Doomsday Page 20

  When Rick saw that Minmei was unhurt, he began a frantic search along what was left of the street in the direction Lisa had run. The sky was an orange fireball now, much of the city a memory. High-rise towers had crumbled like sand castles; houses imploded. Park Street and Macross Boulevard were buckled and heaved like rollercoaster courses.

  Rick heard the high-pitched whine of secondary assaults above the howling of an alien wind; then that deadly thunder returned as explosions continued to punish the city and the surrounding hills.

  He found Lisa lying in the street, miraculously alive though the buildings on the block had been utterly destroyed.

  "What happened?" she yelled above the firestorm.

  "We're under attack!" he returned, helping her to her feet. "The Zentraedi! One ship!"

  Khyron! she said to herself. "We've got to get back to the SDF-2!"

  Lisa took a step forward and would have collapsed, but Rick held her, his hands under her arms. "You're too weak," he spoke into her ear. "Let me take care of you...I love you!"

  She turned in his arms and took his face between her scorched hands. "Am I dreaming this?" she said weakly.

  Minmei was suddenly alongside them, urging them to get to the shelters and pleading with Rick to stay with her.

  Projectiles shrieked like banshees in that chrome sky.

  "Get yourself to safety!" Lisa told her. "Rick and I have our duty to perform!"

  Minmei took a faltering step forward, confused.

  "If you really love him," Lisa continued, "let go of him! He's a pilot-that's his life!"

  "Life?" Minmei screamed, hysterical, her arms flailing about. "You call this a life?! War! Devastation! Battle after battle until everything is destroyed!"

  Rick took her by the arms and tried to calm her, urging her to leave. "We're trying to put an end to all this. We hate it as much as you do, but the future of our race has to be preserved!"

  Missiles exploded nearby, raining vengeful lightning on them and erasing words and thoughts. The three of them huddled together, showered by cinders and unheavenly tongues of airborne fire.

  Minmei looked at Lisa and Rick, angry now. "There is no future!"

  Rick turned to leave, and she grabbed hold of him, begging him to remain by her side. If he loved her, he would stay with her.

  But he shook himself free.

  "Someday you'll understand!" he shouted.

  "I'll never understand!" she screamed to his back.

  Lisa entered the bridge of the SDF-2 at a run, making straight for her station. Vanessa was already at her console, the threat screen in front of her

  flashing with display information.

  "Give me a status report!" Lisa ordered.

  "A single battlecruiser-ten degrees southwest. Present position twenty-seven miles but closing very fast."

  "Right," said Lisa, and reached for the air com net switch...

  The projecbeam field on the bridge of Khyron's cruiser showed the Micronians' new battle fortress, sitting in its circular puddle back to back with its crippled cousin, the SDF-1-Zor's ship, cause of so much undoing.

  The Destroyer stood proudly in the observation bubble command center, his facial features distorted by intense hatred.

  "The dimensional fortress now coming into range, sir," Grel reported from his station.

  "Main gun at full power and standing by," said Azonia.

  "My revenge was well worth waiting for! Admiral Gloval is going to wish he'd never heard of me!"

  Azonia straightened in her seat. "Awaiting your orders, m'lord."

  "Take out the new ship first," he commanded. "Then we'll finish them off. Zor's ship will soon be little more than a footnote in Zentraedi history!"

  "Enemy ship still closing!" Sammie told Lisa from her station below the balcony area of the SDF-2 bridge.

  Kim suddenly swung from her console screen. "I'm getting high-level radiation readings!"

  "Vanessa?" Lisa said, asking for confirmation. "They're firing on us, Captain!"

  Glyphs of unharnessed lightning began to take shape along the blunt bow of Khyron's leviathanlike cruiser, leaping pole to pole across what could almost have been a full-lipped mouth, crowned and underscored with twin-muzzled spiked cannons like tusks on its armored hull. The energy danced and stretched, animated by the Protoculture charges enlivening the

  dreadnought's weapons systems.

