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  “Kyle!” she wailed, and Edwards laughed.

  “Your playmate’s dead, Minmei,” he said, her chin in his flexed fingers. “Have you forgotten how to act the bride’s part?”

  She screamed again.

  Edwards straightened up as one of his lieutenants came alongside. “Run it through the spheres,” he said in Tiresian. “Let her see it.”

  Minmei saw the Regent motion with his hand, and an instant later the organic-looking thing she was shackled to began to glow from within. The light resolved to a stretch of desolate wasteland, and a battle in progress there. Zentraedi Battlepods, oddly enough, up against an army of Invid bipedal Inorganics.

  “My troops are being wiped out!” the Regent growled. “They are no match for the giants. We’ll deploy the Special Children to deal with them—”

  “Keep your robes on,” Edwards shouted, then grinned. “The whites of their eyes …” A Zentraedi in Power Armor bounded into view, blasting three Hellcats to pieces. In the background, the ‘Pods’ plastron cannons spewed limitless destruction across the field.

  “Breetai,” the Regent said.

  “Yes, that’s him.”

  Minmei leaned back from the post for a better look at the sphere. When she turned back to Edwards he was wearing a pickup-studded headband, a neural transmitter of some sort. He showed her a narrow-eyed gaze. “You’re going to perform for us, my pet. Open all frequencies,” he ordered.

  She was certain she had misunderstood him. Perform—what did he mean?

  “Sing,” he said, seeing her bafflement. “You’re going to sing for us!”

  And as he said it, a murmur began to spread through the domed hall; and when the sound reached her again it was made up of hundreds of voices, Human and Invid voices, wedded in a dirgelike rendition of “We Can Win,” the victory anthem of the Robotech War.

  “Life is only what we choose to make it,

  Let us take it

  Let us be free …”

  Minmei realized what Edwards was attempting to do and tried desperately to turn inward to her own songs, to turn away from the telepathic commands he was sending her.

  “We can find the glory we all dream of

  And with our hate

  We can win!”

  She hummed a tune of love to herself, words of peace and purity; but something dark and treacherous was percolating up from beneath them, something the Invid brain was helping Edwards achieve. Her will weakened and faltered, and a few words of the song’s reworked message escaped her lips. This song that had once brought the Zentraedi to their knees …

  “When we fight there’s no defeat,

  We stand tall and will not retreat.”

  The sphere was already showing the song’s effect: the Battlepods were no longer advancing. Some of them appeared to be wandering around in a kind of daze, firing at random, while others collided with one another, or succumbed to the demonic forces Edwards and the Regent had loosed against them.

  Minmei was leading them in song now, tears rolling down her cheeks, Invid and Human shoulder-to-shoulder with weapons raised, swaying together like Oktoberfest beer-hall companions.

  “We shall live the day we dream of winning

  And beginning a new life.

  We will win.

  We will win!”

  Vince Grant was still staring at Aurora long after they had been officially introduced. Walking, talking. And not yet six months old! It was like some grabber pulled from the headlines of a turn-of-the-century Earth tabloid: WONDERCHILD EARNS MASTERS AT AGE TWO. He felt Jean squeeze his hand in a gentle rebuke. “You’re staring,” she whispered when he turned to face her.

  They were seated together on an ornate antigrav couch in Haydon IV’s refurbished assembly antechambers. The couch was one of several pieces of furniture the planet’s design teams had dreamed up to serve the needs of alien guests and visitors. Exedore and Cabell occupied a similar couch opposite the Grants. The Sterlings were also present, along with Arla-Non, leader of the Praxian Sisterhood; Fontine, of the Karbarran emissary group; two Invid representatives from the Regess’s stay-behind brood; and Vowad and several old-guard members of the Haydonite cognoscenti. The room was on the top floor of an inverted icicle of a skyscraper, positioned to offer panoramic views of Glike and the surrounding hillsides. Briz’dziki was low in the sky, flooding the room with rich amber light. Tapestries, carpets, potted plants, and flowers added to the warmth; to Vince the place felt more like a hotel lobby than a governmental sanctum. Everyone there had already screened the vid-disk of the Plenipotentiary Council’s peace proposal.

