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  Claudia returned with two wine goblets and sat down facing Lisa on the

  matching recliner. A framed photo of Roy held center stage on the low table between them. She pulled the cork from the bottle and poured two full glasses. Lisa offered a silent toast and drained the entire glass, sensing an almost instantaneous warmth suffuse her body. She settled back against the couch and smiled at Claudia.

  "So how long does it take for the hurting to stop?" she asked her. "You sound like you're giving up."

  "When he came in with his report this morning, I really wanted to apologize, but then, before I could, he started chewing me out."

  Claudia refilled Lisa's glass. "What did he say?"

  "Only that his personal life was his own business and that I should stay out of it." Again Lisa drained the glass.

  "What did you expect?" Claudia was saying. "He doesn't know how you feel about him. You've both shared some ordeals and some close conversation, but as far as he knows, you're just his fellow officer and sometime friend."

  "I know...I've tried to be honest about it...but I don't think it would matter anyway."

  Claudia had never seen her friend quite so loosened up. Lisa was holding her glass out for yet another refill, but she already looked pretty low-lidded. Claudia didn't want her to get sick or pass out, but she poured a little more burgundy, anyway.

  "You don't know that it wouldn't matter to him. Stop trying to outguess him all the time. Just do it, Lisa."

  Lisa blinked and shook her head. "Okay, toss it up to the wine."

  "Fine. But you weren't drinking out there in the rain twenty minutes ago when you decided he wouldn't want to see you...The situation's not as hopeless as you think-at least the man you love is still alive...Of course, I know that you've had that experience also," Claudia was quick to add.

  Both women turned to the photo of Roy.

  Claudia continued. "When Roy passed away, this," she said, holding up her wine, "became a very necessary crutch for me...Now, nothing seems to

  be important anymore."

  Lisa was stunned, almost brought back to the edge of sobriety. But what about all that optimism? she wanted to ask-all those teas? Instead, she said: "There's a difference, anyway...You and Roy hit it off from the very start...Rick and I were...emenies, I mean, enemies." Lisa stopped and took a breath: "Enemies. "

  Claudia chuckled, then grew somber. "It wasn't like that at all-Roy and I were at each other's throats all the time. It nearly drove me crazy."

  A second revelation! thought Lisa.

  Claudia reached for Roy's photo. "Do you want to laugh? I'll tell ya 'bout him!"

  Lisa laughed' up front. "Lemme tell ya something-right now I'll take all the laughs I can get!"

  Rick was too exhausted to sleep; it was as if he had somehow passed beyond the need for rest. And that cold prewinter rain beating down on the flat roof of his small modular barracks home seemed to be keeping time with his racing heart.

  He had tried to focus his thoughts on Khyron's whereabouts; the latest intel reports pointed to a southern route of retreat. But where, Rick had asked himself while pouring over the reports and reworked maps-somewhere in what used to be Mexico, or the decimated Panamanian land bridge, the Amazon jungles, such as they were? Where was he hiding, and what was his next move likely to be? Even Breetai hadn't a clue.

  He gave up on this after a while and collapsed on his back to the bed, still in his uniform, hands locked underneath his head.

  Why did I have to go and shoot off my big mouth like that? he asked himself, getting at last to the center of his confusion. The least I could have done was to listen to what she had to say!

  That tall, blond, smooth-talking, and guitar-strumming Roy Fokker had been a ladies' man came as no surprise to Lisa; but to hear Claudia tell

  it, he had also been something of a scoundrel and womanizer. Lisa had always known Claudia and Roy as the happy couple-this went back to the early days on Macross Island when the SDF-1 was first being rebuilt. But the stories Claudia had regaled her with for the past two hours painted a much different portrait than the one Lisa had imagined.

  Claudia met Roy in 1996, during the initial stage of what would come to be called the Global Civil War, when the two of them were stationed together at a top-secret base in Wyoming; Roy the eager young fighter jock, half in love with death and destruction, and Claudia the naive recruit, easily impressed and often taken advantage of. Claudia described an arrogant Roy to Lisa: a whacko flyboy who would be plying her with gifts one week, then showing up for a date with three adoring women in tow the next. A Roy who would down enemy fighters in her honor but who would rarely call in advance to cancel an appointment.

