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  crimes of the past. If only Max and Miriya had foreseen this; she would have preferred death to the purgatory of the present.

  "I'm aware of my responsibilities," she told Angelo. "But I just wanted to say that this mission will fail even before it gets under way unless you and I can begin to trust each other."

  She took the small orchid from her lapel, reached across Angelo, and dropped it in his Scotch and soda.

  "Hey-"

  "Tropical ice," she smiled down at him. "A little good luck charm for you, Angie-a peace offering. Do you like it?"

  "I guess..." the sergeant started to reply, sitting up in his chair. But just then someone threw on the overhead lights. Startled by the intrusion, he and Dana swung around at the same moment to find Nova Satori and Bowie centered in the wide doorway.

  "I put you in charge of Bowie and this is what happens?" Nova said, as the entry doors slid shut.

  Dana met them halfway, sizing up the situation quickly and rehearsing her lines. She had certainly anticipated the arrival of these two, but not Bowie's disheveled appearance. His uniform was soiled and one of his cheeks looked bruised.

  "Are you all right?" she asked him. "What's going on here?" Bowie wore a distressed look, more genuine than yesterday's. "I guess I did it again," he answered contritely.

  "I ought to throw you both in jail," Nova scolded Dana. "He was in a barroom brawl." The lieutenant looked like her namesake, ready to incinerate whatever was in close proximity.

  This time Nova herself had caught him red-handed, following him from the caf?and waiting until just the right moment to walk in on him. And now she had Dana just where she wanted her: of course Nova would agree to release Bowie to her custody once again, but this time there would be a price to pay-a first look at the results of tomorrow's recon operation for starters. With rivalry increasing daily between Leonard's army intelligence and the

  Global Military Police, it was the only way Nova could count on getting the real dope.

  Dana looked cross. "What was the fight about?"

  "Ah, some loudmouth said no piano player is man enough to serve in the Hovertanks," Bowie admitted.

  "That's a lot of rot!" Dana returned, back on Bowie's side all at once. "I wonder if I'm man enough?! I hope you taught him a lesson. I'm proud of you."

  Nova expected as much, but played her part by growing angry.

  "Go ahead, praise him, Lieutenant Sterling. You're digging his grave deeper."

  "A soldier stands for something," Dana answered defensively. "What if somebody said no woman is good enough to be an MP-"

  Nova wore a wry look. "Stuff the defense plea, Dana. Battles don't get won in barrooms, and merit doesn't get proven there either! What Bowie earned himself is a cell."

  Unless we can cut a deal...Nova was saying to herself when Dana surprised her.

  "All right then, take him away."

  Both Bowie and Nova stared at her. The lieutenant's meticulously plucked eyebrows almost went up someplace into her hairline.

  "Run him over to the guardhouse," Dana said evenly.

  "B-but, Lieutenant, you can't be serious," Bowie burst out. Dana's verbal slap hurt more than that punch to the face. Even Angelo was stepping forward, coming to his aid, but Dana was unmoved.

  "I have enough to handle without having to worry about an eight ball," Dana said, trying not to think about the orchid in the drink glass, so nearby.

  Nova was watching these exchanges with her mouth open. She gulped and found her voice, hoping she could salvage something from this. "Dana, you'd better not be kidding-"

  Dana shook her head. "I've failed somewhere along the line...It's your turn to take care of him now." She caught the hurt look that surfaced in

  Bowie's eyes and turned away from him, determined to finish this scene no matter what.

  "I've got to be on that mission tomorrow," Bowie was pleading with her. "You said I was right to defend our honor, now you're taking away my chance-"

  She whirled on him suddenly. "I've heard it all before, Grant! You should have thought of that before you went off to that bar!"

  Bowie's eyes went wide. "But Dana...Lieutenant...you-"

  "Enough!" Dana cut him off. "Private Grant, ten-hut! You will accompany Lieutenant Satori to the stockade."

  Nova's puzzlement increased. Where had this one gone wrong? "You don't want to reconsider...?"

  "My mind is made up."

  Nova made a gesture of exasperation, then smiled in self-amusement and led Bowie away.

