The Zentraedi Rebellion Page 6

  “Gentlemen,” Milburn said, “I’m sure some of you know Thomas Riley Edwards.”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Max and Miriya’s marriage may have taken place in deepspace, but that didn’t mean it had been made in heaven. Their arguments didn’t center around sex or money, but around how best to raise Dana. This was made clear to Lisa Hayes aboard Breetai’s flagship, during the joint Zentraedi-RDF mission to engage Commander Reno, then in possession of the factory satellite. Hayes and Hunter, along with the Sterlings, were in an aft cabinspace when Hayes asked if she might hold six-month-old Dana, and Miriya, in response, simply tossed the child toward her. Seated approximately ten feet away, Hayes had to make a desperate lunge for the infant and only just managed to catch her. In his log, Hunter relates how he had never seen a demonstration of Max’s temper until that moment.

  Theresa Duvall, Wingmates: The Story of Max and Miriya Sterling

  The dry heat of Brasília’s winter peaked in July. Despite its almost-mile-high altitude in the lush, undulating uplands of the Sertao, the city baked under a merciless sun. It was hardly the best time for a visit, particularly if your plans called for putting yourself in a shadeless, forlorn plaza in Brasília’s Zee-town, at the center of a protest demonstration. But there was Max Sterling, plum-tinted aviator glasses fogged, faintly blue hair plastered to his forehead, engulfed by a thousands-strong crowd of chanting Zentraedi.

  “Why in the world would Seloy want us to meet her here?” Max said into Miriya’s ear over the guttural anger of the chant. She was slightly to the left in front of him, facing the speakers’ platform.

  “I don’t know why she chose this place,” Miriya said over her shoulder. “It probably has something to do with whatever it is she wants to show me. She wouldn’t go into details. It sounded to me like she thought the phone was bugged.”

  This much wasn’t news to Max. He had been at home the previous week when Miriya had accepted the charges for Seloy’s collect call from Brasília. But he had been grappling ever since with the implications of their short conversation.

  “Seloy doesn’t even have a phone to bug,” Max said.

  Miriya turned her head to frown at him. “She didn’t say it was her phone. She said the phone—the one she was calling from.”

  “And whose was that?”

  “For the tenth time—”

  “And you’re sure she didn’t say anything else about this mysterious item?”

  Miriya elbowed him lightly in the stomach. “If she had, Max, then maybe we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

  Max removed his glasses and wiped the sweat from his eyes. He knew Miriya didn’t have any answers. It was only his edginess speaking, the all-too-familiar protest scene: the crowd of hungry and homeless Zentraedi; the oratory rhetoric of the advocates, demanding that the Zentraedi’s civil rights be respected; the distorted sound system … And the barricades, of course, on the far side of which Max usually found himself, crafted in a Skull Veritech.

  He congratulated himself on the decision to leave Dana behind in Monument, in the care of Vince and Jean Grant. Even if Jean did have her hands full with Bowie, her somewhat sickly infant son.

  An ironic consequence of the War, Brasília had at last achieved status as a world capital, a position it had been denied when Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Recife were vital cities. Together with Belo Horizonte to the southeast, Cuiabá to the southwest, and Buenos Aires in the Argentine Sector, Brasília was now a major commercial center, exporting goods to all parts of the Southlands. Some longtime residents still referred to it by its original name of Plano Piloto, but most of them would have been hard-pressed to outline the city’s original bent-bow-and-arrow design. The so-called North and South Wings had lost their definition, many of the six-story apartment blocks—the super-quadras—were gutted, and the 5-mile-long, 750-foot-wide Eixo Monumental that had been the arrow was now a linear barrio of makeshift dwellings, stretching almost to the arrow’s tip at Praca Dos Tres Poderes, which housed the Ministry, the Supreme Court, and the Governor’s Palace.