  "Talk about a complex personality," Claudia said. "At first I didn't want anything to do with him, and I avoided him as much as possible. I even told him so, point-blank. But...it didn't work-Roy Fokker was nothing if not persistent.

  "But what I'm trying to tell you is that our first impressions can be all wrong. Roy and I never really talked to each other, or said how we actually felt, until it was too late...And then he was gone."

  Lisa was momentarily confused; then she realized that Claudia was referring not to Roy's death but to his overseas transfer during the Global Civil War.

  For over a year Claudia didn't hear from Roy; but ultimately they both wound up on Macross Island soon after the "Visitor" crash landed. Still, it was rough going. Roy now had a new love: Robotechnology-specifically, the Veritech fighters that Dr. Lang's teams of scientists were developing.

  "He used to look at those experimental aircraft the way I wished he would look at me," Claudia explained.

  She had actually left unopened all the gifts Roy had given her in the old days and returned them to him years later, hoping he would come clean

  with her about how he felt. But Roy had simply chalked it up to fate, telling her with a shrug, that you couldn't win them all! And it was Claudia who had ended up hurt. On another occasion she saw him dancing and carrying on with three women in a way that suggested that they knew him much more intimately than she did.

  But finally-on a rainy night much like tonight, Claudia went on-Roy confessed his love for her. As obsessed as he was with flying and combat, he was equally obsessed with death; he was certain that he would die in a fighter, and it was only Claudia he could talk to about his hidden fears.

  "It was quite a revelation for me to realize that underneath all that mechamorph bravado, there was a sensitive human being, full of real dreams and real fears," said Claudia. "Deep down I knew it all along. But look at all the happiness I lost with him just because I wasn't able to say what was in my heart. I just hope that you won't let the same thing happen to you, Lisa."

  Lisa polished off the last sip of wine and set her glass on the table, staring at it absently. Rick had never pulled half the stunts Roy had; she at least had that to be thankful for. But in some ways her problems with Rick ran even deeper than Claudia and Roy's: Their arguments centered on issues like...competition and control...and Minmei! Roy had stepped out from behind his mask, but Rick Hunter didn't wear a mask.

  The ball remained in Lisa's court, and even now, after all these hours of wine and honest conversation, she still didn't know how to play it.

  While Lisa was visiting Claudia's past, Rick was running through his own. He recalled his first exchange with Lisa, when he had called her "an old sourpuss," and their first meeting after he had embarrassed himself in a lingerie shop. Then there were the countless arguments, most of them over the com net, related to procedure and such. Their capture and interrogation on Breetai's flagship. That first kiss...The decoration that followed their escape, the complex crosscurrents that developed after Lynn-Kyle entered the scene. The time Lisa had visited him in the hospital-after inadvertently

  shooting him down. Roy's death, and how she had tried to comfort him...Ben's death on that horrible afternoon over Ontario...The final battle that brought them all together, the way t
hey ran into each other's arms after he had touched down near Alaska Base, thinking themselves the last survivors of their race. And the two long years of Reconstruction following that fateful day. He and Lisa as a team: planning, supervising, rebuilding. She would come over to his quarters for a late-night snack or just hang out and read while he was off somewhere on patrol-often clean up the mess he invariably left behind. And that day not long ago when she had presented him with a picture of her to add to his album...

  For the first time he felt as though he were seeing the whole progression of their friendship clearly. And isolated from its various backdrops-Minmei, Kyle, the war without end, Reconstruction blues-their relationship suddenly leapt out as the most significant one in his life. What leapt out with equal clarity was that he had been an absolute fool!

  How, he asked himself now, could he have run that lame number on Vanessa-just to hurt Lisa?! He realized that his stubborn refusal to believe that Lisa was in love with him was all wrapped up in the Minmei dreams he himself perpetuated. Lisa represented a threat to those dreams, much as Minmei was a threat to Lisa's dreams. Dawn's harsh words were crystal clear, and so were Rick's thoughts: He jumped out of bed feeling as though he had slept for a month, refreshed and revitalized, with one purpose in mind-to find Lisa.