  "What made you do that?" the sergeant asked Dana after they left. Having recently caught a glimpse of Bowie's sloppiness in the field, he wasn't opposed to Dana's decision but wondered, nevertheless, what had motivated this sudden attack.

  "Because I'm CO here," Dana said evenly.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Thrilled at having received, word of the 15th's mission to recon the alien ship-it never even occurred to me that she might not return!-I was suddenly faced with a new obstacle: Bowie Grant was in the custody of the GMP. Dana's reactions to the fortress were of paramount importance, but I was equally interested in establishing the depth of her involvement with the young Grant. I asked myself. Would proximity to the Masters reawaken her Zentraedi nature to the point where she would abandon her loyalties to both teammates and loved ones? It was therefore essential that Grant accompany the 15th, and up to me to see to it that Rolf Emerson learned of Grant's imprisonment.

  Dr. Lazlo Zand, Event Horizon: Perspectives on Dana Sterling and the Second Robotech War

  The penetration operation got under way early the next morning. Coordinated air strikes would provide the necessary diversion, and, with a bit of luck, the breach the 15th was going to require in order to infiltrate its dozen Hovertanks. Tech crews had worked all night long, going over the complex mecha systems and installing remote cameras.

  General Emerson was monitoring the proceedings from the situation room. Staff officers and enlisted-ratings were buzzing in and out supplying him with updates and recon data. There were never less than six voices talking at the same time; but Emerson himself had little to say. He had his elbows on the table, fingers steepled, eyes fixed on the video transmissions relayed in by various spotter planes over the target zone. Only moments ago a combined team of Adventurer VTs and Falcon fighters had managed to awaken the apparently slumbering giant, and an intense firefight was in progress on the high ground surrounding the alien fortress. Armor-piercing rounds had thus far proved ineffective against the ship's layered hull, in spite of the fact that the XT's energy shield had yet to be deployed. But

  Emerson had just received word that the air corps was bringing in a QF-3000 E Ghost-an unmanned triple-cannon drone capable of delivering Reflex firepower of the sort that had proved effective in earlier airborne confrontations.

  The wallscreen image of the besieged fortress derezzed momentarily, only to be replaced by a bird's-eye view of the 15th's diamond-formation advance. Emerson felt his pulse race as he watched the dozen mecha close on the heavily fortified perimeter. It was ironic that his attempts to deescalate the fledgling war had resulted in the 15th's assignment to this mission to hell; but in some ways he realized the perverted rightness of it: Emerson literally had to put what amounted to his family on the line in order to convince the supreme commander to listen to him. And Dana and Bowie were just that-family.

  So often he would try to run his thoughts back in time, searching for the patterns that had led all of them to this juncture. Had there been signs along the way, omens he had missed, premonitions he had ignored? When the Sterlings and Grants had opted to leave aboard the SDF-3 as members of the Hunters' crew did it occur to them that they might not return from that corner of space ruled by the Robotech Masters, or that the Masters might come here instead? Emerson remembered the optimism that characterized those days, some fifteen years ago, when the newly-built ship had been launched, Rick and Lisa in command. Rolf and his wife had taken both Dana and infant Bowie: Aft
er all, they had so often watched over the kids while the Grants spent time on the Factory Satellite, and the Sterlings combed the jungles of the Zentraedi Control Zone-what used to be called Amazonia-for Malcontents; it seemed a perfect solution then that the kids should remain here while their parents embarked on the Expeditionary Mission that was meant to return peace to the galaxy...

  That Emerson had chosen to enroll both of them in the military had resulted in a divorce from his wife. Laura never understood his reasons; childless herself, Dana and Bowie had become her children, and what mother-what parent!-would choose to wish war on her offspring? But Rolf

  was merely honoring the promises he had made to Vince and Jean, Max and Miriya. Perhaps each of them did have a sense of what the future held, and perhaps they reasoned that the kids would have a better chance on Earth than they would, lost in space? Certainly they recognized why Rolf had decided to remain behind, just as surely as Supreme Commander Leonard recognized it...