  It was Max and Miriya’s third visit to Brasília, though this time they had arrived not by Veritech but by commercial hypersonic, in order to set themselves apart from the RDF. Not an easy accomplishment for the War’s most famous and most infamous of mecha jocks. It had gotten so that Miriya couldn’t venture out of the house for fear of being surrounded by reporters; and Max’s modest, upbeat, middle-American manner of speech was being mimicked by every pilot in the RDF, much as an earlier generation of jet pilots had mimicked Chuck Yeager’s drawl. Citing Dana as an excuse, he had managed to convince Rick Hunter to grant him extended off-duty time, though in fact he was still unsure about the barricade question. A staunch defender of the law, he also saw himself as a defender of the rights of Miriya’s—and Dana’s—people.

  Many Zentraedi regarded Miriya, along with Exedore and Breetai, as hajoca—traitors to the Imperative. Those same Zentraedi, while in awe of Max’s warrior skills, reviled him for having married a traitor. At the same time, many of his fellow Earthers reviled him for marrying an alien and, worse still, for fathering a hybrid. It ate at him to think what life would hold for Dana if the situation didn’t improve. She was too young to feel the sting of discrimination, but it wouldn’t be long before she began to grow aware of the stares and snide remarks—especially at the rate she was developing.

  Dana was one of the reasons Max had been noncommittal about the Expeditionary mission as well. Societal pressures notwithstanding, there was Miriya’s sometimes careless handling of her. Not for lack of love—for Miriya was learning about emotions—but through a seeming absence of any nurturing instinct. In the hardened, parentless manner the Zentraedi were raised, she would expect Dana to cope with whatever circumstances presented themselves. Miriya would leave Dana unattended around sharp or hot objects, abandon her outdoors to rain or snow, and toss her about as if she were a stuffed toy. Nonviolent play and simple affection were alien notions to Miriya; and Max, as a result, had become more the primary parent and househusband than he would ever have imagined himself.

  “There she is!” Miriya shouted suddenly. Her right arm was raised and waving. “Seloy, Seloy, over here!”

  Max followed Miriya’s wave and spied Seloy about thirty feet away, angling through the crowd. He grinned broadly. Whenever anyone asked him if he could provide living proof that Humans and Zentraedi were members of the same stock—and many did ask—he would always say, One day, if you’re lucky, I’ll introduce you to Seloy Deparra.

  Admittedly, there were physical differences that distinguished the Zentraedi from Humans, though nothing as obvious as, say, the epicanthic eye fold or the Mongolian spot, nor as superficial as hair color or skin tone—especially among the Southlands’ ethnic mix of European, Asian, African, and indigenous peoples. There was something about the texture of Zentraedi hair, the shape of the head, the bone structure of the face, the turn of the mouth, a slight knobbiness to the elbows, knees, and shoulders … But Seloy Deparra was an anomaly. As lithe and as peerlessly athletic-looking as Miriya, Seloy had widely spaced, long-lashed eyes and a mane of blond hair even a shampoo model might envy. Her face was triangular and her cheekbones were wonderfully pronounced. She was a walking advertisement for the wonders of biogenetic engineering. But could anyone unaware that the Masters had grown her single her out as Zentraedi?

  In spite of the heat, she was dressed in a white jumpsuit and ankle boots, and was carrying a large nylon bag over one shoulder. She moved furtively.

  “You think that bag has what she wants you to see?” Max asked.

  “How would I know?” Miriya said.

  A former Quadrano pilot who had served under Azonia, Seloy had inserted the Micronized and weaponless Miriya into the SDF-1, back when Miriya was bloodlusting after Max instead of simply lusting. Following Dolza’s Rain of Death, she’d spent almost a year in Monument City before heading south. And within months she had fallen
in with some powerful people, though she had never named them.

  Miriya and Seloy exchanged salutes, fists thumping their chests like ancient Roman soldiers.

  “T’sen Parina!”

  “T’sen Deparra!”

  To Max, Seloy merely inclined her head. “Par dessu, Sterling.”

  “Hello to you, too,” Max told her, smiling.

  Without further word she led Max and Miriya back the way she had come, halting only when they’d reached the outer edge of the crowd. Once there, she opened the shoulder bag to reveal a dark-haired, sad-eyed male child of perhaps eleven months, wearing a dirty, tie-dyed Minmei Tour T-shirt.

  Miriya stared at Seloy; then, in Zentraedi, asked, “Where did you get it?”

  “It’s mine.”

