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  “No, Rick! We can’t do it.” Her eyes were as red as some of the console lights. “You’re going to have to let someone else come to her rescue this time. We’re committed to Peryton. We’ve got to finish what we started.”

  Rick slammed his fist down where she could see it. “Tesla, Edwards, and Breetai are converging on Optera! Our presence is crucial to the outcome. It’s imperative we get there!”

  “It’s imperative we remain right here,” she shouted back.

  “We haven’t even committed ourselves yet. The recon force are still in their dropships. We can pull out and return—”

  “Excuse me, sir,” a tech interrupted him from an adjacent console. “One ship is already away.”

  Rick stared at the threat board aghast. “Who issued the order for that ship to launch!”

  “It’s not a dropship, sir. It’s an Alpha.”

  “Burak,” Rick said knowingly.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He wanted to go it alone; now he can, Rick was saying to himself when the tech added, “Rem and Janice Em are with him.”

  Rick cursed and shot to his feet, eyeing the board and swinging around to face Lisa’s tight-lipped look. “Do we have a fix on the Alpha?” he asked, holding her gaze.

  “Bearing zero-one-seven, sir. On a course toward the hive.”

  Rick checked his watch. Less than an hour to get them back or commit to it.

  “Notify the launch bay I’m on my way,” Rick said to the tech.

  “I’ll meet you there, Admiral,” Lisa seethed before she signed off.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  One sees a motif of barrenness and sterility begin to emerge: defoliated Optera, ravaged Earth, irradiated Tirol. A broken marriage between king and queen; a race of loveless warrior clones, another of sexless drones. The Flowers themselves held in reproductive stasis … Only the Protoculture thrived, energized by anger, lusts and warfare.

  Maria Bartley-Rand, Flower of Life: Journey Beyond Protoculture

  Edwards had a dozen of his Ghost Riders with him when he entered the Regent’s Home Hive; and, for good measure, three Scrim and three Crann, trailing the general’s tightly knit formation like obedient mascots.

  The Inorganics were dressed for the occasion in outlandish uniforms culled from the starship’s wardrobe—REF dress cloaks draped over their massively broad shoulders, caps perched atop cyclopean-eyed torsos, battle ribbons dangling from underarm weapons clusters, breechcloths fashioned from United Earth Government flags around narrow, skeletal hips and armored loins. Edwards and his men wore crisply tailored camouflage jumpsuits and jet-black helmets with tinted faceshields. Each carried a gleaming Wolverine assault rifle, a sawtoothed survival knife, twin Badgers in hip holsters, ammo and battery packs, bandoliers of concussion grenades and antipersonnel canisters. Edwards wore jackboots, skintight pants and a flare-shoulder vest of black leather, richly embroidered gloves, and a high-collared duotherm shirt. His blond hair stood spiked away from his polished skullplate like a fright wig, the neural headband riding above his ears like some Incan headdress of royalty. His good eye and cruel mouth were highlighted with purple- and rubicund-colored cosmetics. He was carrying a riding crop and leading a Hellcat on a chrome leash.

  The Regent had a band waiting.

  The Home Hive complex was an agglomeration of mile-high hemispheres that covered hundreds of square miles. From above it had reminded Edwards of a molecule model—an arrangement of domes and the arched conduits that linked them, an obscene polymer or everready ester. The place was mind-boggling in both size and structure, and defied the senses at each turn; so much so that Edwards himself had been sorely tempted to make a beeline back to the dropship and force the Regent to come to him instead. But once through the hive’s permeable membrane he decided he had made the right choice. No show of trepidation or apprehension; a surefooted balls-to-the-wall walk into the enemy’s camp. After all, hadn’t he just saved the Regent’s neck—sent Tesla Peryton-bound with his tail between his legs? If he had a tail, Edwards thought. God knew the renegade had looked satanic enough to possess one in that twenty-foot-high guise. But even Tesla’s ersatz-Humanness paled in comparison to this … this band the Regent assembled! A conceit almost bizarre enough to rival the wedding ceremony he had staged for Wolfe and the rest. An orchestra composed of two dozen of the Regent’s stripped-down soldiers beating on drums, shaking rattles and bells, and blowing into makeshift horns, ocarinas, and flutes. Edwards immediately recognized that the Regent was attempting to copy, perhaps interpret, the welcome the SDF-3 had given his simulagent well over two years ago, and appreciated the chance to vent his bottled-up amazement in a long, roaring laugh.