  “You’re suggesting that Optera can actually be refoliated,” Max Sterling was saying now, directing himself to Cabell and Exedore. “Then why wasn’t this considered earlier on?”

  “It was, Commander,” Exedore answered him. He held a Pollinator in his lap and stroked the creature’s white fur while he spoke. “The proposal was among the issues slated for discussion when the Regent visited the SDF-3. But the talks broke down rather quickly and—”

  “We’re all aware of those events, Lord Exedore,” Vowad interrupted. “But it is my understanding that such a thing would not have been possible then.”

  “That’s true,” Cabell said. “The council was operating under the assumption that the Invid would take an active hand in the process of refoliation. Now, however, thanks in large part to your generosity, Vowad, Haydon IV’s databanks have filled in the few missing pieces of the puzzle.”

  Exedore gestured to the Pollinator. “With these creatures and Flower samples from Haydon IV and Karbarra, I feel certain we can succeed.”

  Fontine grunted. “Talk has reached Karbarra of plans to construct a Protoculture matrix here on Haydon IV. Is there any truth to this?”

  “None,” Vowad answered firmly. “Cabell, perhaps you should address this.”

  The Tiresian settled back into the couch, tugging at his beard. “Rumors,” he said with obvious distaste. “Idle speculation.”

  “But the Zor-clone—”

  “Rem is indeed that. But he is not Zor and should not be considered a factor in these discussions.”

  Vince looked over at the two yellow-robed Invids, wondering about Cabell’s pronouncement. Axum, the taller of the two, stepped forward to respond to Exedore’s question as to how the Regess might respond to such a proposal.

  “This is not within my capacity to answer,” the Invid began. “The Regess has taken leave of this star system and remains incommunicado, even to the living computer the Regent left here. You would do better perhaps to question Haydon IV’s Awareness.”

  Vowad was shaking his head. “We’ve already attempted that.”

  “Then we have no choice but to deal directly with the Regent. Under the proviso that General Edwards be turned over to the council to stand trial,” Exedore hastened to add.

  Max made a disgruntled sound from across the room. Aurora shared his and Miriya’s laps.

  There had been a worried moment earlier when the child had gone into a kind of petit mal seizure, brought on, Vince maintained, by her first sight of the Pollinator. Vince was still waiting for Jean to explain the meaning of tiny Aurora’s shrill warning: Beware the spores, Dana! Beware the spores!

  “The Regent doesn’t give a … couldn’t care less about the Flowers,” Max told the group. “Offer him a matrix if you want to talk peace. His army runs on Protoculture, not Flowers. Ask them,” he said, indicating Axum and his companion scientist.

  The Invid turned his black eyes on the assembly. “The Human speaks the truth.”

  “We have to try, nevertheless,” Exedore objected. “The most recent subspace reports indicate that the Ark Angel has only just entered Perytonspace. A Karbarran prototype vessel is already under way to Peryton, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “You are not,” Fontine said. “We have named it the Tracialle, in honor of the battle there.”

  “Then I propose we have the computers work out sidereal coo
rdinates for a rendezvous between the Ark Angel, the Tokugawa, and the Tracialle. The Sentinels must be dissuaded from launching an attack on Optera until the Regent has been informed of the council’s proposal.”

  “But what of the Zentraedi?” Fontine asked.

  “Commander Breetai is in pursuit of General Edwards only,” Exedore said in an assured tone.

  Vince broke a short silence by saying that the Tokugawa would consider it an honor to have Arla-Non aboard for the mission, and the Praxian accepted with a regal toss of her sun-bleached mane. “And the Skull Squadron is naturally eager to have its commander back,” Vince said to Max.

  Max turned to Miriya before he showed Vince a weak, regretful smile. “Sorry to disappoint everyone, Vince, but I won’t be going along for this one.”

  Again, Vince felt the pressure of Jean’s hand. “Take that surprised look off your face,” she suggested lightly. “Think about Bowie and Dana.”