  Max’s mouth fell open. “Yours as in property,” he managed, “or yours as—”

  “It’s mine,” Seloy repeated. “I birthed him.”

  “But who was the donor?” Miriya said.

  “I can’t reveal that.”

  Miriya’s eyes grew wide. “A Zentraedi?”

  “A Human.”

  Max understood more Zentraedi than he spoke, but words of any sort failed him now. Dana was believed to be the only offspring of a Human-Zentraedi union, and something of a fluke at that, owing to Miriya’s years of contact with Human emotions and foodstuffs. That was the reason Emil Lang was so intrigued by Dana, and why Lang was often so sympathetic of Max’s concerns. Lazlo Zand, as well; though Max sometimes thought that the professor’s fascination with Dana bordered on freakish curiosity.

  Seloy’s earlier furtiveness returned. “The donor—the father is searching for me. That’s why I chose a crowded place for our rendezvous. The child and I are in danger.”

  She had barely gotten the words out when the ground began to shake in thunderous syncopation: one, two; one, two; one, two … The crowd swung toward the source of the sounds in time to see two Battloid-configured Veritechs—a VF-1A and a VF-1J—appear from around the corner of a glass-and-chrome office high-rise. Max noticed that the usual RDF fighting-kite logos had been replaced by unfamiliar eagles, proud and upright, displaying crests of crown, laurel, and solitary stars.

  “Now hear this,” the pilot of the single-lasered VT said over his mecha’s PA. “You are in violation of executive order fifteen dash seventy-seven, which forbids any assembly undertaken without the prior consent of Governor Leonard.”

  The crowd booed at mention of Leonard. “He denies us food, knowing that we’ll protest,” Seloy snarled. “Then he has the excuse he needs to deploy his mecha.”

  “Usurper!” Seloy screamed in Zentraedi through cupped hands. “Negronta! To show allegiance to Leonard dishonors all T’sentrati!”

  One of the advocates said something that got the crowd chanting again. “This was the work mantra of the T’sentrati at the mining base on Fantoma,” Miriya shouted to Max, her eyes wild.

  Max’s heart began to race. The chant increased in volume, drowning out the dueling words of mecha pilots and sympathizers alike.

  Suddenly then—incredible as it seemed—the two pilots opened fire on the crowd.

  From the VTs’ chainguns tore bursts of transuranic rounds as big as candlepins, any one of them capable of blowing the foot off a Battlepod. Hundreds of Zentraedi were instantly dismembered. When Max came to his feet, quivering with terror and disbelief, scenes of carnage met his eyes: blood, limbs, headless torsos …

  But the pilots’ savagery had elicited a perhaps unanticipated reaction: death had called to the Imperative, death had galvanized the crowd into action. And so those nearest the Battloids launched an insane counterattack, charging forward, chanting “Kara-brek! Kara-brek!”—meaning death by honor. Though it might be suicide.

  Again the VTs fired, and again hundreds—aliens and Humans alike—fell to the green-tinted concrete paving stones of the plaza. The Zentraedi front line had been decimated but the attack was only momentarily slowed. Like sharks in a feeding frenzy, the wounded picked themselves up off the blood-slicked ground and resumed the hopeless charge. Others further back in the crowd joined in, Seloy included, racing forward with the child still slung over her shoulder.

  “Seloy!” Miriya shouted.

  The VTs fired. Hundreds more fell. Max’s eyes searched for some sign of Seloy or the infant, but found none.

  From several directions at once appeared half-a-dozen Centaur tanks—decades-old things that rode on huge in-line sleds and were crowned with single-barreled cannons. They stopped for a moment, shimmering in the heat; then, without warning, they lurched forward into the crowd, leaving scores of crushed bodies in their scarlet wakes.

