Just like I tense up whenever somebody says the word “alien,” there’s a word that always gets Bowie sort of silent and thoughtful. Even if—and I’ve seen this happen—somebody innocently mentions the intermediate mode of a Veritech, Bowie sort of goes sphinx.
And so, I react the same way, too, a bit. Nobody can say “Guardian” to me without conjuring up the image of General Rolf Emerson.
Remark attributed to Lieutenant Dana Sterling by Lieutenant Marie Crystal
When Bowie came to, he was still being held by the red. It was supervising from one side, as the blues picked through the wreckage of Dana’s cycle. There wasn’t much left, and what was was scattered wide. The Bioroids hadn’t even been able to find pieces of Dana.
At a silent signal from the red, the searching stopped. There was no telling whether the Humans had reported the aliens’ presence; the all-important mission to recover the Protoculture Matrix took priority.
The Bioroids boarded their antigrav platforms and flew back to the mounds, where strange lights still probed sky and ground. Bowie lay helpless in the red’s fist, weeping and swearing terrible vengeance.
But from a cleft of rock, a battered figure pulled itself up to watch the invaders go. Dana spat out blood, having bitten her own lip deeply and loosened some teeth in the fall. Her body felt like one big bruise. Fortunately, her tough uniform was made for this kind of thing, and had saved her from having the flesh rubbed right off her in the tumble. The many practice falls taken in training had paid off, too.
After she had been jolted from the cycle, the aliens had kept firing at it, thinking she was still aboard, unable to see it well in the midst of the explosion and raining debris. She managed to pull herself to safety outside the area where they looked for her remains.
But she could feel no gratitude. “Bowie!” She tried to draw herself up, to follow after the Bioroid pack, but whimpered in sudden agony at the pain that shot through her shoulder.
Dana was brought before General Emerson without much cleaning up and only the most cursory debriefing. Whatever she had discovered was still going on, and time was all-important. Her left arm was in a sling; the medics said it wasn’t a dislocation, but it was a painful sprain. She had survived the crash better than she had any right to.
Emerson put aside the dressing-down Dana had coming for disobeying orders; there were more important matters at hand. Besides, if it hadn’t been for her curiosity, Earth might very well have remained ignorant of the alien landing until it was too late—if in fact it wasn’t already.
“I’ve been informed that you’ve had a closer look at these alien Bioroids,” Emerson said as soon as Dana saluted and reported.
“Yes, sir. In the wasteland north of Section Sixteen.”
“And a Human being, or something like a Human being, was operating one?”
Dana couldn’t hold back a little gasp, as a sudden vision of the red Bioroid pilot came to her. “That’s the way it looked from where I was hiding, sir.”
Rochelle turned to his superior. “General, Human or not, what would they be looking for out in that wasteland?”
“Could they be scavengers or something, looking for salvage?” Green interjected.
Emerson shook his head irritably. Green was a steady sort as a combat leader, but the suggestion was ludicrous. These invaders had come from an advanced culture with a highly developed technology, and everything about them suggested that they had an extensive technological and social support system behind them—at least until recently.
“No, that can’t be the answer.” He had read Zentraedi debriefing files as thoroughly as anyone. “They’re in the service of the Robotech Masters.”
Rochelle drew himself up. “Then, sir, I suggest we attack as soon as possible, before they become impossible to dislodge from their foothold.”
Emerson shook his head again. “Not yet. First I want to know more about this situation, and about these Bioroids. And above all, I want to know what they’re looking for.”
Dana said plaintively, “But one of my men has been taken prisoner! Please, you have to let me go in there after him!”
“Permission denied.” Emerson rose to his feet, no happier with the necessities of the situation than Dana was, but in a better position to see the overall picture.
“It was your decision to return to headquarters with this intelligence. It was the correct thing to do; we’re fighting for Earth’s survival. A lot of lives have been lost already, and more are certain to be before this thing is over. But our mission is to repel an alien invasion, do I make myself clear?”
He did, to all those listening. They were all soldiers in a desperate war, even Bowie, who meant so much to him.
But all Dana kept hearing were those words, it was your decision.
At the barracks she wandered back toward the ready-room, sunk in despairing musings, until she realized someone was blocking her way.
Angelo Dante leaned against one side of the doorframe, arms folded, his foot braced against the other. “Well, well! Aren’t we forgetting a little something? Where’s Bowie, Lieutenant? I hear he didn’t make it.”
Her face went white, then flushed angrily. She tried to move past, still feeling shame and failure at Bowie’s capture. “Move it, Dante.”
“I call that pretty tough talk for somebody who cut and ran and abandoned that kid out there like that.”
Dana made a sudden decision and met Angelo’s glare. “If I hadn’t abandoned him, there wouldn’t be anybody to go out and get him back, would there?”
With her foot she swept the leg supporting all his weight from beneath him; Angelo ended up on the floor with a yelp. “Got it?” she finished with a slow smile, shucking off the sling. Her arm hurt like blazes, but this was no time to be hampered.
Angelo was looking up at her with his mouth open, not sure if he was going to jump her and give her the drubbing she had coming, or congratulate her for what she seemed to be saying.
“Sergeant, it is my considered opinion that this squad needs some night training maneuvers.”
