The Zentraedi Rebellion Page 4

  Bagzent, the beefy, red-haired Zentraedi crushed against Karita’s other arm, answered Marla. “You’re right about him. He convinced the mayor to keep the sizing chamber in Detroit instead of allowing it to be turned over to the RDF.”

  Bagzent would know, Karita thought. Bagzent had quit his work in Macross to join Khyron at the crashsite of his cruiser, north of Detroit in the Canada Sector. There, Bagzent had undergone voluntary Micronization in order to take part in Khyron’s raid on Detroit to steal the sizing chamber, only to end up incarcerated in that city by the RDF for more than a year. In false refutation of that past, a plastic miniature Minmei doll dangled from a thong around Bazgent’s thick neck.

  Marla had her mouth open to say something when two large though Humanlike forms darkened the sky overhead. Moments later, with a familiar roar, a pair of Battloid-configured Veritechs put down on either side of the convoy, close enough for the crafts’ fusion-turbine foot thrusters to raise a swirling storm of small stones and dirt. The forty-foot-tall Robotech titans stood facing the Zentraedi cordon, autocannons in gauntleted hands.

  “This food shipment is designated for the Mato Grosso Distribution Center in Cuiabá,” one of the pilots announced over the mecha’s loudspeaker. “Since that center is under the jurisdiction of the RDF South, your interference violates RDF statutes and you will therefore be subject to arrest and possible imprisonment if you fail to disband and allow the convoy to pass. If you want food, report to the center like everyone else.”

  “And be told that there isn’t enough to go around?” someone behind Bagzent shouted.

  “You will be fed,” the other pilot said when the crowd had quieted somewhat. “You have our word on it.”

  “We piss on your word!” Bagzent yelled.

  The Battloids raised their weapons and took a ground-shaking forward step. Reflexively, the crowd backed away. Everyone grasped the futility of resisting. But even as the Zentraedi were beginning to disperse, Karita could hear the rumblings of malcontentism among the dispirited.

  Bagzent’s basso voice was loudest of all.

  “It won’t always be like this,” he grumbled. “Every day the reconstructed cities of the north lose some of their trained Zentraedi workers to our cause. We may never learn agriculture or aquaculture, but we won’t need to raise vegetables or fish once we’ve begun to take what we need.”

  For emphasis, he viced his big hand around the Mandarin-robed Minmei doll and squeezed it until it shattered.

  “Miss Macross of 2010, pin-up and poster celebrity during the War, singer, actress, prototype for a line of squeezable toys and mechanical dolls, heroine … The first thing I want to ask is: What comes next for Lynn-Minmei?”

  Minmei feigned a good-spirited laugh. “Katherine, you must be reading my mind, because that’s exactly the question I’ve been asking myself for the past few months.” She shook her raven-black hair for the number-one camera, but kept her blue eyes on Katherine’s, since the idea of the interview—in the fin de siècle tradition perfected by Barbara Walters and Rachel Poriskova—was to beguile viewers into imagining that they were eavesdropping on a conversation between close friends.

  In fact, Katherine Hyson and Lynn-Minmei had met only hours earlier, but Minmei already liked the young, telegenic MBS broadcaster and was eager to help Hyson’s career along if she could. Conveniently, though the M in MBS had once stood for Macross, it now stood for Monument City.

  “And have any answers to that question presented themselves?” Hyson asked.

  Minmei adopted an earnest look. “Actually, I’ve been thinking of doing some television work.”

  It was Hyson’s turn to perform. “I hope you’re not planning a series of celebrity interviews …”

  “No, I’ll leave that to you, Katherine. What I’d like to do is find some way to use television to reach those areas of the world where people are still struggling to rebuild and make meaningful contributions to the future.”

  Katherine offered an approving nod. “Talk about meaningful contributions.”

