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  Ah, what a sweet victory this would be! To wipe out the approaching enemy in the nick of time, to humble the Sentinels and destroy them forever here, where his mate could see it all—and be won back by him by this proof of his strength at war and military brilliance! A true, savage, devolved stroke of greatness.

  Farrago was ripping itself to pieces; shields were down, power systems were failing, communications were all but nonexistent. Always a patchwork ship, she was being driven apart by the Regent’s single bolt.

  A string of explosions opened a power conduit all along a main passageway, like something being stitched by a monster sewing machine, inflicting awful casualties among the crewbeings trapped there. The last of the explosions sent shrapnel and fire into Mr. Blake, Lisa’s trusted bridge officer.

  He had almost made it; the Spherian module was before him, the last that was intact. There was no one aboard the Spherian; at least, no one alive. Concussion, blast, fumes, and flying debris had downed them all.

  Blake barely dragged himself inside; he was losing consciousness and had lost a tremendous amount of blood. Yet he somehow held himself up with one hand on a commo box and reached through the hatch, feeling for the emergency release.

  He had to strip off the safety seal, ripping fingernails loose in the process but scarcely feeling the pain. Tiredly, he took the little quartz lever there and pulled it down. A crystal tone began to sound in the empty Spherian ship as its hatch closed and the strange repelling forces generated by the Regent’s volley began to separate it from Farrago.

  But another internal explosion blew out that whole part of the passageway and penetrated the Spherian hull, killing Blake instantly and damaging the Spherian ship. It would never make its programmed rescue run; it broke in half, the drive section tumbling off on a vector of its own, the rest consumed, along with Blake’s body, by another huge detonation from Farrago.

  The VTs, taken by surprise and surrounded by a horde of Invid mecha, closed ranks and tried to defend themselves as best they could. A few elements tried to break through and run for Praxis, but the Regent’s forces were deployed to stop them. The Skulls re-formed and got ready for a fight to the death. There were some garbled transmissions from the Invid, something about surrender, but the fighter jocks had all heard the tales from the Sentinels who had been prisoners, and decided they weren’t interested.

  Outnumbered five to one, and at times ten to one, they flew from second to second, and died at full throttle. A few joined Alpha to Beta and catapulted themselves into the enemy midst; others got into tight flight elements and rat-raced, skeeting enemies until their own number was up.

  They were the best Earth had to offer, people who had contended with cramped living conditions, low pay, and a long separation from home to serve a cause greater than themselves. And no one was there to thank them as they died in the gun turrets, the flight decks, the cockpits. But they hadn’t signed on for thanks, and hadn’t expected them.

  Farrago came apart, its outlashing throwing portions and scraps of it toward unreachable stars. The teeming Invid swarmed in to slay the last of the VTs and strafe the flagship’s remains.

  “Still no contact with the Regess?” the Regent howled, shaking a gargantuan fist. “Has she no idea what I’ve accomplished?”

  A drone technician looked stricken, realizing that he might die in the next few seconds. “Oh, All-Powerful One! The Regess is no longer on Praxis! The readings we receive indicate that she may be on her way to Haydon IV with her half of our race, but—there are no Protoculture readings on Praxis, no power sources, no movement—nothing!”

  The Regent screamed aloud, but it would have been too much of an inconvenience to leap from his throne and smite the technician. Instead, he tried to wipe the taste of disappointment from his mind.

  “A waste, a waste! Did you record every bit of my victory, so that she may see it? Then, make ready to depart!”

  “To Praxis, my lord?” an Enforcer asked.

  The Regent cuffed the Enforcer aside, and the Enforcer’s armor buckled against the deck with the impact of it. “No, of course not to Praxis! Back to Optera! I’ll find that female and make her see the truth, make her appreciate me!”

  He felt acceleration around him even as he issued more orders. “Send a small observation force to Praxis in case any of my enemies return; this place is of no use to me now. Have them set up a transmitter to warn me if there’s trouble here again. And then back to the Home Hive!”