  Emerson pressed his hands to his face, fingers massaging tired eyes. When he looked up again, Lieutenant Milton, an energetic young aide, was standing over his right shoulder. Milton saluted and bent close by his shoulder to report that Bowie was in the guardhouse. It seemed that the GMP had caught him involved in a barroom brawl.

  Rolf nodded absently, watching the displays, and thinking of a little boy who had cried so inconsolably when his parents left him behind. He wondered whether Bowie had purposely provoked a fight in order to absent himself from the mission. He had to be made to understand that rules were meant to be followed. The 15th had been chosen and as a member of that team he owed it to the others. Of course, it was equally plausible that Dana was behind this; she didn't seem to comprehend that her overprotectiveness wasn't doing Bowie any good, either.

  "Tell Lieutenant Satori that General Emerson would consider it a personal favor if she could find a way to release Private Grant," Rolf told his aide in low tones. "Ask her for me to see to it that Bowie rejoins his unit as soon as possible."

  The lieutenant saluted and left in a rush as Emerson returned his attention to the wallscreen's bird's-eye view of the 15th's advance, realizing all at once that Bowie's readdition to the team would raise their number to thirteen.

  The terrain between Monument City and the fortress was as rugged as it came. What was formerly a series of wooded slopes rising from a narrow river valley had been transformed by Dolza's annihilation bolts into a tortuous landscape of eroded crags and precipitous outcroppings, denuded,

  waterless, and completely unnatural. Stretches of ancient highways could be seen here and there beneath deposits of pulverized granite, or volcanic earthworks.

  Before dawn the 15th was in position just below the fortress's crash site, ringed as it was on three sides by pseudobuttes and tors. Dana had brought the column to a halt, awaiting the arrival of the Ghost drone. Quiet reigned on all fronts.

  Cocooned in the mecha's cockpit, her body sheathed from head to foot in armor, she sensed a strange assemblage of feelings vying for her attention. By rights her mind should have been emptied, rendered fully accessible to the mecha's reconfiguration demands; but with things at a temporary impasse, she gave inner voice to some of these thoughts.

  She knew, for example, that the thrill she felt was attributable to her Zentraedi ancestry; the fear, her Human one. But this was hardly a clear-cut case of ambivalence or dichotomy; rather she experienced an odd commingling of the two, where each contained a measure of its opposite. Her heart told her that inside the fortress she would encounter her own reflection: the racial past she had been told about but never experienced. How had her mother felt when going into combat against her own brothers and sisters? Dana asked herself. Or when hunting down the giant Malcontents who roamed the wastelands? No different, she supposed, than when a Human went to war against his or her own kind. But would it ever end? Even her fun-loving uncles-Rico, Konda, and Bron-were resigned to warfare in the end, telling her before they died that peace, when it came, would merely be an interlude in the War Without End...

  Beside her now, a Hovertank unexpectedly joined the 15th's front ranks, raising a cloud of yellow dust as it slid to a halt in the pebbly earth. Dana thought the Battloid's head through a left turn and almost jumped free of her seat straps when she recognized the mecha as Bowie's Diddy-Wa-Diddy. "What in world are you doing here, Private?" she barked over the tac

  net.

  "You tell me. Somebody sprang me."

  "Good ole Uncle Rolf." She let the bitterness be heard in her tone.

  Emerson had undermined her command.

  "That's the way I figured it," Bowie laughed. Then the laughter was gone. "And Private Grant is completely at your service. I've learned my lesson, Dana."

  Rolf! Dana thought.

  Infuriated, she began to hatch sinister plots against him, but the scenarios all played themselves out rather quickly. Rolf was thinking of Bowie's self-image, as always, and she couldn't help but understand. It was just that self-image wouldn't count for much if you didn't live to cash in on it. Or would it?...Senseless to debate it now, she told herself as the cockpit displays lit up.

  "Then fall in, trooper!" she told Bowie.

  "No more a' this eight-ball crap," Dana heard Angelo second over the

  net.

  "I copy, Sarge," Bowie said.

  Dana called in air strikes as the 15th got moving again, straight for the

  colossal alloy rampart that was the flagship's hull.