  “Your Majesty,” he said after his moment of mirth, making an elaborate bow in front of the Regent’s throne.

  The Invid leader’s nasal antennae twitched as though searching the air for some sign of sincerity. Then, with a proud motion of his head, he announced, “Optera welcomes General Edwards and his Ghost Riders.” A wave from his four-fingered hand brought the band back to life and the smile back to Edwards’s face.

  “It is indeed an honor to be here, Your Regalness,” Edwards told him, turning the Hellcat’s leash over to one of his lieutenants.

  The Regent was flanked by two larger ’Cats wearing gem-studded collars and snarling up a storm as the band members went through their repertoire of racket marches. Hundreds of armored troops stood at attention in unending ranks on both sides of the throne, and behind them, column after column of Pincers, Scouts, and Enforcer ships. And even this gathering took up only a quarter of the Home Hive’s domed central hall.

  The Regent was looking down his snout at the uniformed Inorganics Edwards had brought in and the Hellcat now lying prone at the general’s feet. “I see you neglected to bring the brain scion with you, General Edwards.”

  Along with most of my troops and the rest of your Tiresian strike force, Edwards said to himself. All that, including the living computer, was still safely tucked away on the cruiser, now in low orbit around the Invid homeworld. Such was the power of Edwards’s link with the brain that he could control small numbers of Inorganics through the neural headband alone.

  “I thought we might talk first,” he told the Regent. “See where we stand now that I saved your neck.”

  The Regent barked a coughing sound. “So we shall, General. But you should know that I was merely toying with Tesla. My Special Children were just preparing to move against him when your starship appeared.”

  Edwards followed the Regent’s hand motion off to one side, where fifty or more mecha were lined up along the circumference of the chamber. They resembled the Enforcers, but were bigger and of greater brute strength, bearing multiple upper limbs provided with pincers, tentacles, scythelike blades, weapons, muzzles, heavier armor, and increased firepower. At the base of each ship stood an Invid to match—bigger and more brutish than the Regent’s run-of-the-mill soldiers, and uglier by far. Ill-conceived things that had been rushed into creation.

  “Of course,” Edwards said, letting it go for the moment. “I’m sure Tesla was wetting his robes.”

  “You saw him?”

  Edwards nodded. “What’s he been eating, by the way?”

  “Fruits,” the Regent answered him dismissively.

  “So much for vegetarian diets, huh?”

  The Regent ignored him, gathering his garment as he rose to his feet. “It’s time we talked,” he said, setting off.

  Edwards and his retinue followed, moving deeper and deeper into the Home Hive complex. Through organic tunnels laced with strands of dendrites and ganglia, and on into lesser and greater hemispheres, instrumentality nodes and power supplies; past weather-balloon-size commo-spheres, and close-by the huge chamber that housed the central living computer itself—the bubble-chambered brain from which all others had been sectioned, a floating canescent mass of congealed, convoluted stuff as big as a dirigible.

  But ultimately E
dwards was led alone into the Regent’s private chambers—a pitiful approximation of the lavish quarters the Robotech Masters had enjoyed at the height of their empire. Ornate furniture and mirrors, Greco-Romanesque filagrees and scrolls, atriums and courtyards, arabesque columns and friezework pediments. But it was more send-up than copy: a theatrical facade that overlooked a planet as harsh and sterile as surgical light.

  Edwards could scarcely believe his eyes; and for the first time he began to understand the lusts that had driven the Invid halfway across the Quadrant. It had not been greed, but envy; and it had not been for war, but out of a kind of warped and perverted love. He turned away as the Regent slipped out of his robes to immerse himself in a sunken tub of green soup that smelled like overcooked brussels sprouts.

  “Now, General Edwards,” the Regent said, sighing as he luxuriated in the bath. “How can we help one another?” A fleet of toy ships and terror weapons sat within easy reach.