  They were seated face-to-face on the spacious lanai of a house owned by Japanese friends of Minmei—the son and daughter-in-law of her aunt Lena’s first cousin. The multilevel teak and glass house perched on the north shore of Kauai; the comfortable chairs were made of rattan; and the salt-weathered deck overhung the ocean. Hyson was a slim and pretty brunette with large green eyes under pencil-thin brows, and a rosebud mouth lipsticked in a pale shade that made Minmei think of Claudia Grant. Hyson had jumped at the chance of interviewing Minmei in Hawaii, and in gratitude had promised Minmei an entire hour of airtime rather than the standard twenty-two-minute segment.

  “I assume that your reaching out will include singing,” Hyson said now.

  “Some, yes. But I’ll never again allow my voice to be used as a weapon.”

  “Surely you don’t regret what your voice accomplished during the War?”

  Minmei shook her head. “But I had no choice in the matter then. All I ever wanted was to bring happiness to people. Singing is my way of communicating love. But instead I wound up bringing an army to its knees.”

  “Someone once said that celebrity chooses us, and not the other way around.”

  “I think that’s true. And it often introduces the best and the worst things to one’s life. When I read about celebrities who are troubled by stalking fans, I want to tell them what it feels like to have an entire race wanting to know your every move.”

  Minmei’s sudden introspection was genuine, and Hyson pursued it. “Lynn-Kyle, your cousin and co-star in Little White Dragon, played a part in shaping your career. Why didn’t that partnership survive?”

  “Kyle was pushing me too hard to become political at a time when I wasn’t ready for that. As I said, I only wanted to use my voice to bring joy to people.”

  “Was it an amicable parting?”

  “Not entirely.”

  “Have you talked to him since?”

  Minmei recalled the littered black-sand beach in Monument where they said good-bye. Where Kyle had accused her of being immature and selfish. “No, I haven’t,” she told Hyson. “I don’t even know where he is.”

  Hyson was perceptive enough to move on. “I know that you fired your manager, Vance Hasslewood. Any new management on the horizon?”

  “I’ve been talking to some people.”

  “Would Sharky O’Toole be one of them?”

  Minmei rocked her head from side to side, evasively.

  “Let’s touch for a moment on your abduction last year by Khyron,” Hyson said. “Is it true that he was immune to the power of your singing?”

  “He told me that he despised my singing.” Minmei laughed into her hand. “But he did say that I was a well-built little thing—if my feminist sisters will forgive me.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I called him a big, overgrown clown.”

  Hyson’s jaw fell. “Another first in your career. And did you actually see Khyron and Azonia kiss?”

  “Yes, though I wouldn’t call it a passionate kiss. Kyle and I both saw them. Azonia referred to it as a ‘demonstration,’ because that’s what Breetai called it when he ordered Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes to kiss in front of him.” Minmei blushed and angled her face away from cameras one and two.

  Hyson was shaking her head in wonderment. “I want to get back to Rick Hunter in a moment, but before that, why do you think that Khyron … spared you and Kyle, even when he realized that he’d been duped and that your rescue was imminent?”

  “Because it isn’t the Zentraedi way to take hostages, much less kill them. He never understood that the RDF might lie to him about ransoming Kyle and myself with the SDF-1.”

  “I see,” Hyson said. “What are your thoughts about the malcontents?”

  Minmei handled the question easily. “I’m a Humanist, Katherine; I don’t react to groups, but to individuals. The Zentraedi are stranded here, strangers in a strange land, and I think we
have to keep that foremost in mind before we condemn any of their actions.”

  Hyson leaned toward Minmei, confrontational suddenly. “But, Minmei, you’re not sanctioning what they’ve done—raiding food depots, destroying factories, wreaking havoc on remote settlements?”

  “It isn’t my place to sanction anyone or anything,” Minmei said. “I’m only saying that we have to sympathize with the torment they’re going through. Machines saw to all their needs, and now we’re the only ones they have to turn to.”

  Hyson considered it. “Some might say that this sounds like something you picked up from Lynn-Kyle, in his guise as pacifist and advocate of Zentraedi rights.”

  Minmei frowned. “Kyle taught me many things. One of which was to regard all worlds and all peoples as equal. With the issues Earth is facing now, Humankind—Terran and Zentraedi—can’t afford to be divided.”

  “Are you supportive of the Expeditionary mission to Tirol?”

  “I’m one hundred percent behind it.”

