Robotech: Genesis

Book One of the Robotech series

Copyright 1987 by Jack McKinney


PROLOGUE

I've brought death and suffering in such magnitude, Zor thought. It's only right that I spent the balance of my life bringing life.
	He looked out from the observation bay of his temporary groundside headquarters upon a planetary surface that had been lifeless a mere four days before. He saw before him a plain teeming with thriving vegetation. Already the Flowers of Life were sprouting, reaching their eager, knob-tipped shoots into the sunshine.
	Zor, supreme intellect of his race and Lord of the Protoculture, nodded approvingly. At times the memories of his own past deeds, much less those of his species, seemed enough to drive him mad. But when he looked down on a scene like this, he could forget the past and be proud of his handiwork.
	And above him, blocking out the light of the nearby primary, his gargantuan starship and super dimensional fortress was escaping, as he had directed. The satisfaction he felt from that and from seeing the germinated Flowers made it much easier to accept the fact that he was about to die...
	He was tall and slender, with a lean, ageless face and a thick shock of bright starlight hair. The clothes he wore were graceful, regal, cut tight to his form, covered by a short cloak that he now threw back over one shoulder.
	Zor could hear the alarm signals ring behind him, and the booming voice of a Zentraedi announced, "Warning! Warning! Invid troop carriers are preparing to land! All warriors to their Battlepods!"
	Zor gazed away from the beauty of the exterior scene, back to the harsh reality of the base, as towering Zentraedi dashed about, preparing for battle. Even though the appearance of the Invid had taken them by surprise, even though they were badly outnumbered and at a disadvantage since the enemy held the high ground, there was a certain eagerness to the Zentraedi; war was their life and their reason for being.
	In that, they had met their match and more in the Invid. Zor found bitter irony in how his own poor judgment and the cruelty of the Robotech Masters-his masters-had turned a race of peaceful creatures, once content with their single planet and their introspective existence, into the most ferocious species in the known universe.
	While subordinates strapped armor and weapons on his great body, Dolza, supreme commander of the Zentraedi, glared down at Zor. His colossal head, with its shaven, heavy-browed skull, gave him the aspect of a stone icon. "We should have departed before the Flowers germinated! I warned you!"
	Dolza raised a metal-plated fist big enough to squash Zor. Unafraid, Zor looked up at him, though his faithful aide, Vard, was holding a hand weapon uneasily. Around them the base shook as armored Zentraedi and their massive fighting pods raced to battle stations.
	"What of the super dimensional fortress?" Dolza demanded. "What have you done with it?"
	"I have sent it away," Zor answered calmly. "To a place far removed from this evil, senseless war. It is already nearing the edge of space, too fast and far too powerful for the Invid to stop."
	That much, Dolza knew, was true. The dimensional fortress, Zor's crowning technological achievement, was the mightiest machine in existence. Nearly a mile long, it incorporated virtually everything Zor had discovered about the fantastic forces and powers springing from the Flowers of Life.
	"Sent it where?" Dolza demanded. Zor was silent. "If I weren't sworn by my warrior oath to protect you"-Dolza's immense fist hovered close-"I would kill you!"
	A few pods from the ready-reaction force were already on the scene: looming metal battle vehicles big enough to hold one or two Zentraedi, their form suggested that of a headless ostrich, with long, broad breastplates mounting batteries of primary and secondary cannon.
	"I don't expect you to understand," Zor said in carefully measured tones, as explosions and shock waves shook the base. They could hear the Zentraedi communication net crackling with reports of the Invid landing.
	"You were created to fight the Invid; that is what you must do," Zor told the giant as the headquarters' outer wall heaved and began to crumble. "Go! Fulfill your Zentraedi imperative!"
	As Zor spun and ducked for cover, Vard shielded him with his own body. Dolza turned to give battle as the wall shuddered and cracked wide. Through the showering rubble leapt Invid shock troopers, the enemy's heaviest class of mecha, advanced war machines. Forged from a superstrong alloy, bulky as walking battleships, the mecha resembled a maniac's vision of biped insect soldiers.
	They were every bit as massive as the Zentraedi pods, and even more heavily armored. Concentrated fire from the few pods already on the scene-blue lances of blindingly bright energy penetrated the armor of the first shock trooper to appear. Even as the Invid returned fire with streams of annihilation discs, the seams and joints of its armor expanded under the overwhelming pressure from the eruptions within. It exploded into bits of wreckage and white-hot shrapnel that bounced noisily off the pods' armor.
	But a trio of shock troopers had crowded in behind the first, and a dozen more massed behind them. Annihilation discs and red plasma volleys quartered the air, destroying the headquarters command center and equipment, setting fires, and blasting pods to glowing scraps or driving them back.
	Armored Zentraedi warriors, lacking the time to reach their pods, rushed in to fight a desperate holding action, spraying the Invids with hand-held weapons, dodging and ducking, advancing fearlessly and suffering heavy casualties.
	A swift warrior ran in under an Invid shock trooper, holding his weapon against a vulnerable joint in its armor and then triggering the entire charge all at once, pointblank. The explosion blew the Invid's leg off, toppling it, but the Zentraedi was obliterated by the detonation.
	Elsewhere, an Invid mecha seized a damaged pod that could no longer fire, ripped the pod apart with its superhard metal claws, then dismembered the wounded Zentraedi within.
	Scouts, smaller Invid machines, rushed in behind the shock troopers to scour the base.
	It took only moments for one to find Zor; the Invid had been searching for him for a long time and were eager for revenge.
	As the scout lumbered toward them, Vard tried to save his lord by absorbing the first blast himself, firing his little hand weapon uselessly at the Invid monster. He partially succeeded, but only at the cost of his own life-immolated in an instant by a disc. The force of the blast drove Zor back and scorched him.
	The rest of the discs in the salvo were ignited by the explosion, but, having been flung aside, Zor was spared most of their fury. Still, he'd suffered terrible injuries-skin burned from his body until bone was exposed, lungs seared by fire, bones broken from the concussion and the fall, tremendous internal hemorrhaging. He knew he would die.
	Before the Invid scout could finish the job, Dolza was there, firing at it with his disruptor rifle, ordering the remaining pods to concentrate their fire on it. "Zor is down! Save Zor!" he thundered. Switching to his helmet communicator, he tried to raise his most trusted subordinate.
	"Breetai! Breetai! Where are you?"
	The scout was blown to fiery bits in the withering fusillade, but its call had gone out; the other scouts and the shock troopers were homing in on their archenemy.
	Dolza, with the remaining warriors and pods, formed a desperate defensive ring, unflinchingly ready to die according to their code.
	Suddenly there was a massive volley from the right. Then an even more intense one from the left. To Dolza's astonishment, they were directed at the Invid.
	Breetai had arrived at the head of reinforcements. Some of them were wearing only body armor like himself, but most were in tactical or heavily armed officers' Battlepods. The Invid line began to collapse before a storm of massed fire. More pods were arriving all the time. Dolza couldn't understand how-an invasion force was descending by the thousands from a moon-size Invid hive ship, its troopers as uncountable as insects. Surely the base must be covered by a living, swarming layer of the enemy.
	But the enemy was being driven back, and Breetai was leading a countercharge on foot, just as a small wedge of shock troopers threatened to make good on a suicide rush at Dolza and Zor. A disc struck a pod near Breetai even as he was firing left and right with his rifle; blast and shrapnel hit his head and the right side of his face.
	Breetai dropped, skull aflame, but the Zentraedi countercharge went on-somehow-to drive the Invid back to the breach in the wall.
	Finally Dolza wearily lowered his glowing rifle muzzle. Pursuit of the retreating Invid could be left to the field commanders. He began to take reports from the newcomers, thus learning the details of the unexpected Zentraedi victory.
	Most of the Invid had been diverted in an attempt to stop or board the dimensional fortress and had been wiped out. Even now, word of the attack was going back to the Robotech Masters; a punitive raid would have to be mounted. Breetai was being attended to by the healers and would live, though he would be scarred for life.
	But all of that was of little moment to Dolza. He looked down on the smoking, broken body of Zor. Healers crowded around the fallen genius with their apparatus and medicines, but Dolza had seen enough combat casualties to know that Zor was beyond help.

	Zor knew it as well as Dolza. Drifting in a near delirium, feeling surprisingly little pain, he heard exchanges about the dimensional fortress. He smiled to himself, though it hurt his scorched face, thankful that the starship had escaped.
	Once more, he had the Vision that had made him decide to dispatch the ship; as the master of the limitless power of Protoculture, with his matchless intellect, he had access to hidden worlds of perception and invisible paths of knowledge.
	He saw again an infinitely beautiful, blue-white world floating in space, one blessed with the treasure that was life. He sensed that it was or would be the crux of transcendent events, the crossroads and deciding place of a conflict that raged across galaxies.
	A column of pure mind-energy rose from the planet, a pillar of dazzling force a hundred miles in diameter, crackling and swaying, swirling like a whirlwind, throwing out shimmering sheets of brilliance, climbing higher and higher into space all in a matter of moments.
	As he had before, Zor felt humbled before the mind-cyclone's force. Then its pinnacle unexpectedly gave shape to a great bird, a phoenix of mental essence. The firebird of transfiguration spread wings wider than the planet, soaring away to another plane of existence, with a cry so magnificent and sad that Zor forgot his impending death. He wept for the dreadful splendor of what was to come, two tears flowing down his burnt cheeks.
	But he was buoyed by a renewed conviction that the dimensional fortress must go to that blue-white planet.
	The sounds of the last skirmishes came from the distance as Zentraedi rooted out and executed the last of the Invid troops. Dolza stood looking down at Zor's blackened body as its life slipped away despite all that the healers could do. Dolza suspected that Zor did not wish-would not permit himself-to be saved.
	Whatever Zor's plan, there was no changing it now. The ship itself, along with a handful of Zentraedi loyal to Zor alone, had jumped beyond the Robotech Masters' reach-at least for the time being.
	It was of little comfort to Dolza that final transmissions from the dimensional fortress, in the moments before transition through a spacefold, indicated that the traitors aboard had been badly wounded during the battle to get past the Invid surprise attack.
	"Zor, if you die, the mission is over and I must return in defeat and humiliation," Dolza said.
	"I have thwarted the Robotech Masters' plan to control the universe." Zor had to pause to cough and regain his breath, with a rattle in it that spoke of dying. "But a greater, finer mission is only beginning, Dolza..."
	Zor coughed again and was still, eyes closed forever.

	Dolza stood before a screen that was large even for the Zentraedi. Before him was the image of a Robotech Master. Dolza spoke obsequiously.
	"... and so we have no idea where the dimensional fortress is, at least for the moment."
	The Master's ax-keen face, with its hawkish nose, flaring brows, and swirling, storm-whipped hair, showed utter fury. Dolza wasn't surprised; Zor, who'd given the Masters the key to their power, and the mighty dimensional fortress gone, at a stroke! Dolza wondered if the Invid realized just how much damage they'd inflicted in a raid that would otherwise have been an insignificant skirmish.
	The Robotech Master's voice was eerily lifeless, like a single-sideband transmission. "The dimensional fortress must be recovered at all costs! Organize a search immediately; we shall commit the closest Zentraedi fleet to the mission at once, and all others will join in the effort if necessary."
	Dolza bowed to the image. "And Zor, my lord? Shall I have his remains interred in his beloved garden?"
	"No! Freeze them and bring them back to us personally. Guard them well! We may yet extract information from his cellular materials."
	With that, the Master's image disappeared from the screen.

	"Hail, Dolza! Breetai reporting as ordered."
	Dolza looked him over. A day or two of Zentraedi healing had the senior commander looking fit for duty; though he was again the fierce gladiator he'd always been, he was far different.
	The damage done by the annihilation discs of the Invid could not be completely reversed. The right half of Breetai's black-haired scalp and nearly half his face were covered by a gleaming alloy prosthesis, a kind of half cowl, his right eye replaced by a glittering crystal lens.
	Breetai had always been given to dark moods, but his mutilation at the hands of the enemy had made him distant, cold and wrathful. Dolza approved.
	Dolza had summoned Breetai to a spot on the perimeter of the reinforced base where Flowers of Life were sprouting underfoot. The supreme commander quickly outlined the situation. The details of the long struggle between Zor and the Masters, and Zor's secret plan for the future of Protoculture, shocked Breetai, as did certain other information that was Dolza's alone to tell.
	"You're my best field commander," Dolza finished. "You will lead the expedition to retake the dimensional fortress."
	The sunlight glinted off Breetai's metal skullpiece. "But-it jumped!"
	Sympathy was not part of the Zentraedi emotional spectrum. Dolza therefore showed none. "You must succeed. You must recover the fortress and its Protoculture factory before the Invid do, or we'll have lost everything we've worked for."
	Breetai's features resolved in faux lines of determination. "The dimensional fortress will be ours, on my oath!"


CHAPTER ONE
I had misgivings like everybody else, but I thought (the appearance of SDF-1) just might be a good thing for the human race after all when I saw how it scared hell outta the politicians.
Remark attributed to Lt. (jg) Roy Fokker in Prelude to Doomsday: A History of the Global Civil War, by Malachi Cain

When the dimensional fortress landed in 1999 A.D., the word "miracle" had been so long overused that it took some time for the human race to realize that a real one had indeed come to pass.
	In the late twentieth century, "miracle" had become the commonplace description for home appliances and food additives. Then came the Global Civil War, a rapid spiraling of diverse conflicts that, by 1994, was well on its way to becoming a full-scale worldwide struggle; in the very early days of the war, "miracle" was used by either side to represent any highly encouraging battle news.
	The World Unification Alliance came into existence because it seemed the best hope for human survival. But its well-meaning reformers found that a hundred predators rose up to savage them: from supranational conglomerates, religious extremists, and followers of a hundred different ideologies to racists and bigots of every stripe.
	The war bogged down, balkanized dragged on, igniting every corner of the planet. People forgot the word "miracle." The war escalated and escalated-gradually, it's true, but everyone knew what the final escalation would be-until hope began to die.
	And in a way nobody seemed to be able to stop, the human race moved along the path to its own utter obliteration, using weapons of its own fashioning. The life of the planet was infinitely precious, but no one could formulate a plan to save it from the sacrificial thermonuclear fire.
	Then, almost ten years into the Global Civil War, the thinking of Homo sapiens changed forever.

	The dimensional fortress's arrival was a coincidence beyond coincidence and, in the beginning, a sobering catastrophe.
	Its entry was that of a powered object, and it had appeared from nowhere, from some unfathomable rift in the timespace continuum. Its long descent spread destruction and death as its shock waves and the after-blast of its monumental drive leveled cities, deafened and blinded multitudes, made a furnace of the atmosphere, and somehow awakened tectonic forces. Cities burned and fell, and many, many died.
	Its approach rattled the world. The mosques were crowded to capacity and beyond, as were the temples and the churches. Many people committed suicide, and, curiously enough, the three most notable high-casualty-rate categories were, in this order: fundamentalist clergy, certain elected politicians, and major figures in the entertainment world. Speculation about their motives-that the thing they had in common was that they felt diminished by the arrival of the alien spacecraft-remained just that: speculation.
	At last the object slowed, obviously damaged but still capable of maneuvering. Its astonishing speed lessened to a mere glide-except that it had little in the way of lifting surfaces and was unthinkably heavy. It came to rest on a gently sloping plain on a small island in the South Pacific, once the site of French atomic tests, called Macross.
	The plain was long and broad, especially for such a tiny island, but it was not a great deal longer than the ship itself. A few hundred yards behind its thrusters, waves crashed against the beach. A short distance ahead of its ruined bow were sheer cliffs.
	Its outer sheath and first layers of armor, and a great portion of the superstructure, had been damaged in the course of its escape, or in the controlled crash of its landing. It groaned and creaked, cooling, as the combers foamed and bashed the sand on an otherwise idyllic day on Macross Island.
	The human race began assessing the damage in a dazed, uncoordinated way. But it didn't take long for opposing forces to convince themselves that the crash was no enemy trick.
	For the first few hours, it was called "the Visitor." Leaders of the various factions of the civil war, their presumed importance reduced by the alien vessel's appearance, took hasty steps toward a truce of convenience. The various commanders had to move quickly and had to sacrifice much of their prestige to accommodate one another; all eyes were turned to the sky and to Macross Island. The Global Civil War looked like a minor, ludicrous squabble compared to the awesome power that had just made itself felt on Earth.
	Within hours, preparations were being made for an expedition to explore the wreckage. Necessary alliances were struck, but safety factors were built into the expeditionary force. Enemies at the top had accomplished an uneasy peace.
	Now, those who'd fought the war would have to do the same.

