While the life expectancy of a standard Zentraedi mecha pilot had been determined by the Robotech Masters at three years, the life expectancy of a comparable Invid pilot was never even addressed. In effect, all Invid troops (save the sexually-differentiated scientists) could be activated and deactivated at a moment’s notice—initially by the Regess only, and later by the living computers the Queen Mother helped create to satisfy her husband’s wounded pride (after the “affair” with Zor).…A self-generated variety of Protoculture was essential to mecha operation, in the form of a viscous green fluid that filled the cockpit space. It was through this nutrient bath (liquified fruits from the mature Optera plants) that the living computers, or “brains,” communicated with the ranks.
Selig Kahler, The Tirolian Campaign
“Yes, my boy, I’ve been meaning to show you this place for quite a long time,” Cabell confessed, gesturing to the wonders of the subterranean chamber. The scientist and his apprentice were deep in the labyrinth beneath Tiresia’s pyramidal Royal Hall. “A pity it has to be under these circumstances.”
It was a laboratory and monitoring facility the likes of which Rem had never seen. There were wall-to-wall consoles and screens, networktops piled high with data cards and ancient print documents, and dozens of unidentifiable tools and devices. In the glow of the room’s archaic illumination panels, the place had a dusty, unused look.
“And this was really his study?” Rem said in disbelief.
Cabell nodded absently, his thoughts on the Pollinators and what could be done with them now. The shaggy creatures had become quiet and docile all of a sudden, huddling together in a tight group in one corner of the room. It was as if they had instinctively located some sort of power spot. Cabell heard Rem gasp; the youth was staring transfixed at a holo-image of Zor he had managed to conjure up from one of the networks, the only such image left on Tirol.
“But … but this is impossible,” Rem exclaimed. “We’re identical!”
Cabell swallowed and found his voice. “Well, there’s some resemblance, perhaps,” he said, downplaying the likeness. “Something about the eyes and mouth … But switch that thing off, boy, we’ve got work to do.”
Mystified, Rem did so, and began to clear a workspace on one of the countertops, while Cabell went around the room activating terminals and bringing some of the screens to life. The old man knew that he could communicate directly with the Elders from here, but there was no need for that yet. Instead, he set about busying himself with the transponder, and within an hour he had the data he needed to pinpoint the source of its power.
“As I thought,” Cabell mused, as schematics scrolled across a screen. “They are almost directly above us in the Royal Hall. Apparently they’ve brought some sort of command center down from the fleet ships. Strange, though … the emanations are closer to organic than computer-generated.”
“What does it mean?” Rem asked over Cabell’s shoulder.
“That we now know where we must direct our strike.” He had more to add, but autoactivation sounds had suddenly begun to fill the lab, drawing his attention to a screen off to his left, linked, Cabell realized, to one of Tirol’s few remaining orbital scanners. And shortly, as a deepspace image formed on the screen, it was Cabell’s turn to gasp.
“Oh, my boy, tell me I’m not seeing things!”
“It’s a starship,” Rem said, peering at the screen. “But it’s not Invid, is it?”
Cabell had his palms pressed to his face in amazement. “Far from it, Rem, far from it … Don’t you see?—it’s his ship, Zor’s!”
“But how, Cabell?”
Cabell shot to his feet. “The Zentraedi! They’ve recaptured it and returned.” He put his hands on Rem’s shoulders. “We’re saved, my boy. Tirol is saved!”
But the moon’s orbital watchdogs weren’t the only scanners to have picked up on the ship. Inside the Royal Hall—converted by Enforcer units to an Invid headquarters—the slice of brain Obsim had transported to Tirol’s surface began to speak.
“Intruder alert,” the synthesized voice announced matter-of-factly. “An unidentified ship has just entered the Valivarre system on a course heading for Tirol. Estimated arrival time: one period.”
The cerebral scion approximated the appearance of the Regent’s living computer, and floated in a tall, clear fluid bubble chamber that was set into an hourglass-shaped base.
“Identify and advise,” Obsim ordered.
“Searching …”
The Invid scientist turned his attention to a spherical, geodesiclike communicator, waiting for an image to form.
“Insufficient data for unequivocal identification.”
“Compare and approximate.”
“Quiltra Quelamitzs,” the computer responded a moment later. A deepspace view of the approaching ship appeared in the sphere, and alongside it the various memory profiles the brain had employed in its search.
“Identify.”
“Zentraedi battlecruiser.”
Obsim’s snout sensors twitched and blanched. The Zentraedi, he thought, after all these generations, returned to their home system. He could only hope they were an advance group for the Masters themselves, for that would mean a return of the Flower, the return of hope …
He instructed the computer to alert all troopship commanders immediately. “Stand by to assault.”
