Dark Powers Page 8

  Rem and Cabell wondered if any perfection of the Muse Triumvirate of the Robotech Masters could surpass the aching beauty of this song; they doubted it. Exedore heard it and thought, This power she has—it’s astonishing. No; it’s humbling.

  Thousands of people froze, hearing Minmei, knowing her and her song, but never having heard either sound like this.

  It’s love’s battle we must win…

  The line rose and lingered; losing in personal battle was the epitome of the blues. Minmei was pure and high and luminous with pain at one moment, breathy with a return to the call of life the next. More in touch with her music than the gamine superstar version of herself had ever been.

  We will win

  We must win …

  Minmei twisted the last note around with the wail of a suffering animal, then let it down gently with some chords that said it’s all right; life goes on. Lived through everything else. Not gonna die from this.

  She wavered a little on the piano bench, a bit dazed by the understated power of what she had just released—something that hadn’t been there, in her, before. She was unaware that so many others had heard it, unaware that the lounge was now utterly quiet.

  The Sentinels’ drive flared bright; the starship moved away, its escorts guarding the vessel, as Minmei thought of it, only so far as the end of the proverbial garden path, and then letting it set out into the long night alone.

  “Nothing to report to me? Nothing to report? Is that all you can say?”

  The Invid Regent stalked through his vast halls in the Invid Home Hive on Optera, and his closest aides, knowing his moods, trailed him dutifully but warily. He was capable of becoming violent without warning—feeding an unfortunate bystander to one of his huge, gem-collared Hellcats, or having them devolved in one of the Genesis Pits or simply lashing out with a physical blow.

  And an enraged blow from the Regent was something few might hope to survive. Some twenty feet high, he was the tallest of his race, among whom an average height was some six or eight feet. His advisers, though, like Tesla, stood twice average height.

  Unlike the underlings following him, the Regent was draped with an organic cape that grew around the back of his neck and resembled a manta ray, lined from front to back with tuberclelike sensors that resembled eyeballs. He often spread the strange structure like a cobra’s mantle in times of fury, and the mantle was stirring restlessly, even now.

  “No word from the reinforcements I sent to retake Tirol? No message on the whereabouts of Tesla? No answer from the Regess? Perhaps my servants need motivation.”

  He stopped to turn to them.

  “Your troops have barely had time to reach Karbarra, to pick up forces from the garrison there for the attack on Tirol, much less reach Tirol itself,” one of the lackeys managed to get out, trembling.

  “A- and perhaps Tesla has paused to gather more varieties of the Fruit of the Flower of Life,” another one ventured. “He has great hopes that a preparation made from them will be of vast advantage to you, Mighty One!”

  “And it may be that your communications have simply not reached the Regess yet,” the third pointed out. “She has always responded to Your Magnificence’s messages in the past.”

  Yes. Usually with mockery and defiance. Repelled by his de-evolutionary experiments, just as he was provoked by her insistence on maintaining a form that was Tiresoid—that was so like the females of the race of the hated Zor—the Regess had abandoned him, followed by half their species, like the dividing of some unimaginable insect colony.

  And with his resources of troops and vessels and Flower essence so limited in the wake of the vast Invid–Robotech Master war, he could scarcely afford to begin a civil conflict against his own mate and half his race. At least, not yet.

  The Regent was in no mood to listen to his underlings’ rationalizations, in no mood to be reminded of logistical limits, or of Tesla’s semimystical theories about the Fruit of the Flower of Life. He stood now near the center of the Home Hive, a stupendous network of domes and connecting conduits that stretched far and wide across Optera like an incandescent spiderweb. But, with its energy reduced now and its population so depleted, it seemed to mock the power that had once been his.

  The feeler-sensors on his snout glowered angrily with the words, “Yes: motivation.”

  He seized the adviser nearest him, not really caring which one it was, and flung him across the chamber. The underling sprawled and lay quaking. “Kill him,” the Regent told the other two.

