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  It just didn’t seem right, though, with so many dead and so many more, perhaps, about to die. “We’re getting distorted signals, so we’re not sure what’s happening,” she told Sean.

  “There,” the tech said just then. “I think that’s them! But—the reason our signal’s distorted is because they’re so close to one of the enemy mother ships. “Hell’s own bells! It’s right on top of them!”

  The shuttle was barely drifting along. “Staying tight as possible,” Marie said, tight-lipped.

  “Creepy silences. Man, I hate creepy silences,” Dana muttered.

  “I suppose you’d rather have them shooting at us again?” Angelo shot back.

  “Don’t worry, ground-pounders!” Marie said tartly. “There’ll be lots more shooting, and soon.” The three ATACs frowned at that; they were armored troopers, not leg infantry ground-pounders.

  Marie hunched forward in her chair; the shuttle was coming to the end of the flagship’s underbelly. “Get ready to try for contact again.”

  “Ready and waiting,” Bowie said evenly.

  “Everybody look sharp,” Marie said. “I’m taking us up for a look-see.”

  She hit the main thrusters and zoomed up from underneath the immense flagship. Immediately, two of the chandelier-bulb cannon swung into place and sent out tangled vines of green-white destruction.

  “Oh, now they manage to find us, now that we’re not hiding.” Marie laughed scornfully, taking the shuttle through evasive maneuvers. “On your toes, all of you! We’ll be getting company!” Still, the fact that the enemy seemed to have lost track of the Challenger once the shuttle was close in underneath was not to be forgotten.

  “Alien assault ship on our tail,” Angelo called out.

  “And I’m picking up two more coming in on our flanks,” Dana added.

  But the alien ships refrained from firing this time. There was still more that the Robotech Masters wished to know about these primitive Earthlings, creatures like missing links really, who had in some unfathomable manner wiped out the giant Zentraedi.

  The launch bays of the assault ships opened, and Bioroids zoomed forth.

  Marie had partial shields back, but she zoomed in low to the flagship’s upper hull, skimming it, so that the enemy cannon couldn’t be depressed low enough to hit the shuttle.

  The Bioroids, on the other hand, had trouble getting a clear shot, swarming as thickly as they did; they ran the risk of hitting their own ship or one another.

  “Bowie, resume contact-scan,” Marie ordered.

  “Roger; scanning,” Bowie responded. The laser-contact with Liberty required enormous precision. That would mean that Challenger IV was going to have to do less maneuvering, at least for a little while. And that in turn meant that somebody was going to have to keep the Bioroids away from the shuttle; repel them perhaps, or better yet, decoy them.

  “Take over,” Marie told Heideger. “I’m going to suit up.” She began making her way to the rear cargo bay, and her Veritech.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  You can’t get somebody in your sights in combat without spending a lot of time after that wondering if you’re in somebody else’s.

  Remark made by Dana Sterling to Nova Satori

  THE BIOROIDS BEGAN TO PRESS THEIR ATTACK; HEIDEGER threw in some jukes-and-jinxes as the top cargo bay doors opened to make Marie’s launch less of a clay-pigeon shoot.

  The VT roared out into the dark vacuum, and most of the Bioroids turned to pursue at once, leaving the others to dodge the shuttle’s fire. Dana and Angelo each managed to flame a blue enemy mecha.

  Then it was again all turns-and-burns for Marie, a furious dogfight in the uncaring void. She bagged three of them in harrowing, furious maneuvering much more appropriate to atmospheric fighting than airless space; Robotech craft moved very much in accordance with the pilot’s imaging, and Marie was much more comfortable flying where aerodynamics and control surfaces counted.

  Then a fourth alien foe got a line of shots into her fuselage, but only at a grazing angle, so that they did little damage. She turned on the blue vengefully, flamed it, and neatly avoided fire from two more.

  Suddenly a shape from her nightmares swooped close, the red Bioroid aiming for her. “Oh, no, you don’t!” She hit emergency power, blasting away, at the same time putting the VT through mechamorphosis. The VT reconfigured to Guardian mode. Marie was about to come around for another go at the red, but two blues pounced on her before she could.