Much as spacefold was a warping of the continuum, it was a mind-bending experience as well. The world was filled with a thousand voices speaking at once, and dream-time images of externalized selves loosed to live out an array of parallel moments, each as real and tangible as the next, each receding as swiftly as it was given birth. The stars would shimmer, fade, and emerge reassembled. Light and shadow reversed. Space was an argent sea or sky shot through with an infinite number of black holes, smeared with smoky nebulae.
This marked Lisa’s sixth jump, but familiarity did nothing to lessen the impact of hyperspace travel, the SDF-3’s tunnel in the sky. It felt as though she had awakened not on the other side of the galaxy but on the other side of a dream, somehow exchanged places with her nighttime self, so that it was her doppelgänger who sat in the command chair now. Voices from the bridge crew surfaced slowly, muffled and unreal, as if from a great depth.
“… reports entry to Valivarre system.”
“Systems status,” she said weakly and by rote. “Secure from launch stations.”
Some of the techs came to even more slowly than she did, bending to their tasks as though exhausted.
“All systems check out, Admiral. Dr. Lang is on-screen.”
Lisa glanced up at the monitor just as the doctor was offering his congratulations. “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering course and velocity corrections. Hope you don’t mind, Lisa.”
Lang seemed unfazed by their transit through hyperspace; it was one of the strange things about a jump: like altitude sickness, there was no way to predict who would and would not suffer side effects. She was certain that a number of the crew were already being removed to sick bay. Surprised at her own state of well-being, Lisa shook her head and smiled. “We’ve made it, then, we’ve actually made it?”
“See for yourself,” Lang said.
Lisa swung to study a screen, and there it was: a magnified crescent of the ringed and marbled jadelike giant, with its distant primary peeking into view—a magnesium-white jewel set on the planet’s rim. A schematic of the system began to take shape, graphics highlighting one of Fantoma’s dozen moons and enlarging it, as analytical read-outs scrolled across an ancillary screen.
“Tirol,” said Lisa. The moon was closing on Fantoma’s darkside. Then, with a sinking feeling, she recalled the EVA blip.
“Still with us,” a tech reported in an anxious tone. “But we’re leaving it farther behind every second.”
“Dr. Lang,” Lisa started to say. But all at once alert signals were flashing all over the bridge.
“Picking up multiple radar signals, sir. Approach vectors coming in …”
Lisa’s eyes went wide. “Sound general quarters. Go to high alert and open up the com net. And get me Admiral Hunter—immediately.”
“We’ve got them,” Rick was saying a moment later from a screen.
“Do we have a signature?” Lisa asked the threat-board tech. Her throat was dry, her voice a rasp.
“Negative, sir. An unknown quantity.”
Lisa stood up and moved to the visor viewport. “I want visuals as soon as possible, and get Exedore and Breetai up here on the double!”
“Well?” Lisa said from the command chair, tapping her foot impatiently. Klaxons squawked as the ship went on alert. She had not forgotten about the EVA craft, but there were new priorities now.
Exedore turned to look at her. “These are not Tirolian ships, Admiral, I can assure you.”
Breetai and Rick were with him, all three men grouped behind the tech seated at the threat board. “Enhancements coming in now, Lisa,” Rick said without turning around.
The computer drew several clamlike shapes on the screen, pinpointing hot areas.
Breetai straightened up and grunted; all eyes on the bridge swung to fix on him. “Invid troop carriers,” he announced angrily.
“Invid? But what—”
“Could they have formed some sort of alliance with the Masters?” Lisa thought to ask.
“That is very unlikely, Admiral,” Exedore answered her.
Rick spoke to Lang, who was still on-screen. “We’ve got company, Doctor.”
“The ship must be protected.”
“Sir!” a tech shouted. “I’m showing multiple paint throughout the field!”
Rick and the others saw that the clam-ships had opened, yawned, spilling forth an enormous number of small strike mecha. Pincer Ships, Breetai called them.
“I want the Skull scrambled.”
“Ghost Squadron is already out, sir,” Blake reported from his duty station.
“What!”
The threat board showed two clusters of blips moving toward each other. Rick slapped his hand down on the Situation Room com stud, demanding to know who ordered the Veritechs out.
“General Edwards,” came the reply.
“Edwards!” Rick seethed.
Blake tapped in a rapid sequence of requests. “Sir. Ghost Squadron reports they’re moving in to engage.”