  They didn’t hesitate for a moment. Snatching weapons from a pair of armored-trooper sentries, they turned the guns on their former colleague and opened fire. Streams of annihilation disks flew, flaring bright when they struck, enveloping the fallen Invid in a brief inferno. The stench of the charred body wafted through the Hive.

  The Regent debated whether he should order the remaining two to shoot each other, or, perhaps more interestingly, themselves. But that would waste more time, since new lackeys would have to be trained from scratch.

  His bloodlust had been sated a little. He contented himself with telling them, “Go now and do as I’ve commanded. And bring me no more news of failure.”

  Senep, the commander in charge of the Invid mission to send fresh troops to Tirol, was aware of the Regent’s state of mind. He was at pains to do his duty well, but quickly.

  Reports from Tirol were somewhat sketchy—word that Zentraedi and some apparently unknown Tiresoid race had attacked the planet in concert. Senep’s hastily assembled task force, manned by troops borrowed from Karbarra’s ample garrison, now moved out for deepspace, still preparing itself for the rather protracted voyage to its objective.

  Senep was relieved that his plan to commandeer resources from Karbarra had been approved. To gather units in dribs and drabs from various other worlds, and from the forces patrolling the outer marches of the Invid’s shrunken empire, would have cost him time that he could ill afford to waste.

  But Senep had been able to make two telling arguments in favor of his idea. One was that Karbarra had more than sufficient Invid strength to perform its task, even with its garrison thus reduced. The second, and more important, was that the Karbarrans were most unlikely to become intractable or demonstrate any resistance or defiance.

  No, the Karbarrans had a very good reason to obey their overlords’ every whim without objection.

  The Invid commander was still getting his ships into proper formation when a communications tech turned to him, its snout-sensors agleam with emotion as it spoke.

  “Commander! Alien starship approaching from deepspace! It just went subluminal and appears to be on course for Karbarra!”

  For Karbarra, and Senep’s task force. “Identify.”

  “Impossible, sir. It does not match anything in our data banks.”

  Senep puzzled for a moment over the long-range sensor image of the Sentinels’ ship. “I’m not going to ask questions. Battle stations. All units prepare to attack.”

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  It is a critical point that each new form of enemy in the Wars was a new problem in the use and application of Earth mecha. What would work against a Battlepod was suicide against Invid Inorganics; the vulnerable points, weaponry, and performance profiles were completely different.

  The Human fighters were lucky they had all those curious and experimenting monkeys in their ancestry; the REF in particular was a climate wherein only quick learners survived.

  Selig Kahler, The Tirolian Campaign

  The voyage from Tirol to Karbarra had been filled with a schedule even more exhausting than the preparations for the Sentinels’ departure. Rick, like all the others aboard, had been forced to take what little sleep he could get in catnaps.

  They had had to familiarize the non-Human Sentinels with Robotech weapons, of course—as much as was feasible while under way. Some of them, like Burak and Kami, were more than willing to learn, while others—the Karbarran ursinoids and the Praxian
amazons in particular—seemed unwilling to trust any small arms but their own. This, though the Karbarrans appeared inclined to try out mecha and Bela and Gnea could barely wait to ride that completely crazy winged horse of Lang’s into battle.

  Rick and his staff had racked their brains coming up with ways to try to integrate the wildly varied forces in battle and make everybody understand what they were supposed to do. Rick had moments of agonizing doubt that it had been accomplished, wondering if he was heading into one of the worst debacles in military history.

  Then there had been the various misunderstandings and frictions to mediate. The Sentinels’ resentment of Cabell and Rem; run-ins between the Humans and non-Humans as cultural difference led to clashes (well, the Hovertanker did have that fractured jaw coming to him for calling the Praxian woman a “brawny wench,” even if it was meant jokingly); the constant insistence of Burak and the other Perytonians that their planet be given higher priority in the campaign—it was all beginning to give Rick migraines.