  He grabbed an umbrella and ran through the rain to her place, but she wasn't there. He tried a spot in town she frequented; no one had seen her. He phoned headquarters, and the SDF-2 duty chief told him that Lisa had signed out hours ago...That left only one more possibility.

  He deposited another token in the pay phone and tapped in the numbers as rapidly as he could.

  "You're kidding," Lisa slurred when Claudia informed her that Rick was on the phone.

  "He called from across the street." Claudia smiled, recradling the handset.

  "You're serious."

  "You bet I am." Claudia picked up Fokker's picture and regarded it. "Now I wanna have a drink with this fella," she said. "So don't plan on hanging around here with your friend."

  Lisa was suddenly flustered. "What'll I say?"

  "What'll you say? If you don't know by now, then we've wasted the whole evening."

  In a moment Rick was pounding on the door, and Claudia was handing Lisa yet another box of tea. "Your Prince Charming is here. Now, go on, and take this with you-it's a great little icebreaker."

  They walked silently, shoulder to shoulder beneath Rick's umbrella. Lisa was carrying on a running dialogue with herself, and by the looks of it, Rick was too. After all they had been through together, tonight had all the uneasiness of a first date. Something as yet unspoken had altered the way they reacted to each other.

  "Uh, you aren't going to be too cold, are you?" Rick asked her. "Oh, no...Are you?"

  Rick suggested they call a cab, even though it was only a few blocks to either of their quarters-and that was the general idea, wasn't it? She smiled and said that she enjoyed walking.

  Rick agreed: Yeah, it felt good to walk. "I walk a lot at night," said Lisa. "That's great-it's terrific exercise."

  Finally, when she couldn't stand the small talk anymore, she said: "Rick. We've got to talk."

  They were at the corner nearest his place. Rick gestured. "We could go to my quarters, but I don't have anything to offer you-er, wine or..."

  She produced the package of tea. "I've got just the thing." Rick smiled. "You're a lifesaver," he told her.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  First and foremost we must accept who we are; only then can we gain a clear view of our motives. How well I recall being one of the important people, and how well I recall the effect that illusory self-image had on my decisions and motivations. Fallen from grace, I was rescued from what might otherwise have been a transparent existence. Unimportant, I learned to know myself. This forms the basis for the following lesson.

  Jan Morris, Solar Seeds, Galactic Guardians

  November 2014 came and went, Thanksgiving for those who remembered it-not in remembrance of the pilgrims, though, but in memory of the feast held two years before, when the SDF-1 returned to its devastated homeworld and founded New Macross. Wild flowers covered the western slopes of the Rockies, and blue skies had become an everyday event. The cities had been peaceful, and there was no further sign of Khyron. Minmei was back on tour.

  Rick and Lisa had been seeing a lot of each other. This morning she was in the small kitchen of her quarters, humming to herself while preparing sandwiches and snacks for the picnic she and Rick had planned. On routine patrol only days ago, he had discovered an ideal spot in the nearby forest. Lisa was in high spirits. She had a map of the area spread out on the table. It seemed like months since she had taken personal leave and years since she had done anything like this. And she owed at least some of her happiness to Claudia for getting her to be more honest with Rick; she had told him how special he was, and surprise of surprises, he had said he felt the same way toward her.

  In his own quarters a few blocks away, Rick was getting himself ready. Lisa had said she wanted to take care of the food; all he had to do was show up on time. He was certain he could handle that much. It was strange to be out of uniform, almost frightening to contemplate a return to normalcy,

  days and days of uninterrupted peace. And that very sense of discomfort made him ask himself how similar the Human and Zentraedi races had become: in their own way grown dependent on war.

  The phone rang while he was shaving. He turned off the razor and went to answer it, figuring it was Lisa trying to hurry him along.

  "I'm almost ready," he said into the handset, not bothering to ask who was on the line. "I'll be there-"

  "Hi there, it's me!"