	The flight deck of the Gibraltar-class aircraft carrier Kenosha retreated beneath the ascending helicopter, a comforting artificial island of nonskid landing surface. Lieutenant (jg) Roy Fokker watched it unhappily, resigning himself to the mission at hand.
	He turned to the man piloting the helo, Colonel T.R. Edwards, who was flying the chopper with consummate skill. Roy Fokker was more used to those occasions when he and Edwards were doing turns-and-burns, trying to shoot each other out of the skies.
	Roy Fokker was an Internationalist, right down to his soles. His uniform bore the colors of his carrier aviation unit, a fighter squadron: the Jolly Roger skull-and-crossbones insignia. The colors were from the old United States Navy, the renowned and justly feared VF-84 squadron off the USS Nimitz that had hunted the skies in F-14 Tomcats, then Z-6 Executioners, right up to Roy's own production-line-new Z-9A Peregrine.
	Roy wished he was back there in his own jet, in his own cockpit.
	For so important a takeoff, it would have been normal to see the Kenosha's skipper on the observation deck under phased-array radar antenna and other tower shrubbery-the deck the aviators called Vulture's Row. Admiral Hayes and the other heavy-hitters were all there, but Captain Henry Gloval wasn't. Today, Captain Henry Gloval was belted in the rear of the helo with a platoon of marines and some techs and more scientific equipment and weapons than Roy had seen packed into a bird before. That the Old Man should actually leave his command and go ashore showed how topsy-turvy this spaceship or whatever it was had turned matters on Earth.
	It was as oddball a mission as Roy had ever seen; it made him uncharacteristically nervous, especially since the opposition junta had picked Edwards as its representative on the team.
	The last time Edwards and Roy had crossed contrails, Edwards had been in the hire of something called the Northeast Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. There was no telling who he was really working for now, except that he was always, without exception, out to benefit Colonel T.R. Edwards.
	Roy told himself to stop thinking about it and do his job. He fidgeted in his seat a little, uncomfortable in web gear weighted with about a hundred rounds of weapons, ammo, and survival and exploration equipment.
	He pushed his unruly mop of blond hair back out of his eyes. He wasn't sure why or when long hairstyles had become the norm among pilots, but now it was practically de rigueur. Some Samurai tradition?
	He glanced over at Edwards. The mercenary was perhaps thirty, ten years older than Roy, with the same lean height. Edwards had tan good-looks and sun-bleached hair and a killer smile. He seemed to be enjoying himself.
	Roy's youth didn't make him Edwards's inferior in combat experience or expertise. The practical philosophy of the old-time Swiss and Israelis and others like them was now the rule: Anyone who could fly well did, and they flew as leaders if they merited it, regardless of age or rank.
	All the tea-party proprieties about a flyer needing a college education and years of training had been thrown out as the attrition of the war made them untenable. Roy had heard that kids as young as fourteen were in the new classes at Aerial Combat School.
	Edwards had caught the glance. "Want to take over, Fokker? Be my guest."
	"No thanks, Colonel. I'm just here to make sure you don't mess up and spike us into the drink."
	Edwards laughed. "Fokker, know what your problem is? You take this war stuff too personally."
	"Tell me something: D'you like flying for a bunch of fascists?"
	Edwards snorted derisively. "You think there's that much difference between sides, after ten years of war? Besides, the Neasians pay me more in a week than you make in a year."
	Roy wanted to answer that, but his orders were to avoid friction with Edwards. As if to remind him of that, a sudden aroma wafted under his nose. It was pipe tobacco, but to Roy it always smelled like a soap factory on fire.
	Gloval was at it again. But how do you tell your commanding officer that he's breaking regs, smoking aboard an aircraft? If you are a wise young lieutenant (jg), you do not.
	Roy turned back to study Macross and forgot Gloval, Edwards, and everything else. There lay the blackened remains of a ship like nothing Earth had ever seen before.
	"Great God!" Roy said slowly, and even Edwards had nothing to add.

	The wreck was cool, and radiation readings were about normal. Previous fly-bys hadn't drawn fire or seen any activity. The helo set down a few dozen yards from the scorched, broken ruin. In another few moments the team was offloading itself and its equipment.
	Gloval, a tall, rangy man with a soot-black, Stalinesque mustache, captain's hat tilted forward on his brow, was establishing security and getting ready for preliminary external examination of the wreckage. He was square-shouldered and vigorous, looking younger than his fifty-odd years until one saw the lines around his eyes.
	But while the preparations were going on, Lance Corporal Murphy, always itching to be on the move, couldn't resist doing a little snooping. "Hey, lookit! I think I found a hatch!"
	Gloval's voice still retained its heavy Russian accent. "You jackass! Get away from there!"
	Murphy was standing near a tall circular feature in the battered hull, waving them over. With his back to it, he didn't see the middle of the hatch open, the halves sliding apart. He couldn't hear his teammates' shouted warnings, as several long, segmented metal tentacles snaked out.
	In another moment, the unlucky marine was caught and lifted off his feet. The service automatic in his hand went off, then fell from his grasp, as he was yanked within. None of the others dared to shoot for fear of hitting him.
	The hatch snapped shut. Gloval spread his arms to hold back Roy and some of the others; they would have charged for the hatch. "Stand where you are and hold your fire! Nobody goes any closer until we know what we're dealing with!"

	An hour later things had changed, although the explorers didn't know much more than they had at the beginning.
	At Admiral Hayes's insistence, Doctor Emil Lang had been choppered ashore to supervise. Lang was Earth's premier mind, by decree of Hayes and Senator Russo and the others in the alliance leadership, the final authority on interplanetary etiquette.
	Lang ordered everyone into anticontamination suits, then directed a human-size drone robot to make preliminary exploration of the ship. When the robot, essentially a bulbous detector/telemetry package on two legs, stopped dead in front of the hatch as the hatch reopened, Lang looked thoughtful.
	The robot refused to respond to further commands, the hatch stayed open, and there was no sign of activity within. Lang's eyes narrowed behind his suit's visor as he concentrated.
	Lang was a man just under medium height, slight of build, but when it came to puzzling out the unknown, he had the courage of a lion. Disregarding his orders, he directed Gloval to select a party to explore the wreck. Gloval picked himself, Roy, Edwards, and eight of the grunts.
	"Get those spotlights on," Lang instructed. "And you may chamber a round in your weapons, but leave the safeties on. If anyone fires without my direct order, I'll see that he's court-martialed and hung."
	Unnoticed, T.R. Edwards made a wry face inside his suit helmet and flicked his submachine gun selector over to full auto.
	The lights they'd brought-spotlights mounted on the shoulders of their web gear-were powerful but not powerful enough to reach the farthest limits of the compartment in which they found themselves. Lang and Gloval only studied what was before them, but from the others were soft exclamations, curses, obscenities.
	It resembled a complex cityscape. The alien equipment and machinery was made of glassy alloys and translucent materials, with conduitlike structures crisscrossing in midair and oddly shaped contrivances in every direction. The spacecraft was built to a monumental scale.
	Readings still indicated no danger from radiation, atmospheric, or biological contamination; they removed the suits.
	"We will divide into two groups," Gloval decided, still in charge of the tactical decisions. "Roy, you'll take four marines. Dr. Lang, Edwards-you'll be in my group."
	They were to work their way forward, following opposite sides of the wreck's inner hull, in an attempt to link up in the bow. Failing that, they would observe as much as possible and fall back to their original point of entry in one hour.
	They started off. No one heard the inert probe robot suddenly reactivate and step through the open hatch in their wake, moving more nimbly than it had a few minutes before.

	Fifteen minutes later, in a passageway as high and wide as a stadium, Roy paused to shine his shoulder-mounted lights around him. "This place must be playing tricks on my eyes. Does it look to you like the walls're moving?" he asked the gunnery sergeant behind him.
	The gunny said slowly, "Yeah, kinda. Like there's a fog or somethin' flowin' through all the nooks and crannies."
	Roy was about to get them moving again when he heard someone calling softly, "Caruthers. Hey, man, where y' at?"
	Caruthers was the man walking drag at the rear of the file; they all turned back to see what was going on. Caruthers had fallen far behind for some reason; but he was rejoining them, his spots getting nearer. But something about the man's movement wasn't normal. Moreover, his head hung limply and he appeared to be moving considerably above them, as if on a catwalk.
	They flashed their beams his way and stood rooted in astonishment and stark terror. Caruthers's body hung on a line, like a tiny puppet, held in the hand of a humanoid metal monster seventy feet tall.
	The armored behemoth swung its free hand in their direction. They didn't have time for permission to react; they wouldn't have listened if Lang had denied it, anyway.
	Roy and the gunny and the other marines opened fire, the chatter of their submachine guns loud in their ears.
	Their tracers lit up the darkness, as the bullets bounced off the monster's armor as if they were paper clips.
	Its right hand loosed a stream of reddish-orange fury. A marine disappeared like a zapped bug, turned to ash in an instant.


CHAPTER TWO
I suppose, in the back of my mind, I was aware that fate had sent my way a chance to be mentioned in the same breath with Einstein, Newton, and the rest. But to tell the truth, I thought little of that. Before the lure of so much new knowledge, any scientist would've made poor old Faust look like a saint.
Dr. Emil Lang, Technical Recordings and Notes

Roy and the others emptied their weapons to no avail. The looming weapon hand swung to a new target as they ducked, switching their turned-and-taped double magazines around to lock and load a fresh one.
	A second stream of superheated brilliance blazed, and another marine was incinerated.
	Roy realized the radio was useless; it was in Hersch's rucksack, and he'd just been fried. Roy turned, spotted the RPG rocket launcher dropped by the first victim, and made a dive for it.
	The gunnery sergeant gave him a look of misgiving but kept his peace. Firing the weapon might be suicidal for a number of reasons, including secondary explosions from their attacker, but Roy saw no other options; their escape was cut off, and there was no cover worthy of the name.
	The RPG was already loaded. Roy peered through the sights, centering the reticle, and fired at the thing's midsection, where two segments met. The resulting explosion split the metal monster in half; it toppled, venting raging energy. The secondary blast knocked Roy off his feet.
	He lost consciousness for a second but came to, momentarily deafened, with the gunny shaking him. Roy managed to read his lips: "It's still alive!"
	Blearily Roy followed the pointing finger. It was true: Segments of the shattered behemoth were rocking and jouncing; those that had some articulation were trying to drag themselves toward the intruders. Other pieces were firing occasional beams, most of which splashed off the faraway ceiling.
	The gunny got Roy to his feet and began dragging him around the remains in what seemed like the direction from which they'd come. Even though he couldn't hear, Roy could feel heavy vibrations in the deck. He turned and found a second monster approaching. He couldn't figure out how the first one had come upon them so silently, and he didn't wait around to find out.
	The thing halted by the smoldering debris of the first as Roy staggered off behind the gunny.
	"... remember coming through here," Roy dimly heard the gunny say when they paused after what seemed like a year of tottering along the deck. Evidently, the gunny had covered his ears to avoid the rocket's impact; he was listening as well as looking for more enemies.
	"Neither do I," Roy said wearily. "But all our other routes were blocked."
	"They could've polished us all off, Lieutenant," the gunny said.
	Roy shook his head, just as confused as the marine. "Maybe they're herding us along somewhere; I dunno."
	They took up their way again. Roy's hearing was coming back, accompanied by a painful ringing. "Maybe they don't want to kill all of us because-"
	The gunny screamed a curse. Roy looked down to see that the deck plates were rippling around their legs like a running stream, engulfing them.

Gloval gripped his automatic resolutely. "Are you getting all this on the video, Dr. Lang?"
	Lang put his palm to his forehead. "Yes, but those shapes keep shifting... gets me dizzy just looking..."
	"Kinda like... vertigo..." T.R. Edwards added.
	Gloval was feeling a little queasy himself. He called a halt for a breather, sending Edwards to peer into the next compartment. Gloval watched Lang worriedly; with the arrival of the alien ship, Lang became the most indispensable man on the planet. Lang must be kept safe at all costs, and the fact that Gloval couldn't raise Roy's party or the outside world on the radio had the captain skittish.
	Edwards was back in moments, face as white as his teeth. "You'd better brace yourselves." Edwards swallowed with difficulty. "I found Murphy, but-it's a little hard to take." He swallowed again to keep from vomiting.
	One by one they went to join him at the entrance to the next compartment, from which an intense fight shone. Lang caught the edge of the hatch to steady himself when he saw what was there.
	In a large translucent tank wired with various life support systems floated the various pieces of Lance Corporal Murphy in a tiny sea of sluggish nutrient fluid.
	They drifted lazily, here an arm, there the head-sightless eyes wide open-a severed hand bumping gently against the stripped torso. The fluid was filled with fine strands glowing in incandescent greens. Tiny amoebalike globules flocked to the body parts and away from them again, feeding and providing oxygen and removing wastes.
	Gloval turned to the marine behind him. "Establish security! Whoever did this may still be around." The men shook off their paralysis and rushed to obey.
	All, that is, but one, who was about to pluck out a leg by a white, wrinkled foot that had bobbed to the surface. "We can't leave 'im like this!" Through the grinding war, the marines had maintained their honor and their high traditions proudly; esprit de corps was like the air they breathed. To leave one of their own on the battlefield was to leave a part of themselves.
	But Lang pulled the grunt back with surprising strength. "Don't touch him! Who knows what the solution is? You want to end up pickled in there too? No? Good! Then just draw a specimen with this device and be careful!"
	Gloval, carefully gauging the alien topography to keep his mind-and eyes-off Murphy's parts, determined that his suspicions were true: The internal layout of the place was changing around them. There was no way back.
	He quickly formed up his little command and got them moving, grimly satisfied that Edwards wasn't so cocky anymore.
	Moments later, as the party moved through a darkened area, he felt a marine tug at his shoulder. "Cap'n! There's a-"
	And all hell broke loose as armored behemoths set upon Gloval's group from the rear, blasting and trying to stamp the puny humans into the deck.
	One marine gave the beginning of a shriek and then blew into fragments, the moisture in his tissues instantaneously converted to steam, the scraps of flesh vaporized in the alien's beam.
	The humans cut loose with all weapons, including a man-portable recoilless rifle and a light machine gun whose drum magazine was loaded with Teflon semi-armorpiercers. A second marine was cremated almost instantly.
	They had better luck than Roy's team in that the machine gunner and the RR man both happened to aim for the lead monster's firing hand and were lucky enough to find a vulnerable point, blowing it off.
	The fortress's guardian staggered and shook as the fire set off secondary explosions. "Gloval! In here!" screamed Edwards, standing at the human-size hatch to a side compartment. The survivors dashed to it, crowding in, two of the marines hauling Lang between them while the doctor continued recording the scene as the injured machine-thing shot flame and smoke and flying shrapnel through the air.
	"We can hold 'em off from here-for now," Edwards said, throwing aside a spent pair of magazines and inserting a fresh one in his Ingrain MAC-35.
	"Concentrate fire on anything that approaches that door," Gloval told the marines, and turned to survey the rest of the compartment. It was quite tiny by the standards of the wreck: Perhaps eight paces on a side, with no other exit.
	Lang was shaken but in control, willing his hands to be steady as he took what videos he could of the scene in the outer compartment. Gloval was about to command him to get back out of the line of fire when the floor began to move.
	"Hey! Who pushed the up button?" Edwards shouted, pale again.
	"Security wheel!" Gloval bellowed. "Doctor Lang in the center!"
	Lang was thrust into the middle of the rising elevator platform as the others put their backs against him, weapons pointed out before them. The ceiling was about to crush them, but suddenly it rippled like water, letting them pass through. They came up into a brighter place and heard a familiar voice.
	"Well, well. 'Bout time you guys got here."
	"Roy!" The lieutenant stood leaning against a stanchion in the most immense chamber they'd seen yet, lit as bright as day.
	When stories were exchanged, Gloval said, "All right, then, we've been herded here. But why?"
	Lang pointed to a bridgelike structure enclosed by a transparent bowl, high to the stern end of the compartment. It was big but seemingly built to human scale.
	"I'm betting that is the ship's nerve center, skipper, and that is the captain's station."
	"It's our best shot, so we shall try it," Gloval decided, "but you stay with the main body, my good doctor, and let Roy go first."
	"What an honor." Edwards grinned at Roy.