  And there was the bewildering job of understanding the alien Sentinels themselves. As the ship drew closer and closer to Karbarra, Lron and Crysta and their people became more and more withdrawn and morose. Veidt was puzzled by it, too.

  Normally, as Rick understood it, the gloomy Karbarrans—preoccupied with the tragedy of fate and the ultimate futility of things—made Earth’s teutonic types look giddy by comparison; but the prospect of battle was one of the few things that made the big ursinoids cheerful. That wasn’t true now, though, and none of them would explain why.

  Rick tried to put it from his mind, along with things like this business about Haydon. Apparently, Haydon was some sort of extraordinarily important historical figure or deity or something, but beliefs and convictions varied among the Sentinels and led to sharp disputes. And so part of their pact had been to avoid all mention of Haydon. Lang was desperate for more information concerning the matter, but the Sentinels had clammed up about it.

  Those were Rick’s lesser problems. Bigger ones included trying to make things more efficient and organized, and constantly being stymied by explanations he couldn’t quite grasp.

  One of his first ideas had been to automate the feeding of the Ur-Flower peat—Sekiton, it was called—into the furnaces, freeing up the stoker gangs for other work. Lron and Crysta had given him a long explanation, which he didn’t comprehend in the least.

  They seemed to be saying that the Sekiton had to be physically touched and handled by Karbarrans to be of any use. If relegated to robotic handling, its affinity for Karbarran life-forms thus frustrated, Sekiton would have its feelings hurt or sulk or whatever, and refuse to yield up its energy properly.

  It had to be a translation problem, Rick decided. Didn’t it?

  He just hoped that he had understood the Karbarrans’ intelligence assessments properly. When they had left their homeworld, the Invid were maintaining a relatively small occupation force, and it sounded like something the Sentinels could cope with. Rick’s plan was to use the production facilities on Karbarra—famous for their adaptability and output—to begin assembly lines to turn out mecha and ships with which to arm native recruits, increasing the Sentinels’ strength perhaps tenfold.

  Lron and his folk were disinclined to comment much about the idea, and apparently held the conviction that fate would bring what it would bring. That gave Rick reservations about the plan, and so he convinced the other Sentinel leaders to scout out the situation carefully before beginning any offensive.

  To that end, the starship resumed sublight speed drive far out from the planet itself. Lisa, in her capacity as captain, gave the command to carry out the maneuver.

  She had left behind the more formal REF uniform with its tailcoat and skirt. Now she wore the tight-fitting unisex bodysuit that seemed more appropriate for the Sentinels’ rough-and-ready style, the group’s insignia high on the left breast of her yokelike torso harness, just as it was on all the other Humans. The starship made its transition.

  And found itself, all in an instant, practically in the lap of Senep’s task force.

  Lisa turned and yelled for battle stations.

  As for Crysta and Lron, they had taken advantage of the preoccupation of most of the ship’s company with the return to sublight speed to find their way to the hold in which Tesla was being kept.

  The Praxians who were on guard were only too glad to let the Karbarrans relieve them long enough for the amazons to go get something to eat. Besides, it lay well within Lron’s authority to conduct an interrogation.

  When they were alone with him, the ursinoids went over to where the Invid scientist sat, shackled, behind bars. “You begged us to spare you,” Crysta said in a growl. “You said you would be of use. Well, now you can be. Tell us what you know of the prison, and of its … its captives. How are they guarded? How may they be freed?”

  Tesla had been watching her almost indifferently, Crysta thought, though it was difficult to tell any Invid mood by appearance. But when the scientist spoke, it was with an almost saintly kindness.

  “Ah, Madam Crysta! If only I knew these things, I could tell them to you, and atone at least in some small part for the crimes I’ve committed against your race back when my will was enslaved by the Regent! But I know nothing of such military arrangements, you see.”

  His chains rattled as he struggled to his feet. “However, another idea occurs to me. Release me, that I may go down to the surface of Karbarra and negotiate for you at once. The Invid commander, without the Regent there to contradict, will listen to me.”

