Metal Fire Page 8

  General Emerson asked Dana to accompany him to the war room; it was the first time they had had a chance to talk in some weeks, but Rolf was careful to steer the conversation away from the issue of the aliens. He knew full well what must be going through Dana's mind, but there was as yet no proof about the nature or identity of the invaders. Rolf hoped that the briefing would put an end to this once and for all, and wondered what Dana's mother would have done. But then, had Admiral Hunter, Max, Miriya, and the others, not gone off on their Expeditionary Mission, none of this might be happening now. Miriya had turned against her own kind once before, and Rolf was certain that she would have remained on Earth's side in the present conflict.

  Dana had to be made to realize that the Zentraedi were in no way connected with the Robotech Masters. Of course it was true that as clones of that very group there was blood between them, but the Zentraedi had gone off on their own; they had become their own people, and Dana was more than any other Zentraedi representative of this great change. There was no kinship between her and these clones the Robotech Masters had brought to Earth; there was only enmity between them; she had no brothers or sisters to that ship, any more than the people of Earth who had fought one another through the course of history felt blood between themselves.

  The chiefs-of-staff were seated around that grouping of tables Rolf still wished triangular, with Leonard in his customary place at the curved apex, and Dr. Byron from Defense Medical standing off to his right. Byron was a tall man, whose head often appeared too small for his massive torso. He had sharp, pointed features, and a dark brown mustache that was a perfect inverted match for his arched and bushy eyebrows, giving his face a somewhat comic turn, at odds with the no-nonsense forcefulness of his

  personality.

  Emerson and Sterling's entry had obviously interrupted the man. Rolf introduced Dana to Leonard and the staff, seeing the analytical glint in the supreme commander's eye now that he had a visual image of this person he had not seen in years, save for a brief handshake at the Academy ceremonies. But he was more than civil to Dana, complimenting her on the recon mission and the capture of the Bioroid.

  Leonard bade Dr. Byron continue with his findings.

  "First of all, we found something remarkable inside the pilot's body," Byron said, reading from his notes. "There was some sort of bio-electrical device implanted in its solar plexus. Subsequent analysis of this showed it to be similar to the animating chips used early on by Dr. Emil Lang's teams of Robotechnicians in the manufacture of Earth mecha."

  Emerson's hand shot up. He gestured impatiently until Byron acknowledged him.

  "I'm sorry to interrupt, Doctor. But was the pilot human or not?" "Oh, definitely not human," Byron said, shaking his head.

  Rolf heard Dana's heavy sigh of disappointment as the doctor continued.

  "But I will say that it surpasses anything we ever attempted in the way of bio-mechanical creations. In fact, this animating device we found in the android's solar plexus is nothing if not akin to an artificial soul."

  The supreme commander cleared his throat loudly. "Let's keep theology out of this," he directed at Byron. "Just stick to the facts, Doctor."

  Byron winced at the rebuke and nervously adjusted the collar of his jacket.

  "Our belief is that this race was forced to adapt to hostile environments as it began its expansion across the galaxy, and that an android bio-system was the natural outgrowth of this."

  Leonard broke in again. "These aliens are not even the micronized Zentraedi we first thought, but an army of programmed androids in control of devastating bio-mechanical weapons. It's obvious to me that the

  Robotech Masters found it much easier to use androids than clones." He looked around the tables, then stood up, hands pressed to the table. "So much the easier for us, then. We are waging a war against an artificial lifeform, gentlemen, and we should have no qualms about destroying it-utterly."

  Suddenly Dana was on her feet. "Commander, you're mistaken," she said. She raised her voice a notch to cut through the comments. "That Bioroid pilot may have been an android, but I believe that we're dealing with a race of living beings-not a soulless army of machines."

  Byron narrowed his eyes and rocked forward on the balls of his feet. "My observations are completely documented," he countered. "What proof do you have to back up this absurd position?"

  "I've had some first-hand experience in dealing with them," Dana shot back. But she now felt Rolf's hand tighten on her arm.

  "Sterling, sit down!" he told her.