  Max threw a bear hug around Miriya and began to drag her away from the tanks, out of the plaza, struggling against the force of the Imperative with each backward step.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Begun in the terminal phase of the Global Civil War (1996), the team of Moran and Leonard—aided and abetted by Lazlo Zand and T. R. Edwards—would endure for some thirty-six years, until their deaths at the conclusion of the Second Robotech War. Revisionists often dismiss the pairing as an extension of the Russo/Hayes apparat that emerged from the Civil War. But on closer examination Moran and Leonard seem to have had more in common with the Zentraedi leadership, whom they so detested. The author, for one, cannot read of Doha’s hatred for “Micronians” without being reminded of Leonards hatred for “aliens”; nor of Cabell’s detailing of the Imperative embedding process without thinking of Moran’s “brainwashing” at the hands of Conrad Wilbur’s Faithful.

  footnote in Zeitgeist’s Insights: Alien Psychology and the Second Robotech War

  “His full name is Anatole Eli Leonard,” Brigadier General Reinhardt told the gathered members of the RDF Command in their new headquarters on the Excaliber base in Monument City. It was a little over a week since the slaughter in Brasília, and Monument had been experiencing nightly protest demonstrations by Zentraedi and their legions of sympathizers.

  “Eli was the mother’s maiden name,” Reinhardt continued. “French-German descent, titled and very wealthy. Father was English, brought up in the U.S. He bought and sold beef worldwide. Anatole was born in Paraguay in seventy-three, but raised in Argentina and all over Asia.”

  The room was a high-ceilinged octagon crowded with technology, and the conference table was horseshoe-shaped, with inlaid keyboards and data screens. Guards were posted at each of the four sliding doorways. Neither politicians nor scientists were present.

  Reinhardt directed a nod to the elevated glass-fronted control booth and a quarter-scale holo of Anatole Leonard flamed from a floor projector in the horseshoe’s hollow. The digitized image had obviously been generated from parade footage of some sort; the bearish miniature in ornate uniform was marching.

  Leonard’s bullet-shaped, shaved head made Rick think of Josef Turichevskiy of the old United Earth Defense Council, and he whispered as much to Lisa, seated to his right on the high-rank curve of horseshoe.

  Reinhardt was pacing back and forth in front of the holo. “He’s said to sleep only five hours a day so he can devote the other nineteen to hating the Zentraedi. He saw extensive action during the Global Civil War, first with the Neasian CoProsperity Sphere, then with the Factionalists. Embraced the technophobic beliefs of the Faithful during reconstruction of the SDF-1 on Macross Island.

  “We haven’t been able to determine where he passed the War, but he surfaces in Brazil after the Rain of Death and emerges as one of the Southland’s chief reorganizes, personally overseeing the evacuation of Rio de Janeiro by leading over 200,000 survivors on a three-month march to Belo Horizonte and on to Brasília. A regular legend, even though he’s thought of by some as an opportunist who isn’t above cutting deals with gangs of bandits, vigilante groups, and mercenary armies. Lately, Aaron Rawlins and Krista Delgado have thrown in with him.”

  “More separatists,” Major Aldershot commented, running a forefinger along the u
nderside of his waxed mustache. Awarded a Combat Infantry Star during the Civil War, he had a prosthetic left arm and right leg. “Rawlins and Delgado may have held the fort during the SDF-1’s absence, but when it came time to pull together and rebuild, where were they—down in the Southlands organizing private armies. Their thinking is medieval.”

  Several at the table were nodding in agreement.

  Reinhardt went on. “To Leonard’s credit, he has managed to maintain peace among hundreds of self-interest groups operating in that area of the Southlands. More importantly, he has the people’s support because he’s willing to take a strong stand on malcontentism. He claims that the Zentraedi provoked this latest confrontation.”

  Video footage of the riot ran on the inlaid screens, handheld shots of the charge and its bloody aftermath. Watching the tape, Rick recalled his standoff with a murderous crowd of Zentraedi in New Detroit years earlier. At issue was a sizing chamber Khyron had designs on. Lynn-Kyle had spoken for the Zentraedi, ultimately forcing Rick to yield to their demands that the sizing chamber remain in Detroit. Rick had been obsessing over his failure ever since. He asked himself now whether he would have fired on the crowd if they had attacked him.

  “The death toll stands at one thousand one hundred Zentraedi, forty-four sympathizers, and eighty-six bystanders,” Reinhardt said when the tape had ended. “Martial law is in effect in Brasília, Belo Horizonte, and Cuiabá.”

  Rick spoke up. “I’d like to know how Leonard justifies using armed response.”

  “The official explanation is that the VT pilots panicked.”