  “Has the REF asked you to join the mission?”

  Minmei smiled lightly. “It’s going to be a diplomatic mission. The REF doesn’t need an entertainer.”

  “Speaking of the REF, there’s a rumor that you and Vice Admiral Hunter were engaged shortly before Khyron’s raid on Macross.”

  “Let’s just say that we toyed with the idea of marriage. But as much as I care for him, I couldn’t allow him to resign from the RDF. Earth needs leaders like Rick, and I couldn’t allow my own selfish needs to come first.”

  Hyson grinned. “The problems of two people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, right?”

  Minmei frowned, missing what she knew was a reference to some old movie or song. “I guess so.”

  “So in the twenty-first century, it’s Rick who gets on the plane to carry on the fight.”

  Minmei’s look of uncertainty held. “Uh—”

  “But the two of you have remained close friends?”

  “Oh, we’re the best of friends. I’ve always seen us as star-crossed, from the day the Zentraedi attacked Macross Island to reclaim the SDF-1.”

  Hyson gave the camera operators ample time to close on Minmei’s flawlessly beautiful face. “When were your happiest times?”

  Minmei thought for a moment. “Aboard the SDF-1, as strange as that might sound. Living in rebuilt Macross before the War had completely dominated all our lives. Before I was voted Miss Macross.” She looked into the camera. “That’s why I couldn’t bring myself to attend the funeral last month. I prefer to live with my memories instead of burying them.”

  A full month of work by demolition and reclamation crews had reduced much of Macross City to rubble. Leveled were some sites that had appeared in three incarnations—on Macross Island, inboard the SDF-1, and under the Big Sky of the Northwest: the Hotel Centinel, which had hosted hundreds of celebrity fetes before and after the War; the White Dragon Chinese Restaurant, owned by Lynn-Kyle’s parents, Max and Lena; the Kindest Cut Steak House, favorite haunt of the late Veritech ace Ben Dixon; the Variations and Seciele Coffee Shops, where Lisa Hayes had passed many an off-duty hour; the Pub, where Roy Fokker and friends had partied hard to the fusion jazz of the Black Katz; the Close Encounters Video Arcade, where Max Sterling had bested Miriya Parina at Veritechs!; John’s Cabaret, where Minmei had often performed; the Bamboo Club, where Rico, Konda, and Bron had first met “the terrible trio” of Sammie, Vanessa, and Kim; and the Onagi Central Theater, where the computer-generated Bob Hope/Bing Crosby film Road to India had been playing when Khyron attacked …

  Immeasurable tons of irradiated wood, aluminum, steel, glass, plastic, and concrete were being bulldozed into the crater lake. Then additional tons of specially treated sand and gravel and lead pellets would be dropped by formations of cargo planes, until the lake was completely filled in, and what had once been Macross would be little more than an immense, vaguely circular plateau, from the center of which rose three tellurian buttes, marking the resting places of Khyron’s cruiser and the SDFs 1 and 2.

  It would be Earth’s newest national monument.

  At the same time Minmei was being interviewed by Katherine Hyson, Rory Lightfoot, a barrel-chested operating engineer of Cree descent, was standing on the running board of his idling bulldozer, clapping dirt from his gloved hands and the durable thighs of his antihazard suit. He spent a long moment gazing at the tor that was the buried SDF-1, then turned to his partner, who was seated in the cab of the massive machine.

  “I’ve got two last words for that ship,” Lightfoot said over the helmet intercom. “Good riddance.”

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Being inside [the factory satellite] is like being inside an inverted mechanized jellyfish with thousands of tentacles at work, building yet another mechanized behemoth inside its own monstrous belly.

  Emil Lang’s technical recordings and notes

  It was a glorious June morning in the Northwest: not a cloud in the sky and the mountainsides verdant with burgeoning growths of lodgepole pine and western larch. Fencing the sinuous river that flowed north toward Monument City were cottonwoods and aspen. The gray, military limousine had the asphalt road to itself, save for the occasional double-trailered truck hauling goods south to Denver or Albuquerque.

