There was never any other child born on Earth from a union of Zentraedi and Human. I made sure of that, with the powers at my command. Because, of course, I immediately knew that Dana was the One; Dana was all that was needed. And the plan went forward.
Dr. Lazlo Zand, notes for Event Horizon:
Perspectives on Dana Sterling and the Second Robotech War
Lieutenant Nova Satori took a precise sip of wine, then consulted the heavy chronometer on her wrist. “Zero hour.”
Across from her, Zor gave her a puzzled look. “Something important?”
Although he was good at fighting, there were still so many things he simply didn’t understand. Was he, in the terms of this “date,” behind schedule somehow? Was he late in initiating the curious physical interchanges the barracks braggarts always talked about? Was there some accepted procedure for abbreviating the preliminaries? Perhaps he should begin removing garments—but whose?
Nova stared at him. “Well … don’t tell Dana or anyone else, but the relief force is just lifting off for the moon.”
Nova couldn’t for the life of her figure out why she was telling him, except that she liked one-upping Dana. She couldn’t really put a finger on why she had come along with him to the restaurant either, except that she felt drawn to him—almost against her will.
When Zor was first captured, Nova was responsible for his interrogation. She had felt that he was an enemy then and was suspicious that that still might be the case. But there was something singularly attractive about him. He had an agelessness about him even though he looked young, a serenity even though he was tormerited by his missing memory, as though he were a part of her. It was as if he, as the expression went, had a very old soul.
Zor was thinking along quite different lines. Nova’s mention of Dana reminded him that he was supposed to have gone to the movie with her. It had completely slipped his mind; he wondered if bit by bit he was losing all memory functions.
Some curiosity—more of a compulsion, actually—had made him ask Nova to dinner. He hoped that she could tell him more about himself; he might even be able to recover a part of his lost self. But there was more to it than that, motivations Zor Prime couldn’t fathom.
He studied Nova, an attractive young woman with a mantle of blue-black hair so long that she had to sweep it aside when she sat down. Like Dana, she wore a techno-hairband that suggested a headphone. Her face was heart-shaped, her eyes dark and intense, lips mobile, bright, expressive.
“Earth calling Zor.” She chuckled, breaking his reverie.
“Eh?”
“Promise not to mention it, I said. Dana’s got an awful temper; she’s going to split a seam when her precious 15th squad gets left out of another major operation!”
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell her.”
Nova shrugged to indicate that it really wouldn’t be so bad if Dana found out from him and learned that he had found out from Nova.
She said, “No one’s supposed to know the relief force is on its way until tomorrow. I really shouldn’t have told you about it.”
The vague compulsions in Zor suddenly coalesced, and he found himself asking, “How many ships are going? How are they planning to get past the enemy?”
It would all be revealed tomorrow anyway, and Nova’s tongue had been loosened by the wine with which Zor had been plying her. “Well, I heard that—”
“So! there you are!” Dana howled, rushing toward the table. The pianist stopped playing and silverware was dropped by startled diners.
Angelo Dante followed, embarrassed. The Revenge of the Martian Mystery Women had been a debacle, animated camp moron-fodder instead of the sizzling interplanetary romance-comedy-adventure Dana was under the impression they would be seeing. Apparently the officer who had told Dana about it was jazzing her. Angelo had laughed so maniacally that she had slugged his arm and dragged him out of the theater. Then she set out on a mission of revenge.
Now, she set her fists on her hips and glared daggers at Zor. “Just who the hell d’you think you are, you double-dealing dirtbag, standing me up so you can take out something like her?”
Zor looked very confused and almost queasy. Nova said, “I don’t think I like the sound of that last part.”
“You’re not supposed to, you tramp! It was an insult!”
Angelo managed to intervene just as Nova was about to vault across the table for a go at Dana, who was waiting to clean Nova’s plow before going on to put Zor in traction.
“Now calm down, ladies!” He looked to Zor for assistance; the maître d’ was already headed their way. “Hey, Zor, you just gonna sit there like a vegetable or what?”