  Inside the shuttle, Heideger yelled, “Marie’s in trouble!”

  Dana waxed another blue but missed the one behind it. “Look, we’ve all got our own problems. Bowie, talk to me.”

  Bowie was intent at his work at the commo suite. “Tentative contact. I think I’ve got a fix on them.”

  “Raise the laser-transmitter,” Dana ordered; that would risk having it damaged, but there wasn’t much time left, and the volunteers would just have to gamble.

  Outside, Marie led the first blue along, getting it between her and the second, then zapping it thoroughly. The second came through the spherical fireball of the first, blinded a bit by it, so that she took it by surprise and peppered it with a sustained burst. It, too, was obliterated.

  “Transmitter in position,” Bowie said over the tactical net.

  Marie spared a quick glance while maneuvering and craning for more opponents. “Roger! I see it!” The laser had emerged from an armored pod over the flight deck. It was such a fragile, unimpressive-looking device, it occurred to Marie, to have been the centerpiece of such carnage.

  A blue seemed to notice the apparatus and go in for a shot at it, but Marie pounced on it from the six o’clock position and shot the alien war machine to shreds.

  “Awright, Bowie, now or never,” Dana said, swinging her guns to a new target.

  Bowie began sending the encoded transmission in burst format; all the information was contained in a single micro-pulse that was repeated over and over. If just one pulse got through, the Liberty operators could decrypt it instantly, reprogram their transmitters, and resume contact. The pulse-message also detailed what had happened on Earth since the aliens’ appearance.

  The problem was that the shuttle was being battered so badly by enemy fire that not even the complex compensating gear could keep the beam well on target.

  The shuttle volunteers began firing again, pressing the triggers until their thumbs grew tired, as more Bioroids came in at them to replace the ones they destroyed. Marie turned and was a split-second too late to dodge, and the red Bioroid came at her out of nowhere and scored a hit. She twisted the Guardian to avoid the worst of the blast, and smashed against the shuttle’s fuselage. “I’m hit!”

  “Marie!” Dana yelled over the net.

  “It’s that red Bioroid,” Marie moaned in pain as the marauder came at her in another pass. Her Guardian barely got out of the way, but the red gave an impression of toying with her. “He’s too quick for me!”

  Dana looked at the scene on the external monitors, wide-eyed. It’s the same one, she knew with a certainty she never questioned. The one I—I’m afraid of. But why? What are these strange feelings? And now it’s going to kill Marie.

  But a diamond-hard resolve came into her. No! I won’t let it! “I’m going out there,” she decided, rising from her place.

  Bowie and Angelo started to object, but she was already dashing aft. “Do your best to hold them. And get that message through!”

  The endless drill of the Academy and duty with the 15th served her well; in seconds she was in armor, climbing into her Battloid-mode mecha. I know how that Bioroid thinks! I don’t know how, but I do! I can beat him!

  “More bandits coming,” Angelo reported as the cargo bay doors opened again. The doors swung up and out to reveal a volume of space filled with the deadly blossoms of explosions and the streaming discs of the Robotech energy weapons.

  A blue saw the opening and tried to ride its Hovercraft right down into th
e shuttle cargo bay. Dana’s Battloid brought up its heavy rifle and hosed the blue with blazing energy, sending it back in burst fragments.

  She swung the rifle back and forth, driving back nearby attackers. “Hang on, Marie! I’ll be right with you!”

  “Thanks,” Marie said, sounding harried. “I could use the help.”

  “Bowie! Any response from Liberty?”

  Sweat ran down Bowie’s face in rivulets. “Not yet.”

  Tessel tried to contain his frustration. “Why hasn’t Liberty answered? Why?”

  Like everyone else in the command center, he was afraid what the answer might be. Perhaps the whole theory behind the plan was wrong, or the equipment wasn’t up to the job. Or perhaps there was no one alive at Space Station Liberty to hear.

  “Sir, we can’t raise Liberty or the shuttle. It’s beginning to look like it’s a wipe, sir,” a G2 analyst reported.