	Zor's quarters were as he had left them, so long ago and far away. The sleep module, the work station, and the rest were built to human scale and function. Lang stared around himself as if in a dream.
	Despite the many objects and installations that were impossible to identify, there was a certain comprehensibility to the place: here, a desk unit, there, a screen of some kind.
	Roy, Gloval, and the others were so fascinated that they didn't notice what Lang was doing until they heard the pop and crisp of static.
	"Lang, you fool! Get away from there!"
	But before Gloval could tear him away from the console, Lang had somehow discovered how to activate it. Waves of distortion chased each other across the screen, then a face appeared among the wavering lines.
	Gloval's grip on Lang's jacket became limp. "Good God... it's human!"
	"Not quite, perhaps, but close, I would say," Lang conceded calmly.
	Zor's face stared out of the screen. The wide, almond eyes seemed to look at each man in the compartment, and the mouth spoke in a melodious, chiming language unlike anything the humans had ever heard before.
	"It's a `greetings' recording," Lang said matter-of-factly.
	"Like those plates and records on the old Voyagers," Roy murmured.
	The alien's voice took on a different tone, and another image flashed on the screen. The humans found themselves looking at an Invid shock trooper in action, firing and rending.
	"Some kind of war machine. Nasty," Lang interpreted.
	As the others watched the image, Roy touched Gloval's shoulder and said, "Captain, I think we'd better get out of here."
	"But how? This blasted ship keeps rearranging itself."
	"Look!" cried Edwards, pointing. The deck rippled as a newcomer rose up through it. All weapons came to bear on it except Lang's; the doctor was dividing his attention between what was going on and the continuing message on the screen.
	A familiar form stood before them. "It's the drone robot, the one that broke down," the gunny said.
	Edwards's eyes narrowed. "Yeah, but how could it have followed us?"
	"It appears to be functioning again," Gloval said. "Maybe we can use it to contact the base."
	Lang crossed to the robot, which waited patiently. He opened a rear access cowling and went to inspect the internal parts there, then snatched his hands back as if he'd been bitten.
	They all crowded around warily, ready to blast the machine to bits. "This isn't the original circuitry," Lang said, sounding interested but not frightened. "The components are reshaping themselves."
	As they stared, wires writhed and microchips changed like a miniaturized urban renewal project seen from above by time-lapse photography. Things slid, folded, altered shape and position. It reminded Roy of an unlikely cross between a blossoming flower and those kids' games where the player slides alphanumeric tiles around into new sequences.
	"Perhaps it's been sent here to lead us out," Gloval suggested.
	"But why'd the other gizmos attack?" Edwards objected.
	Lang shrugged. "Who knows what damage the systems have suffered? Perhaps the attacks are a result of a malfunction. Certainly, the message we just saw was intended as a warning, which implies good intentions."
	"But what's it all mean, Doc?" Roy burst out.
	Lang looked to him. "It means Earth may be in for more visitors, I think. Lots more."
	"All right, all of you: Get ready," Gloval said. "If we can get the drone to lead us, we'll take a chance on it. We've no alternative."
	While the others readied themselves, dividing up the remaining ammunition, reloading the last two rocket launchers, and listening to Gloval direct their order of march, Lang went back to the screen console.
	He had been right; this was the ship's nerve center, and the console and its peripherals were the nucleus of it all. Lang began form-function analysis, fearing that he would never get another chance to study it.
	Certainly, the ship used no source of power that he could conceive of. Some uncanny alien force coursed through the fallen ship and through the console. Perhaps if he could get some data on it or get access to it...
	At Lang's cry they all turned with guns raised, as strobing light threw their shadows tall against the bulkheads. The command center flashed and flowed with power like an unearthly network of electronic blood vessels.
	The console was surrounded by a blinding aurora of harsh radiance that pulsed through the spectrum. Lang, body convulsed in agony, holding fast to the console, shone with those same colors as the enigmatic forces flooding into him.
	"Don't touch him-!" Gloval barked at Roy, who'd been about to attempt a body check to knock Lang clear. Edwards moved to one side, well out of range of the discharges, to get a line of fire on the console that wouldn't risk hitting Lang. Edwards made sure his selector was on full auto and prepared to empty the magazine into the console.
	But before he could, the alien lightning died away. Lang slumped slowly to the deck.
	"Captain, the robby's leaving!" The gunny pointed to where the deck was starting to ripple around the drone's feet.
	There was no time for caution. Roy slung Lang over his shoulder, hoping the man wasn't radioactive or something else contagious. In another moment they were all ranged around the robot, sinking through the floor.
	Air and matter and space seemed to shift around them. Lang was stirring on Roy's shoulder, and Roy was getting a better grip on him, distracted, when one of the marines hollered, "Tell me I'm not seein' this!"
	The ship had changed again, or they were in a different place. And they were gazing at the remains of a giant.
	It was something straight out of legend. The skeleton was still wearing a uniform that was obviously immune to decay. It also wore a belt and harness affair fitted with various devices and pouches. But for the fact that it would've stood some fifty feet tall, it could have been human.
	The jaw was frozen open in an eternal rictus of agony and death; an area the size and shape of a poker table was burned through the back of its uniform, fringed by blackened fabric. Much of the skeletal structure in the wound's line of fire was gone.
	"Musta been some scrap," a marine said quietly, knowingly.
	Lang was struggling, so Roy let him down. "Are you all right, Doc-"
	Roy gaped at him. Lang's eyes had changed, become all dark, deep pupil with no iris and no white at all. He had the look of a man in rapture, gazing around himself with measureless approval.
	"Yes, yes," Lang said, nodding in comprehension. "I see!"
	There was no time to find out just what it was he saw, because the robot was in motion again. Roy took Lang in tow, and they moved out, only to round a corner and come face to face with two more of the armored guardians.
	The gunny, walking point right behind the robby with one of the RPG launchers, let fly instantly, and the machine gunner and the other RPG man cut loose too as the red lines of tracers arced and rebounded of the bright armor.


INTERLUDE
Listen, take the Bill of Rights, the Boy Scout oath, and the Three Laws of Robotics and stick 'em where there's no direct dialing, jerk! "Good" is anything that helps me stay at the top; "bad" is whatever doesn't, got it?
Senator Russo to his reelection committee treasurer

"And, in brief," Admiral Hayes finished, "Captain Gloval's party made it back out of the ship with no further casualties, although they encountered extremely heavy resistance."
	Senator Russo puffed on his cigar, considering the report. "And Doctor Lang?"
	"Seems to be all right," Hayes said. "They wanted to keep him under observation for a while, but he's absolutely determined to resume research on the alien vessel. And you know Lang."
	Indeed. Earth's foremost genius, the man to whom they would all have to look now for crucial answers, made his own rules.
	"I should add one more part of the after-mission report that I still find it difficult to credit," Hayes grudged. "Captain Gloval estimates, and his and the others' watches corroborate this, that they were inside the ship for some six hours."
	Russo blew a smoke ring. "So?"
	Hayes scratched his cheek reflectively. "According to the guards posted outside the ship and their watches, Gloval and the others were only gone for approximately fifteen minutes." He sat down again at the conference table.
	Russo, at the head of the table, thought that over. He knew Hayes was too methodical an officer to include a claim like that in his report without having checked it thoroughly.
	Senator Russo was a florid-faced, obese little man with a gratingly false-hearty manner and a pencil mustache. He had fat jowls and soft white hands bearing pinkie rings. He also had a brilliant tailor, a marvelous barber, and enough political clout to make him perhaps the most important figure in the emerging world government.
	Now, he looked around the top-secret conference room aboard the Kenosha. "Whoever sent this vessel may come to retrieve it. Or someone else might."
	He broke into an unctuous smile. "If something like this hadn't come along, we'd've had to invent it! It's perfect!"
	The other power mongers gathered there nodded, sharing the sly smile, their eyes alight with ambition.
	The timing of the crash was indeed astounding. Not a month before, these same men had been part of a group that had met to lay the groundwork for one of the most treacherous plots in history. It's true they were confronting the ultimate crisis-the likelihood that the human race would destroy itself. But their solution was not the most benign, just the one that would be most profitable for them.
	They'd been intent on creating an artificial crisis, something that would stop the war and unite humanity under their leadership. A number of promising scenarios had been developed, including epidemics, worldwide crop failure, and a much less spectacular version of the very thing that had taken place in Earth's atmosphere and on Macross Island.
	Russo's smile was close to a leer. "Gentlemen, I don't believe I'm being presumptuous when I say this is destiny at work! The blindest fool can see that mankind must band together."
	Under our rule, was the unstated subtext. Russo saw that the true power brokers there understood, while Hayes and a few other idealistic dupes were almost teary-eyed with dedication and courage. Suckers...
	It had never really mattered to the power brokers what side they served, of course; the ideologies and historical causes of the Global Civil War meant little or nothing to them. Russo and others like him had given those mere lip service.
	The important thing was to use the opportunity, to gain prestige and power. Russo had joined the Internationalists-the world peace and disarmament movement-because they offered personal opportunity. If they hadn't, he'd have thrown in with the factionalists without a qualm, so long as they promised him a route to power.
	Hayes was saying, "We must act with all possible speed, throw every available resource into understanding the science behind that ship, into rebuilding it, and using this amazing `Robotechnology,' as Doctor Lang insists on calling it."
	Absolutely beautiful! Russo thought. An enormous tax-supported defense project, more expensive and more massive than anything in human history! The opportunities for profit would be incalculable. In the meantime, the military could be kept distracted and obedient, and all political power would be consolidated. More, this incredible Robotechnology business would ensure that the new world government would be absolutely unchallengeable.
	Russo frowned for a moment, considering Hayes again: good soldier, obedient and conscientious, but a plodding sort of fellow (which was Russo's personal shorthand for someone prone to be honest).
	Yes, Hayes might present a problem somewhere down the road-say, once Earth was rebuilt and unified and ready to be brought to heel, when it was time to make sure that those in power stayed there for good.
	But there would be ways to deal with that. For example, didn't Hayes have a teenage daughter? Ah, yes. Russo recalled her now: a rather plain, withdrawn little thing, as the senator remembered. Lisa.
	In any case, there'd be plenty of time to neutralize Hayes and those like him once they'd served their purpose. Have to keep an eye on that Lang, too.
	But this Colonel Edwards, now; he seemed to be a bright young fellow-knew which side his bread was buttered on. He was already passing secret information to Russo and keeping tabs on Gloval and the others. Edwards would definitely have his uses.
	"Let's have Doctor Lang, eh?" Senator Russo proposed.
	Lang came in, lean and pale, emitting an almost tangible energy and purpose. The strange, whiteless eyes were unsettling to look at.
	"Well, Doctor," Russo said heartily. "We've had a miracle dropped from heaven, eh? But we want you to give us the straight gospel: Can that ship be rebuilt?"
	Lang looked at him as if he were seeing Russo for the first time-as if Russo had interrupted Lang during some higher contemplation, as, of course, he had.
	"Rebuild it? But of course we will; what else did you think we would do?" It sounded as though he had doubts about Russo's sanity, which was mutual.
	Before Russo could say anything, Lang continued. "But you used the word `miracle.' I suppose that may be true, but I want to tell all of you something that Captain Gloval said to me when we finally fought our way out of the ship."
	He waited a dramatic moment, as his whiteless eyes seemed to take in the whole conference room and look beyond.
	"Gloval said, `This will save the human race from destroying itself, Doctor, and that makes it a kind of miracle. But history and legend tell us that miracles bear a heavy price."'


CHAPTER THREE
There's a movie my grandfather loved as a boy, and my father sat me on his knee and showed me when I was a little kid, The Shape of Things to Come.
The part that made the biggest impression, naturally, was when the scientist-aviator climbs out of his futuristic plane and looks the local fascist right in the eye and tells him there'll be no more war. Babe, how many times I've wished it was that easy!
Lt. Comdr. Roy Fokker, in a letter to Lt. Claudia Grant

"Fireworks," Lieutenant Commander Roy Fokker murmured to himself, neck arched back so that he could watch the bright flowers of light. The gigantic mass of Super Dimensional Fortress One blocked out much of the sky, but he could still see skyrockets burst into brilliant light above every corner of Macross City. There were banners and flags, band music, and the constant laughter and cheering of thousands upon thousands of people.
	"Fireworks instead of bombs; celebrations instead of battles." Roy nodded. "I hope it's always like this: parades and picnics. We've seen enough war!"
	Macross Island had changed a lot in ten years-all for the better, in Roy's opinion. After the World Government made rebuilding the alien wreck its first priority, a bright modern city had been erected around the crash site, along with landing strips used to airlift supplies and equipment, construction materials, technicians and workers and their families, and military personnel.
	A busy deep-water harbor had been dredged, too. Two colossal aircraft carriers were anchored there, though they were dwarfed by the vessel in whose shadow Roy stood. Flights of helos and jetcraft made their passes overhead, rendering salute to the Earth's new defender, Super Dimensional Fortress One.
	Roy glanced up at the SDF-1 again. Even after a decade, he was still awed every time he gazed at it. Its hull and superstructures gleamed, sleek and bright now, painted in blue and white. The vast transparent bubble of the bridge bulged like a spacesuit facebowl, giving the eerie impression that the fortress was keeping watch over the city.
	Roy still found himself wondering what the ship had originally looked like before its terrible crash. How close had Lang and his team come to restoring it to its original state?
	One thing was certain: Lang and the others had performed the most amazing technical feat in Earth's history. Not all the battle fortress's secrets were theirs, not yet; but that seemed only a matter of time. In the meantime they'd gotten the SDF-1 fully operational, and given the Earth the means to build its Robotech Defense Force-the RDF.
	And today, for the first time, the general populace was going to see things that had been classified top-secret.
	A flight of Veritech fighters, wings swept back for high speeds, performed a fly-by. They were from Skull Team, Roy's command. "Wait'll we show 'em what we can do," he said, smiling.

	Across town, a motorcade made its way with flashing lights and wailing sirens toward the SDF-1's platform, already late for the ship's scheduled launch on its maiden flight. Motorcycle outriders led the way, followed by a long stretch limousine. Bunting and pennons hung everywhere.
	Not everyone in town was overjoyed with the day's festivities. Macross City's mayor, a small, stocky man who usually showed good humor, scowled in disapproval as the motorcade rolled in his direction. Vern Havers, who ran one of the town's more prosperous appliance stores, stood by his side, watching.
	"Now what's wrong, Mr. Mayor? What's all that sighing about?"
	Mayor Tommy Luan shrugged. "Aw, after all these years, it's hard to believe we may be looking at the old girl for the last time." Both men gazed at the colossal ship, which dominated the city and the island, its running lights blinking and flashing.
	Of course, SDF-1 was only leaving for a test flight, to be followed by a short shakedown cruise if everything checked out well; but the mayor could be right-there was no telling when the fortress might return.
	Certainly, Macross would never be the same place again.
	"We'll all miss her," Vern conceded. "But aren't you proud to see her launched at last?"
	"Of course. But if the test is successful, we'll all be unemployed!" the mayor burst out. Vern wasn't looking forward to closing down his business either, but he remembered the war very well. He had to admit he liked the idea of the battle fortress being out there in space, guarding the planet, a lot better than the mayor seemed to.
	Vern sighed. A lot of people had forgotten just why Macross City existed. But Vern kept his opinion to himself.
	The motorcycles and limousine roared by. "The big shots making their grand entrance!" The mayor sniffed. It was well known that the mayor hadn't been invited to any of the important ceremonies; the world leaders were keeping the prize honors for themselves.
	"Captain Gloval doesn't seem too happy about it," Vern observed, hoping it would make Tommy Luan feel a little better.

	Not happy, indeed. As the limo shot along, Russo, sharing the back seat with Gloval, waved tirelessly, flashing his smile to everyone with the bland relentlessness of a career politician.
	Without turning from the crowds, he chided, "Don't look so sour, Gloval! It's our big day! Surely you realize all those loyal citizens out there consider you their hero! You could at least wave to them."
	Gloval grunted, chin sunk on his chest, arms folded. He was wearing his dress uniform, and some pushy liaison officer had seen to it that every decoration Gloval was entitled to wear was in place. Gloval had certainly won more than his share of medals and "fruit salad" over the years, but he didn't much like being in the spotlight. He was grumpy.
	Still, there was something to what Russo had said. The senator might consider it his big day, but it was those people out there who'd worked like mad these last ten years, sacrificed and hoped, all in the name of peace and security for future generations.
	"All right, I'll wave," said Gloval, hoping the speechmakers' foolishness and the political hacks' patting themselves on the back wouldn't last long. Gloval only wanted to be out in space with his new command.

	At SDF-1, all was controlled commotion. The Veritech demonstration was due to begin at any moment, and final preparations to get the fortress under way were still not on schedule. Com circuits and the ship's intercoms rang with checklist items: engine room and astrogation systems, communications and life support, combat and support squadrons, and more. Literally millions of items had to be double-checked by the SDF-1's thousands of crew members during those final days of preparation.
	Up on the bridge, Commander Lisa Hayes arrived to make sure everything would be squared away for launching. Admiral Hayes's daughter had always made it a point of honor to show more merit, more skill at her job, and more dedication to the service than anyone around her so that there could be no question of favoritism when the time came for promotion.
	She'd carved out an amazing career for herself. At twenty-four, she'd been made First Officer of SDF-1. A lot of that was due, no doubt, to her familiarity with the ship's systems: With the exception of Doctor Lang, no one had such a complete and comprehensive knowledge of the vessel's every bolt and button.
	But there were her endless commendations and top evaluations as well, and two decorations for courage under fire. Some people thought her too severe, too single-minded in her obsession with duty, but no one accused her of not earning her rank.
	She paused to survey the bridge, a slim, tall, pale young woman with blond-brown hair that bobbed, confined in graceful locks, against her shoulders. Her subordinates were already at their duty stations.
	Claudia Grant seemed to have things well in hand, speaking into an intercom terminal from her position at the Bridge Officer's station. "Roger, engine room; that's affirmative."
	Vanessa, Sammie, and Kim, three young female enlisted-rating techs, completed the bridge complement; Gloval liked running things with as little confusion and as few people as possible.
	Vanessa was feeding computer projections of fuel consumption to the engine room while Kim finished up the astrogation checklist and Sammie saw to the manual systems. They were all young, like Lisa-like most of SDF-1's crew. Robotechnology and the weapons and machines it had spawned were a whole new game; taking people while they were young and instilling its strange disciplines in them had proved more workable, in most cases, than trying to get veterans to unlearn what they'd already taken to heart.
	Lisa sighed, brushing her hair back with her hand, making her way to her station. "The ceremony starts in fifteen minutes. I hope the captain gets here in time. The scuttlebutt is that he didn't get much sleep last night."
	Claudia gave a smile, her brown face creasing, eyes dancing. "Yeah; the flag-rank officers threw a farewell party for him. They probably sat up all night telling each other war stories. You know how they are."
	Lisa hid a mischievous smile. "And where were you, Claudia? Hmm?"
	Claudia was taken off guard. "What're you talking about?"
	"You didn't get back to your quarters until four in the morning, that's what! You must've been partying too."
	Claudia stuck her nose in the air and struck a glamorous pose. She was taller than Lisa and several years older, with exotic good looks crowned by a cap of close, coffee-colored curls.
	"You jealous? I had a late dinner with Commander Fokker."
	Lisa had been joking, assuming Claudia had spent her last groundside leave visiting with her family, but suddenly the First Officer was angry.
	"Claudia! You stayed out all night, knowing you and Roy both have flight duty today?" Duty was everything to Lisa; she had trouble understanding how anyone could be so casual about such an important mission.
	But there was also something else, something about Claudia's love affair with the handsome, heroic Roy Fokker-not jealousy, but rather a feeling of Lisa's own loneliness. It brought an uncharacteristic confusion to her, a sudden emptiness that made her doubt the principles by which she lived her life. She shied away from it, reasserting control over herself by acting every inch the First Officer.
	But Lisa wasn't the only one who was angry. Claudia set her hands on her hips. "So? What's the big fuss about, Lisa? We won't let it affect our performance on duty. After all, we're not children-and you're not our mother!"
	Lisa felt her cheeks growing red. "Your responsibilities to the ship come first, Claudia!"
	Neither one was backing away from the confrontation, and Claudia looked like she was running out of patience. And given her size and temper and the fact that she was an accomplished hand-to-hand fighter, Claudia was nobody to antagonize unnecessarily.
	"My private life is my own business! Nobody else's!" Claudia stopped herself just short of some cutting remark: Why don't you try loosening up for a change, Lisa?, for example.
	But she got hold of herself instead. "Now then, let's get to work, all right?" She pointed toward Lisa's duty station. "Get outta here."
	Lisa hesitated, unused to backing away from a fight, and still angry but feeling she'd overstepped her authority. Just then Vanessa said slyly, "Lisa doesn't understand about men, Claudia. She's in love with this spaceship."
	Claudia couldn't resist a grin, and Kim threw in, "Yeah, you got that right!"
	That stung Lisa terribly, though she'd have died before admitting it. She knew she had a reputation as a cold fish among most of the ship's complement; maybe that was why, against the rules of good discipline, she'd found herself becoming close with the other women with whom she spent so much time on the bridge. Besides, Captain Gloval's informal and even indulgent way of running the bridge-rather fatherly, really-made it easy to make friends.
	But now Lisa felt herself flush angrily. "That wasn't funny, Vanessa; we have an important job to do here-"
	Claudia, still steaming, interrupted her: "You act like I don't care about our mission at all!"
	Sammie, at twenty the youngest of the bridge crew, couldn't bear to hear her friends fight anymore. "Oh, don't argue!" she cried.
	She was so plaintive that the danger level lowered a little. "I'm not the one who keeps butting into everybody's business," Claudia pointed out.
	Not quite ready to retreat, Lisa let out a growl she'd somehow picked up during her time with Gloval. Even as she began, "I'm warning you-" she was aware of a new sound in the bridge, cutting through her anger.
	Claudia wore a haughty look, nose in the air again. "I hate to interrupt, but hadn't you better check your monitor, Commander?"
	Then Lisa realized that an insistent signal was sounding from her duty station. She crossed to it, trying to put the argument out of her mind as Kim called out, "It's an unidentified incoming aircraft, Lisa!"
	Checking her monitors, Lisa saw it was on an approved approach path and signaling for landing instructions. Since none of the many military aircraft flying patrol around Macross Island had challenged or interfered with the new arrival, it could be nothing but a peaceful visitor.
	Lisa opened a communication link, resolving to try to smooth things out with her friends. She'd so much wanted the day to be right, to be marked by excellence and top performance! Why couldn't anyone share her drive for perfection? Perhaps she was simply fated to be the outcast, the oddball-
	"Attention, aircraft approaching on course one-zero-seven," she said coolly. "Please identify yourself."
	A youngish male voice came in response. "This is Rick Hunter. I have an invitation for today's ceremonies, invitation number two-zero-three."
	Lisa checked it against another computer display, although she found herself irked by the job. The SDF-1 was set to launch, and she was expected to act as an air traffic tech!
	But she responded, "That's confirmed as an invitation from Lieutenant Commander Fokker." Fokker! Lisa kept emotion out of her voice and avoided meeting Claudia's eye, finishing, "Follow course five-seven for landing."
	"Roger," the voice said cheerfully, and signed off.
	With all the important things I have to worry about, Lisa mumbled to herself, they also have to saddle me with babysitting the Rick Hunters of this world?