  There was his alter ego to groom, and set on its path-way. Enough of these meddling Humans; he would send in his simulagent double to do away with the Tirol base, then consolidate the near stars at his leisure. And when he held all the cards, he would bring the Regess to heel.

  A sudden thought struck him. If he could produce a copy of himself, why not a copy of the Regess? Yes! One who would be dutiful and compliant and a proper wife? Meek and obedient and … receptive to him. The very image of that made him feel rather paternal and husbandly at the same time.

  But no; he snarled at the realization that the Regess was gone, and she had taken all detailed biogenetic models of herself with her. Even more to the point, possessing a mere image of her wouldn’t be the same as possessing her, of bending his mate to his will; he would always be aware, on some level, that the real thing was out there in the universe somewhere.

  “Why are we dawdling?” he bellowed. The command ship blurred forward to superluminal speed.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  We should protect the Seed,

  or we could all fade away

  Flower of Life

  Flower of Life

  Song of the Tiresian Muses*

  Damn her!

  T. R. Edwards tried to tell himself that he didn’t care anymore. Wasn’t his staying away from the ringside table tonight proof enough of that? The storied Lynn-Minmei enchantment had no power over him, and now the world knew it. Oh yes, the world knew it …

  He hadn’t meant to have more than that one jigger of Tirol-made bourbon with Adams and the others, but it had gone a little beyond that, and while he wasn’t unsteady on his feet, it was time to go home. The planning of a coup d’état took a sharp mind and unrelenting work. To bed, then.

  Except–the door to his quarters was slightly ajar.

  He silently drew the pistol that was with him day and night, entering without a sound. He could have called security, but tonight he was in the mood to kill someone.

  He edged in, peered around a corner—and froze.

  “Come on; sit down quick, before it gets cold.” Minmei blew out a long match as the candles on the improvised dinner table filled the room with a warm glow.

  She threw the dead match into the fireplace, looking as awkward as a teenager. “This is just home cooking.” It was almost a whisper. “The guys at the club got me the ingredients, but I’m a good chef, T. R.; from way back. Worked in my folks’ restaurant.”

  She swallowed and watched him. Edwards felt like doing something violent; the idea of having feelings this strong for anyone was anathema to him.

  “Do you really love me?” Minmei asked him all at once. “I have no way of making you, but please don’t lie to me! Can you love me—”

  She was cut off by the beep of the special commo apparatus in his study. Without saying a word, he unlocked it by retinal scan, went into it, and locked the door, making the room a secure, soundproofed facility.

  He was glad he was sitting down when he keyed the call. It was a patch-through from the loyal Ghost Team techs manning the Invid equipment beneath the Royal Hall. The Regent stared out at him. “You take your time about answering a transmission.”

  Edwards found his voice. “My apologies. Had I known, I would have—made arrangements.” Not “been waiting”; he had to keep a certain parity here.

  The Regent made an annoyed gesture. “There are other arrangements you don’t have to make; the Sentinels are destroyed, one and all.”

 
; Edwards felt the color rise in his face, and the grip of his hands as he made triumphant fists, but he gave no other sign as a silent victory cry rang through him. “And now it is time you and I met face to face,” the Regent continued.

  Edwards’s eyes narrowed. “Surely, you don’t expect me to, to—”

  “Come to Optera? No; you wouldn’t, would you? But noblesse oblige, and all that; I will come to you, this one time. Do us all a favor, Human, and see that you make it worth my while.”

  The Regent broke the connection and Edwards sat there, his head swimming. My rivals are dead. The would-be Overlord of the galaxy wants to cut a deal with me.

  Edwards instantly began trying to figure out ways to gull, use, and betray the Regent.

  Minmei looked up as Edwards came back into the candlelit dining room. “Good news, I hope?”

  “No news at all.” He had his hands on his silvery head-piece, straining a bit. “But … where were we? You said please don’t lie to you; you said please tell you if I can love you.”

  He drew the half cowl off his face, letting her see him there in the soft light.