  Suddenly uncertain, Rick looked at the phone. "It's Minmei!"

  "Oh, Minmei!" he answered, perking up. "Where've you been?" "All over the place," she said dismissively. "Where are you now?" Rick looked at the phone again. "Home. "

  Minmei laughed. "Oops, I completely forgot! I called to thank you...for saving me and...Kyle. I mean it."

  "You don't have to thank me, Minmei," Rick said plainly.

  After a moment she asked him if he was free for the day. Rick hemmed and hawed but didn't mention the picnic. She was hoping that he could make it over to Monument City-she had a few hours free before tonight's concert.

  "I kinda made plans already."

  "Oh, please, Rick," she purred. "I'm only here for today, and I'm sure whoever you're going to meet won't mind."

  Rick thought back to his conversation with Lisa, how he'd asked her to cancel whatever plans she had made so they could get together for the picnic. He looked at his watch and wondered what sort of last-minute excuse he could come up with. Sickness? A new war?

  "Pleease..." she repeated.

  "Uh, I guess it's okay," he said, relenting. "It's not every day that I get to spend time with you."

  "It'll be fun," Minmei said excitedly. "You can see your friend any time, right?"

  him.

  "Yeah..."

  "Great! I'll be waiting for you at the airport. And dress up," she told

  An old school chum showed up, Rick thought, replacing the handset.

  Somebody who just wandered in from the wastelands. Quickly he punched up Lisa's number, but of course she had already left; more than likely she was already at the Seciele coffee shop waiting for him. Better to say nothing, he decided at last. Just not show up at all.

  There are a hundred reasons why this is a good idea, Rick said to himself as he dropped his fanjet in for a landing on Monument's new strip, not the least of which was the chance to put his little craft through some paces-it had been months since he'd taken it out. And of course it was good for his relationship with Lisa: putting his feelings for Minmei to rest and such. But "sudden business in Monument City" was what he planned to tell Lisa; he promised himself that he would take her on two picnics to make up for this.

  He cut quite the dashing figure in his new gray jump suit as he jumped from the cockpit. He h
ad changed from denim and flannel to his one and only suit and was wearing it underneath, a black scarf tied around his neck.

  "I'm over here, Rick!" Minmei waved from behind the chain-link fence. "How've you been, flyboy?"

  He approached her, smiling. She was wearing a tightfitting sweater and skirt, heels, a large red hat that matched her belt, and big round tinted glasses.

  "I don't think I would have recognized you," he confessed. She laughed. "That's the point, silly."

  Rick got out of the jump suit and stowed it in his carry case, while she ran to the gate, coming around to his side of the fence.

  In a moment they were walking arm in arm, not saying much to each other. Rick felt uncomfortable in his button-down shirt and tie but tried not to convey it.

  "Listen, Rick," Minmei said at last, biting her lower lip. "I'm sorry to drag you away from your appointment. I hope he wasn't mad at you, whoever he was."

  Rick cleared his throat. "Uh, no, he wasn't mad...I rescheduled my appointment with him..." Minmei pressed herself against him, her hand caressing his arm. People were checking them out as they strolled by. "Aren't you worried that someone might recognize you...and me, and, er..."

  "I'm never worried with you," Minmei sighed. She turned him around and reached for the knot in his tie, adjusting it. "I've never seen you in a suit before. You're very handsome-you look important."

  Important? he asked himself. He remembered how good it felt to be in denim and flannel-strange but good. And here he was in a suit, wandering around Monument City with a star on his arm, looking important, and receiving compliments left and right. What did Minmei have in mind? he wondered. Lisa had wanted to picnic and hike.

  Minmei had rented a vehicle for them to use. Rick climbed behind the wheel and followed her directions into the city. Monument was about the closest thing Macross had to a sister city. It had been founded by Zentraedi once under Breetai's command, who had rallied around the crashed warship towering out of its lake the way Humans had around Lake Gloval's similarly situated SDF-1. Monument had spearheaded the separatist movement and had recently been the first to be granted autonomy from the Macross Council.