  Beaming, Edwards stretched out on a chaise lounge as wide as a trampoline, toeing off his jackboots and propping pillows up behind his head. He had left the neural headband in the care of his team leader. “The way I see it, we’ve both gotten ourselves into a fix. You’ve got Tesla and the Sentinels banging on your door, and I’ve got the REF hounding me. I thought for a while we could solve everything by throwing in together, but we missed our window of opportunity. Sending a simulagent to Tirol didn’t help matters.”

  The Regent was willing to concede the point. “Perhaps I was a bit hasty. But I wasn’t certain I could trust you.”

  Edwards waved a hand. “Forget it. I would’ve done the same thing. Besides, what’s past is past. I’m thinking about what we can do today.”

  “And that is …”

  Edwards sat up, elbows on his knees. “I know where the Protoculture matrix is. And if your ships can get us to Earth, we’re as good as gold.”

  “Leave Optera?” the Regent said in distress.

  “It’s a lost cause,” Edwards told him. “Course you can go down fighting if that’s your idea of fun. But I’m not ready to throw it in just yet.”

  “But Earth—”

  “Can your ships do it?”

  The Regent thought for a moment. “I believe they can, but I would have to consult with the living computer to be sure.”

  “Then do it,” Edwards said, standing up. “Between the data in my ship’s computers and what I’ve fed into the section you left in Tiresia, we’ve got everything we need—time-space factors, sidereal computations, the works. Thanks to Lang’s investigations, I’ve also got the lowdown on the matrix, and once we nab that, we’ll have all the Protoculture we can handle.

  “My people are already in power out there. All you and I need now is a strike force large enough to handle the Masters.”

  “The Masters are headed there!”

  “Calm down,” Edwards barked, sidestepping a splash of nutrient from the tub. “Of course they’re headed there. So’s your wife.”

  The Regent fell silent while he tried to picture the partnership: a journey across the Quadrant, a final slugfest with the Robotech Masters … Smiling to himself, he looked over at Edwards. Earth cleared of Humans for the arrival of the Regess and her children. A new world to settle. Yes, it seemed a brilliant plan.

  Edwards caught the Regent’s look and turned his back to hide a grin. The old snail is planning to off me when the time is right, Edwards told himself, delighted to find that the two of them really did think alike.

  The Regent was about to speak when the door to the chamber opened. “Your Majesty,” a servant said, entering and genuflecting. “One of the Humans wishes to speak with his commander.”

  The Regent curled his fingers. “Permit him to enter.”

  Edwards’s lieutenant shouldered past the Invid servant, stopped in his tracks when he got a load of the Regent in the tub, then turned a serious look to the general. “Message from the ship. We’ve got company upstairs. ID scanners say it’s the Valivarrr.”

  “Breetai,” Edwards cursed.

  The Regent went bolt upright in the bath, sending a tidal wave through the tub, “Breetai!” He experienced a memory flash of the Zentraedi’s one-eyed anger coming ship-to-ship on a view-orb. We’re coming for you!

  “I want the brain transported down here immediately,” Edwards was saying, pacing alongside the tub, mindless of puddles the Regent’s thrashing had released. “In fact, scrap that. Get the entire ship down here. We’ll force them to meet us on land this go-round.”

  “The Zentraedi—here?” the Regent croaked.

  Edwards had adopted a thoughtful gaze, which slowly reconfigured to a broad smile. “Nothing to worry about,” he announced laughing. “We’ve got the weapon we used to beat them last time.”

  Two servants had appeared to help the Regent into his robes. He showed Edwards a puzzled frown as he climbed from the tub. “A Protoculture weapon.”

  “Better than that,” Edwards told him. “We call it a Minmei.”