  Leonard looked furious. "Look here, I'm familiar with your report, but it's possible you've misread your experiences, Lieutenant. The aliens could have implanted certain things in your mind. If they're capable of creating androids of this advanced form, who knows what else they're able to do?"

  "No," Dana said back to him. "Why do you refuse to accept the possibility I might be right?!"

  Leonard slammed his fist on the table. "Don't provoke us, Lieutenant. Quiet down at once or I'll be forced to have you removed from this session."

  But Dana was on a roll, the persistent nature of her alien side well in control of her now. "You're fools if you refuse to hear me out!" she told the staff.

  "Remove this insubordinate!" Leonard commanded. "I've heard enough!"

  Two sentries had stepped in and taken hold of her arms.

  But Emerson, too, was on his feet now. "Perhaps we should listen to her."

  "I haven't got time for her disruptions," Leonard said stiffly.

  Dana was pulled from the room, twisting and kicking, even breaking free of their hold once to call everyone an idiot. Rolf only hoped that Leonard was willing to overlook some of it. He sat down as a conciliatory gesture, exchanging looks with the supreme commander.

  "Go on with your report, Dr. Byron," Leonard said after a moment.

  Byron wrapped things up, losing most of the staff when he turned to technicalities.

  Leonard cleared his throat.

  "Gentlemen, it seems to me our course is clear: we must commit ourselves to the total destruction of these androids."

  All but Emerson voiced their concurrence.

  Leonard threw the chief of staff a dirty look as he stood up. "Do you have something to add, General?"

  Emerson kept his voice controlled. "Only this: if these aliens possess any human qualities, we should try to negotiate. Fighting can't be the only alternative. Look what happened during the Robotech War-"

  "Surely you don't believe that we could ever come to terms with a group of barbarians, do you Emerson?"

  "That's probably just what Russo and Hayes and the rest of the UEDC said before Dolza's armada incinerated this planet," Rolf said with a sneer. "I believe anything is better than a continued loss of lives."

  "Perhaps, perhaps," the supreme commander allowed. "But their advanced technology leaves us no other choice. Even if we could negotiate, we'd be doing so from a position of weakness, not strength, and that could prove fatal. It's out of the question! Now, will there be anything else from you, General?"

  Leonard hadn't even heard him, Rolf said to himself as he took his seat. Worse, the commander was actually repeating the justification Russo and his doomed council had used before firing the Grand Cannon at an alien armada of over four million warships.

  "No, Commander," Emerson said weakly. "Not now." Someone will whisper the proper words over our graves.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Confronted with the issue of [Supreme Commander Leonard's] militaristic megalomania, we are tempted to point to the past and remind one another that history repeats itself. I know of no other statement that so demeans us as a planetary race. Since Humankind looked the Monolith in the face this authorless theory has been used to both excuse and justify our shortsightedness and shortcomings; to explain away our foolish actions and violent choices. But isn't it time that we asked ourselves why history has to repeat itself? Short of positing a new theory of reincarnation-with the same gre
edy men caught up in an eternal return to wage the same war over and over again-we are left in the dark. Certainly Leonard was being pressured by Chairman Moran, and certainly he had inherited the bloodstained mantle left behind by T. R. Edwards; but where are the actual chains, biogenetic or otherwise, that enslave him to history's dark flow? Perhaps we should look to the Robotech Masters for answers. Or the Protoculture itself.

  Major Alice Harper Argus (ret.),

  Fulcrum: Commentaries on the Second Robotech War

  "The officers on the general staff are nothing but a bunch of idiots," Dana reported to her teammates when she rejoined them in Monument Sector Five, a usually crowded downtown district of shopping and office malls that was all but deserted today.

  With Angelo Dante in temporary command, the squad had just relieved the 14th squad Tactical Armored and already positioned their Hovertanks. Dana had roared up out of nowhere, executing a neat front leap from the nose of the Valkyrie, and immediately begun to regale them with an account of the briefing session with Commander Leonard. Both Sean and Angelo wondered to themselves what might be the outcome of Dana's being forcibly ejected from the war room; either one of them stood the chance of receiving a promotion if the lieutenant was busted because of her actions.