  Localized storms were unleashed as the ship tore through the winter clouds above Macross, orange thrusters aft propelling it swiftly toward the lake and the immobile fortresses.

  The bolts crackled and hissed in the thin air as the bow began to open, revealing a network of blazing vertical shafts of power, fangs and incisors filed to gleaming points in the mouth of the beast. Ultimately, from somewhere deep within its black heart a cone of blinding light burst forth, spewing from the cruiser and fanning out to encompass the Earth itself, then narrowing and collapsing upon itself as it found its focus. It surged forward across the rooftops of the city, buildings collapsing in its wake, and struck the heart of the fortress, rending the fabric of spacetime on impact and opening gaps into antiworlds.

  Colors reversed themselves; what had been light was now darkness, and what had been blackness glowed with an infernal radiance. The heavens rolled and gyrated as though the very stars had been thrown into chaos by the force of the explosion.

  "SDF-2 has taken a direct hit!" a hurried and frightened male voice informed Rick over the tac net. "We've lost communications!"

  Rick looked over his shoulder, dropping the Veritech's left wing as he turned. Below him Lake Gloval was a caldron of fire and smoke, less a reservoir of water than a volcanic cone. The new fortress was in ruins, holed through and through by the annihilation ray.

  "They're listing!" the voice updated. "They're sinking, Captain!"

  "Come in, SDF-2," Rick shouted into his helmet mike. "Lisa, do you read me?! Captain Hayes?!" His commo screen was a grid of black and white static, then a vertical column of blue and white bands. "Answer me!" he shouted once again.

  Approaching Skull Team from twelve o'clock came an angry flock of Zentraedi mecha, pursuit ships, tri-thrusters, and Battlepods.

  Rick locked onto his targets and pulled home the Hotas.

  "You'll pay for this!" he snarled through bared teeth.

  The rain was harsh but blessedly cool against her raw skin. Why hadn't she thought to include sunscreen in the beach basket? And was Rick as burned as she?...The wailing of tortured seabirds was taking her rapidly to the surface of the world, the roughhouse voices of beachgoers at play...

  Lisa opened her eyes to a close-up view of her console keyboard and touch pads, water cascading between the tabs and puddling on the floor. Her hands were under her face, and the screen in front of her was blank and silent. She raised her head, pushed wet hair from her face, then struggled to her feet to ascertain the extent of the damage to the bridge.

  On the floor below the flyout balcony, Sammie and Kim lay sprawled near their duty stations, seemingly dazed but uninjured. Klaxons were sounding throughout the ship, and the overhead fire control system had drenched everyone and everything in the hold. Lisa turned to check on Vanessa before opening the comlink to request assistance.

  "Fire control teams needed on levels four through twenty," she managed.

  Back at her station, Kim put in a call for medics.

  "All section commanders file status reports as soon as possible," Lisa heard Vanessa say.

  "Tell 'em we need more help on the flight deck!" a paramedic shouted from the floor.

  Kim was working frantically at her controls. "Computer's dead!" she told Lisa. "No manual override. We have no control whatsoever!"

  "Losing power, Captain," Vanessa said behind her. "Recommend we abandon ship!"

  Lisa's mouth dropped open as she felt the impact of those words and understood what it meant to lose a ship.

  She swept her eyes across the bridge: The fortress had taken a direct hit
some floors below the control center, but secondary missiles had razed the bridge as well. There were huge holes in the bulkheads behind her, acrid

  smoke was coiling from the ventilation systems, and for the first time Lisa was aware that the ship was listing hard to starboard.

  Think! she screamed to herself, as if to chase the demons of defeat from her mind. What would Admiral Gloval do in a situation like this?

  She pictured him sitting in the command chair on the SDF-1 bridge, his white cap pulled low on his brow, the tobacco-stained fingers of his right hand gently tugging at the ends of his thick mustache...She could almost hear him:

  "Lisa, you know that you'll always be able to find me right here. "

  And suddenly she understood why he had told her this; she understood why he had been absent so often these past months while the SDF-2 was nearing completion, why he had given her command of the fortress...

