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  "Roy would have liked that."

  "Skull Leader to Skull wing: I've got bogies on my screen. Estimate fifteen seconds until first contact."

  Rick and his men were in a delta formation; below them, also in triplicate, were Indigo and Vermilion, along with several other VT teams. Max and Ben were on the lateral commo screens in Skull One's cockpit.

  "Are both of you ready to get the job done?" "You bet we are, Lieutenant," Ben said.

  Max added, "Ready for combat."

  Rick felt a reawakened sense of purpose that bordered on sheer exhilaration. It was not the usual prebattle adrenaline rush or any other endorphin high but a settling of the storm that had raged inside him since the ship's return to Earth and had peaked with Roy's death-a storm that had whipped him into a frenzy and left him depleted of spirit, faith, the very will to goon. But now, out in this wild blue yonder, those storm clouds were breaking up, and with them that ominous sense of doom and impenetrable darkness. Skull One was airborne again; Rick Hunter was airborne again. Where before he had seen irony, he now felt a curious but calming harmony. He would prevail!

  In the lead ship of the alien assault group, Khyron was thinking the same thing. But where Rick's thoughts were tuned to life, Khyron's were attuned to death-as clear an example as any of the differences that separated Human from Zentraedi.

  "They're dead ahead," Khyron said to his pilots. "Keep your shields up and fire when ready. Let's get them now!"

  So saying, he engaged the ship's boosters, signaling his wingmen to follow suit, and threw his forces against Hunter's.

  The two groups met head-on, filling the skies with thunder. Explosions bloomed and erupted like some hellish aeroponic garden. Brilliant blue and yellow tracers crisscrossed with contrails and the smoke and fire falls of destroyed ships. Wingmen broke away from their leaders to engage the enemy mecha one on one in an aerial free-for-all. VT pilots sometimes used the analogy of boxing versus street fighting: There were no rules; your opponent was unskilled but mean-spirited and more than likely unstoppable.

  Zentraedi snub-nosed tri-thrusters, triple-finned and resembling stylized faucet controls, tore through the Veritech formations, plastron cannons blazing, blue fire holing craft and pilots alike. Twin top-mounted rockets were elevated to firing positions, launched, and more often than not found their mark, throwing fiery debris into the arena; balls of flame that were once Veritechs plunged from the sky.

  But the Robotech forces hit back.

  Skull One banked sharply to avoid the debris of an exploded craft, angry blue fire deep within its aft thrusters, red-tipped pyloned heat-seekers eager for release. Rick trimmed his ship only to find that he had four more bandits on his tail. He led them on a merry chase, up into a booster climb to the edge of night, then down in a power dive they hadn't anticipated.

  Rick threw down the G lever and thought the mecha through to Guardian configuration. He flew into the face of his pursuers like a bird of prey, taloned legs engaged and rear undercarriage guns erupting when he'd cleared their formation. Orange fire blazed from beneath the wings.

  A Zentraedi ship exploded, then a second, as it kamikazeed in on Skull One, an expanding cloud of orange death. Divine wind, indeed, thought Rick.

  The Guardian was hovering now, utilizing the downward-pointing foot thrusters for loft and stability and pouring out fire against the two remaining ships. And once again, Rick's thoughts and shots found their mark.

  He heard Ben's voice above the racket on the tac net.

  "Hey, Skull Leader, that was mighty fine flying, but you've got to be more careful!"

  But it was Ben who wasn't being careful: An enemy mecha had him locked on target and was about to open up. Fortunately, Max Sterling had been monitoring the approach; he had the craft lined up in his reticle, and he loosed two rockets to take it out.

  Rick heard Ben's cry of surprise, then delight, as Max brought his blue-trimmed ship alongside Dixon's port wingtip.

  "You okay, Ben?" Max asked, a lilt to his voice. "Yeah, sure, now I am, thanks."

  "Well, stay alert, big guy."

  "Better believe it. Nobody tunes out Ben Dixon!"

  Rick was too involved in the battle to notice that several alien ships had peeled away from the attack group and established a holding pattern not far from the SDF-1. This did not go unnoticed on the bridge of the fortress itself, however, or onboard the cruiser commanded by Khyron's second, Grel.