Zor tried to put his thoughts in order. He couldn’t remember why it had been so important to get Nova to tell him those secrets about the relief expedition. Now that Dana had interrupted everything, he could barely recall the impulse that had made him ignore his date with Dana.
“I—I’m so sorry.” He got to his feet unsteadily. “I don’t feel well.…” He lurched from his place, and headed for the door.
“Damn chicken! Come back and die like a man!” Angelo fumed, for he felt that he was about to meet his own fate.
Outside, Zor stopped to catch his breath, leaning on a railing overlooking a garden near the restaurant’s entrance. He heard Nova’s voice in his head again, “The relief force is just lifting off for the moon.”
But then there was another voice, a cold one, speaking directly to his mind. It filled him with terror and hate, and he saw an image of an ax-keen, angry face set against a collar that looked like the Invid Rower of Life.
It said, Message received and understood.
At Fokker Aerospace Field, on the outskirts of Monument City, the last units of the emergency relief force were lifting off. The larger warships were being helped aloft by the brute power of a dozen flying tugs. The tugs released their cables as the warcraft climbed above Earth’s gravitational grip.
They formed up, making their way out beyond the atmosphere, moving at flank speed, maintaining communications silence. Their ascent was masked by the bulk of the Earth for the time being. Since the Robotech Masters couldn’t maintain geostationary position over Monument City and still guard access to Luna, the expedition would have an element of surprise.
To someone of an earlier day, the giant battlecruisers would have resembled prenuclear submarines, complete with conning towers, and bulky thruster packages attached to their sterns. Their estimated time of rendezvous with the units from ALUCE station, barring trouble, was in just under six hours.
At Moon Base ALUCE, Marie Crystal began organizing things for the evacuation, with brave words to the wounded about how they would be on Earth by the next morning.
Home, she thought, and thought, too, of a certain deuce private—formerly a First Lieutenant—in the 15th squad, ATAC. Sean, Sean! To be with you again!
Jeddar, group leader of the Clonemasters, glared at Musica sternly. “What exactly is the meaning of this behavior?”
“Do you realize that you’re jeopardizing the very existence of our people?” added bearded Ixtal, the other male in the Clonemaster triumvirate.
Tinsta, the tall, androgynous female, commanded not unkindly, “Child, explain yourself.”
Allegra and Octavia watched the scene, not daring to say a word. They had already concluded that they would never be able to comprehend Musica’s new, aberrant behavior. They were frightened to death of being contaminated or punished for what their triad-sibling was doing. Off to one side, Karno and the other Guard clones looked on.
Musica sounded as if she was ready to weep again, something with which Allegra and Octavia were becoming uncomfortably familiar. “I’m sorry! I wish I could explain! I don’t mean to be disobedient, really I don’t!”
“Your mate has been selected, Musica,” Tinsta said. “And he is Lieutenant Karno. You will submit to this decision.”
“The survival of your own people requires it.” Jeddar pressured her.
She shook her head, her long, deep-green hair swinging around her face, moaning, “No … no …”
“Yes!” Jeddar shot back. “Disobedience cannot be tolerated!”
Musica, moaning, seemed to undergo some sort of seizure. Then she slumped to the deck. Her sisters rushed to kneel by her. The Clonemaster triumvirate gaped; finally Jeddar found words. “This is far worse than I had imagined.”
“Has she ceased to live?” Lieutenant Karno asked numbly.
Jeddar replied, “She has fallen into what the Humans call a ‘faint.’ ” A cold current rippled through him. Until this moment, he had been sure that his Robotech Masters ultimately would be victorious. But as Musica now knew emotions, so did Jeddar begin to know the meaning of doubt.
Everything was on schedule, and the relief force was expecting rendezvous with Marie’s contingent, when the chilling news came.
“Enemy ships spotted at mark seven niner, closing on us fast!”
General quarters sounded, armor-shod feet pounding the deck as men and women rushed to battle stations. Cannon and missile tubes were run forth from their turrets as the rust-red, whiskbroom-shaped assault ships of the Robotech Masters plunged at the relief force.