  Louie waited for Dana to finish before telling her what he had learned at the forensic lab after she had left.

  "We discovered that the relay we thought was a control device is actually some kind of sonic frequency receiver."

  "So?" Dana asked him.

  Louie adjusted his goggles. "So the Bioroid is probably controlled by a mixture of telepathic suggestion and signals from artificial sensors."

  Dana's face fell. "You mean the Bioroids aren't controlled by the pilots?

  After I just shot off my mouth back there-"

  "I'm sure they can be," Louie said encouragingly, "but not like we originally thought. It looks like some kind of higher intelligence may be controlling them by remote control."

  "I don't get it," said Angelo, trying to scratch his head through his helmet.

  "Someone or something is actually feeding instructions to the android pilots," Louie explained.

  "They're not clones then?" Louie shook his head.

  Dana still refused to believe any of this. "Well, anyway," she started to say, "I told them..."

  All at once alert sirens were blaring throughout the city. Dana ordered everyone back to their Hovertanks (executing yet a second gymnastic leap as she mounted her own), and switched on her radio. The net was alive with a thousand voices, but she didn't need to try and make sense of the reports. One look up explained everything: the skies above Monument City were filled with the aliens' scarablike troop carriers.

  "It's a full-scale enemy attack!" Sean said.

  "If you have any alternative, don't shoot directly at their cockpits," Louie yelled before he threw himself into the Hovertank's seat. "We might be able to capture one!"

  Hundreds of alien ships were closing on the city, but now, even higher overhead, appeared the telltale atmospheric streaks of Alpha fighters,

  breaking formation and falling in to engage their Robotech enemies. A hail of brilliant yellow fire, calculated to angle away from the city itself, was launched against the invaders, Skylord and Swordfish missiles and Teflon rounds impacting on the rust-colored crafts' armored hulls to little or no effect. The sky was lit up with tracers, dazzling crescents of light, and fiery explosions. But the troop carriers continued their attack, not only weathering the storm, but returning their own brand of hell fire as the Alphas completed their descent and dropped below them. The four-muzzled guns of revolving undercarriage turrets spewed light and death across the sky, taking down fighters faster than the eye could keep track. Trailing tails of dense black smoke, Alphas plunged uncontrolled toward the city, while others were simply disintegrated in midflight. Pilots drifting homeward on synsilk chutes were cut down as well.

  "It looks like there's more than we can handle, Lieutenant," Angelo shouted over the net.

  Dana said nothing. There had to be a way to disable those Bioroids without harming the pilots, she thought. There had to be a way-but how?

  Now hatches on the side of the troop carriers sprang open. Bioroids mounted on their Hoverplatforms were disgorged from the ships in a seemingly unending line. They fell upon the city, untouched by the Alpha fighters, outmaneuvering them in almost every instance and bringing their own disc guns to bear against them. The Bioroids fanned out over the city, as though searching for something that had as yet eluded them. From every sector came reports of their descent, but there was no clearcut sense of their motive. They landed finally in unvarying groups of three and spread through the city streets on foot.

  Most of Monument City was packed away in the enormous underground shelters that had become as much a part of city life since the Global Civil War as a Sunday stroll in the park. But, as always, there were those who had opted to return home first to salvage some precious knickknack, or make certain that family or friends had already departed; and then there were the diehards who simply refused, and the thrill-seekers

  who lived for this sort of thing. And it was these last groups that the Bioroids moved against, fulfilling the directives of the Masters to capture as many Micronians as possible. Unseen by Dana and the rest of the 15th, and as yet unreported by the Civil Defense networks, the Bioroids were engaged in a novel form of looting: using their massive metalshod fists to smash through the walls of dwellings and shops, and grab in those same hands whatever Human stragglers they could find, often unknowingly crushing them to death before returning them to the troop carriers.

  Ultimately the Bioroids entered the canyons of downtown and found the 15th waiting for them.