CHAPTER FOUR
All right, you win, "Big Brother." I'll come to your party. I'll even put up with all those military types you hang around with. But try not to make it too boring, okay?
Rick Hunter's RSVP to Roy Fokker's invitation to the SDF-1's launch ceremonies

High above Macross Island, an unusual aircraft began to descend into the complex flight patterns of Launching Day, following course five-seven for landing, just as Lisa Hayes had instructed.
	Rick Hunter whistled as he got a better look at the SDF-1. The descriptions and the newscasts just didn't begin to do justice to the astonishing size of the thing! The two supercarriers anchored among the flotilla of ships in the harbor were of the new Thor class-each longer than a 150-story office building resting on its side-yet they were modest in comparison to the battle fortress.
	And the sky was full of the sleekest, most advanced-looking fighters Rick had ever seen-Robotech fighters, the newscasts had called them. Whatever that meant. For a moment Rick couldn't blame Roy Fokker for dedicating himself to this Robotech stuff.
	After a decade of secrecy, the United Earth Government promised the wonderful new breakthroughs made on Macross would be revealed. To Rick, it simply meant that Roy wouldn't have to be so hush-hush about what he was doing, and perhaps their friendship could get back on its old footing.
	Rick maneuvered his ship smoothly through the traffic, relying not on his computers but on his own talent and training-a point of pride. He was the offspring of a proud, daring breed: last of the barnstormers, the stunt fliers and the seat-of-the-pants winged daredevils.
	He was eighteen years old and hadn't been outflown since-well, long before his voice had changed from a kid's to a young man's.
	His plane was a nimble little racer of his own design. A roomy one-seater, white with red trim, powered primarily by an oversize propfan engine but hiding a few surprises under its sleek fuselage. Rick had named it the Mockingbird, a fittingly arrogant name for the undisputed star of the last of the flying circuses.
	He tossed a dark forelock of hair back and adjusted his tinted goggles, then went into a pushover and power dive for the SDF-1. This Robotech stuff looked impressive... but maybe it was time somebody showed these military flyboys that it was the pilot that mattered most, not some pile of mere metal.

	Far out beyond the orbit of Earth's moon, a portentous tremble shook the spacetime continuum as if it were a spiderweb. It was only a preliminary disturbance, yet it was exacting and of great extent. A force beyond reckoning was making tentative contact on a day that marked a turning point in the history of the unsuspecting earth.

	On Macross Island, in the shadow of the SDF-1, Roy didn't have time to notice the tiny racing plane making a pass over the ship's bow, thousands of feet above him. The public address system carried an announcement to the tens of thousands gathered there.
	"And now we present an amazing display of aerial acrobatics, demonstrating the amazing advances we have made through Robotechnology. Lieutenant Commander Roy Fokker, leader of the Veritech fighters' Skull Team, will describe and explain the action for us."
	Roy made his entrance to enthusiastic applause; he was known to and well liked by most people on Macross Island. Tall and handsome in his uniform, the blond hair still full and thick, he stopped before the microphone stand. He gave a snappy salute, then fell into parade rest and began his address.
	"Today, ladies and gentlemen, you'll see how we've applied human know-how to understanding and harnessing a complex alien technology."
	Overhead, a half dozen swift, deadly Veritech fighters peeled off to begin their performance.
	"Keep your eyes on planes two and four," Roy went on as two and four lined up for the first maneuver, engines blaring. "Flying at speeds of five hundred miles per hour, only fifty feet above the ground, they will pass within just a 	few yards of one another. Robotechnology makes such precision possible."
	Roy looked out over the crowd with satisfaction. All eyes were gazing up in amazement at the onrushing fighters.
	But the show would build from there. Precision flying was nothing compared to the other forms of control Robotechnology gave human beings over their new instruments. At long last average citizens would get to see Guardian and Battloid modes in action, Robotechnology applications that until now had been used only in restricted training areas or drills far out at sea, when the Veritechs were launching from the decks of the Daedalus and the Prometheus.
	Those people in the throng, the ordinary citizens of Macross, were the ones who deserved the first live look at what the SDF-1 project had brought forth. They'd earned that right-much more than all the politicians, who had merely voted how much time and work and money would be spent-time and work and money that were invariably not the politicians'.
	Today, all the rumors and speculations about Robotechnology would be put to rest, and the people of Earth would find out that the reality surpassed them all.
	Roy was thinking about that happily as he spoke, waiting for the inevitable gasps from the crowd as the first high-speed pass was executed. It took him a few seconds to realize that the people below the speakers' platform weren't gasping.
	They were laughing.
	Roy whirled, craning his head to look up. Two and four had been forced to peel off from their pass by the sudden appearance of an interloper, a gaudy little stunt plane, absurdly out of place among the modern miracle machines.
	A circus plane! "Oh no-o-o!" Roy didn't have to guess who it was; he'd arranged for the invitation himself, and he was regretting it already. He grabbed the microphone out of its stand and flipped the switch that would patch him through to the aircom net.
	"Rick! Is that you, Hunter?"
	The little Mockingbird gave a jaunty waggle of its wings in salute as Rick banked slowly overhead. His reply came patched through the PA system.
	"Roy! It's good to hear your voice, old buddy! They tell me you're a lieutenant commander now. The army must really be desperate!"
	Furious, Roy yelled into the mike. "Are you crazy? Get that junk heap out of here!" He forgot that he was still patched through the PA, so that the whole crowd followed the exchange. Of course, as loud and angry as Roy was, the people up front would've had no trouble hearing him anyway.
	The people below thought it was great, and the laughter started again, even louder. Roy was shaking one fist at the little stunt plane, holding the mike stand aloft with the other, like Jove brandishing a lightning bolt: "Hunter, when I get my hands on you, I'm gonna-"
	Roy didn't get to elaborate on that; just then the bottom half of the telescoping mike stand dropped, nearly landing on his foot.
	Roy caught it just in time-at thirty, he was one of the oldest of the Veritech fighter pilots, yet his reflexes hadn't slowed a bit-but couldn't quite get it to fit back together. Fumbling, forgetting what he'd been about to say, he was ready to explode with frustration.
	He abruptly became aware of the laughter all around him. The crowd was roaring, some of them nearly in tears.
	One young woman in front caught his eye, though. She looked to be in her mid teens, slender and long-legged, with a charming face and hair black as night. She was standing behind a kid, possibly her brother, who was laughing so hard, he seemed to be having trouble breathing.
	At some other time, Roy might have tried to catch her eye and exchange a smile, but he just wasn't in the mood. His face reddened as the laughter washed over him, and he unknowingly echoed Lisa Hayes's sentiments of a few moments before: Why today, of all days?
	Roy covered the mike with his gloved palm and stage-whispered to one of the techs. "Hey, Ed! Switch this circuit over to radio only, will you?" It was going to be awfully hard to chew out his men about com-procedure discipline after today.
	It took only a second or two for Ed to make the change.
	"What're you trying to do, Rick, make a perfect fool of me?"
	Roy could hear the laughter in his old friend's voice. "Aw, nobody's perfect, Commander!"
	Roy was just about grinning in spite of himself. People who didn't watch their step every moment were liable to become Rick Hunter's straight men. Roy decided to give him back a bit of his own. "You haven't changed a bit, have you, kid? Well, this isn't an amateur flying circus; my men are real pilots!"
	"Amateur, huh?" Rick drawled. He looked off in the distance and saw the Veritech fighters in a diamond formation for a power climb, preparing to do a "bomb-burst" maneuver. "I'm gonna have to make you eat those words, Commander. Comin' in."
	"Stop clowning around, Rick-look out!"
	Mockingbird swooped down in a hair-raising dive, barely missing the speaker's platform, so low that Roy had to duck to avoid getting his head taken off. A lot of people in the crowd hit the dirt too, and most of them cried out in shock. Roy caught another glimpse of the pretty young thing in the front row; she seemed thrilled and happy, not in the least frightened.
	Roy spun as the Mockingbird zoomed off, building on the acceleration it had picked up in its dive. Suddenly, as the little aircraft was safely away from the crowd, covers blew free from six booster jet pods mounted around the turbofan cowling at the rear of the ship, and powerful gusts of flame lifted it into a vertical climb. The crowd went "Oh!"
	Leaving streamers of rocket exhaust, the Mockingbird went ballistic, quickly overtaking the slower-moving formation of Veritechs.
	"Get out of there!" Roy yelled up at him, not even bothering with the mike, knowing it was pointless. "Headstrong" was a word they'd invented with Rick Hunter in mind.
	Rick cut in full power, came up into formation perfectly, becoming part of the display, as the Veritech fighters completed their climb and arced away in different directions, like a huge version of the afternoon's skyrockets.
	The crowd was applauding wildly, cheering. Roy shook his fist again, furious-but a part of him was proud of his friend.

	Out in space, vast forces were coalescing-nothing Earth's detectors could perceive yet, though that would happen soon. Soon, but too late for Earth.
	Contact had been made; an inconceivable gap was about to be bridged, a marvel of science put to hellish use.

	As Mockingbird floated in for a perfect landing, Roy leaped from the speaker's platform, so eager to get at Rick that he forgot to let go of the mike, yanking the stand over and nearly tripping on the microphone cord. The cord snaked along behind him as he ran.
	Rick raised the clear bubble of the cockpit canopy as he taxied to a stop, his forelock of dark hair fluttering in the breeze. He pushed his tinted flying goggles high on his forehead. "Whew! Hi, Roy."
	Roy was in no mood for hi's. "Who d' you think you are? What were you trying to do, get yourself killed?"
	Rick was nonchalant, pulling off his headset and goggles and tossing them back into the cockpit as he hiked himself up. "Hey, calm down!"
	Not a chance. Roy still had the mike in one hand, a few yards of cable attached to it. He flung it down angrily on the hardtop runway surface. "And while we're at it, where'd you learn to do that, anyway?"
	Rick had his hands up to hold the much bigger Roy at bay. He gave a quick smile. "It was just a simple booster climb. You taught it to me when I was just a kid!"
	"Ahhh!" Roy reached out, grabbed Rick by the upper arm, and began dragging him off across the hardtop.
	"Hey!" Rick objected, but he could see that he'd taken a lot of the voltage out of Roy's wrath with that reminder of old times.
	"I have to admit, those guys up there were pretty good," Rick went on, jerking his arm free, straightening his dapper white silk scarf. "Not as good as me, of course."
	Roy made a sour expression. "You don't have to brag to me, Rick. I know all about your winning the amateur flying competition last year."
	"Not amateur; civilian!" Rick bristled. Then he went on with great self-pleasure. "And actually, I've won it eight years in a row. What've you been doing?"
	"I was busy fighting a war! Combat flying and dogfighting kept me kind of occupied. Hundred 'n' eight enemy kills, so they tell me."
	"You're proud of being a killer?"
	They'd touched on an old, sore subject. Rick's late father had rejected military service in the Global Civil War, though he would have been the very best. Jack "Pop" Hunter had seen combat before and wanted no more part of that. He had instilled a strong sense of this conviction in his son.
	Roy stopped, fists cocked, though Rick continued walking. "What?" With anyone else, a serious fistfight would have resulted from this exchange. But this was Rick, who'd been like family. More than family.
	Roy swallowed his fury, hurrying after. "There was a war on, and I was a soldier! I just did my duty!"
	They made a strange pair, crossing the hardtop side by side: Roy in his black and mauve Veritech uniform and Rick, a head shorter, in the white and blazing orange of his circus uniform.
	They stopped by a vending machine unlike any Rick had seen before, which offered something called Petite Cola. Rick fed it some coins while the machine made strange internal noises. He took a can of ice-cold soda for himself, giving Roy the other.
	"You promised my dad that as soon as the war was over you'd come back to the air circus. Why'd you go back on that, Roy?"
	Roy was suddenly distant. "I really felt guilty about letting your father down, only... this Robotech thing is so important, I just couldn't give it up."
	He pulled the tab on his soda, torn by the need to explain to Rick and the knowledge that some parts of the original mission to Macross Island, and of Robotechnology, were still classified and might be for decades more. He felt a debt, too, to the late Pop Hunter.
	Roy shrugged. "It gets into your blood or something; I don't know."
	Rick scowled, leaning back against the Petite Cola machine. "What is Robotech, anyway? Just more modern war machinery!" Somewhere, he could hear a kid raising a ruckus. "And the aliens-huh?"
	He couldn't figure out how he'd lost his balance, sliding along the vending machine. Then he realized it was moving out from behind him.
	The Petite Cola machine was rolling eagerly toward the child, a boy of seven or so who was throwing a terrible tantrum.
	"Cola! I wanna cola! You promised me you'd buy me a cola, Minmei, and I want one right now!" He was dressed in a junior version of a Veritech pilot's uniform, Rick saw disgustedly. Teach 'em while they're young!
	Roy looked around to see the commotion. He was suddenly very attentive when he saw the person trying to reason with the kid-`Minmei"-was the young lady who'd been standing at the edge of the speaker's platform.
	She was charming in a short red dress, pulling on the boy's arm, trying to keep him from the vending machine that was closing in for the sale. "Cousin Jason, behave yourself! I already bought you one cola; you can't have any more!"
	Jason wasn't buying it, stamping his feet and screaming. "Why? I wanna cola-aaahh!"
	To Rick's amazement, the scene turned into a combination wrestling match and game of keepaway: Minmei was trying to prevent Jason from reaching the machine and was crying, "Cancel the order, please, machine!" while Jason struggled to get past her. In the meantime, the machine, circling and darting, made every effort to reach him short of rolling over Minmei. With its persistence and agility, the vending machine somehow gave the impression that it was alive.
	"Never saw anything like that." Rick blinked.
	Roy gave him an enigmatic smile. "Robotechnology has a way of affecting the things around it, sometimes even non-Robotech machines."
	Rick groaned. "Robotech again?"
	"Jason, you'll make yourself sick!"
	"I don't care!" Jason wailed.
	"Maybe you could tie a can of soda to a fishing pale and lure him home, miss?" Roy suggested.
	Minmei turned to him, still deftly keeping the kid from scoring the Petite Cola. She broke into a winsome smile. She was of Chinese blood, Roy figured, though she had strange, blue eyes-not that he was interested! Claudia would probably take a swing at him (and connect) if she found out he was roving. Still, something about Minmei's smile made her irresistible.
	"Oh! You're the officer from the stage! You were very, very funny!" Minmei giggled, then turned to the little boy sternly.
	"That's it! We're going home! Come on, Jason; don't make me spank you!" She lugged the boy away as the Petite Cola machine made halfhearted attempts to clinch a sale against all hope.
	"Well, Roy," Rick commented, elaborately droll, "I see you're still a big ladies' man."

	In deep space, dimensions folded and transition began; death was about to come calling.