  Grel, arms folded across his chest, studied the blue projecbeam field. Deep within a schematic representation of the planetary rim, a bright red light bar flashed once, then twice more. And over the com came the voice of one of the fleet commanders.

  "Sir, the radar jamming tactic appears to be working. Shall we now proceed?"

  Grel leaned forward over the console. "Yes, proceed as planned."

  As he gave the word, five enormous warships began a slow descent toward Earth.

  Gloval stood at the forward bay of the bridge, white cap pulled low on his head, eyes heavy with concern. In the western sky flashes of devilish fire marked the battle zone, discs and crescents in the dusk. South, a cluster of enemy craft in a curious holding pattern, and below the fortress, a city in chaos-a city in peril. What were the residents to make of these unannounced fireworks? Gloves wondered. The SDF-1 was headed north at a good clip, but would it clear these population centers before the battle escalated? He knew it would. He closed his eyes to shut out the scene. He had brought the fortress here to disembark the civilians, and in so doing he had endangered yet another group. Was there no winning this thing-on any front?

  "Sir, radar is destabilizing."

  Gloval didn't bother to turn and face Vanessa; wearily, he said, "The Zentraedi are jamming our signal...One thing after another...Alert Skull Team to begin a recon sweep of the area." Then he swung around. "Put the new barrier system on standby and be prepared for new enemy activity."

  Claudia exercised her prerogative by pointing out that activating the shields would draw power from the weaponry systems, but the captain was way ahead of her; he had little patience left for ground already covered. "I understand the problem, but I must consider the safety of all personnel aboard. Now, put the new system on standby immediately!"

  "Yes, sir," Claudia deferred. "Stand by to engage..."

  Meanwhile, a solitary ship of bizarre design was on a low, silent approach to the dimensional fortress, taking advantage of a ridge of low hills to conceal itself from detection and involvement in the raging battle. The mecha was insectlike in appearance, with a globular twin-hemisphered body, pincer arms, two cloven legs, and a pointed proboscis cockpit module. It was not a Botoru ship-one of Khyron's Seventh Mechanical Division-but a

  Quadrono. And held in the grip of the armored right hand, contained in a transparent chamber similar to, that which had delivered three micronized spies into the SDF-1, was the female ace of that fleet, Miriya Parino. She wore a sleeveless blue-gray sackcloth of a dress, belted with rough cord, and carried no weapons.

  It was this last that worried the female pilot of the mecha. She had visual contact with Miriya via the curved screen in the cockpit, audio through the helmet communicator.

  "Miriya, this is dangerous! Are you certain you want to board the Micronian ship with no weapons?"

  "I won't need weapons."

  "But Commander Azonia is already upset about the failure of this operation..."

  "Upset, but not with me. It's Khyron who has made a mess of things." And some of us are aware of the special rivalries that exist between Azonia and Khyron, she wanted to add. But Miriya had no quarrel with the Backstabber. He was now doubly responsible for her mission and her present micronized size: first by alerting her to the Micronian ace who had bested her in battle, and second by launching yet another unauthorized attack against the SDF-1. The battle had simplified the infiltration considerably. But these facts were of no use to the pilot.

  "Just deliver me to the Micronian ship," Miriya said stern
ly.

  Khyron had removed himself from the aerial arena; his command mecha was positioned at the southern perimeter of the skirmish, and he had managed to raise Grel on the com. The lieutenant's face appeared on a secondary commo screen in the cockpit while explosive flashes of battle light strobed against the outer hull of the ship.

  "We're hovering above the surface, awaiting your further orders, my lord."

  Khyron was pleased enough to compliment his second.

  "Excellent, Grel, you've done a superb job. Now, prepare your attack,

  but don't open fire until I join you." "My lord!" Grel saluted.

  Following Gloval's orders, Skull Team had also temporarily absented themselves from the battle to recon south of the fortress. Rick had patched the infrared scanners, wide and long-range, into the commo system; center and lateral screens now afforded him an imageenhanced sweep of the horizon. In a moment he had radar contact and upped the magnification on the screens. Gloval was right: Zentraedi cruisers!

  Rick activated the scrambler and went on the tac net. "Lisa, are you monitoring?"

  She answered, "Affirmative," from the bridge and notified the captain: "Skull has visuals on five alien cruisers; range, seventy miles, south-southeast, vector headings coming in now..."

