Robotech - The Macross Saga: Battlecry, Vol 1–3 E-Book

Jack McKinney

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 864

Beschreibung

Collected together in one neat volume—three electrifying futuristic adventures that let loose the Robotech Defense Force against the most fearsome conquerors in the universe. Three ROBOTECH novels for the price of one. Genesis, Battle Cry, and Homecoming from the Macross Saga collected together in one neat volume. GENESIS The Global Civil War was about to make Humankind extinct, when the stupendous Super Dimensional Fortress, dispatched to Earth by a dying alien genius, changed all that forever. Humanity's only hope lay in a corps of untried young men and women gifted with powers they didn't fully understand. Then the most feared conquerors in the universe attacked, determined to destroy them for no reason they could comprehend. BATTLE CRY Henry J. Global is in command of the Super Dimensional Fortress. But a massive enemy force led by Khyron the Backstabber is hot on his trail… HOMECOMING For over a year, the humans aboard the Super Dimensional Fortress fought and eluded a millions-strong armada of alien warships. Now the SDF-1 would have to slug her way through the massed enemy fleet to return to blue-white Terra. But villains come in human form as well as alien 6 and the evil of power-hungry men may be the most lethal threat of all…

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

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Copyright

BAPTISM OF FIRE

VOLUME 01: GENESIS

PROLOGUE

01

02

INTERLUDE

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

VOLUME 02: BATTLE CRY

01

02

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

VOLUME 03: HOMECOMING

01

02

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

Robotech novelizations based upon the animated science fiction series produced by Harmony Gold and available from Titan Books.

THE MACROSS SAGA: Battlecry Genesis

Battle Cry

Homecoming

THE MACROSS SAGA: Doomsday

Battlehymn

Force of Arms

Doomsday

THE MASTERS SAGA: The Southern Cross

Southern Cross

Metal Fire

The Final Nightmare

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Robotech – The Macross Saga: Battlecry, Vols. 1–3

Print edition ISBN: 9781803365688

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803365718

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First Titan edition: October 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

©1985–2023 Harmony Gold USA, Inc. ROBOTECH®, MACROSS®, and all associated names, characters and related indicia are trademarks of Harmony Gold USA, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

BAPTISM OF FIRE

EIGHT WEEKS OF SPECIAL TRAINING HAD FAILED TO PREPARE HIM for the silent insanity of space warfare. Disintegration and silent death, the pinpoints of distant light that were laser beams locked on to his ship, the stormy marriage of anti-particles, the grotesque beauty of short-lived spherical explosions…

Rick Hunter fired the VT’s thrusters as two Battlepods closed in on him from above the relative above, at any rate, for there was no actual up or down out here, no real way to gauge acceleration except by the constant force that kept him pinned to the back of his seat or pushed him forward when the retros were kicked in, no way to judge velocity except in relation to other Veritech fighters or the SDF-1 itself. Just that unvarying starfield, those cool and remote fires that were the backdrop of war.

VOLUME 01

GENESIS

TO CARL MACEK,WHO PULLED IT ALL TOGETHER

PROLOGUE

I’VE BROUGHT DEATH AND SUFFERING IN SUCH MAGNITUDE, ZOR thought. It’s only right that I spend 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 bounded 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, point-blank. 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 taut lines of determination. “The dimensional fortress will be ours, on my oath!”

01

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 Ranger skull-and-crossbones insignia. The colors were from the old United States Navy, the renowned and justly feared VF-84 squadron of 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 pounds 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, Long 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 divisions. “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 movements 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.

02

I suppose, in the back of my mind, I was aware that fate had sent my way a chance to he 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 light 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 manportable 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 Ingram 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.

Edward’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 off 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 aftermission 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.’”

03

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 modem 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