  Janice had elected to follow Burak’s lead—temporarily, at least—and per his instructions brought the Veritech down in the outskirts of what had once been Peryton’s principal city, LaTumb. It was in its time an extraordinary place, having grown up around Haydon’s psicon generator, and later the sacrosanct shrine erected to his memory. Even in the eerie predawn light, Rem recognized as much; but most of what he saw was in ruins. Slagged towers of steel and native stone, collapsed bridges and roadways, horror and devastion stretching clear to the horizon. A lasting memory of the early wars, when reoriented Peryton had had the world on a string. Before the priesthood rivalries, the suicidal slide into holocaust. But though overshadowed now by the enormous nosecone-shaped hive the Invid had thrown over the shrine, the place was far from depopulated. Convinced perhaps that the Möbius battle would never erupt so close to the device that had inadvertently lifted it into perpetuity, thousands of Perytonians continued to live among the ruins or in the primitive settlements, the walled-in dwellings and filthy slums that surrounded the core.

  “We’re going to have to penetrate the hive if we expect to do any lasting good here,” Janice was explaining. “And we can take it as an encouraging sign that no ships have showed up to give us the customary welcome. I suspect the Regent has recalled most of the garrison; but the hive has not yet been emptied.”

  Neither Rem nor Burak thought to question her about this; when Janice was in android guise, questions seemed irrelevant. Nevertheless, Rem had some concerns about just how she planned to get them through the settlement’s patrolled streets, let alone into the hive itself.

  Hie trio were on a grassy rise several miles distant from the Invid perimeter, the Veritech well concealed in an evergreen forest at their backs. The space between was a patchwork quilt of buildings and open space, some torchlit, some equipped with generators and mercury lights. Open sewers abutted areas of manicured lawn. Thatched shelters sat next to stately mansions; rich and poor, good and evil, rubbed shoulders on every corner. Here was a marketplace, teeming with early morning breakdown activity; there a city block of chic shops. Packs of doglike carnivores roamed the street, foraging yard to yard. Through night-scope glasses Rem watched one unruly band launch an attack against a group of domesticated animals penned up inside a crudely fashioned backyard corral. Two Perytonians wielding triple-bladed war clubs and hardwood staffs were attempting to fight off the beasts. Elsewhere, merchants and scammers were closing up shop—dealers in foodstuffs, flesh, and contraband; peddlers of low-tech trash and high-tech dreams; thieves, arsonists, berserkers, murderers, and assassins.

  Rem thought about a mythic place the Earthers called hell, and began to see Burak in an entirely new light, thinking: the Flowers of Life could have saved this place as he handed over the glasses. Now those Flowers that bloomed in the aftermath of battle were brought straight to the hive and sent offworld to Optera.

  “This is not a world for Humans,” Burak said after a moment.

  He lo
wered the glasses and turned a strange look to his companions—look that radiated a mix of emotions to rival the city’s own. Rem thought about the wonders Burak had glimpsed, and how suddenly out of place the Perytonian must have felt.

  “You two won’t get ten steps before someone either murders you or turns you over to the Invid.” His eyes flashed for Janice’s benefit. “I should never have listened to you, Wyrdling. I should have returned here with my own people, not some shape-changer and clone.”

  Janice dismissed the taunt and began removing a black robe from her backpack. “I borrowed this from one of his friends,” she said, indicating Burak and handing the robe to Rem. “Put it on.”

  Rem pointed a questioning finger to his breastbone. “You’re joking.”

  Burak chortled, the messianic glint restored to his eyes. “Do as she instructs, Zor-clone. With the hood raised you’ll pass for a hornless Perytonian child.”

  Rem frowned at the thought, but despite his misgivings began to slip the heavy, long-sleeved, monklike habit over his head. Next, its flare-shouldered cowl and animal-hide waistband. “I hope you brought one along for yourself,” he said to Janice.

  She was on her feet now, a few paces back toward the woods. Umbra was near rising behind her, stars evanescing in the light.

  “I won’t require it.”

  A transformation came over her as they watched, her body attenuating, her skin undergoing shifts of tone and color. Janice’s lavender hair was gone, as were the android’s eyes. Her head grew cone-shaped and hairless, her browridge pronounced; and from the forehead above her now demonic eyes emerged two slender horns.

  Burak fell back, performing magical safeguards and uttering Perytonian shibboleths. “Wyrdling!” he intoned. “Wyrdling!”

  And all at once they were three of a kind.

  “A-another trick you picked up on Haydon IV,” Rem said when he had relocated his voice.

  “A projection,” she explained. “I am still Janice underneath the image.”