  Vince did, regarding the Sterlings and their supernaturally gifted child for a moment. A line from an ancient book came to him out of the blue, and he said, “It’s a far, far better thing we do than we have ever done.”

  “Black Angel Leader reports enemy craft in full retreat,” a tech on the Ark Angel bridge updated.

  Veidt hovered across the bridge to the ship’s forward bays. Local space was littered with debris from the dozens of Pincercraft the Veritech squadrons had destroyed. Spherical bursts erupted in the distance where a few final dogfights were taking place. Peryton rotated below them, gray clouds and the snowcapped peaks of a reddish landmass.

  “Black Angel Leader requests command’s orders, sir.”

  Veidt turned a mouthless face to the screens, briefly studying the data scrolls. “Order them down to assist the landing party,” he sent to the tech at her station.

  “And the enemy troop carrier?”

  Veidt recalled Sarna’s death, a ritual he enacted for circumstances like these. “We’ll go after the ship ourselves,” he announced after a moment.

  Lisa ducked as a naked young Perytonian hurled himself over her head to thrust his horns into an opponent’s midsection. Jack took a spatter of blood across the face and cursed disgustedly at everyone within earshot. All around the two Sentinels, loinclothed Perytonians were butting and goring one another to death. Beneath the war cries and agonized screams, the world was a crazed woodblock symphony, punctuated by the sibilant sound of horns slashing through the air, the wet thump of horns against yielding flesh, the sound of a thousand footfalls in the streets: the crazed chorus of war.

  “This way! This way!” Lisa shouted, grabbing a handful of Jack’s jumpsuit and tugging him along. Through a forest of clashing heads and horns, she caught a brief glimpse of Gnea and Karen up ahead; Baldan was with them, fending off assailants with both hands, a Spherisian bolt weapon in one, a Garudan grappling hook in the other. The alleyway was paved with fallen bodies, awash in bright, pungent-smelling blood.

  They had been forced off the rise and down into LaTumb’s nightmarish cityscape when the Möbius battle first materialized. Reanimated Perytonians, many still bearing open wounds from the day before, had swarmed into their midst with a suddenness that left the Shock Troopers and Battloid pilots dumbfounded. More than one mecha had been toppled, more than one pilot dragged screaming from sprung canopies, perhaps to become a ghostly part of tomorrow or the day after’s struggle. Lisa had seen Rick’s own mecha spun completely around by the antlike thrust of the marauding armies; but she had lost sight of the VT when the battle waves carried her and Jack, Gnea and the others, down into the thick of things.

  It wasn’t Pamplona everywhere, though. On the roof-tops and in the ruined atriums of buildings, Perytonians were fighting it out with broadsword and mace. Inside a rock corral near a thatched dwelling she had whisked by, Lisa spied a joust in progress, Perytonians riding on the shoulders of their companions, ribboned lances impaling riders and bearers alike.

  “Down!” Jack screamed as machine gun fire stitched holes across a wooden door nearby. Lisa joined him on the ground, belly-crawling behind a wall of bodies heaped up horizontally along the edge of the street. Energy weapons had cleared a swath through the intersection in front of them, but random bursts from those same guns were keeping everyone momentarily pinned down. Gnea, Karen, and Baldan finally succeeded in working their way over to Jack and Lisa’s position. The three of them had been completely stripped of uniforms and weapons by now, and had clothed themselves in bloody scraps of Perytonian black robes.

  “Say anything and I’ll murder you!” Karen screamed at Jack before he could speak. There was a maniacal look in her green-flecked eyes, the only time Jack could ever recall seeing real fear there.

  “We’ll be safer inside!” Baldan said, pointing to the door that had taken projectile fire. “There are shelters below us!”

  Gnea asked about Rem.

  “No sign of any of them,” Lisa told her. A body dropped from the roof and nearly flattened Jack and Karen. “Maybe they made it to the hive in time!”

  Everyone twisted around at the same moment to have a look at the mountain-sized nose cone. From where Lisa crouched, she could see that the hive had been holed in at least half-a-dozen places, hordes of Perytonians scurrying in and out even as she watched.