CHAPTER FIVE
From the first, there were anomalies about the situation on the target world, things that gave me pause. The second-guessers would have it that I was remiss in not advising caution more strongly. But one did not antagonize great Breetai with too much talk of circumspection, you see-not, at least, without great risk.
Exedore, as quoted in Lapstein's Interviews

The stars shimmered and wavered as if shivering with dread. And well they should.
	The forces that bound the universe were briefly snarled by a tremendous application of energy. The dimensional warp and woof pulled apart for a moment.
	In a precisely chosen zone of space beyond Luna's orbit, it was as if a piece of the primordial fireball that gave birth to the cosmos had been brought back into existence.
	Motes bright and hot as novas, infinitesimal bits of the Cosmic String, were spewed out of the rift in spacetime like burning sparks of gunpowder from some unimaginable cannon shot; the burning detritus of nonspace moving at speeds approaching that of light itself, consumed almost as soon as they came in touch with three-dimensional reality.
	Larger anomalies, like furious comets, flared here and there in the wash of light. Then there was another explosion beyond any description: the pure emission of unadulterated hell. It pushed outward from a rip in the fabric of the universe, taking on shape and shedding a raging wave of incandescence as if it were water. The shape became longer, more forceful, menacing.
	The Zentraedi had come at last.
	First was the great flagship, sheets and wind racks of ravenous light streaming away behind it to reveal its shape: nine miles long, an irregular blunt-nosed cylinder.
	A vessel many times the size of SDF-1, the flagship was a seemingly endless span of mighty weapons and invulnerable shields, of combat-ship bays and mountainous armor and incalculable firepower. The pride of the Zentraedi fleet, searching the solar system in an instant and knowing where its prey waited.
	The flagship had been built with only military conquest, warfare, and destruction in mind. Manning it was a race of beings bred for that single purpose.
	The ship was like a leviathan from the deepest oceans of human nightmares, with superstructure features that might be gills here or titanic eyes there, huge spines that were sensor spars, nubbles of the secondary and lesser weapons batteries, projections like questing fangs. Lighted observation ports, some of them a hundred yards across, suggested bulging, multiple eyes.
	Behind it came a fleet surpassing any the Zentraedi had ever assembled before, cascading from the spacefold warp that had been their shortcut past the endless light-years. They were a school of gargantuan armored fish numerous enough to fill all the oceans, plated and scaled in sinister greens and browns and blacks, with pale underbellies in sickly grays and blues.
	There were more of them than the visible stars. They were the mightiest Zentraedi armada ever seen, and yet they were cautious. They followed a flagship that knew no equal in any fleet they'd ever encountered, and yet they were wary.
	If translated into human terms, their caution would mean something like: Even wolves can be prey to the tiger.
	Having pursued the single wounded tiger across space and time, the fleet of so many hundred thousand ships formed up around the flagship.
	In the transparent bowl of the Supreme Commander's flagship, Breetai, tall and stiff in his dress uniform, gazed down on his operations center. Even for a Zentraedi, he was a mighty tower of bone and muscle, as strong as any trooper under his command and as good a fighter. Like many of his engineered race, his skin was a mauve shade suggestive of clay.
	A projecbeam drew a two-dimensional image of the target planet in midair, a puny and an unremarkable blue-white sphere, nothing much to look at. Rather disappointing, really.
	Breetai reached up one hand to touch the cold crystal-and-metal half cowl that covered much of his head, thinking back to the day so long ago when Zor had died, and the dimensional fortress had been lost. The failure still burned at him.
	He'd accepted that with a warrior's fatalism, and with a warrior's lust for triumph he contemplated the final victory that would be his this day.
	Breetai studied the Earth coldly. "The finder beam has locked on this planet. Are you sure this is the source of those emanations?" His voice was huge and deep, with a resonance that shook the bulkheads.
	Off to one side, Exedore, Breetai's adviser, kowtowed slightly, showing deference from habit even though he wasn't in Breetai's line of vision. "Yes, sir, I'm positive."
	Breetai pursed his lips in thought. "They could have executed a refold." The thought of losing his quarry again was almost unbearable, but Breetai avowed no emotion to show.
	"It's doubtful, sir," Exedore said quickly. "There was no evidence of a second jump into hyperspace."
	Savagely, Breetai thought again of those traitors to his race and their narrow escape. "Hmm. They couldn't have gone far in their condition. And they would have to land in order to repair the ship." He looked to Exedore. "That's a logical conclusion, I think."
	Exedore inclined his head respectfully. "I agree. It would seem very likely, sir."
	Breetai was used to acting on his own instincts and deductions; but it was reassuring that Exedore, the most brilliant intellect of the Zentraedi race, was in accord.
	Breetai considered Exedore for a moment: small, almost a dwarf by the standards of their species, and frail into the bargain. Gaunt, with protruding, seemingly lidless eyes and a wild thatch of odd, rust-red hair, Exedore was still the embodiment of Zentraedi law and tradition-and more valuable to the towering commander than any battlefleet. Yet with all that, he was loyal, almost selfless in his devotion to Breetai.
	Breetai gave Exedore a curt nod. "Very well; dispatch a scout team for a preliminary reconnaissance."
	In the Zentraedi warrior religion, efficiency was a virtue ranking only behind loyalty and courage in battle. The words were scarcely out of Breetai's mouth when two of the fleet's heavy cruisers detached themselves and advanced on the unwary planet.

	At the festivities in the shadow of the SDF-1, Rick was getting his first close look at a Veritech fighter that had been put on display. Because he was accompanied by Roy, Rick was allowed into the roped-off area around the craft and permitted a hands-on examination of the ship.
	"Whew, this fighter's a real beauty, all right." He looked at it enviously; he had no desire to fly combat, but that didn't stop him from longing to sit at the controls of the fantastic machine, high in the blue.
	He ran his hand along the fuselage. "It looks great. How does it handle?"
	Roy thought that one over. "Hmm. Well, why don't you climb aboard and see for yourself?"
	"You really mean that?"
	"Uh huh. I'll ride piggyback behind you." It was, perhaps, bending the rules a bit, though familiarization flights were scheduled for VIPs later in the day. Still, a little sample of what the Veritech could do might change Rick's attitude about military service, and the service could sure use a flier like Rick Hunter.
	Rick was already scrambling up the boarding ladder, peering into the cockpit. "The controls look pretty complicated," Roy called up, "but I'll check you out on them."
	Rick looked down and smirked. "I'm not worried. If you can learn to fly one of these things, I sure can."
	Roy snorted, "Don't be so modest!"
	When Rick was in the pilot's seat and Roy was in the rear seat, Roy handed Rick a red-visored Robotech flight helmet.
	Rick turned it over in his hands, examining the interior. "Whoa, what kind of helmet is this? What's all this stuff inside?"
	"Receptors. They pick up electromagnetic activity in your brain. You might say the helmet's a mind reader, in some ways."
	The receptors were just like part of the helmet's padding: soft, yielding-no safety hazard. But Rick wasn't so sure he liked the idea of having his head wired. "What're they for?"
	"For flying a Veritech, buddy boy. You'll still handle a lot of manual controls, but there are things this baby does that it can only do through advanced control systems."
	Rick hiked himself around in his seat and leaned out to look back at Roy. "Look, I saw your guys flying, remember? What's so special about these crates that you have to wear a thinking cap just to steer one?"
	Roy told him, "The real secrets aren't supposed to go public until the politicians are through with all their blabbing, but I'll tell you this: The machine you're sitting in isn't like anything humans have ever built-it's as different from Mockingbird as Mockingbird is from a pair of shoes.
	"Because you don't just pilot a Robotech ship, Rick; you live it."

	On the main reviewing stand high above the crowd, Senator Russo stood at the speaker's rostrum, his voice echoing out over the throngs, amplified so that it reached to the farthest shores of the sea of people. Flags snapped in the wind, and the moment felt like a complete triumph.
	"This is the day we've all been looking forward to for ten years! The Robotech project has been a tremendous asset to the economy of Macross City and to the welfare of our people!"
	Captain Gloval, standing to one side with a few other dignitaries, tried to keep from yawning or simply throwing up his hands in disgust. So far, all Russo and his cronies had done was take credit for themselves and do some not-too-subtle electioneering.
	Gloval cast a critical eye at the weather and gave it his grudging approval. He was impatient to launch; various other Earth military forces were already deployed in space, patrolling and awaiting the start of the SDF-1's first space trials. But the politicos didn't care who they kept waiting or what careful timetables they spoiled when they had the spotlight.
	A liaison officer came up the steps at the rear of the reviewing stand and approached Gloval as Russo went on. "More important, though, is the fact that the technology developed here will benefit all mankind, now and in the future. And I need not mention what it means to the defense of our great planet, Earth!"
	The liaison cupped his hand to Gloval's ear and said, "Excuse me, sir: urgent message from the space monitoring station. A strange flash of light and an explosion, tremendous radiation readings, accompanied by irregularities in solar gravitational fields."
	In spite of the warmth of the day, Gloval suddenly felt cold all over. "The same sort of event occurred ten years ago. You know what happened then, don't you?"
	The aide was trying to conceal his fear, nodding. "That's when the alien ship arrived."
	Gloval assumed the icy calm of a seasoned captain. "Better check it out. Come with me."
	Gloval was descending the platform steps as Russo announced what a great honor it was to introduce the commander of SDF-1, Henry Gloval.
	For once, Russo didn't know what to say. "Come back here! You have to make a speech!" he shouted.
	Gloval never even looked around. The time for speeches was over.

	On the SDF-1 bridge, the women who were the battle fortress's heart worked furiously to make some sense of the sudden chaos around them.
	"What's going on here, anyway?" Claudia demanded, trying everything she could think of to interpret her instruments and reassert some control over the ship's systems.
	"Claudia, give me a readout!" Lisa called calmly. All around her, the bridge was a din of alarms, flashing indicators, malfunctioning controls, and overloaded computers.
	Claudia looked up from her hopeless efforts. "Every system on the ship is starting up without being turned on!"
	Unprecedented, impossible-to-interpret mechanisms had self-activated in the ship's power plant-the great, sealed engines that not even Lang had dared open. And the many different kinds of alien apparatus connected to it were doing bewildering things to the SDF-1's structure as well as its systems, making the humans helpless bystanders.
	"The defense system is activating the main gun!" Claudia reported, horrified.
	Far off at the great starship's bow, gargantuan servomotors hummed and groaned. The huge twin booms that made up the forward portion of the ship moved to either side on colossal camlike devices. The booms locked into place, looking like a fantastic tuning fork. The ship's reconstruction had the bow high up now, pointed out above the end of Macross Island's cliff line at the open sea.
	Lisa's mind raced. The main gun had never been fired; no one was even sure how powerful it was. That test was to be reserved for empty space. But if it salvoed now, the ensuing death and destruction might well be greater than that created by the ship's original crash.
	At the same time, everyone aboard could feel the supership shifting slightly on the massive keel blocks-the monolithic rests on which it lay. Warning klaxons and horns were deafening.
	The SDF-1's aiming its gun, Lisa realized. But at what target?
	"Shut down all systems!" she ordered Claudia.
	Claudia, trying the master cutoff switch several times to no effect, looked at Lisa helplessly. "It doesn't work!"
	A sudden glare from the bow lit the bridge with red-orange brilliance, throwing their flickering shadows on the bulkhead behind them.
	Around and between the forward booms, tongues of orange starflame were shooting and whirling and arcing back and forth. The fantastic energy cascade began sluicing up the booms toward their tips, sparks snapping, seemingly eager to be set free.
	And still Lisa could think of nothing she could do.
	Just then the hatch opened and Gloval hurried in so quickly that he bumped his head on the frame. He didn't spare time or his usual swearing at the people who'd refitted the largest machine ever known for not providing a little more headroom.
	"Captain, the main guns are preparing to fire!"
	Gloval assessed the situation in seconds, but Lisa could see from his expression that he was as much at a loss as she.
	"I can't control them!" Claudia told Gloval. "What'll we do?"
	Lisa absorbed a terrible lesson in that moment. Despite what they might teach in the Academy and the War College and Advanced Leadership School, sometimes there was nothing you could do.
	The energy storm around the booms had built to an Earth-shaking pitch, a noise like a million shrieking demons. Then huge eruptions of destructive energy streaked off the booms.
	The bolts streamed off into the distance, thickening into a howling torrent of annihilation, a river of starflame as high and wide as SDF-1 itself, shooting out across the city.
	Lisa expected to see everything in the volley's path consumed, including the gathered populace.
	But that didn't happen. The superbolt went straight out over the cliffs and over the ocean, turning water to vapor and roiling the swells, raising clouds of steam that wouldn't settle for hours. The shot was direct, the curve of the Earth falling away beneath it as it lanced out into space.
	And just as Lisa Hayes was registering the fact that the city still remained, intact and unharmed-that her father was down there somewhere, still alive-new information began pouring in on scopes and monitors.

	The Zentraedi heavy cruisers, closing in on the unsuspecting Earth, barely had time to realize that they were about to die. By some unimaginable level of control, the blinding shaft of energy split in two.
	The twinned beams holed each heavy cruiser through and through, along their long axes. Armor and weapons and hull, superstructure, and the rest were vaporized as the beams hit, skewering them. They expanded like overheated gas bags, skins peeling off, debris exploding outward, only to disappear, blown to nothingness, an instant later in globes of bright mass-energy conversions.
	From his command station, Breetai watched impassively, arms folded across his great chest, as the projecbeam displayed the death of the two heavy cruisers.
	"Now we know for sure: The ship is on that planet!" This time he didn't bother soliciting Exedore's advice. "All ships advance, but exercise extreme caution!"
	The Zentraedi armada took up proper formation, ships-of-the-line moving to the fore, and closed on the target world.

	Clouds of superheated air blew out across the ocean; gulls cried in the aftermath of the SDF-1's single volley.
	Gloval was at the bridge's protective bowl-its "windshield"-his face all but pressed against it, scanning through the steam and fog. He breathed a prayer of thanks that the city was unharmed.
	"Some sort of magnetic bottling," Sammie reported, focused on her work. "All the force was channeled directly out into space, except for some very marginal eddy currents."
	"We have control over all systems again, sir," Claudia announced calmly. "What happened, sir?"
	Gloval suddenly felt old-older than the ship, the island, the sea. He wasn't about to speculate aloud, not even to his trusted bridge gang, but he was just about certain he knew. And if he was right, it put the weight of a planet on his shoulders.


CHAPTER SIX
While Captain Gloval gets admittedly deserved credit for his handling of the disaster that day, male historians frequently gloss over Gloval's straightforward statement that if it weren't for the women on SDF-1's bridge, their nerve and gallantry and professionalism, the Robotech War would have been over before it had fairly begun.
Betty Greer, Post-Feminism and the Global War

The ground had stopped shaking, and the sky was clearing. The Veritech fighter stopped its trembling dance, and Rick Hunter caught his breath. The air seemed a little hotter in his lungs, but not terribly so.
	He called back to Roy in a subdued voice, "Wow. What were all those fireworks about?"
	Fireworks! Roy thought. 'Fraid not! Aloud, he said, "I dunno. I better go check. Wait here; I'll see what's goin' on."
	He put aside his flight helmet-the "thinking cap," as Rick had called it-and hiked himself up out of the fighter cockpit. If what Roy feared the most had come to pass, Rick would be as safe where he was as anywhere else. And he'd also understand why some people could spend their lives preparing for war.

	"The space monitor report's coming in," Sammie sang out. "It shows what our gun was firing at."
	"I have it here, Sammie," Lisa cut in, studying her monitors. "Two large objects, probably spacecraft, origin unknown, on Earth-approach vector, approx two hundred miles out."
	Gloval was nodding to himself without realizing it. The ship could be raised or lowered, the booms traversed for-what, a few insignificant minutes of arc? And the SDF-1 hadn't been moved, except to lift it onto the keel blocks, since it crashed. The range was incredibly long, making for a greater field of fire; but still, such a shot, such a series of events, could only come about with some forewarning, or intuition, or-we forgot that whoever built this vessel had to some extent mastered time; could, perhaps, see through it. Could see this very moment?
	"Both objects were struck dead center by the beam and were destroyed-disintegrated," Claudia said. "Orbital combat task forces are deploying for defense, with Armor One and Armor Ten-sir? Captain Gloval?"
	Sammie, Vanessa, Kim-they exchanged looks with one another as Lisa and Claudia traded facial signals. Gloval was laughing, a deep belly laugh, his shoulders shaking. Claudia and Lisa saw that they were both thinking the same thing: If Gloval, their source of strength and calm, had lost his grip, all was lost.
	"Captain, what is it?" Lisa ventured. "What are you laughing about?"
	Gloval stopped laughing, crashing his fist against the observation-bowl ledge. "It was so obvious! We should have known! A booby trap, of course!"
	Claudia and Lisa said it at the same time, "Booby trap, sir?"
	"Yes, it's one of the oldest tricks in military history! A retreating enemy leaves behind hidden explosives and such."
	He clamped his cold pipe between his teeth. "The automatic firing of the main guns means that enemies have approached close enough to be a threat to us." He drew his tobacco bag out of the breast pocket of his uniform jacket.
	"Captain Gloval!" Sammie was up out of her chair. Everyone turned to her, wondering what the new alarm was.
	"No smoking on the bridge, sir!" Sammie said. "Strictly against regulations!"
	Claudia groaned and clapped a hand to her forehead. Lisa reflected, Nothing throws Sammie.
	"I was just holding it; I wasn't going to light it," Gloval said defensively. The unreality of the situation retreated with Sammie's interruption. There were both good things and bad things about having one's bridge crew be like family.
	But doubts were past now. Gloval barked, "Hot-scramble all fighters and sound general quarters! I'm declaring a red alert!"