  Nova heard the sharp intake of breath at her side, Sean and Louie. The three young soldiers said nothing, fearing it might bring bad luck; they watched the screens, not blinking, not moving.

  * * *

  Dana added the tremendous firepower of her Battloid to that of Marie’s Guardian and the shuttle’s batteries. Heideger somehow kept minimal shield power, although the ship took a number of hits. The whole area around the shuttle was a crisscrossing of the heaviest firing Dana had ever seen. Bioroids came apart in mid-pounce, only to be replaced by more.

  Then Marie called out, “You can’t win! You’re not even Human!” and Dana saw that the red had reappeared like a Horseman of the Apocalypse, diving at the Black Lion leader. Marie and the red chopped away at each other with intense fire until the range was very short, nearly point-blank. Then the red sheered off and came around for another try.

  “Dana, he’s headed your way! I’m joining you!”

  In moments, Marie was in the bay beside Dana, shoulder to shoulder, muzzles aimed high as the enemy leader rushed in at them again, his oval hand weapon putting out rounds one on top of the next.

  It became a collision course, the two women and the alien vying to see which side could put out a more murderous volume of fire. VT Battloid and Hovertank Battloid stood their ground as the red closed in.

  “Just keep shooting, Dana, keep shooting!”

  Bolts from the heavy cannon that was Dana’s rifle scored at last, ripping into the edge of the red’s visor, so that smoke and burning scrap spun from it. The red veered off yet again, to regain balance.

  “Don’t stop! He can’t last long!” Marie said as the red came in at them on a new track. “You’ve got the angle; he’s yours!”

  Dana’s Battloid spread its feet and stood like a metal titan flinging starflame. The red came in, and, as if events had become snarled in some kind of chrono-dimensional loop, she scored a sustained shot on the same part of the left shoulder she’d hit in the fight at Fokker Base. Once more the shoulder nearly separated; once more the red tumbled away like a seared and flailing Lucifer cast down.

  Dana’s mind reeled. Was this past, present, future? Was it real? “I—I got him!” she cried, bringing herself out of the disorientation.

  “Good shooting, ground-pounder.” Marie laughed. As before, the blue Bioroids broke off their attack as soon as their leader withdrew from the field of battle.

  Inside the shuttle, Bowie activated the new frequency-jumping commo system, patching an incoming message through the tactical net so that Dana and Marie could hear it. “This is Space Station Liberty calling Earth, Space Station Liberty calling Earth. Do you copy? We have relayed your message to Moon Base. Repeat, Moon Base has resumed contact as well.”

  Bowie and Angelo were up, pounding each other on the back. They were about to drag Heideger into it when they saw that he was slumped, lifeless, in the copilot’s seat. The joy ebbed from them.

  “Oh, no …” Heideger had taken a fatal charge from an energy surge during the final attack. Angelo, nearly in tears, closed the man’s eyes for the last time.

  “They made it! Mission accomplished! Challenger’s heading home!” a command center tech whooped. Sean and Louie stood watching the place turn into a madhouse of celebration. Even Nova Satori was smiling, eyes shining.

  Louie adjusted his dark goggles and shrugged to Sean. “With three ATACs up there—what’d they expect?”

  High above the Earth, in the flagship of the Robotech Masters, all aspects of the encounter were reexamined and subjected to a coldly merciless scrutiny. The Scientist clone triumvirate had primary responsibility in this matter, though, of course, the Politician triumvirate was working in close coordination—a coordination difficult for the uncloned to imagine.

  Silent discussions and debates took place, moderated through the Master triumvirate’s humped Protoculture cap. The many mental voices spoke in the precision of artificially induced psi contact; they were unhampered by any emotion.

  It was clear that the space station and the lunar base were in contact with the primitives below once more, in a fashion that thwarted, for the time being, the Masters’ ability to jam. The Humans had millions upon millions of frequencies among which to jump, and even the resources of the Robotech Masters were finite—the more so now that Protoculture was in such short supply.

  Resumed communication was of little moment, though, and the losses in Bioroids and assault ships was of scant concern. It was the unknown that troubled the Masters. Thus far, there had been no sign of the enigmatic weapons or powers that had destroyed most of the Zentraedi race, and some five million warships.