  Lron showed his teeth. “I told you asking this slime-thing was useless,” he told his wife. And to Tesla, he added, “Now we try a different approach. Let us see how much you can remember with one of those antennae twisted off your snout!”

  Tesla shrank back, even though he was the larger of the two. “Keep your distance! Your leadership circle said I was not to be tampered with. Have you forgotten so soon?”

  “But the others aren’t here now,” Lron pointed out, putting one hand on the lock. “And I am.”

  Crysta, worried that this possible key to the Karbarran dilemma might not survive her mate’s vigorous questioning, was just saying, “Lron, perhaps he’s telling the truth—” Just then the alarms went off, exotic ululations and crystal gongs and warhorns and the various other calls to arms of the assorted Sentinel races.

  Lron made sure the cage was secure, then he and Crysta pounded off for the bridge. As they rounded a corner in the passageway, they were unaware that they were being watched from the shadows.

  Burak stayed back until the two were out of sight, then stared thoughtfully at the door to the compartment holding Tesla’s cage. At last, the sounding of the alarms drew him slowly, unwillingly, off toward his battle station. Then he began to run, to run as if something were chasing him.

  “They haven’t fired on us out of hand; that’s a piece of luck we didn’t have coming,” Lisa conceded. “Rick, I suggest we not scramble the VTs, at least not yet.”

  Rick met her gaze for a moment, then nodded.

  There were far fewer of the enemy than the SDF-3 had confronted over Tirol. Four of the rust-colored Invid troopships, shaped like gigantic clams, were deploying around a much more modest version of the Invid command ship the Humans had glimpsed—the one Cabell had pronounced to be the royal flagship of the Regent himself. If the troop carriers were clams, this thing was an ominous starfish.

  The Sentinel leadership was piling onto the bridge now, reacting or not according to the fashion of their species. “They’ve got the drop on us,” Rick said softly.

  Lisa shook her head. “I don’t think so, or they would’ve opened up right away; the Invid are the shoot-first type.” But I don’t understand.

  Aboard Senep’s flagship, the task-force command finally got some results from the vessel’s Living Computer. It seemed that most of the components of the unidentified craft matched with space vehicles from many Invid-controlled worlds,
and the central structure to which they had been joined fit the profile of an outlandish craft that the scientist Tesla had had under construction.

  Senep’s antennae shone with anger. That blithering idiot! But—if it was Telsa, why hadn’t he identified himself? Perhaps something was wrong.

  Senep queried the Living Computer about the offensive capabilities of the newcomer. Of the weapons that could be identified from memory banks, none could match the range or power of the flagship.

  It certainly didn’t resemble anything the new foe—the Human-Zentraedi alliance—would conceivably field. And no ship of a subject race posed much threat to an Invid command ship.

  “We’ll close with it, then,” Senep decided, “within range of our main guns, but out of Tesla’s. Then we’ll send our mecha to investigate.”

  Lisa refused to answer the enemy’s query signals, of course; none of the Sentinels could imitate an Invid, and there wasn’t even time to get Tesla up to the bridge, much less coerce him.

  “But why are they approaching?” Veidt’s eerie voice came.

  Lron growled, “They know what our weapons can do; they know their flagship has us outgunned.”

  There were only seconds to act; Lisa turned to one of the gramophone mikes. “Patch me through to Commander Grant.”

  “Way to go,” Rick whispered to his gutsy wife, realizing what she had in mind.

  “I’m beginning to get unfamiliar Protoculture readings from that craft, Commander,” the ship’s Living Brain relayed.

  “Launch mecha,” Senep said, having taken up his position of advantage. “And at the first sign of resistance, open fire—”

  It was as if he spoke into the ear of a listening deity. At that moment a tremendous bolt sprang from a peculiar design feature on the underside of the lone ship. It struck Senep’s vessel almost dead-center, a star-hot stiletto of energy that pierced the command ship’s shields and hull, stabbed it to its heart, and lit the vessels around it with its dying eruption.