	Down below, the crowds milled uncertainly as helos and other aircraft veered away to report to battle stations. Suddenly, launch crews were scrambling to get Veritechs into the air. Out on the carriers, all catapults were busy, while the SDF-1's own warcraft rushed up from the ship's interior and groundside runways to establish a protective shield overhead.
	Out in the void, armored spacecruisers, human-designed vehicles incorporating some of the principles learned from Robotechnology, moved their interceptors and attack craft out of the bays and into fighting position.
	It wasn't long before the swarm of human defenders had sensor contact, then visual sighting, on the aliens; the Zentraedi wouldn't have had it any other way.
	A Scorpion interceptor pilot reported back to Armor One over the tac net, "Enemy approaching on bearing niner-zero. We are engaging. Commence firing!"
	Scorpions and Tigersharks and a dozen other types of Earthly combat spacecraft, ranging up to the mammoth Armors themselves, rushed to close with the aliens' first attack wave.
	Missiles-Stilettos and Piledrivers and Mongooseswere launched at extreme range so that all but the glows of their drives were lost to sight until the blackness blossomed with the spherical explosions characteristic of zero-g, the bursts overlapping one another, thicker than a field of dandelions.
	The Zentraedi ships-of-the-line forged through the intense fire with few losses, closing the gap in seconds. The formations broke up to lock in a fierce, pitched battle.
	The Armors launched all their missiles. Lasers, kinetic energy weapons-rail-gun autocannon and such-were the other main Terran weapons. The Zentraedi's were far superior; their warcraft simply outclassed the defenders', whose design involved fewer Robotech innovations.
	Earth's forces fought with savage determination, but the unevenness in technologies was instantly apparent.
	Aboard the alien command ship, Breetai studied the engagement solemnly in the projecbeam images and monitors, listening to his staff's relayed readouts with only a small part of his attention.
	"Very heavy resistance, sir," Exedore observed.
	"Yes," Breetai allowed. "But why are they using such primitive weapons? Our lead ships have broken through. It's unbelievable, this sacrifice they're making! Some sort of trick, no doubt."
	Exedore considered that. "Yes, it is puzzling."
	Breetai whirled on him. "It makes no sense, then? Even to you?"
	"There has to be a reason, but it's beyond me. Surely, the Robotech Masters-"
	He was interrupted by an urgent message from the tech at the threat-prioritization computers. "Commander Breetai! Two enemy cruiser-class vessels are approaching; they could be the ones who launched the missile bombardment."
	Breetai smiled, but his single eye was chilly. "Destroy them!"
	Specially designated main and secondary batteries opened fire: phased particle-beam arrays and molecular disruptors, long-range and fearsomely powerful.
	Armor Two was hit on the first volley as hundreds of spears of high-resolution blue fury ranged in on it. It tried to evade the barrage; house-size pieces of armor and superstructure were blown from it. Many of the smaller defending craft were completely disintegrated.
	Breetai, waiting for effective counterfire, lost patience. Perhaps the foes' hesitation to use reflex weaponry fit into some strange plan, but to forgo use of any advanced technology, to sacrifice troops to this kind of slaughter, was perverse.
	Incredulous, Breetai wondered if somehow this victory was going to be far easier than it had seemed when that first mighty bolt rose from Terra. "Those idiots behave as though they don't even know how to use their own weapons! Full barrage, all cannon!"
	The Zentraedi command ship cut loose again with all forward gun turrets. Armor Two was instantly holed through in a hundred places, the enemy beams penetrating it like ice picks through a cigar box.
	Hull integrity went at once, and internal gravity; hatches and seals blew, and space began sucking the atmosphere from the cruiser, tossing crew and contents around like toys. Still more hits made a sieve of the pride of the orbital defense command and destroyed its power plant. A moment later it disappeared in a horrendous outpouring of energy, while lesser ships all around it met a similar fate.

	Lisa, more pallid than ever, kept her voice even as she reported to Gloval: "Armor Two is destroyed and Armor Ten is heavily damaged, sir. Other losses extremely heavy. The Orbital Defense Forces are no longer even marginally effective. Alien fleet is closing on Earth."
	Gloval sat in his command chair, fingers steepled, chin resting on pressing thumbs. "I had hoped this moment wouldn't come in my lifetime. SDF-1 kept us from exterminating ourselves and let us achieve worldwide peace, but now it has brought a new danger down upon us. We face extinction at the hands of aliens whose power we can only guess at."
	Henry Gloval's mind ranged back across a decade to that first investigation of the wrecked SDF-1. Miracles have a price. And this one, I think, will be very, very high.
	Claudia and Lisa and the other members of the bridge crew swapped quick, worried looks.
	"I had hoped that war was a thing of the past. We all had." Gloval looked up from his distraction like a knight at the end of his prayer vigil, ready to take up a shining sword, a gleaming shield.
	"But here we go again, like it or not." He rose to his feet, shoulders back, and a vivid current of electricity that hadn't been there a moment before hummed in the air. Gloval was suddenly strong as an old oak.
	"All right. Give the order to move out!"
	"Yes, sir." Lisa relayed the command crisply. "All forces, deploy in accordance with Contingency Plan SURTUR."
	More Veritechs launched all across the island as Lisa's words reverberated to every corner of it, like the gods' final war song. "We are under attack by alien invaders in sector four-one-two. This is not a drill, I say again: This is not a drill."
	Roy Fokker, clambering into his fighter, pulling on his flight helmet, gasped, then hissed. He'd been so busy saddling up Skull Team when word came that there was trouble that he'd forgotten all about Rick!
	Then he calmed. The fighter in which Rick was sitting had been seconded from active duty for the public relations events; it wasn't as if some angry pilot would be wrestling him out of the cockpit. So Rick was as safe there as anywhere else for the time being.
	Lisa's voice rang across the airfield. Roy didn't mind it, but he couldn't help wishing it were Claudia's.
	Then Roy got back to the job at hand, settling the all-important helmet on his head. He switched on the tactical net, trying to sound casual, just about bored. The fighter-pilot tradition; dying was something you sometimes couldn't help, but losing your cool was unforgivable.
	"Well, boys, you heard her. This is the real thing." Roy practically yawned.
	The sky was filled with climbing flights of fast-moving aircraft, vectoring off to their assigned coverages. Dozens, hundreds had arisen from the carriers and the island. The flattops were making ready to stand out to sea so that the foe couldn't concentrate his attacks; that would take some time. But at least with the combat squadrons aloft, Earth wasn't as vulnerable to a single, concentrated strike.
	Lisa's voice came over Roy's flight helmet phones. "Wolf Team has cleared. Skull Team, prepare for takeoff."
	"Skull Team ready." Roy knew the men in the other parked Veritechs would be watching him as well as listening over the tac net. He gave a quick thumbs-up. "Awright, boys; this is it."
	More fighters were streaking up from the flight decks of the carriers, launched out from the waist catapults or propelled out into the air over the Hurricane-style bows.
	"Let's go," drawled Roy Fokker. Robotech engines shrilled.

	"What a disorderly arrangement!" Breetai exclaimed, studying Macross City on long-rage scanners. The populace, the military forces-they were so unbelievably concentrated! "These people must be completely ignorant of spacewar tactics!"
	The sensor image panned until an image-interpretation computer locked it in. Breetai leaned closer to the fishbowl surface that protected his command post.
	"What's this? The battle fortress! But-what's happened to it?"
	Exedore took that as leave to speak. "It appears to have been completely redesigned and rebuilt, perhaps by the inhabitants of that planet."
	Breetai set his fists on his hips. "Mere primitives couldn't possibly have captured a Robotech ship."
	Exedore fixed Breetai with his great, protruding eyes, their eerily pinpoint pupils hypnotic, mystical. "Perhaps it crashed on their planet and they managed to salvage it."
	"But what about the crew? Zor's traitors wouldn't just let these creatures have the vessel!"
	"Maybe they perished in the fighting with the Invid, or in the crash," Exedore suggested delicately. It was an answer of high probability; Breetai saw that at once, chose not to contest it, and congratulated himself on having a friend and adviser like Exedore.
	"Even so..." The commander sidestepped the discomfitting idea that the primitives were antagonists to be feared. "The ship would have been terribly damaged. And these primitives wouldn't have the technology to repair it."
	This Zentraedi arrogance of ours gets worse with every generation, Exedore thought, even as he readied his answer. Someday we may all pay for it.
	"I know, sir, but is there any other explanation? It is a Robotech vessel, and we know they have-"
	"Reflex weaponry!"
	"Precisely. And this makes them very dangerous. So we must exercise extreme caution."
	Breetai turned back to the projecbeam displays, uttering a feral growl. The instruments and transparent bowl rang with it.
	A command center coordinator's voice came up over the intercom. "Target pinpointed, Commander. We're launching fighters!"
	Breetai and Exedore contemplated the image of the dimensional fortress.


CHAPTER SEVEN
If there exists on record a stranger familiarization flight than Rick Hunter's VT shakedown, I have been unable to find it.
Zachary Foxx, Jr.,VT: the Men and the Mecha

Zentraedi combat ships of every kind cut down through Earth's atmosphere in tight, well-maintained formations, plunging at Macross Island and its surrounding waters. The alien pilots were confident, swelled with their swift and smashing victory against the target world's outer defenses.
	The bright streaks of their plummeting drives seemed as numerous as raindrops. They were primed for easy kills and a swift capture of the battle fortress that had to be captured whole and undamaged, as Breetai had ordered. The invaders had had it pretty much their own way so far.
	All at once that changed...and the rout suddenly became a battle again.
	Protective covers had been raised from the SDF-1's missile racks; almost all incoming ordnance was intercepted and exploded in midair. Fighters of types the Zentraedi hadn't encountered before boiled up to lock in combat with them. And the elite warrior race found out, to their extreme unhappiness, that the primitives had indeed puzzled out quite a bit of Robotechnology.
	In Earth's slaughterhouse skies, the dying began again.

	Snoozing comfortably, Rick Hunter began to rouse a bit. If the weather had turned so bad-there was constant thunder-maybe he ought to make sure all the windows were shut. Only, he didn't seem to remember where he was. Besides, there was this bothersome voice in his ear; it had the ring of authority, and that was something that never failed to antagonize him.
	"This is SDF-1 control calling VT one-zero-two. You down there, on the exhibition grounds! We're on combat alert! Why haven't you taken off?" Lisa Hayes had a million other things to do; prodding slowpoke fighter jocks was the last problem she needed, and it made her mad to have to take time she couldn't spare to do it.
	Rick sighed and stretched, then tilted the strange flight helmet back on his head, leaning forward and blinking groggily at one of the cockpit's tiny display screens. A young woman's face peered angrily out of it: pale and intense, impatient. Rick Hunter was used to being regarded as something pretty special, particularly by the opposite sex; he therefore decided at once that whoever she was, she had a pinched and grumpy look.
	"You don't mean me, do you, lady?" But just then he became aware of distant explosions-not thunder but the reports of incoming fire. And there were blazes in the city, and smoke and damage. Crewpeople were rushing everywhere, fueling and arming and guiding planes, getting them airborne. Meanwhile, up in the air...
	What were all those intertangled contrails and afterburner glows and explosions and tracers?
	"Huh? What?" Rick Hunter asked himself weakly. People were scrambling around the plane in which he sat, readying it.
	"Don't waste any more time!" the pale face in the screen scolded. "Take off immediately and join your wingman! The fighter squadron's outnumbered as it is!"
	Rick gritted his teeth. "What d'you mean take off? The runway's demolished!"
	And so it was, one of the primary Zentraedi targets, one of the few to be hit effectively. The young woman on the screen appeared to be counting to control her temper.
	"Runway two is operable. You're fully armed, and your engines will overheat very quickly at high standby, so prepare for immediate takeoff!"
	Now that she mentioned it, he could hear the highpitched whine of an engine, could feel it through his seat, but it was not like any he'd ever heard before-and Rick Hunter had heard 'em all.
	Rick leaned out of the cockpit for a look. Sure enough, the Veritech was armed to the teeth, external hardpoints and pylons loaded with ordnance, the jet also carrying odd pods that he couldn't quite figure out.
	Then a ground crewman was next to him, standing on the boarding ladder. "All set, sir! Good hunting!" The man did something or other, and the cockpit canopy descended.
	Rick was to admit later that that would have been a very good time to come clean and admit that he had no idea what was going on, that he was a noncombatant and needed to be shown to a shelter. But that would have entailed admitting that he didn't know how to fly the aircraft in which he was sitting, that he couldn't. That he was, in short, nothing but a bystander, a hick, just like the people who gawked up at him at the flying circus.
	And when you regard yourself as the greatest pilot in the world, an admission like that is extremely difficult. Besides, there was that irritating female on the screen.
	"Well, okay. If you insist."
	Rick drew a deep breath, took the controls, and gave himself a quick run-through, remembering all the stuff Roy had told him. He waggled rudders and played around for a second, then increased throttle, taxied out, and stood the fighter nearly on its tail, like a meteor in reverse.
	A late Zentraedi missile blew a hole the size of a city block where he'd been parked a few seconds before. He was hoping the ground crews had all gotten clear as the Veritech responded to his demands for speed.
	Wow! The proverbial bat.
	He adjusted wing sweep and camber and angle of attack, going ballistic, wingtips leaving wispy lines of contrail like spider's thread. And though he would never have admitted it, he was more than a little intimidated. He was riding a rocket.
	He punched a hole in a cloud, then found himself in the middle of a vast, swirling gladiatoral combat, the biggest dogfight since the close of what they called WWII.
	"Whoa-ooooooo!"
	Robotech craft were everywhere, and planes of some design that made no sense to Rick; not aerodynamic but devilishly fast and mounting unprecedented firepower. Explosions flowered all around him, rocking the ship, just as a lazy, familiar voice came over the tac net.
	"Skull Leader to Veritech squadron. Intercept new invader flights at zone four-two-eight. Traffic's pretty heavy out here, boys, so break formation, but don't leave your wingman!"
	"Roy!" He sounded short of breath. Rick looked up, open-mouthed, as a Veritech flying the Jolly Roger insignia bagged an alien recon craft shaped something like a flying bottle.
	Debris was raining everywhere; pilots from both sides screamed in agony as they were blown to oblivion up where sky met space.
	And, because dogfighting was so incredibly demanding physically, the tac net was loud with gasps and grunting. Dogfighters trained themselves to lock the muscles of their lower bodies-turn their legs to iron; suck their gut to their spine. Anything to keep the blood up high in the head. Up in the brain, where it was needed even more than in the heart.
	The pressure on the pilots' diaphragms was fearsome; they could draw only short, hard-won breaths, if they were in high-g maneuvers.
	The tac net sounded like eight or ten wrestling teams had been paired off for the championship.
	And the trophy was Earth.