  "Of course!" she yelled. She beckoned her bridge crew to follow her and hurried from the control room.

  A winding service corridor still connected the two fortresses, a dark and spooky place now, but the four of them barely took notice of its sinister elements as they ran toward the mother ship, Lisa in the lead. Barely breaking stride, she hit the control switch for the bridge hatch, and they rushed in, surprised to find the overhead lights on and the display boards lit. They were equally surprised to find Claudia standing at her forward station, already initiating the lift-off sequence.

  "Welcome aboard, ladies," she said calmly and with a hint of humor. "What took you so long?"'

  "Don't just stand there," Gloval barked from the command chair. "We have a job to do. Battle stations everyone!"

  Lisa smiled to herself while she and the others hastened to their consoles and screens. So it was true: Gloval had half expected an attack of some sort. He had sworn to Khyron (and the entire crew, for that matter) that the SDF-1 was nonoperational, when in fact it was not only spaceworthy but armed to the teeth. Robotech crews had to have carried out the top-secret reconstruction months ago, purposely leaving the battered exterior of the fortress untouched.

  "What about the main gun, sir?" she asked Gloval.

  "Enough power for one firing. We'll have to make sure it's effective." "Computer countdown is already programmed, sir," Claudia reported. Gloval called for maximum power on all thrusters.

  "Antigrav power levels at optimum capacity," Sammie updated.

  "All systems go," said Kim. "Ready for immediate lift-off on commander's mark!"

  Claudia tapped commands into her overhead control board.

  "Drive system is operational, and the chronometer is running. Four seconds to ignition. Three! Two! One!..."

  "Take her up!" shouted Gloval, almost rising from his chair...

  Minmei, her aunt and uncle, Mayor Tommy Luan, and thousands of others were pressed together in Macross's main shelter, an enormous aboveground structure of steel and reinforced concrete that also housed the city's communications system and data storage networks. Minmei had been entertaining everyone with songs and stories. They were all maintaining, despite the despair they felt when word of the destruction of the SDF-2 had reached them. Recent arrivals to the shelter described how that Zentraedi dragon had belched a flow of irresistible force and how the new fortress had slipped like a corpse beneath the frothing surface of Lake Gloval. The crowds in the shelter had keened and offered up their prayers.

  But now incredible news had arrived: The SDF-1 was lifting out of the lake! And people all over the city were beginning to leave their shelters, heedless of the burning buildings and ravaged land, the death wind that blew like a gust from hell through the deserted streets. Their guardian was resurrected, and this was all that mattered. Even annihilation itself held no sway.

  Minmei, too, left the shelter in time to see the fortress liftoff, parting the water as it rose from the lake, still a gleaming techno-knight despite its sorry appearance. The supercarriers that were its arms were held out in that characteristic gesture of supplication, and already the main guns were

  elevating into position above the knight's visored helmet...

  Khyron's cruiser was continuing its deadly descent, disgorging blast after blast of white light from its unholy gullet. Streaks of blue lightning shot from pinpoint gun turrets, while power-armored Zentraedi troops steadfast along the warship's rusted hull loosed cannon fire against the Earth Forces mecha.

  Rick skimmed Skull One along the cruiser's organiclooking surface, offing missiles as he broke and climbed across its bow. When the recipients of those Stilletos and Hammerheads exploded beneath him, he threw the fighter into another dive, reconfiguring to Guardian mode as he dropped. The skies were alive with tracer rounds, hell flowers, and annihilation disks. Veritechs and Zentraedi pursuit ships were locked in crazed dogfights amid it all, adding their own slugs and rounds to the chaos, their own deaths to the escalating body count.

  In Battloid mode now, legs splayed on the sickly-colored hull and the autocannon at the ready, Rick's mecha emptied his rage at barbed turrets and solitary troops alike. Explosions encircled him, filling the air with whitehot shrapnel. But the great ship held to its course, hurtling toward the lake undeterred.

  All at once there was a voice on the com net. "Rick! Rick Hunter-is that you?!"