  Rick and Lisa were at opposite ends of the limo’s roomy rear seat, turned away from one another. The tinted privacy partition was raised and conditioned air whispered from the vents. They both wore dress uniforms, though their white command caps sat on the deck of the rear window. Of the frowns they also wore, Rick’s was the more pronounced.

  “I suppose you would have rather walked to Fokker Base,” Lisa said, looking over at him—her first words since the curt hellos they had exchanged when the chauffeur, a warrant officer, collected Rick at his house.

  Rick glanced at her but said nothing.

  “Well, not to worry, Admiral,” Lisa said. “I’m sure no one at Fokker will interfere if you decide to fly Skull One to the factory instead of riding the shuttle.”

  Rick swung away from the side window. For two months now they had been tiptoeing around the issue of his promotion, but enough was enough. “I have no problem with the shuttle, Lisa. But this—” He waved his hands about, indicating the limo. “This is what I object to.”

  “What are we supposed to do, Rick—take a bus?”

  “I just don’t like the message it sends.”

  “Stop being ridiculous. You think people are going to begrudge us a chauffeured ride to Fokker? They know we’re on important business. If I were you, I’d be more concerned with the message your attitude sends.”

  “My attitude? Can you blame me? You knew I didn’t want this promotion. Why can’t you see my side of it?”

  “Oh, I do see your side,” she answered calmly. “It’s just that your thinking is warped.”

  “What, suddenly I’m incapable of deciding how to live my own life?”

  Lisa made a fatigued sound. “You’re right, Rick, I had no right to speak up for you. Maybe you were better off as a captain.” Her expression hardened. “Or maybe you should have married Minmei and resigned from the RDF altogether.”

  Rick winced. He had hoped that Lisa hadn’t seen the previous evening’s telecast of Katherine Hyson’s interview with Minmei.

  “Yes, I saw the program,” Lisa continued before he could comment. “And I’m still furious about it.” She mocked Minmei’s childlike voice. “ ‘We toyed with the idea of marriage, but as much as I cared for him, I just couldn’t allow him to resign. Earth needs leaders like Rick Hunter and I couldn’t allow my own selfish needs to come first.’ ”

  Lisa’s head shook in frustration. “She seems to have conveniently forgotten what she said in Macross when she found us by the lake, holding each other and crying.” Her eyes bored in on Rick. “Or have you also forgotten?”

  “Well, there was a lot going on—”

  “All of a sudden she knew from the sta
rt that you loved me, and she hoped you could forgive her for trying to make you something you weren’t—and for her pretending to be something she wasn’t.” Lisa forced an exasperated exhale. “And I didn’t hear her mention anything to Katherine Hyson about how she’d discovered that she wasn’t really eager to be married after all.” She did her Minmei impression again: ” ‘Music and celebrity are my life.’

  “She’s rewriting history to make herself look noble to her adoring fans. That way she not only ends up with the life she wanted all along, but she evades the guilt of depriving the world of a hero—meaning you.” Lisa held Rick’s gaze. “Just imagine how it would be if you had married her. Minmei off on tour somewhere, and you left with nothing but your little fanjet.”

  Rick held up his hands in protest. “You know I wouldn’t have resigned. All I’m saying is that I never wanted to exchange my thinking cap for a command cap.” He snatched the brimmed symbol of his rank from the rear window deck and turned it about in his hands. “Anyway, I’m not convinced the Tirol mission is going to solve our problems, Lisa. There’s too much work to be done right here.”

  Lisa softened. “Rick, I told Admiral Gloval the same thing you’re telling me—that we should concentrate on rebuilding the Earth to defend it against the Masters. But Henry was convinced of the need to confront them in their own space, even if it meant going to guns with them.”

  Rick eyed her askance. “What happened to our ‘diplomatic mission’?”

  “Henry said the time had come for us to leave our cradle behind and stake our claim in space. But we can only do that when we’ve made peace with the Masters—or at the very least seen to it that they can’t wage war.”

  “All the more reason for me to have stayed a captain.”

  Lisa shook her head. “You sell yourself short—you always have. You’re capable of more than piloting a mecha and racking up enemy kills, and the Earth needs all that you have to give.”