	"Hey, Fokker! Wouldja mind telling me what's going on around here?"
	Roy had just finished dusting a bogie off Skull Eight's tail. He switched a communications screen over to ship-to-ship and was, he admitted, not all that surprised to see Rick Hunter's face.
	"How's it feel to be a fighter pilot?"
	"What're you talkin' about, Big Brother? I'm not a fighter pilot; in fact, I-uhhhh!"
	That last, as a wash of light came through Rick's canopy, and Roy's screen dissolved into a storm of distortion. There had been explosions just before the cutoff; in fighter jocks' lingo: he tuned out. Tuning out was terminal.
	But Roy cut in maximum thrust, checking his situation displays, heading for his friend's location. "Hold on, Rick; I'm coming."
	The Veritech's thrust pushed him back, deep into his seat. Roy felt tremendous relief when he sighted VT one-two-zero flying level and unharmed.
	Roy caught up and fell in on Rick's wingtip. "You weren't hit; it was just a close one. You all right?" The alien that had come so close to nailing Rick was coming around for another try.
	"Whew! Yeah, I'm okay," Rick decided.
	Roy moved into the lead just a bit. The enemy fighter was closing fast. "Combat flying's scary for everyone first time out," he said. "You'll get used to it, though; it's not that much different from the good old days at the flying circus."
	So saying, Roy thumbed the trigger on his control stick and sent two air-to-air Stilettos zooming to score direct hits on the invader and blow it to flaming bits.
	"Yeah, but I never got shot at in the circus, Roy." Funny, but now the flying circus seemed like another life, a million years ago.
	"You'll get used to it. Just tag along with me and we'll start your on-the-job training-if you can keep up with me."
	The old smirk was back on Rick's face. "If? I'll do my best not to leave you in my backwash!"
	"Let's go get 'em, Little Brother." Roy increased airspeed, beginning a climb, wings folding back for high-speed dogfighting. Out of nowhere, an enemy fighter came in at Rick from six o'clock high, chopping at him with energy bolts.
	He let out a cry as he began to lose control, the fighter E shaken and bounced by the near misses.
	"Climb and bank!" Roy called out, trying desperately to bring his ship around. "Rick!" He himself was dodging Zentraedi cannon fire a moment later. With Rick's ship out of control and nosediving in a spin, the Zentraedi had broken off his attack and turned on the Skull Team leader. The two fighters joined in a vicious duel.
	Rick tried everything he'd ever learned but couldn't regain control of the Veritech. "I think I've had it, Roy. I'm getting no response from the controls at all!" Macross Island pinwheeled up at him.
	Just then a voice he recognized came up over the net. "This is SDF-1 control calling VT one-two-zero. Pull out! You're diving straight at us!"
	"Lady, don't you think I'd like to? But all the controls have lost power."
	"Have you tried switching to configuration B?" Lisa Hayes demanded.
	"Huh? B? What're you talking about?"
	"You don't know?" This one must've really lost it-complete panic! "Listen, pulled down the control marked B on the left side of your instrument panel."
	The ground was very near. Rick, dizzy and almost unconscious from the g forces, somehow guided his hand to the knob in question, having a little trouble sorting it out from an identical one next to it marked G, moving it down in its slot.
	The Veritech abruptly slowed in its tailspin, stabilizing, beginning to level off. At the same time, Rick could feel the entire ship start to shudder and shift, its aerodynamics changing in some way that he couldn't comprehend. He could feel vibrations, as if the fighter was-changing.
	"What's it doing?" The fighter was still descending, the streets of Macross City looming up before the canopy. Rick had been a pilot long enough to know that since its flight characteristics had changed so dramatically, there was no other answer except that the shape of the Veritech had somehow altered.
	What he didn't realize, and couldn't see from the cockpit, was that the ship had begun undergoing a process Doctor Lang had dubbed mechamorphosis. It was no longer configured like a conventional fighter but had, instead, gone to Guardian-G-mode, on its way to B.
	In this transitional state it resembled a great metal bird of prey, an eagle, with sturdy metal legs stretched to set down and wings deployed, humanlike arms and hands outstretched.
	But before Rick could figure out what had happened or the fighter could complete the shift to B, the Veritech crashed into the upper floors of an office building at an intersection in Macross City.
	Fortunately, the alert had the population indoors or underground in the sprawling shelter system, and so no one was killed. The Guardian carved a path of devastation through the upper stories of an entire block, its fantastically strong armor and construction resisting damage.
	Bricks, concrete, and girders flew in all directions; clouds of plaster went up like a dust storm. Signs crashed down, and broken plumbing gushed; severed power lines spat and snapped. The Guardian's engines cut out as the machine became aware of its situation and reacted to emergency programming.
	Rick Hunter could still feel the plane shifting, changing, all around him. In fact, in some way he couldn't figure out, he could sense it-could actually feel it.
	Rick sat where he was, realizing that he didn't know how to eject, even if the system was a "zero-zero" type that would let him survive a standstill ground-level ejection, which was far from the case.
	It felt as if the crazy Robotech fighter was coming to a stop; he readied himself for a quick escape, not wishing to be in the neighborhood if a few tons of highly volatile jet fuel suddenly took a notion to catch fire. But the Robotech ship had one last surprise for him; the relatively smooth slide became a lurch as the plane snagged on some final obstruction. The fighter heaved, and Rick's helmeted head slammed into the instrument panel.
	If he hadn't been wearing the flight helmet, it would have been the end. As it was, he saw stars and nearly lost consciousness.
	But the Veritech was unhurt. With a creaking of girders and the racket of tons of rubble being moved, the machine began to extricate itself. The mechamorphosis to B mode was complete, and the fighter was now a Battloid.
	It looked for all the world like a man in armor, a supertechnological knight sixty feet tall. The electric gatling gun that had been pod-mounted under the Veritech's belly was now aligned along its right arm, the giant right hand gripping it like an outlandish rifle.
	The cockpit section was unrecognizable, now incorporated in the turretlike "helmet," the Battloid's head. Its visor swung this way and that, taking in the situation, seeing the explosions of the dogfight continuing high above.
	The Battloid knew the enemy was there; it was ready to do what it had been designed to do. It awaited orders.
	Rick shook his head groggily. "What d'ya know? I'm alive!" Then he saw that something was wrong with his perspective-that he was high above the street, that there were things about Robotech too astounding to believe. He saw the distant air engagement too.
	Somehow Rick knew, deep down, that life was never going to be the way it had been fifteen minutes ago. Things had changed forever.


CHAPTER EIGHT
Dear Diary,
Launch day's really been fun, even though Jason's making himself a bit of a pest. I met a couple of really dreamy guys, pilots, I guess-a very tall blond one and a cute little darkhaired one.
I'm going back out this evening to sing at the municipal center picnic. Maybe they'll be there! I might-hey! I think something's going on outside. More later.
From the diary of Lynn-Minmei

In SDF-1's bridge, Vanessa studied her screens and gave Gloval a concise report. "Twenty-four unidentfied objects are descending from space, projected landing point twenty to thirty miles west of Macross Island, sir. They're definitely not ours."
	"Why didn't we detect them before?"
	Vanessa looked to the captain, adjusting her big aviator style glasses. "When the main guns fired, they sapped so much power, our radars malfunctioned."
	Gloval reflected on that. "That first wave of attack ships-it was just a decoy. Very clever strategy. Lisa! Recall Lieutenant Commander Fokker's team immediately!"
	Lisa, studying her data displays, said, "They're still engaged in combat with the first attack wave, sir. I doubt they can break away without suffering heavy losses."
	Gloval nodded stiffly. "I understand. Thank you."
	Vanessa updated, "The unidentified crafts have landed in the ocean twenty-five miles west of us. They seem to have submerged, sir."
	Gloval could no longer put off giving Lisa the unpleasant command. "Call Prometheus and order them to send out reconnaissance choppers."
	"I already have them awaiting your go-ahead, sir. They'll be on station in five minutes."
	"Mind reader," Gloval growled, though there was real fondness in his voice.
	"Yes, sir," Lisa said, cheeks coloring a bit.
	There was only a moment in which to be relieved that Gloval wasn't rankled at her for anticipating him; those recon helicopters racing to confront the new alien arrivals were quite capable in their own way, but they weren't Robotech ships. And that could be very bad for the helo crews.

	People had crept forth, very hesitantly, to gawk up at the towering knightlike figure that had been VT one-two-zero. The Battloid stood straddle-legged in the middle of the street. As pieces of sheetrock fell from its shoulders and bits of rubble rained around it, it appeared as if it were waiting for a trumpet to sound the call to arms. It took a few faltering steps, nearly toppling over.
	"What is that?" one man breathed.
	"A giant robot!" a second misguessed.
	"Could be an alien invader!" a third ventured. There were already a thousand rumors abroad as to exactly what had happened to Macross Island and to the human race in general.
	A few yards away, Lynn-Minmei crouched with her uncle and aunt in the doorway of their restaurant, the White Dragon, unsure what to do. Jason had been outside playing somewhere when the chaos began, and there was no sign of him.
	"It's stopped moving; it's just standing there now," Minmei said, looking up at it. She got ready to make a dash, to go look for her cousin.
	Suddenly a small figure in bib overalls and yellow sweatshirt dashed out from behind a crumpled trailer, passing by the metal fighting machine's feet, close enough to touch them.
	"Wow! Hey, Minmei! Come lookit what's out here! An honest-to-goodness giant robot!"
	She caught him up in a hug, as relieved as her Uncle Max and Aunt Lena were. "Oh, Jason! What if that thing had stepped on you?"
	Jason pushed her away with the unconcern of the very young. "Aw, I can take care of myself." Then he broke loose, heading for the stairs, a compact little whirlwind.
	"I want to get a good look at that thing! C'mon; we'll go upstairs and look out the window!"
	Minmei hurried after. She yelled, "Jason, wait for me!" as her Aunt Lena called, "Don't let him fall out the window!" then went back to trying to figure out what to do with the shambles that had been a thriving business only minutes before.

	The two Barracuda naval attack helicopters from Prometheus approached watchfully, encountering only calm sea.
	"This is PHP two-zero-two," the flight leader radioed. "We're approaching target area. Negative sightings of alien craft so far."
	Lisa's reply came after a burst of static. "Roger that, PHP two-zero-two. Maintain maximum surveillance; bogies are suspected to be submerged. Prepare to deploy sonobuoys."
	Her transmission was just ending as the blue water broke for one, then another, then half a dozen rounded shapes. They bobbed up, shedding water, bulbous and gleaming metallically, with odd projections-tubes-suggesting old-fashioned magnetic mines.
	The floating objects turned, the tubes aligning and sighting. All at once they spat lines of dazzling brilliance up at the Barracudas. More and more of the rounded shapes bobbed to the surface, joining in the barrage.
	The flight leader barely blurted out, "We're being fired upon!" when the crisscrossing beams found the second chopper and blew it to pieces in midair.
	"Let's get out of here!" the leader screamed, firing a missile and preparing to run even as the beams converged on his ship. The chopper became a fireball. The pilot's scream was cut off in midtransmission.
	Back on the bridge, Lisa reported woodenly, "They're gone, sir."
	Gloval glared out the forward viewport. "And here I am with an untested ship, an inexperienced crew-" And very little time to make my decisions.
	The hatch slid open, and Russo strode onto the bridge, puffing on his cigar and clutching his expensive lapel, seemingly in control. But he was pale and sweating; Lisa could see that and smell it. Under the hail-fellow-well-met exterior, the senator was so frightened that he was in danger of passing out.
	"Well, Captain, it's lucky for us we got this ship finished in time to fight off the invaders. When d' you take off?"
	The curious timing had occurred to Gloval, too-that the aliens should arrive at this very moment. His own conclusion was that the final activation of the SDF-1's huge, mysterious sealed power plant had somehow drawn the invaders. But he had no time to think about that now.
	In answer to Russo's question, he simply hmphhed.
	Russo's eyebrows beetled. "You are ready, aren't you? Why haven't you taken off? What are you waiting for?" He glared up at the captain.
	Gloval's upper lip curled. "You must think I'm out of my mind. I can't take this ship into combat with a crew of raw recruits who've never been in space before! What's more, this ship hasn't even been tested yet; we don't even know if it'll fly."
	His commitment to his oath of service made him add, "If you order me to take SDF-1 up, I'll obey. But it'll be against my better judgment."
	Claudia and Lisa were standing rigidly at their stations, pretending to take no notice. But Sammie turned to Kim and whispered, "D'you think he's serious?"
	"I think he means it." Kim nodded after a moment's thought.
	Sammie gave a toss of her long mane of wheat-colored hair. "Wow," she whispered with a tremble.
	"I am ordering you to take off, Captain. Understand?" Russo was saying.
	Kim frowned, "What's the matter, Sammie? I thought you wanted to go into space."
	Sammie's eyes were big, frightened. "I do... I think."
	But all of a sudden, it's real!
	"Let it be your responsibility, then," Gloval came back to Russo, "because I'm telling you, it could be suicide. We don't understand half of SDF-1's systemry yet!"
	Russo's lip was quivering, but he bristled, "It sounds to me like you're saying you've no confidence in your crew. Is that what you're telling me, Gloval?"
	Gloval looked quickly to Lisa and Claudia, who turned back to their duties to avoid being caught watching the confrontation. "I didn't say that."
	"Then what are you saying? Earth has spent untold resources on this Robotech ship, and I don't want to see it destroyed on the ground."
	"Senator-"
	"No, Captain! No more excuses; take off!"
	"Very well. As ranking official, you may take that seat over there. We'll be under way in a few moments."
	Russo almost swallowed his cigar. Claudia had to stifle her snigger. "What?!" the senator exploded. "No! That is, I have too many other things to do on the ground. You're not to take off until I've left this ship, is that clear?" The terror in his voice was unmistakable.
	"Whatever you say, Senator." Gloval showed a thin smile.
	Pulling himself together, Russo beat a hasty retreat. To the bridge gang he said, "Well, girls, we're all depending on you. So don't let us down!" The hatch closed behind him.
	Gloval stared at the hatch. We aren't ready for combat. We just aren't ready!

	Minmei joined Jason at the top-story window. They were gazing up at the immobile war machine from about the height of its waist. The titanic chest had been holed by enemy fire.
"Wow, look how big it is!" the boy squealed with delight.
	"Be careful, Jason," Minmei scolded, holding him back so he wouldn't climb out onto the ledge.
	"I wonder where it came from?" Jason yelled happily.
	As they watched, the cyclopean head tilted far forward as heavy servomechanisms hummed, leaving the torso uppermost.
	Down in the street, people were exclaiming, "Look! It moved its head!" "It just fell out of the sky and wiped out those buildings!" "It's as big as a building itself!"
	"See? Its back opened up!" Jason cried, pointing. Minmei gasped. A co-pilot's seat rose on a support pillar, lifted into sight by some inner mechanism. It was empty.
	Jason's brows came together. "There's nobody running it!" Machinery whirred again, and the post moved higher, raising the first seat to reveal a second mounted below it. In that seat was Rick Hunter.
	Getting out of his seat, looking down, Rick ignored the furor of the crowd below. "What's going on here? What's happened to me?"
	"The pilot looks confused," Jason commented; he'd been hoping for someone a little more impressive.
	"Maybe he was injured in the crash," Minmei suggested. But something about the young man was familiar.
	"I must be seeing things," Rick muttered. "This used to be a fighter plane."
	He spotted Minmei and Jason. He recalled the girl from somewhere but couldn't take time to try to place her just now.
	"Excuse me, but, uh, what is this?" He indicated the Veritech. "I mean, what does it look like to you?"
	Minmei took a moment to absorb the question. "Some kind of robot, I think."
	"Oh, great," Rick sighed, relieved. "When I got into this thing, it was an aircraft. I thought I'd gone nuts."
	"A convertible airplane?" Minmei and Jason both echoed. "You must be joking," Minmei added. She thought he wasn't bad-looking, however, and wondered how old he was. Not much older than she was, she judged.
	"I'm as puzzled as anybody about it."
	"You're kidding!" she said. "You're the pilot and you don't even know what it is?"
	"No, I'm not a military pilot. I'm just-just an amateur!" Satisfied, Roy? "It's all, um, a big mistake. I'm not supposed to have it."
	"An enemy spy!" Jason squawked.
	Minmei gave him a little shake to quiet him. "Jason!"
	"Spy?" Rick yelped. "Look, this was the army's idea, not mine!" He shook his head, looking down at the Battloid. "Look at all the damage!"
	Helicopters were approaching from the distance, and traffic was venturing forth again. "Will you have to pay for it?" Minmei wondered.
	Rick's stomach felt like it was doing somersaults. "Me? I hope not." A truck was insistently blowing its horn down by the Battloid's automobile-size feet. "What?" he yelled angrily.
	The driver hollered up, "Get that thing off the road! I have a truckload of military supplies to deliver and I'm in a hurry, Mac! Now, move it!"
	Rick stood up, surrendering to the inevitable. "I don't know how it works, but I'll try."
	"Good luck!" Minmei called. She'd decided he was kind of cute.
	"Thanks." She has a real nice smile. He'd have to remember his way back here.
	"And please be careful."
	He gave her a broad grin and a wave. "Sure. I will." He got back to his seat. As it lowered, he tried to think of something else to say but could only come up with, "So long!"
	"I hope I see you again sometime!" Minmei called.
	Back in the cockpit, Rick told himself, "Well, all I can do is throw a few switches and hope for the best, I guess." The giant head swung back into place.
	Taking the control grips, he panned the screen before him. "At least I can see where I'm going. If I can just figure out how to get there."
	But as the Battloid stirred, preparing to walk, he felt a distinct lack of confidence, something he was unused to. The machine seemed to want more of him than the mere pushing of buttons.
	The Battloid lifted its foot to step, lost balance when it brought it too high, and swayed, about to topple over backward. The crowd that had gathered to stare at the Battloid panicked and began to bolt, yelling and milling. Rick howled in dismay.
	Just as the war machine was about to crash into the buildings behind it, back thrusters flared for a quick, intense burn. The Battloid was pushed back to a precarious balance. Then it went off kilter in the opposite direction, staggering toward the little balcony over the White Dragon from which Minmei and Jason watched, open-mouthed.
	The two saw that it wasn't going to stop; with wails of fright, they turned and fled just as the Battloid crashed through the wall where they'd been standing, collapsing that whole portion of the building. It came to rest like a drunk who'd passed out across a bar.
	Minmei coughed and spat out plaster, checking Jason, whom she'd shielded under her as she went down. "Please tell me you're okay!"
	"I am!" Jason said brightly.
	Rick's voice came over the Battloid's PA system. "Are you two all right in there?"
	"Yes!" Minmei yelled.
	In the cockpit, Rick tilted his helmet back to wipe his brow. "Thank goodness!" He couldn't bear the thought of hurting an innocent bystander.
	Besides, the girl was real cute.


