zor. Enslave a world she might, but take it for her own?

  Never!

  CHAPTER ONE

  The armada of Robotech ships T.R. Edwards had amassed for his planned invasion and conquest of Earth would be put to that very use years later when Admiral Hunter sent them against the Invid. Adding irony to irony, it should be mentioned that the warships had serious design flaws which went unnoticed during their use on Tirol. Assuming this would have been the case even if Edwards had managed to persevere, the invasion would have failed. Destiny failed to deliver Edwards the crown he felt justified to wear and likewise failed to deliver Hunter the quick victory he felt justified to claim.

  Selig Kahler, The Tirolian Campaign

  A fleet of Robotech warships moved into attack formation above the Moon, a mixed school of gleaming predators, radiant where the distant sun touched their armored hulls and alloy fins. Each carried in its belly a score or more of Veritech fighters, sleek, transformable mecha developed and perfected over the course of the past thirty years. And inside each of these was a pilot ready to die for a world unseen. War was at the top of the agenda, but in a narrow hold aboard one of the command vessels a young man was thinking about love.

  He was a pleasant-looking, clean-shaven youth going on twenty, with his father's long legs and the wide eyes of his mother. He wore his blue-black hair combed straight back from his high forehead-save for that undisciplined strand that always seemed to fall forward-making his ears appear more prominent than they actually were. He wore the Expeditionary Force uniform-simple gray tight-fitting pants tucked into high boots and a short-sleeved ornately collared top worn over a crimson-colored synthcloth bodysuit. The Mars Group patch adorned the young man's shirt.

  His name was Scott Bernard-Lieutenant Scott Bernard-and this was a homecoming of sorts. That fact, coupled with the anxieties he felt

  concerning the imminent battle, had put him in an impassioned frame of mind. The fortunate recipient of this not-so-sudden desire was a pretty, dark-eyed teenager named Marlene, a good six inches shorter than Scott, with milk-chocolate-brown hair and shapely legs enhanced by the uniform's short skirt.

  Scott had Marlene's small face cupped in his hands while he looked lovingly into her eyes. As his hands slid to her narrow shoulders, he pulled her to him, his mouth full against hers, stifling the protest her more cautious nature wished to give voice to and urging her to respond. Which she did, with a moan of pleasure, her hands flat against his chest.

  "Marry me, Marlene," he said after she had broken off their embrace. He heard himself say it and almost applauded, simply for finally getting the nerve up to ask her; Marlene's response was a separate issue.

  Her surprised gasp probably said the same: that she too couldn't believe he was finally getting around to it. She turned away from him, nervous hands at her chin it an attitude of prayer.

  "Well, will you?" Scott pressed.

  "It's a bit sudden," she said coyly. But Scott didn't pick up on her tone and reacted as though he had been slapped.

  "You'll have to speak to my father first," Marlene continued in the same tone, her back to him still. "My mother, too." When she turned around, Scott was staring at her slack jawed.

  "But they're back on Tirol!" he stammered. "They might not be here for-" Then he caught her smile and understood at once. He had literally known her for her entire life, and he still couldn't tell when she was putting him on.

  Marlene was smiling up at him now, eyes beaming. But the sudden shrill of sirens collapsed her happiness.

  "Defold operation complete," a voice said over the PA. "All wing commanders report to the bridge for final briefing and combat assignments."

  Scott's lips were a thin line when he looked at her.

  "Answer me, Marlene. I might not get another chance to ask you."

  The command ship bridge was a tight, no-nonsense affair, with two duty stations squeezed between the wraparound viewports and four more back to back behind these. There was none of the spaciousness and calm that had characterized the SDF-1 bridge; here everyone had a seat, and everyone put duty first. It took something like the first sight of Earth to elicit any casual conversation, and even then the comments would have surprised some.

  "I'm so excited," a woman tech was saying. "I can hardly wait to see what Earth looks like after all these years.'

  Commander Gardner seated at the forward station of starboard pair, heard this and laughed bitterly to himself. He had served under Gloval during the First Robotech War and had been with Hunter since. His thick hair and mustache had gone to silver these past few years, but he still retained a youthful energy and the unwavering loyalty of his young crew.

  The woman tech who had spoken was all of seventeen years old, born in deep space like most of her shipmates. Gardner wished for a moment he could have showed her the Earth of forty years ago, teeming with life, wild and wonderful and blissfully unaware of the coming tide...

  "Wha
t does it matter?" the tech's male console mate answered her. "One planet's the same as another to me. Robotech ships are all I've known-all I want to know."

  "Don't you have any interest in setting foot on your homeworld? Our parents were born here. And their parents, right on back to the first ancestors."

  Gardner could almost hear the copilot's shrug of indifference clear across the bridge.

  "Just another Invid colony, color it what you will. So this place is blue and Spheris was brown. It doesn't do anything for me."

  "Spoken like a true romantic."

  The copilot snorted. "You get romantic thinking about the Invid

  grubbing around the old homestead looking for Protoculture?"

  Commander Gardner was hanging on the answer when the door to the bridge hissed open suddenly and Lieutenant Bernard entered.

  "Alpha Group is just about ready for launch," Bernard reported.

  Gardner muttered, "Good," and rose from the contoured seat, signaling one of the techs to turn on the ship's PA system.

  "Most of you know what I'm about to say," he began. "But for those who don't know what this mission is all about, it's simply this: Several months ago we became aware that the Invid Sensor Nebulae had located some new and apparently enormous supply of the Flowers of Life. The source of the transmissions turned out to be the Earth itself.

  "The Regis moved quickly to secure the Flowers, with the same murderous intent she demonstrated on Spheris and Haydon IV and a dozen other worlds I don't have to remind you about. Nor should I have to remind you about what we're going to face on Earth. It seems probable that the Invid decimated Wolff's forces, but we number more than four times the units under his command."