Cabell was puzzled. It was not Zor’s ship after all, but some sort of facsimile. Worse, the Invid had sent its small fleet of troop carriers against it, and their Pincer Ships were already engaging mecha from the Zentraedi ship out near Fantoma’s rings. Initially, Cabell wanted to convince himself that the Zentraedi had for some reason returned in Micronized form; but he now dismissed this as wishful thinking. It was more likely that the starship had been taken by force, and he was willing to guess just who these new invaders were. Presently, data from one of the network computers confirmed his guess.
He had pulled up trans-signals received by the Masters shortly after the destruction of Reno’s fleet and the capture of the factory satellite. Among the debris that littered a vast area of space some eighty light-years out from Tirol were mecha almost identical to those the would-be Zentraedi had sent against the Invid. These invaders, then, would have to be the “Micronians” whose world the Masters had gone off to conquer, the same humanoids who had been the recipients of Zor’s fortress, and with it the Protoculture matrix.
And while Invid and Terrans formed up to annihilate each other, a small ship was leaving Tirolspace unobserved. Watching the ship’s trail disappear on his monitor screen, Cabell smiled to himself. It was the Elders, fooled like himself perhaps, into believing that the Zentraedi had returned. For their skins! Cabell laughed to himself.
So Tirol was suddenly Masterless. Cabell considered the battle raging out by the giant’s ring-plane, and wondered aloud if Tirol was about to change hands yet again.
In the Royal Hall Invid headquarters, Obsim was thinking along similar lines. These starship troopers were not Zentraedi, but some life-form similar in makeup and physiology to the population of Tirol or Praxis. And yet they were not Tirolians either. By monitoring the transmissions the invaders were radioing to their mecha pilots, the brain had discovered that the language was not that of the Masters.
“Sample and analyze,” Obsim commanded.
It was a primitive, strictly vocal tongue; and the computer easily mastered it in a matter of minutes, along with the simple combat code the invaders were using.
Obsim studied the communications sphere with interest. The battle was not going well for his Pincer units; whatever the invaders lacked in the way of intellect and sophistication, they possessed powerful weapons and mecha more maneuverable than any Obsim had ever seen. A world of such beings would not have been conquered as readily as Spheris, Praxis, and Karbarra had. But firepower wasn’t war’s only prerequisite; there had to be a guiding intelligence. And of this the invaders were in short supply.
“Computer,” said Obsim. “Send the mecha commanders new dictates in their own code. Order them to pursue our troops no matter what.”
The starship itself was hiding inside Fantoma’s ring-plane; but if it could be lured out for only a moment, the troop carriers might have a clear shot at it.
Obsim turned to face the brain. “Computer. Locate the starship’s drives and relay relevant data to troopship commanders.” He contemplated this strategy for a moment, hands deep within the sleeves of his robe. “And prepare to advise the Regent of our situation.”
The tac net was a symphony of voices, shrill and panicked, punctuated by bursts of sibilant static and the short-lived sound of muffled roars.
“Talk to me, Ghost Leader,” a pilot said.
“Contact, fifty right, medium range …”
“Roger, got ‘im.”
“Ghost Three, Ghost Three, bogie inbound, heading zero-seven-niner …”
“Ghost Six, you’ve got half-a-dozen on your tail. Go to Battloid, Moonlighter!”
“Can’t get—”
“… ”
Rick cursed and went on the com net. “Ghost Leader, do you require backup? Repeat, do you require backup? Over.”
“Sir,” the pilot replied an instant later. “We’re holding our own out here, but it’s a world of shi— er, pain, sir!”
“Can you ascertain enemy’s weapons systems? Over.”
Static erased the pilot’s first few words. “… and some sort of plasma cannons, sir. It’s like they’re throwing … -ing energy Frisbees or something! But the mecha are slow—ugly as sin, but slow.”
Rick raised his eyes to the ceiling of the bridge. I should be out there with them! Breetai and Exedore had returned to their stations elsewhere in the ship; and by all rights Rick should have been back in the Tactical Information Center already, but everything was happening so damned fast he didn’t dare risk pulling himself away from a screen even for a minute. Lisa had ordered the SDF-3 to Fantoma’s brightside, where it was holding now.
“Has anyone located General Edwards yet?” Rick shouted into a mike.
“He’s on his way up to the Sit Room, sir,” someone replied.
Rick shook his head, feeling a rage mount within him. Lisa turned to watch him. “Admiral, you better get going. We can manage up here.”
Rick looked over at her, his lips tight, and nodded.
“Sirs, enemy are in retreat.”
Rick watched the board. “Thank God—”
“Ghost is in pursuit.”
Rick blanched.
“Contact them! Who ordered pursuit—Edwards?!”
Blake busied himself at the console. “Negative, sir. We, we don’t know who gave the order, sir.”
“Direct the Skull to go—now!” Rick raced from the bridge.