CHAPTER NINE
Clearly, as Gloval said, SDF-1 was in part a booby trap. He was too busy to think of it, and I wasn't a trained military man, so it didn't occur to us until it was too late that that particular, sword might cut both ways.
Dr. Enid Lang, Notes on Launch Day

The moment came in a way no one had forseen even an hour before; SDF-1, all running lights flashing, prepared to launch for the first time.
	"Gravity control systems through bulkhead forty-eight are green light," Sammie relayed to engineering. "Please confirm, over."
	From all over the ship the reports came in; the messages went to every corner of it. It was no longer a question of waiting for a perfect checklist; the dimensional fortress was going-now.
	"Priority one transmission from HQ, Captain Gloval," Vanessa announced. "Armor One has completed recovery procedures and is departing now to join Armor Ten at Rendezvous Point Charlie."
	Gloval grunted acknowledgment and added, "Thank you, Vanessa. Claudia, check the reflex furnace and see if we've recovered full power yet."
	Claudia studied her equipment, listened to a brief intercom message, and said, "Ready condition on furnace power, sir."
	Once more, Gloval wondered about those enormous, enigmatic, and unprecedentedly powerful engines. "Reflex power" was a term Lang used; even his closest assistants scratched their heads when Lang scribbled equations and tried to explain why he called it that and what he thought was going on inside the power plant.
	Not that it mattered; all Gloval wanted was for his ship to function, to be battleworthy, for however long it took. A few days-perhaps.
	Or a day. Just give me one day!
	"Very good. Antigravity: full-thrust."
	"Aye aye, sir," Kim sang out. "Full thrust." The mountainous bulk of the SDF-1 trembled and was somehow alive under them. The bridge gang went through individual countdowns and checklists, their voices and those from the intercom overlapping.
	Then Claudia's rang out clear as an angel's through the ship, and over Macross Island. "Ten... niner... eight..."
	A hundred thousand thoughts and fears and prayers hovered over the island, almost a tangible force in themselves.
	... two... one..."
	"Full power," Gloval ordered. "Activate the antigravity control system."
	The entire city vibrated slightly, as the hundreds of thousands of tons of SDF-1 rose from the ship's Gibraltarlike keel blocks; their unique absorption system adjusted to the sudden unburdening.
	The ship rose smoothly, casting its stupendous shadow across the island. "The gyroscope is level, sir," Lisa reported tersely.
	Gloval eased back in his chair, hoping it was a good omen. "Well done."
	He'd barely said it when a tremor ran through the great ship. Below, he could see the upper-hull/flight deck actually quake.
	SDF-1 lurched, then listed hard to port, throwing people from their feet. There was a lot of yelling; the intercom was bedlam.
	"What in blazes is going on?" Gloval thundered, grasping the arms of his chair to keep from being thrown across the compartment. "Trim the pitch attitude immediately!"
	"It must be the gyroscope," Claudia said, struggling to stay at her station.
	"No, look!" Lisa was pointing out at the upper-hull/flight deck.
	Bulges had appeared, like volcanic domes being thrust up against the hardest armor ever developed; the tearing of metal sounded through the SDF-1 like the death throes of dinosaurs.
	The convexities of armor broke open like overripe fruit, yielding complex cylinders of advanced-design systemry. The cylinders, each the size of a railroad tank car, rose majestically into the air, trailing power leads and torn support frameworks.
	"The gravity pods are breaking away!"
	Gloval rushed up behind Lisa to see for himself. "What is it? Oh, no! They're tearing away from the ship instead of lifting it!"
	Everywhere it was the same; the physics of the disaster was inflexible. Dozens of gravity pods tore lose, continuing their ascent as they'd been charged to do, breaking their way through any structure in their path (or, to put it another way, conventional gravity was dragging the SDF-1 down around them).
	"This can't be happening!" Gloval breathed, not so much distraught by the probable outcome the disaster would mean for himself and his command as by the utter catastrophe it meant for Earth.
	"The ship is losing altitude, Captain!" Lisa cried.
	Gloval groaned. "Please! Tell me I'm dreaming this!"
	"Pardon, sir?" Lisa said.
	He hadn't realized he'd spoken aloud. "It's a nightmare."
	SDF-1 fell faster, its few operating thrusters unequal to the task of easing it down. All through the ship, people knew that calamity had occurred and waited with varying attitudes to find out what their fate would be.
	With alarms hooting and wailing, the ship crashed back onto its keel blocks. Under the velocity of even a cushioned fall, the titanic weight made the monolithic blocks crack, give way, and collapse or drive themselves down into the Earth.
	But the impact-absorption systems built into them saved the ship from greater damage and spared lives, before the blocks were overloaded and defeated. SDF-1 settled down with its hull against the rubble and soil and hardtop, but the ship's back hadn't been broken or its hull breached.
	The bridge wasn't so different from any other section: outcries and screams and incoherent yelling. In moments, the noise died away and military discipline reasserted itself. SDF-1 rested at a 15-degree list to port.
	"Is anyone hurt?" Gloval's voice cut through the confusion. Everyone else chimed in that they were uninjured, then shut up; the captain's voice must be heard, uninterrupted, at a time like this; and though the bridge gang was untried in space, they knew their duty and they knew their orders.
	Gloval strode back toward his seat. "I want a full damage report. Give me a computer readout on every system onboard!" The SDF-1 was a fish in a barrel for the time being; he had only minutes in which to act.
	"Yessir!" the five voices responded as one, giving the words a choral sound.
	Gloval looked infinitely tired. "They'll never let me forget this."
	"You shouldn't blame yourself for this, sir," Lisa said softly.
	Gloval lowered himself into his chair, shaking his head to contradict Lisa.
	"I am the captain," he said simply.

	In the street outside the White Dragon, a very peculiar salvage operation was in progress.
	The Battloid had been rigged with cables attached to two seafood delivery trucks. The civilian populace had always been sympathetic to the military's mission, and by now news broadcasts had made it apparent to most people that a new and awful war had begun and that, like it or not, everyone was a part of that war for the time being. So the truckers and other bystanders were doing their best to get the Battloid righted.
	The big box jobs gunned their engines, tires spinning and squealing, laying down large black patches of rubber and raising reeking clouds of smoke. The trucks backfired, and their engines labored.
	Slowly, the armored mechamorph came away from its resting place, toward a vertical position. Rick, sweating over his controls, sat with hands hovering over them, hesitant to court further misfortune by interfering.
	The Battloid was standing again-for the moment. It reached the vertical and slowly began to tilt the other way. Volunteer helpers and onlookers let out a wide assortment of exclamations and yowls and scurried for safety; the drivers leapt from the cabs of their trucks and hotfooted it.
	Minmei and Jason hugged each other and shouted, "Oh, no!" at the same instant.
	Rick grabbed for the controls desperately. At the very least, he had to try to keep this insane metal berserker from doing more damage to the restaurant.
	The Battloid lurched, trying to find its balance. Rick tried his best but couldn't seem to do anything right. Again, it was as if the machine was waiting for him to do something more than merely manipulate controls.
	The Battloid took a lurching step, and its legs became entangled in the cables; it twirled clumsily and fell backward toward the opposite side of the street, its back crashing against an empty building that had taken heavy damage from the enemy barrage.
	It sank down, crunching the building, until it came to rest with its backside halfway to the street, heels dug into the pavement. When Rick was sure the machine was stable for the time being. He wiped his brow again. "Oh, why me? How come these things don't happen to other people?"

	The triumphant Veritech squadron flew in tight formation, making its way back to the Prometheus and the dimensional fortress.
	Roy was in the lead spot, of course. "This is Skull Leader, Veritech squadron, to SDF-1. Am returning to base. We have met the enemy and pretty much cleaned their clocks. They've withdrawn from Earth's atmosphere."
	Lisa's face was on the display screen. "Commendable work, Commander Fokker, I'll-"
	She was abruptly moved out of the way by Claudia, who said "Let me talk to him! Roy, how many of them did you shoot down?"
	"Only ten this time," he said nonchalantly. But the dogfight would be a legend by that night, the hardest rat-racing he'd ever seen. Every millisecond was going to be analyzed and refought a hundred times among the flying officers.
	"You're slipping, Roy," Claudia told him, but her tone wasn't critical at all.
	"Well, don't worry, Claudia; I'll make it up." Something tells me I'm going to get plenty of opportunities! "Do you have any word on the VT one-zero-two?"
	Lisa crowded back onto the screen. "That section-eight case! He landed in Macross City in a Battloid, and he's doing more damage than the invaders."
	Roy laughed. "Thanks, Lisa."
	"Who is he? He's not registered as a fighter pilot."
	"Don't worry; I know him."
	"Well, he sure needs help." Lisa scowled.
	"I'd better go check on him." Roy switched to the tic net. "This is Skull Leader to group. You guys head on back to Prometheus. I've got some business to take care of in town. Captain Kramer, you take 'em home."
	"Will do, boss."
	Roy peeled off from the formation and, increasing his wings' sweep for higher speed, plummeted for Macross City. "I should've known better than to leave him alone," he muttered.
	Even in a city that had known a peppering of energy bolts and alien rockets, it wasn't too hard to spot the mess made by an out-of-control Battloid. "Aha! That you, Rick, old son?"
	The war machine was resting against a building. "Hi, Roy! It's me!"
	"Had a busy day down there, huh?"
	Rick sighed. "You might say that, Big Brother."
	People in the streets spotted the approaching aircraft. The skull insignia was well known; but things had a way of being unexpectedly dangerous today, and nobody was up for taking any more chances.
	Everybody sprinted for cover again. Roy switched his ship to Guardian mode for the descent-the mechanoid/eagle configuration that allowed more control in the tight quarters of a city street. It settled in on the bright blue flare of its foot thrusters, chain-gun cradled in its right arm.
	In another moment Roy's ship had mechamorphosed to Battloid. Its shoulder structure gave it a look of immense brute power, like a football player. Rick felt like rubbing his eyes. "I must be dreaming this; I don't believe it!"
	Jason, crouched with Minmei behind a fallen cornice, yelped, "That airplane became a robot too!"
	"Amazing!" Minmei murmured. It was all so strange and almost magical-it made her wonder what the young pilot's name was.
	"A few small repairs and you can take that Battloid back into action," Roy said blithely.
	"What're you talking about?" Rick yelled over the net. "I don't even know what this thing is, and if you think I'm qualified to operate it, just take a good look around the neighborhood!"
	But he watched his screen in utter fascination as Roy's war machine shifted its weapon from its right arm, drew out a long, thick band as sturdy as a heavy-cargo sling, and settled the weapon over its left shoulder, all as casually as an infantryman going to sling-arms.
	Rick gaped. No control system in the world could do that. Maybe a battery of computers, if the sequence was worked out precisely in advance. But what Roy had done had more of an on-the-spot look to it.
	It brought to mind what Roy had told Rick about the Robotech flight helmet-the thinking cap: "You don't just pilot a Robotech ship; you live it."
	"If you can fly a jet, you can operate a Battloid," Roy began. "I'll tell you what to do. Gross movements are initiated by manuals-the legs are guided by your foot pedals, for instance."
	"Which foot pedals, Roy? I've got about fifty controls in here!"
	"Fifty-seven, if you want to get technical. But that's not the important part. Just button up and listen; I'll explain while I'm making repairs."
	The skull-insignia Battloid extruded metal tentacles, tool-servos, waldos, and a host of other advanced repair apparatus. In moments the one Robotech war machine was repairing the other. Welding sparks jumped, and damaged components were replaced.
	"The secret's that helmet," Roy said. "You generate general movements or sequences with your controls, but the Robotechnology takes its real guidance straight from your thoughts. You've got to think your ship through the things you want it to do."
	Rick couldn't help being skeptical in spite of everything he'd seen. "Now you're gonna tell me these junk heaps are alive?"
	"Close enough for me," Roy said noncommittally, "although you're going to have to make up your own mind about that. We still don't understand the power source-the same power source that runs SDF-1 but we know that, somehow, it's not just a-a blind physical process. It's involved with life forces somehow; with awareness-with mind, if I'm not getting too fancy for you."
	"I think you're bucking for a medical discharge, mental category."
	Roy chuckled. "See for yourself. Just pay attention and I'll tell you how it's done."


CHAPTER TEN
When it comes to testing new aircraft or determining maximum performance, pilots like to talk about "pushing the envelope."
They're talking about a two-dimensional model: the bottom is zero altitude, the ground; the left is zero speed; the top is max altitude; and the right, maximum velocity, of course. So, the pilots are pushing that upper-right-hand corner of the envelope.
What everybody tries not to dwell on is that that's where the postage gets canceled, too.
The Collected Journals of Admiral Rick Hunter

For the next few minutes Roy repaired Rick's downed machine while he briefed his friend on the secrets of operating Robotechnology.
	"These Battloids are classified top secret," he finished, as he made the last reconnection. "And you've gotta trust me on this one: There is a reason for it." All the repair tackle had neatly withdrawn itself into the skull Battloid's huge body.
	"There, that oughta do it," Roy said. "Now switch on energy and depress those foot pedals slowly, like I told you."
	Rick did, and thought his way through the maneuver as Roy had instructed. He focused his mind's eye on the act of getting back to his feet; something at the other end of the helmet's pickups sensed and understood.
	Carefully, Rick Hunter's red-trimmed Battloid levered itself up, gaining its feet to stand shoulder to shoulder with Roy's.
	"That's it," Roy said. "See how easy it is?"
	More than easy; it was exaltation. It felt as if there was a feedback or reciprocation mechanism in the control system; Rick felt as if he were the Battloid.
	Several stories tall. Indestructible. Armed with the most advanced weapons the human race had developed. With the power of flight in a way that did indeed make the Mockingbird seem primitive, and metalshod fists capable of punching their way through a small mountain.
	Rick drew a deep breath, dizzy with the feeling.
	"That's it!" Roy encouraged. "See how easy it is?"
	"Wow, you learn fast, don't you?" said a voice from street level over the battloid's external pickups.
	Rick looked down at Minmei and Jason. He automatically guided the Robotech machine so that it leaned down toward the girl. "Thanks."
	A voice from the distance-Minmei's Aunt Lena-called, "Minmei! Jason! Come on!"
	Minmei waved up at Rick. "See you later! We're being evacuated!" She trotted off with Jason in tow, long, slim legs moving with unconscious grace.

	Off the shore of Macross Island the breakers came in, crashed, and sent up high fountains of foam, and the waters pulled back to regroup yet again for their eternal assault on the beach.
	But the next breaker brought a different kind of assault.
	Zentraedi Battlepods launched straight up out of the water on their thrusters: scout versions, officer versions, and the standard models configured to carry a variety of heavy weapons and equipment.
	Their biped design, the legs articulated backward, resembled that of an ostrich. They landed on the shore and began advancing in long leaps like monstrous kangaroos, sensors swinging for information, weapons ready for the kill. They arranged themselves in skirmish formation and covered miles in seconds.
	Soon they loomed across a ridgeline, looking down on Macross City.

	At Breetai's command post, the report was patched through. "The recon and Battlepods have landed, Commander. We're ready to attack."
	Exedore's protruding, pinpoint-pupiled eyes swung to regard his lord. Breetai leaned to a communications pickup.
	"Attention all gunnery crews! Prepare to give covering fire to the recon assault group."
	The command "Ready All Guns" and subsidiary orders rang through the armada. The long muzzles were run out and ranged in. In their sights was Macross City.

	"We better get moving, Rick," Roy told his friend. "We still have a war to fight."
	"I'm still pretty unsure of myself with all these robot controls! I'm not ready for combat."
	"Not robot; Robotech!" Roy corrected automatically. "Look, pull the control marked G, and we'll switch to Guardian configuration."
	Rick complied, muttering, "What the heck is a Guardian? Here goes!"
	As the Veritech shifted and mechamorphosed, converting to a bird of prey/war machine, Roy explained. "The Guardian controls operate almost exactly like those of the fighter plane. You can fly it without any problems."
	"I've heard that before," Rick reminded him.

	On a hill overlooking the city, the crowds waited to be admitted to the underground shelter system. Because of the dangerous nature of research and experimentation going on in the city and the fact that Macross would be a primary military target for any aggressor, the shelters had always had a high priority in the island's construction projects.
	Minmei and her relatives were waiting fretfully with the thousands upon thousands of others. The emergency personnel were working as fast as they could, but moving the huge population underground was time-consuming at best.
	The job facing the civil defense crews was overwhelming, and to top it off, many people had stopped in the foothills to try to find friends or relatives before moving below.
	But that wasn't what made Minmei halt in midstep.
	"My diary!" She had been keeping it since she was old enough to hold a pen, xeroreducing her writing so that each page held weeks of entries in a single, thick little volume. In it were all her thoughts, ideas, memories, stories, the lyrics for her songs, her poetry and secret longings, and the most important letter she'd ever received in her life-Minmei's diary was her life.
	"I have to go back for it!"
	"Don't be foolish, child!" Lena cried. "There is no going back." Jason watched wide-eyed; he was too young to have known Minmei before she'd come to live on Macross Island, but he already adored her.
	Minmei ducked away from her aunt's restraining hands and avoided Uncle Max's effort to stop her. Older people just didn't understand!
	"It won't take me a minute to get it, don't worry!" Then Minmei was off, gamine legs flying.
	"Come back!" Aunt Lena moved to follow, but two CD workers, too late to restrain Minmei, blocked her way. Uncle Max and Jason and the others stood watching as Minmei's fleet figure disappeared down into the city. Over all loomed the fallen SDF-1, blocking the sun.

	Breetai studied the fire-mission computer models. He gave a grudging nod of satisfaction.
	"All guns standing by for bombardment, Commander Breetai," a tech reported.
	"Good. Level everything in the path of the assault forces but be careful not to damage that battle fortress. I want to take it intact!" Once the Battlepods had established a beachhead, his plan could be implemented, and Zor's masterpiece would belong to the Zentraedi.
	Then let the Robotech Masters beware! Breetai thought.
	Lead elements of the armada opened fire; those farther back in the dense cloud of warships couldn't fire without the risk of hitting another Zentraedi vessel.
	A torrent of alien bolts rained down like a hellish spring storm, in a kill-zone that encircled the dimensional fortress. Buildings seemed to melt like candles in a blast furnace, riddled by thousands of narrow, high-intensity beams, collapsing in clouds of plaster and concrete dust.
	Death was everywhere among the CD teams, emergency personnel, antilooting squads, and others who'd bravely remained behind. Dying screams and the shrieks of the wounded rose on the bolt-splashed heat waves. Zentraedi Battlepods watched it all impassively from their vantage point: wingless, headless armored ostriches bristling with sensors and heavy weapons. The shelters and the masses waiting to enter them were noted, but those were of no importance; Breetai was only interested in the SDF-1.

	"They're invading the city!" Rick yelled from his Guardian's cockpit. It was only by accident, he realized, that he'd crash-landed outside the kill-zone.
	"Yeah; it looks like it was evacuated just in time," Roy said, surveying the blasted landscape from his higher vantage point in the Battloid.
	He also had updates on the refugee situation and the various assembly points. "If you're worried about your girlfriend, we could go check on her."
	Roy shifted to Guardian mode and showed Rick how it was done; the two Guardians skimmed away like jet-powered skaters, foot thrusters riding them on a blasting carpet mere inches off the ground, safe from most of the enemy fire.

	"Do we have a fix on where that bombardment is coming from?" Gloval snapped.
	"A fleet of spaceships, numbers uncertain but very, very high. In lunar orbit," Vanessa told him promptly.
	Gloval rubbed his jaw. "Beyond the range of our missiles."
	Lisa looked up from her monitors. "Captain, an alien assault force is approaching from the east, range eight miles."
	It was her job and her prerogative, so she added, "We need air support, sir."
	Gloval gave a qui