He gave her a slow smile. “Like in that off-limits area?”
She stood there and gave him a wink even while she was saying, “I don’t know what you’re referring to, Angie. Ten-hut!”
The big three-striper was on his feet with machinelike speed. “Now, then,” she went on. “This squad’s gotten complacent, sloppy, and out of practice. Get me?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Consequently, you will pass on the order to scramble immediately. Tell ’em to stow the yocks and grab their socks, Sergeant.”
The Bioroids’ activities at the mounds had come to a standstill as the Robotech Masters weighed the problems posed by the wraiths.
Progress was hampered, too, because the red Bioroid was not on the scene. He had taken the prisoner into the forward command ship to examine the Human and see what could be learned. That had proved to be vexingly little; the creature was unconscious, and its thought patterns so unevolved that normal methods of interrogation didn’t work.
Bowie slowly came back to life as he felt himself being jarred and shaken. He was still in the metallic grip of the Bioroid leader, being borne along a passageway to the sound of the massive metallic footsteps. Two blues walked behind. The place was stupendous, built to Bioroid scale.
All three mecha appeared red in the passageway’s lighting. Bowie glanced around in punchy amazement; the place looked as organic as it did technological, some advanced mixture of the two. One area seemed to be composed of asymmetric spiderwebbing thicker than the thickest hawsers; the curved passageway ceiling had a vascular look, as though it were fed by blood vessels. Tremendous polished blue convexities in the wall might be darkened viewscreens or immense gemstones—Bowie couldn’t even guess.
He strained at the grip, but it did no good. “C’mon, ya big ape! Lemme go! Yer crushin’ me!”
The trio of Bioroids stopped before a triangular door even taller than themselves. The three door segments were joined along jagged seams, like a triskelion. As the door slid open, so did the red’s broad chest and helm, exposing the glowing ball-turret and the pilot who sat there calmly, legs drawn up, looking remote and at peace.
Bowie snarled, shaking his fists. “Oh, so ya worked up the guts to show yourself, huh? Well, what happens now, Prince Charming? Afraid to let me go because you’d be gambling with your teeth?”
The red Bioroid pilot studied him as if he were something in a lab smear. Bowie fumed, “What’s the matter, pretty boy? Can’t you talk?”
The enemy spoke again in that eerie mental language. Prisoner, you display much bravado. But like all primitives, you’ve yet to learn the value of silence.
And the red pilot gave Bowie a quick lesson, tossing him into the compartment that had just opened up. The Bioroid had leaned down some way, so that Bowie wasn’t maimed or killed. The fall stunned him, though, knocking the wind from him.
Door and Bioroid were already resealing by the time the captive got a little breath back. “That’s right! You better hide in that tin can, you stinking coward!”
And then the door was shut. Bowie collapsed back on the deck, hissing with the pain he hadn’t let his captors see. “Just you wait, pally!”
After a while he hauled himself to his feet. The compartment he was in was as big as his whole barracks complex back at the base; surely there must be some way out.
But a hurried search yielded little. The place was evidently a storeroom, but the crates and boxes bigger than houses were impervious to his efforts to open them. He could find no escape route, not even a Bowie-size mouse hole. The enemy had neglected to take his lockback survival knife from him, but there wasn’t much it could do against the armored bulkhead all around him.
Then he gave more thought to the light far overhead. It was a triangular, grilled affair, and the light source seemed to be high above the mesh. It put him in mind of conduits and crawlspaces. In another moment he was shinnying up the side of a crate, ignoring the pain of his wounds and injuries.
It took him nearly twenty minutes of scrambling, leaping, and balance-walking among the containers and pipes and structural members, and he had to double back twice to try new approaches, but at last he came up under the mesh. He hoped against hope that he wouldn’t hear the rumble of the ship’s engines for just a while longer—that he could get out before the invaders got whatever they had come for and departed Earth.
He hesitated, the knife in his hand. But then he went ahead, to prize up the mesh and try his best to break free. As far as he knew, he was the only one left alive to sound the alarm to all Earth that the invasion had come. Then, too, there was Dana to avenge.
The instant the knifepoint dug into the seam of the mesh where it rested against its housing, there was an intense flash of light. Bowie didn’t even have time to scream; the knife flew from his hand and he dropped.
“Sir, the sun’s almost up out there and a recon drone got a look at the enemy position from high altitude,” Rochelle reported. “They’re just beginning to excavate at the site of the old SDF-1, but we have no idea as yet what they’re after or why.”
Emerson stretched, yawned, and rubbed his eyes. “We can’t delay any longer. Whatever they’re doing, we’ve got to see that they don’t accomplish it. They started these hostilities; now it’s our turn at bat. All right, you know what I want you to do. Proceed.”
Rochelle, Green, Tessel, and one or two others snapped to attention. “Yes, sir!” Then they hurried off to begin implementing the op plan Emerson had approved during the hours of consultations and meetings.
Emerson was left alone to muse. The only thing in that old wreck is useless, rotting Robotechnology. Well, one person’s junk is another’s Protoculture, I suppose.
Something about that stirred a half-developed thought in the back of his brain. There would be an avalanche of operational decisions and problems coming down on him very soon; that was a hard and fast rule with any operation. But he shunted them aside for the moment, and punched up access to the UEG archives.