  “Cheer up!” Jack shouted into their midst. “It’s only six hours to sunset!”

  The battle had insinuated itself deep into the hive, but it had yet to penetrate the innermost corridors and descend into the area of the cliff-enclosed shrine itself.

  From the arched entryway of the Haydon’s generator, Rem watched the Macassar’s face come to life in a globe of lightning-fed luminescence. Burak made terrorized sounds beside him, his six-fingered hands twitching as though he were the recipient of those plasma bolts.

  “I won’t go any further!” he told Janice, canting his strong legs in front of him to brace himself.

  “You won’t have to,” Rem heard Janice say in a voice so controlled it disturbed him. “Listen …”

  Something odd began to transpire within the sphere. The Macassar’s face lost its fearsome, masklike visage and grew more lifelike, more tortured.

  Burak stammered a moan.

  “That this day would never have happened,” the Macassar intoned to the shrine. “That this battle should continue until they are returned to me.”

  Burak straightened up. “Who? Who does he ask be returned to him, Wyrdling?”

  “His sons, Burak. They died in battle shortly before he entered the shrine. Haydon’s device ignored the Macassar’s plea for planetary peace and assumed his grief instead.”

  Rem saw Burak’s face contort with confusion. “But how—”

  Janice quieted him.

  The Macassar’s heavily boned brow wrinkled, irisless eyes spilling two small tears down his cheeks. “Or until such time as two willingly give up their lives that my children might live.”

  With that, an aperture opened in the transparent sphere: a circular portal large enough to accommodate a Human or a Perytonian, almost inviting in its simplicity, a door into an energized domain of pure thought.

  Burak whirled on Janice. “Savior, you said!”

  “And so you shall be,” she told him.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  Much has been made of the so-called parallels between prelapsarian Optera and Earth’s legendary Garden of Eden. But frankly I find the parallels forced and unconvincing. Some have branded Zor the serpent, the Perytonian Flowers the apple. Let us ask, then, just who it was that planted the Garden and set the rules in motion? Haydon, some say, Haydon the Great.

  A. Jow, The Historical Haydon

  Spotted with vermilion, the Fruits were the size of medicine balls, but seemed no larger than melons in Tesla’s mutated mitt. He was holding one to his lips now, about to take a bite out of it, when a blood-tipped spear zipped past his head and pierced the thing, pinning it against the tissuelike wall of the hive like some display pi
ece. Tesla voiced a strangled scream and ran for cover, stuffing Fruits into the large pockets of his floor-length garment as he disappeared around a bend in the corridor. But the battle continued to pursue him.

  Almost as though it had personalized itself, he thought, breathing hard when he came to a halt. He bent over, supporting his hands on his knees, and threw a quick glance over his shoulder toward the corridor intersection. Spears and arrows were sailing past one another, shrieks and groans echoing from all quarters. Rival hordes of war crazed Perytonians were tearing through the hive like lab rats on street drugs, leveling everything in their path to get to their enemies. Invid soldiers were firing back, but outnumbered and ill-prepared, they were being overrun. Most were scientists and techs in any case, unaccustomed to in-close fighting.

  Tesla shuddered at the thought of meeting a creature who was accustomed to such carnage.

  But at least he had managed to salvage a sufficient batch of Fruits—thanks to what was perhaps a final directive from the hive’s brain—and all he required now was a sanctuary in which to ingest them, and maybe a full-length mirror to glimpse the results. These were the ones destined to put him over the top, the Fruits that would complete his transformation and bring about a new glory to the Invid race. Doubtless the troopship that had carried him from Optera was a burning husk by now; but surely the Sentinels would recognize his greatness and genuflect before him. Then he could take up where he had left off: destroy the Human, Edwards, and depose the Regent.

  Provided he lived to see nightfall.

  The battle was rounding the corner now, hot on Tesla’s heels once more. He winced as a small dagger buried itself to the hilt in his rump; then he started running again, propelling himself through a series of inward turns and vertical descents that moved him deeper toward the center of the hive. His flight brought him finally to the innermost corridor band, which he circled in its entirety before locating the osmotic gate that accessed the center.