  Once, the face had been handsome; but now there were raised white scars in a violent, puckered crisscross, a slash from his hairline to the bridge of his nose and from there a reverse angle to the heel of his jawbone. The eye was scarred shut, with only a little prosthetic fitting showing now. A half-devastated face that gave him a doomed look.

  “Do you really love me?’ ” he quoted her own words to her. “ ‘I have no way of making you, but please don’t lie to me!’ ”

  Where did the act end and truth begin? If she rebuffed him at this moment, Edwards resolved to launch his coup now, taking her as his first hostage and the one he would never let go.

  She reached out tentatively, touching the ravaged side of his face. He had never endured that touch from anyone. He returned the touch but otherwise sat like a granite statue. Then she was around the table, in his lap, kissing him.

  “Farrago destroyed,” Vince Grant said. “But it doesn’t look like the Invid are coming after us; something’s happening.”

  The rest of the Sentinels stood around him, repressing their questions; they had already learned that it was bedlam when they all talked at once.

  They were gathered in a deactivated GMU; the Praxian requirement that all mecha power down during the meeting in the castle had been an unexpected godsend.

  Is this where our luck turns? Gnea wondered.

  The Invid fleet above suddenly let forth a myriad of minor sensor “paints,” then accelerated for superluminal.

  The small observation force of Pincers and Scouts and armored Shock Troopers swept down confidently to take up their places. They quartered the globe that was Praxis. They isolated the important civic-commercial centers, and came in for landings.

  The VTs rose up to meet them, having received the word that the Regent was gone. Wolfe’s Hovertanks fired as Gladiators, or flew on back thrusters as Battloids, dragging the enemy from the air. Again there was that total environment of warfare, so insane—and yet so emphatic that it seemed to the fighters that it was the only time they were truly alive.

  “Skull Ten, you got a bogey; scissor right!”

  “Skull Six, Skull Six, scissoring; get ’im off my back, Max!”

  And the GMU cannon fired, its first round hitting the Invid command ship. There would be no distress call to the Regent.

  The Invid threw themselves into the engagements with utter ferocity. But they were met by young Earth soldiers who were angry about Karbarra and confused and scared about Praxis: in a certain sense, the Invid had made their enemies too scared to give in and too scared to lose.

  Neither side could withdraw, and so the fighting went on. One by one, the VTs fell, despite their high kill ratio. The mecha hunted one another across Praxis, the VTs using up ordnance and fuel. Both Rick and Max were forced to land when their mecha began to lose power; Miriya had been forced to eject earlier, her VT too shot up to stay in the air.

  When the Invid were also forced to take to the ground, the Destroids and the Wolfe Pack moved in, with other Sentinels on Hovercycles and in flitters, and riding whatever else they could get into the air. The Invid still had the advantage of numbers, but the Hovertanks and REF irregulars were comparatively fresh. In a half-dozen separate, desperate actions, the Invid were surrounded and annihilated, but at terrible cost.

  In the aftermath, the principal Sentinels gathered—stunned and bloodied by what they had abruptly endured—and realized what had happened to them.

  The two or three surviving VTs had landed, spent, no longer capable of lifting off Praxis. Only a handful of Hovertanks and Destroids had survived the no-quarter fighting.

  Hundreds were dead, in addition to the thousands who had perished with Farrago. The GMU was their only resource; they had no way of communicating with Tirol, or any other potential source of rescue.

  Bela came by to help a weary Jack to his feet as he sat near the GMU; he had barely escaped his burning Hovertank, and it looked like he was plain old leg infantry again, at least for the foreseeable future.

  He was filthy and tired. He had just come in from two sleepless days and nights of recon patrol, trying to make sure there were no Invid left and to find something, anything, that would help the Sentinels get out of their deadend dilemma. And he and his squad had come back empty-handed.

  Bela was leading Halidarre, one of the few operating mecha left. “Admiral Hunter wants to see you, old son,” she said. He groaned wearily as she pulled him up, and shouldered his Wolverine.

  “Where are you headed?” he asked. She and the Robo-horse were laden with gear and weapons, and so was Gnea, who was hurrying up to meet her.