  Sean said, "Heads up, folks, here they come!" "Have any bright ideas, Louie?" the sarge asked.

  "Yeah, I do," the corporal answered, ignoring Dante's sarcasm. "If you aim to either side of the cockpit, you can temporarily paralyze the pilot."

  "Now why the hell would I want to do that, Nichols?!" Dante bellowed. Dana cut into the tac net. "Angelo, just do as he says-it's important,"

  she announced cryptically. "We've got to try to avoid hitting the pilots directly."

  "Whose side are you on?" Dante got out just in time.

  The Bioroids loosed plasma bolts from their Hoverplatforms top-mounted guns as they approached, one of the first shots finding Dante's mecha; the explosion threw the Hovertank fifty feet from its position in the center of the street, but the sergeant rode it out, reconfiguring to Gladiator mode during the resultant back flip and swinging the cannon around for a counterstrike. Dana had also reconfigured her mecha. She hopped the self-propelled gun over to Dante's new resting place, just as the sergeant blew one of the Bioroids from the air.

  "Angelo, listen to me-I want you to try to shoot down their Hovercraft first."

  "What are you up to, Lieutenant?" he fired back at her.

  "Once you've got 'em off their Hovercraft,". Dana went on, "shoot at their legs and put 'em out of commission." She was trying her best to make

  this sound appealing to Dante, but she could just imagine his face, screwed up in anger under the helmet.

  The Bioroids were coming in low now, not more than ten yards off the ground, Bowie, Sean, and Louie a barricade they'd never get past. The 15th trio blew the Hoverplatforms out from under the attackers, even as explosions rocked the street all around them. Bioroids fell with ground-shaking crashes, while others decided to leap from their crafts and take up positions in recessed doorways and storefronts. Downtown became a war zone as both sides pumped pulsed fire through the streets. The sides of highrise buildings collapsed and cornices and friezes crumbled to the cratered street. Glass rained down in deadly slivers from windows blown out high above the fighting.

  Dana ordered her team to reconfigure from Gladiator to Battloid for possible hand-to-hand encounters.

  The street and surrounding area was pure devastation now, bu
t the enemy had been held at the 15th's line. No one bothered to ask what the aliens were looking for, or where they hoped to get. Still in Battloid mode, the squad headed for the cover and continued to trade salvos with the entrenched group who had taken the far end of the avenue. Once again, Dana reminded them to go for the legs and not the cockpits. But this time Sean took issue with her.

  "They can still blast us if we do that," he pointed out. "We've gotta take a chance and aim at an area near those cockpits, Lieutenant."

  "They're androids, damn it, androids!" Angelo yelled over the net. "I'm convinced they're not, Sergeant!"

  "Well what's the difference whether they're androids or clones?!" Dante said as debris from a shattered store sign fell on him. He thought his Battloid through a front leap that took him clear across the street. "They're still shooting at us!"

  "We've got to capture one!"

  Without warning, a Bioroid appeared behind Dana's mecha and loosed a blast at her. She spun but not in time. Fortunately Angelo saw the move

  and managed to take the thing out, slugs from his chaingun tearing open the enemy's cockpit.

  "So much for leg shots," Dante said.

  "That's one I owe you," Dana responded tight-lipped.

  Bioroids had taken to the rooftops and were pouring everything they had into the street. Troop carriers were dropping in to assist, and things quickly took a turn for the worse.

  "We'll never be able to hold them!" Sean said, voicing what all of them were thinking.

  But just as suddenly, the battle began to reverse itself, through no effort of the 15th. The Bioroids were returning to their Hoverplatforms and making for the scarab ships, seemingly in retreat.

  Dante said as much over the net and ranged in the Trojan Horse's forward viewfinder. One of the Bioroids had a civilian clutched in its hand. Dante turned and found another-the civilian limp, probably dead. Everywhere he looked now, he saw the same scene.

  "They're taking hostages!" he told Dana. Traversing his cannon, he took aim on one of the Bioroids, muttering to himself, "You're a goner now, buddy..."