  "Lisa!" Rick cried. "I must be hearing things!"

  "You're not," she told him. "I'm aboard the SDF-1, and we're preparing to fire the main guns. So I strongly suggest you get yourself out of there!"

  He was already reaching for his mode selector stick. "You don't have to tell me twice!" he exclaimed, running his mecha along the deck and lifting off.

  Rick raised Max and Miriya on the tac net. Wing to wing the three fighters peeled away from the targeted cruiser...

  "Main gun is in ready position," Claudia announced. "Energy reading at

  present...niner-five-zero."

  Lisa ran calculations at the adjacent station, reporting the results. "The admiral was right-that's only enough energy for one shot, so make it a good one!"

  Vanessa gave the word: The cruiser was centered in the computer reticle.

  "Now, fire!" yelled Gloval...

  The two columnar towers of the main gun were set in position side by side, a continuous cat's cradle of scintillescent energy uniting them running fore to aft. As Gloval issued the command to fire, the power web seemed to solidify itself for an instant; then the twinboomed gun blowtorched.

  A near hemisphere of incandescence erupted from the fortress, dematerializing the winter clouds and igniting the sky like a second sun. The collective force of an infinity of hyperexcited subatomic particles tore through Khyron's approaching cruiser like a radiant stake driven into its icy heart.

  But the cruiser's forward motion was not yet arrested. Flayed of armor and superstructure and trailing a dense pillar of swirling black smoke, it continued to fall...

  Khyron tasted blood in his mouth. In the dim illumination in the observation bubble provided by the cruiser's auxiliary power system, he traced the blood's course to a deep gash over his left eye. The eye itself was closed, swollen and hemorrhaging in its fractured socket. Azonia was in the command chair beside him, unscathed though the rest of the bridge was in ruin.

  "All right," he said, as though taken in by a minor trick, "they've had their fun, and now it's our turn! I'll show them!"

  Behind him, both Grel and Gerao had met their deaths. Weapons systems and communications were out; likewise the computers and projecbeam screens. But the ship's navigationals were alive-the ship itself

  could be used as a final weapon.

  "Now what?" Azonia asked eagerly.

  Khyron took the second chair. "They can't erect a defense barrier without any power, correct?!"

  "Right! They're helpless! Get them!"

  He turned to her and smiled. "We both will," he rasped. "But it requires a sacrifice...are you willing to face it with me, Azonia?"

  She reached out for his hand
. "It will be glorious." "Yes...glorious. Locking on guidance systems, now."

  Its power systems depleted, the SDF-1 had dropped back in the lake, helpless.

  Vanessa glanced up at the schematics on the threat board. The enemy hadn't altered its course. "It looks like he plans to ram us, sir!"

  Gloval turned to Sammie: "Do we have any power left?!" "Not enough to activate the main gun again, sir." "Kim?" said Gloval.

  "Same story here...I have no helm control!"

  Claudia turned from her station: "Reserves and backups are out." Gloval stood up. "Ready the ejection modules," he started to say. But

  Sammie was shaking her head, tears rolling down her freckled face. "Only module C is operational. The rest are..."

  Lisa felt her heart begin to race. Everyone looked at each other, saying more with their eyes than would have been possible through words alone. Sammie and Kim were crying, holding each other. Vanessa was tightlipped, stoic, almost angry.

  Lisa saw Claudia and the admiral exchange glances, then suddenly felt her friend's graceful hand on her shoulder.

  "Lisa..."

  Lisa stepped aside and clutched at herself, feeling a wave of hysteria mount inside her. "No!" she screamed.

  "Lisa, yes!" someone said-it could have been Sammie, or Kim, or

  Vanessa.

  Claudia and Gloval took a step toward her. She began to shake her head wildly...

  Max and Miriya, Rick and what remained of the Skull Team, had put several miles between themselves and Khyron's warship. Circling out over the lake, they regrouped and headed home, the SDF-1 at twelve o'clock, now resettled in the choppy waters.