  Scoop-nosed Tac Air fighters, Adventurers and Falcons, came down in prearranged sorties, dumping tons of smart and not-so-smart ordnance, strafing, braving the fire of the glassy inverted-teardrop fortress cannon. Warheads exploded violently against the ship's hull, summoning in return thundering volleys of pulse-cannon fire and an outpouring of Bioroids, some on foot, but many more atop ordnance-equipped hovercraft. Ground teams peppered the existing alien troops with chaingunfire, and the tac net erupted in a cacophony of commands, requests, praise, and blood-curdling screams.

  While the two sides exchanged death, the Ghost drone dropped in on its release run. A nontransformable hybrid of the Falcon and the Veritech, the Ghost was developed in the early stages of Robotechnology as an adjunct to the transorbital weapons system utilized by the Armor series orbital platforms. It had undergone several modifications since, and the one

  in present use was closer to a smart bomb than a drone aircraft. Professor Miles Cochran's team had plotted an impact point toward the bow of the fortress, in the vertical portion of hull somewhat below the pyramidal structure known to some as Louie's "Robotech Teat."

  ATAC Battloids took up firing positions and concentrated their total power on the predesignated section of the hull in an attempt to soften it up. Main batteries and rifle/cannon, and the multiple barrels of the secondaries, everything in the 15th cut loose, aimed at the one small section of offworld alloy. The air shimmered and cooked away; heat waves rose all around, and power levels in the ATACs dropped rapidly. Dana sweated and hoped that no assault ship or Bioroid came at them now, when the 15th's mecha must hold their positions until the breach had been made.

  Sterling kept the 15th well back from the strike zone as the Ghost zeroed in. The craft fell short of its projected goal, but the ensuing explosion proved powerful enough to open a fiery hole large enough to accommodate a Hovertank, and no one could ask for more than that.

  The ATACs lowered their weapons in a kind of shocked surprise. "When we get back, I'll buy the beers!" Bowie said, breaking the

  silence.

  Dana returned an invisible smile and thanked him, promising to hold him to his word. "All right, Fifteenth," she commanded over the tac net, "you know the drill!"

  Protoculture worked its magic as Battloids mechamorphosed to Hovertank mode, reconfiguring like some exotic, knightly origami. Thrusters whined as the tanks floated into formation, forming up on Dana for the recon, and riding separate blasting carpets toward the jagged opening and the dark unkno
wn.

  Behind the visor of her Valkyrie's helmet, Dana Sterling's eyes narrowed. "Now we take the war to them!" she said.

  The Bioroids didn't exactly escort the 15th in, nor welcome them with open arms once they arrived. Dana raised the canopy of her mecha and

  gestured the team forward, ordering them over the net to maintain formation. She led them on a beeline to the breach, disc gun and cannon fire paving an explosive road for the Hovertanks, which continued to loose pulsed bursts in return. Miraculously, though, no one was hit and shortly the 15th found itself inside one of the fortress's cavernous chambers.

  It was Professor Cochran's suggestion-based on a rather sketchy analysis of the fortress's infrastructure (which had led him to believe that much of the starboard holds were given over to defense and astrogation)-that the team swing itself toward the port side of the ship if possible. This quickly proved to be not only viable but necessary because the starboard section was found partitioned off by a massive bulkhead it would have taken another Ghost to breach. Consequently, the ATACs barely cut their speed as they advanced.

  Three Bioroids suddenly appeared, dropping from overhead circular portals that simply weren't there a moment before-"They may as well have dropped in from another dimension," Louie Nichols would say later.

  As annihilation discs flew past Dana's head, she trained the Vlalkyrie's muzzle on the first of these and took it out with a faceplate shot; the alien seemed to absorb the cranial round silently, slumping down and shorting out as Dana sped past it. The other two were laying down a steady stream of crippling fire most of the team managed to avoid. But Dana then heard a terror-filled scream pierce the net and saw one of the 15th's tanks screeching along the vast corridor on its hind end. Dante was trying to raise Private Simon when the mecha barreled into one of the Bioroids and exploded. Dana and Louie poured plasma against the remaining one, literally blowing it limb from limb.