  "All right," said Gloval, hands behind his back at the forward bay. "Claudia, activate the omnidirectional barrier at once!"

  In the new shield system control room, more than a dozen techs and specialists readied themselves. Situated aft and well below the bridge in a huge hold, the room itself was little more than a flyout platform equipped with a central readout table and numerous manned consoles and viewscreens. But the device responsible for the energy barrier was something else again. Blue rings of pulsed energy filled the hold as Gloval gave word to engage the system. Power began to build in the field generator-an enormous gearlike dish with eight hydraulic closure teeth-while its mate telescoped down on a thick shaft from the hold overhead. Short of meshing, the generators exchanged phrases of fire, forming and containing a sphere of effulgent energy.

  On the bridge the energy sphere registered schematically on Claudia's console monitor as a globe-shaped grid fully encompassing the upright SDF-1.

  Externalized, the sphere was a yellow-green cloud that grew and expanded from the ship's center, gaseous and slightly luminescent, haloing

  the fortress in the night sky.

  Grel was viewing its formation on the command center screen as Khyron entered, his harness pack and hip blasters still in place.

  "What's going on?" he demanded.

  Grel didn't bother to salute. "There's a large energy shield surrounding the Micronian ship."

  Khyron snorted. "I don't care. Open fire, now!"

  It was as if someone had scribbled across the sky with a light crayon...that many rockets were launched from the Zentraedi warships. Ninety-eight percent of them found their mark, enveloping and obscuring the dimensional fortress in a minute-long symphony of explosions. But to the amazement of human and Zentraedi alike the shield absorbed the deadly storm, and the fortress was left unscathed.

  "It's unlike anything we've encountered," said Grel, commenting on a profile schematic of the Micronian shield. "And it seems to be fully protecting the ship from our attack. So what now?"

  "Yes..." Khyron answered slowly. "Advance the group and continue firing until I order you to cease."

  And continue they did, employing pulsed lasers and cannon fire. Streaks of horizonal lightning converged on the SDF-1, but to no avail. What the shield didn't absorb, it simply deflected.

  Captain Gloval was cautiously optimistic; the barrier system was holding, but Vanessa's threat board showed that the enemy had advanced well into the yellow zone.

  "The enemy is continuing their attack," she warned him. His hopes dashed, the captain gave voice to his fears.

  "This time they won't stop coming until they've destroyed us."

  Sammie turned her frightened eyes to him. "Sir, couldn't we radio headquarters and ask for some support or something?"

  "That won't work," Lisa chided her. "The captain knows a request like that would just be ignored."

  "Because we've been making so many demands about the civilians?" Kim asked.

  It was the wrong time for foolish questions, but Gloval fielded them patiently. "It has more to do with our proximity to the ground," he told her. He'd placed his own head on the chopping block; it was unlikely that anyone in the Council would come to his rescue.

  "Message, sir."

  Gloval turned his attention to Claudia's overhead monitor. It was one of Lang's Robotechnicians.

  "We've got a serious problem, Captain. The barrier system is beginning to overload!"

  Rick and the members of Skull Team had been watching the bombardment in awe, but Lisa was now ordering them to counterattack the warships.

  "You've got to draw their fire, Lieutenant Hunter. The shields can't take- any more. If you fail...

  "There isn't going to be any ship to return to."

  Her eyes shifted on the screen, as if trying to find his across miles of sky. "It looks bad, Rick. Captain Gloval wants you to know that as of this moment, the safety of every single person on this ship rests in your hands."

  The safety of every single person on this ship rests in your hands...Bottom of the ninth: bases loaded, two outs, Hunter on deck...

  Skull Team descended on the cruisers like vengeful eagles. They had reconfigured to Guardian mode for the drop and to Battloid now as they touched down on the first warship, skimming over its armored green hull, blue foot thrusters blazing like power skaters. Gatlings resounding, they moved toward the stern, taking out turret guns and sealing weapons ports. But that still left four ships emitting unbroken lines of blue death.

  The once clearly defined schematic sphere was now a vaguely circular blotch bleeding sickly colors across the Zentraedi projecbeam field.

  "You see," Grel said knowingly, "their energy readings are dropping quickly. The shield is at its limit."