  Certainly, there had been no use of any such thing as yet. Still, though the Masters were arrogant and supremely egotistical—despite their decadence, and the blind eye they turned to their own decline—they harbored no illusions when it came to recognizing the power of giant cloned warriors they had created. Whatever had defeated the Zentraedi—had virtually swallowed the countless goliaths and their fleets and mecha like some black hole—was a force to be feared even by the Robotech Masters.

  Perhaps all that had gone before was a clever Human ruse, it occurred to the cold intellects in the flagship. Perhaps all of mis sacrifice and seeming vulnerability on the part of the primitives was a strategy to draw the Masters on until they met the fate of the Zentraedi.

  Another body of opinion had it that whatever force had obliterated the Zentraedi—and there was evidence that that force might have been the Zentraedi themselves—it no longer existed. Therefore: press ahead; strike for the treasure beyond treasures that lay below.

  And overhanging all debate was the need, the hunger, for Protoculture. Though the Masters would never have framed it so, without Zor’s greatest creation they were a dying race of refugees; however, with it they would be, as they thought of themselves, Lords of all Creation.

  The longing and need was greater than any mortal could ever conceive; a vampire’s thirst was a mere dryness of the throat by comparison. A decision was reached in the wake of the battle; the next phase of the Robotech Masters’ plan was set into motion.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  Of course, Dana Sterling wasn’t physically isolated in her upbringing; indeed, it was somewhat rough-and-tumble at times. But, while there are indications that she was not a virgin by the time she graduated from the Academy, she seemed to have formed no strong sexual bond of any kind—as if something were saving her as surely as Rapunzel being kept in a tower.

  I refer the reader to the writings of Zand, Zeitgeist, and the rest as to what that something was; it seems certain that the events at the mounds and thereafter bear them out.

  Altaira Heimel, Butterflies in Winter;

  Human Relations and the Robotech Wars

  TWO HOVERCYCLES HOWLED THROUGH THE NIGHT SIDE BY side.

  Dana knew there would be road grit and dust from the cinders of the wounded Earth to wash from her hair later, but she didn’t care. Their headlights threw out cones of harsh light across the desolation as she and Bowie barreled across the
wasteland.

  A night patrol would ordinarily have been a crashing bore. It was a little like guarding the Gobi Desert; who was going to steal this piece of real estate? But the Southern Cross Army was on yellow alert in the wake of the Challenger ruckus, and everyone who wasn’t grabbing some much-needed sleep was on ready-reaction standby. Heel-and-toe watches in the 15th’s ready-room had just about driven Dana crazy, so she had jumped at the chance to take this patrol, to get away from the base for a while. Bowie had naturally come along, loyal and concerned as any brother.

  Besides, there was a chance, however remote, that the Robotech Masters might try an invasion, which gave the joyride a little added voltage.

  Her hair was only partly confined by the band of her goggles and the techno-ornament hairband she wore; Dana reveled in the whipping of the thick, short blond waves, and the feel of the wind in her face.

  When the base signaled, she let Bowie handle it; she was enjoying herself too much. Then reality caught up with her.

  Bowie cut in even nearer, until they were knee-and-knee at sixty miles an hour. Both slowed a bit, so they could talk rather than use their commo link; Bowie knew Dana hated to have the base eavesdropping.

  “Headquarters has been tracking us!” Bowie yelled it slowly, so that she could read his lips—lit by his instrument panel lights and the backwash from the headlight—as well as strain to hear. “They said to come about, right now!”

  They both took a low hummock of sand hardened into glass by a long-ago Zentraedi blast, like a pair of steeple-chasers. Dana nodded to him. “Okay, let’s go.” She’d learned early in life that freedom never lasted for long.

  But as they swung around, their headlights scaring up rabbits and strange radiation-bred things that had come out in the darkness, sending them scuttling for cover, Dana exclaimed in surprise, then yelled, “Hold it!”

  Both cycles retroed, then came to a halt, engines at low idle. “Hmmm.”