Lisa regarded Fantoma’s ring-plane and remembered a similar situation in Saturn’s rings. “Activate ECM,” she ordered a moment later. “We’re bringing the ship up. And, dammit, send someone out to rescue that EVA craft!”
Jonathan Wolfe left the SDF-3 launch bay right behind the last of Max Sterling’s Skull Squadron fighters. He was in a Logan Veritech, a reconfigurable mecha that would one day become the mainstay of the Southern Cross’s Tactical Armored Space Corps. The Logan was often jokingly referred to as a “rowboat with wings” because of the bow-shaped design of its radome and the mecha’s overall squatness. But if it was somewhat less orthodox-looking than the Alpha, the Logan was certainly as mean and maneuverable—and much more versatile—than the VT. In addition, the mecha’s upscaled cockpit could seat two, three in a pinch.
Scanners had indicated there were two people aboard the hapless EVA craft that had been caught up in the SDF-3’s fold. And they were alive, though more than likely unconscious or worse. There had been no response to the fortress’s attempts to communicate with the craft.
Empowering the fortress’s shields had made use of the tractor somewhat iffy, so Wolfe had volunteered for the assignment, itching to get out there anyway, even if it meant on a rescue op. Now suddenly in the midst of it, he wasn’t so sure. Local space was lit up with spherical orange bursts and crisscrossed with blue laserfire and plasma discs of blinding light. Zentraedi Battlepods were one thing, but the ships the VTs found themselves up against looked like they had walked out of some ancient horror movie, and it was easy to believe that the crablike mecha actually were the XTs themselves. But Breetai and Exedore had said otherwise in their prelaunch briefings; inside each ship was a being that could prove swift and deadly in combat.
And that was indeed the case, as evidenced by the slow-mo dogfights in progress all around Wolfe. Skull’s VTs were battling their way through the remnants of the Invid’s original strike force in an effort to catch up with the Ghost Squadron, who’d been ordered off in pursuit of the main group. Wolfe watched amazed as Battloids and Pincer Ships swapped volleys, blew one another to fiery bits, and sometimes wrestled hand-to-pincers, battering each other with depleted cannons. Wolfe watched Captain Miriya Sterling’s red Veritech engage and destroy three Invid ships with perfectly placed Hammerhead missiles. Max, too, seemed to be having a field day; but the numbers were tipped in the enemy’s favor, and Wolfe wondered how long Skull would be able to hold out.
He was closing fast on the EVA craft now, and thought he could discern movement in the rear seat of the cockpit. But as the Logan drew nearer, he could see that both pilots were either unconscious or dead. Reconfiguring now, he imaged the Battloid to take hold of the small ship and propel it back toward Fantoma’s brightside and the SDF-3. But just then he received a command over the net to steer clear, and a moment later the fortress emerged from the ring-plane and loomed into view. Inexplicably, the Skull Squadron was falling away toward Fantoma’s opaline surface, leaving the ship open to frontal assaults by the Pincer units, but in a moment those ships were a mere memory, disintegrated in a cone of fire spewed from the SDF-3’s main gun.
Harsh static crackled through Wolfe’s helmet pickups as he turned his face from the brilliance of the blast. But when he looked again, two clam-shaped transports had materialized out of nowhere in the fortress’s wake.
Reflexively, Wolfe went on the com net to shout a warning to the bridge. Secondary batteries commenced firing while the fortress struggled to bring itself around, but by then it was too late. Wolfe saw the SDF-3 sustain half-a-dozen solid hits, before return fire sanitized the field.
A score of lifeless men and women lay sprawled across the floor of the fortress’s engineering hold. Damage-control crews were rushing about, slipping in puddles of blood and cooling fluids, trying to bring dozens of electrical fires under control. A portion of the ruptured hull had already self-sealed, but other areas ruined beyond repair had to be evacuated and closed off by pocket bulkheads.
Lang and Exedore ran through smoke and chaos toward the fold-generator chamber, arriving in time to see one of the ruptured mechanisms vanish into thin air.
Lang tried to shout something to his team members above the roar of exhaust fans, but everyone had been nearly deafened by the initial blasts.
Just then a second explosion threw Lang and Exedore to the floor, as some sort of black, wraithlike images formed from smoke and fire and took shape in the hold, only to disappear from view an instant later.
Lang’s nostrils stung from the smoke of insulation fires and molten metals. He got to his feet and raced back into the chamber, throwing switches and crossovers at each station. By the time Exedore got to him, Lang was a quivering, burned, and bloodied mess.
“They knew j-just where to h-hit us,” he stammered, pupilless irises aflame. “We’re stranded, we’re stranded here!”