  “To scout the planet for Hunter, and for myself. Jack, they can’t all be gone.” Bela turned and put her hands on his shoulders, Halidarre’s rein drooping from her grasp. Her face, with its hypnotic raptor eyes, held him, its lines pulled into fierce but frightened lines. “They can’t all be gone!”

  He reached up and thumped her shoulder with his fist. “We’ll find ’em, sis. You’ll see.”

  She gave him a hug, kissed his cheek, and rumpled his hair. It felt a little like an affectionate mugging. Gnea hugged him too, and then both Valkyries were on their winged horse. Halidarre reared and gave a whinny so realistic that Jack wondered if something wasn’t going a little strange with its engrams.

  Then Halidarre was away, into the sky, and Hagane, the malthi, went zipping and zooming after like a hummingbird. The rallying cries of the Praxians drifted back, sounding sad now, all alone in the emptiness.

  In the GMU, Karen, with Jan Em’s surprisingly capable help, was bending over readouts to tabulate what resources were left: there were very few.

  Major Carpenter was standing by; with the TO&E all but obliterated, he was a rising star, an all-around fixer. Jack didn’t quite like his can-do-even-if-it’s-hard-on-the-lower-ranks-sir style, but at least the guy was trying to help pull things back together.

  Admiral Hunter was starting to look pretty grizzled, like Jack himself. “I want you to take a team out and check on a possible Invid base for me,” Rick told him.

  “Sure thing, sir,” Jack answered. “But I think we should go belowdecks and apply a welding torch to that Tesla first, and get a little more intel information out of him.”

  Then he realized Lisa was about to brief those assembled. Jack nodded understanding to Rick’s hand signal, and took a seat to listen.

  Another recon, Jack thought. Wish I had a flying horse.

  “All right, there’s no getting round it. We’re—we’re stuck here,” Lisa was telling Vince and the Sterlings and the principal Sentinels.

  We might be here for the rest of our lives, it occurred to Jack. He found himself stealing another look at Karen, but she was busy.

  “But that’s just for the moment,” Lisa went on forcefully. They all seconded her, from varying places on the emotional spectrum: anger
, growing misgivings, stoic determination, or, in Burak’s case, a kind of starry-eyed disregard of reality.

  We’d better get out of here, Jack Baker thought. ’Cause I’m not so sure how long we can last all thrown in together like this.

  Lisa outlined new strategies, new possible solutions. After the group had broken up, she drew Rick aside. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at dog-and-pony shows.”

  “You did fine.”

  They left the GMU, headed for their quarters at the palace. At least there was no shortage of living space, or food; a vacated Praxis provided plenty of those.

  Halfway there, Lisa stopped and began pounding her fist on a stone wall. “We’ve got to get things moving again, before the Sentinels fall apart and everybody settles down to become subsistence farmers, or hunters. The Invid aren’t going to leave us alone forever; you know that.”

  He put his arm around her waist and they went their way again. “Everybody’s gonna realize that, Lisa, once they get a chance to think. Believe me.”

  “Rick, they must!”

  She drew an uneven breath. “Listen, tell me: what were you thinking about when you were standing back there with Baker, during the briefing? You had a peculiar look on your face.”

  He clicked his tongue. “Unworthy, maybe, but I was thinking that at least we’re together, and …”

  She didn’t let the hesitation go on long. “And what?”

  “And if one of us had had to go with Farrago, I’d rather it would have been me. Because I couldn’t have faced this or anything else without you.”

  Lights were coming on with the dusk, in the GMU and the palace.

  The following chapter is a sneak preview of DEATH DANCE—Book III in THE SENTINELS saga.

  * lyrics (c) copyright 1985 Harmony Gold Music, Inc.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  It was as if the Expeditionary Mission was fated to strike a truce with someone, and the Regent just happened to be the only enemy in residence. In another five years the Robotech Masters would arrive in Earthspace, followed three years later by the Regess and her half of the Invid horde; but in 2026 (Earth-relative) this was still speculation, and for a few brief days there was talk of peace, trust, and other impossibilities.