  Khyron laughed through his teeth. "Now these Micronians will be mine.

  Mine!"

  Inside the SDF-1 the barrier system generators lost their grip on that shared and maintained globe of energy; the ball flattened, grew savagely oblate, then lost its circumference entirely and began to arc untamed throughout the hold.

  The bridge was in chaos.

  "Barrier generators four and seven are losing power due to intense core overheating," Claudia reported to Gloval. Her monitor schematic revealed weakened coordinates along the shield grid.

  The captain quickly ordered her to switch to subsystem power. Meanwhile three of the nine screens at Kim's station and two at

  Sammie's had blacked out; two others were flashing a field of orange static. "We have an overload situation in the outer field circuits..."

  "Number seven converter has exceeded its limit..." "Emergency backup crew, report to your service areas."

  Lisa brought her hands to her ears and went on the aircom net. "Skull Leader, keep your comline open for emergency orders."

  The threat board showed the Zentraedi warships continuing their advance. "They've just entered the red zone, Captain!" Vanessa shouted.

  Then, suddenly, there was a blood-curdling scream through the patch lines from the shield control room and primary lighting failed. The bridge crew looked like the living dead under the eerie glow of console lights. Klaxons and warning sirens were blaring from remote areas of the fortress. Sammie's station screen had gone fully to orange.

  "It's reaching critical mass," she yelled. "It's going to explode!"

  Rick heard the panic in Lisa's voice. "Skull Leader, evacuate your team at once-the barrier system is about to chain-react. Evacuate-"

  Rick, Max, and Ben thought their Battloids through an about-face. Beyond the rim of the Zentraedi warship they could see the barrier transubstantiate: What appeared as the selfsame shield was in fact shot through and through with submolecular
death.

  Rick watched as radiation detector gauges came to life in the cockpit. He raised his teammates on the tac net and told them to clear out on the double.

  Behind them the shield expanded, its internal colors shifting from green through yellow and orange to deadly red; then, after a blinding flash of silent white light, the shield was gone. In its place a hot pink hemisphere began to form, an umbrella of horror fifty miles wide.

  The three pilots ran their Battloids along the armored hull, past turrets and singed bristle sensors already slagging in the infernal heat; they reconfigured to Guardian mode and launched themselves, the spreading shock wave threatening to overtake them.

  Rick glimpsed one of the warships rise from the pack and accelerate itself to safety. But the rest were annihilated, atomized along with every standing structure and living thing on the ground.

  Skull One was tearing through fuchsia skies, fire nipping at the fighter's tail. Inside, Rick searched desperately right and left for a sign of his wingmen. Max's ship came into view to port, but Ben was nowhere in sight.

  "Ben, Ben!" Rick cried. "Behind you, Lieutenant!"

  Rick found Dixon's radar blip on the screen; Ben was converting to Guardian for added thrust.

  "Hit your afterburner-now! Do you copy?"

  Ben's voice was terror-filled: "It's too late, Rick! I can't make...Aaarrrggghhh!..."

  Rick shook his head wildly, as much to deny the truth as to keep the sound of death from his ears.

  He crossed himself as Ben's radar image began to fade.

  A second friend lost...color gone out of the world...

  CHAPTER FOUR

  All of a sudden it seemed everything was out of control. Here we were back on Earth, feeling more displaced than we'd felt in deep space. The Council refused to hear us out. The Zentraedi attacks continued unabated, we'd lost Roy Fokker and Ben Dixon, and thousands of innocents had been killed. I wasn't alone in feeling this sense of hopelessness. But it was something we weren't supposed to discuss, as though we had all agreed to some unspoken rule: By not talking about it we could make it go away...Day by day it was becoming more difficult for us to find any sense of comfort or acceptance in Macross, and here was Lynn-Kyle adding fuel to the fire, spearheading a peace movement which could only further undermine our attempts to defeat the aliens. Not that there wasn't ample justification for civil unrest. But we were one ship, one cause-no thanks to Russo's Council-an independent nation at war with the Zentraedi! I had personal reasons for disliking [Kyle], but 1 now found reasons to distrust him as well. That he had turned Minmei against me, I accepted as given. But I couldn't stand still and allow him to threaten the ship, that military/civilian integrity essential for our survival.