Fast-moving and mounting formidable firepower, the assault ships dodged the Terrans’ shot patterns and began scoring hits almost immediately. Hulls were penetrated by fusion-hot lances of energy; there were explosions and explosive decompression in the breeched warcraft. Southern Cross soldiers died in flames, in whirlwinds of shrapnel, and in vacuum.
Battlecruiser number three, the Austerlitz, disappeared in a furious fireball. Other vessels were taking heavy damage. The Terrans had been taken by surprise, and no one could answer the question, How could this have happened? How could they have been waiting for us, as if they knew we were coming?
But the Humans struggled to throw up a screen of AA fire, bring damage under control, and simultaneously launch mecha of their own. In moments the Ajaxes, rotors folded for space combat, howled forth from the battlecruisers to engage in battle.
As soon as the Ajaxes began their counterattack, the hatches opened in the sides of the assault ships, and enormous Bioroids rode forth to give battle on circular antigrav Hovercraft. The Bioroids deployed for the fight, looking like vaguely human-shaped walking battleships. They swarmed angrily, outnumbering the Human mecha.
“Air Cavalry One to Lieutenant Crystal,” the call came over the command net. “I’m breaking radio silence to request immediate assistance. We are under heavy attack and request immediate assistance.”
Marie, on the bridge of the destroyer escort Mohi Heath, saw the worried look on the face of Lieutenant Lucas, the Aircav commander. She opened her headset mike to transmit. “Roger, Aircav One; we’re on our way.”
The ships of the patchwork evacuation force went to maximum speed. Marie threw the headset aside and ran for her own A-JAC, and the rest of her TASC outfit, the Black Lions, hot-scrambled.
The Bioroids were enjoying good hunting.
The relief expedition was short on mecha, since so many had been committed to the first strikeforce and many more had to remain behind to guard Earth. So, the enemy assault ships stayed back and let the clone-operated Bioroids ride their Hovercraft, and slaughter the enemy.
The relief force Ajaxes and others fought valiantly, but the sheer unevenness in numbers became apparent at once. Bioroids blazed away with the weapons mounted in the control stems and platform bows of their Hovercraft, and with the disc-shaped handguns that were as big as fieldpieces. Ajaxes blazed into explosive death one after another.
Lieutenant Lucas, his unit half gone, was calling to ask permission for a hasty withdrawal; there was no point in throwing away Earth’s valuable mecha. Then, suddenly, there was a blue Bioroid on his tail, the gun in its control stem spewing annihilation discs. Lucas only had a split second to wonder who would take over (his exec being dead already) and to hope that the strikeforce somehow would survive.
But then the Bioroid disappeared in a flaming ball of gas, and a strange A-JAC bearing a rampant black lion came zooming past. “Crystal, this is Lucas! Crystal, is that you?”
“Looks like this time the settlers have come to rescue the cavalry,” she said. She added to her own outfit, “Okay, boys; let’s wrassle ’em around some.”
But that was already happening. Marie Crystal’s Black Lions had come in on the enemy’s rear flank, undetected, and hurled themselves into the furious dogfight. They had already changed the odds; within seconds they were turning the kill ratios around. Before fifteen seconds passed, eight surprised Bioroids had been shot to fragments or utterly destroyed.
But the enemy seemed determined to stand its ground, as it were, and fight. The Lions, having been mauled so badly on their first assault only days before, were more than willing to oblige.
Dogfight? Rat race? Oh, yes! Marie thought. Now you pay! And if somebody asks who your accountants are, you just say, “the Black Lions”!
The engagement got even hotter. Marie did a classic “Fokker Feint,” flamed a blue, then raised Aircav One again. “Lieutenant Lucas! Now’s your chance! Head for ALUCE base!”
It was too sensible a suggestion for Lucas to argue with; the units still on the moon would need the relief force, and Marie’s pilots were keeping the enemy busy. Lucas disengaged his Ajax even as the relief warcraft made their way past the distracted Bioroids to recover Aircav One and its birds on the fly. He headed for ALUCE at top speed.
Some of the enemy tried to give chase, and Marie led several of her Ajaxes to stop them. She decided to change the mix a bit, and went to Battloid mode. Other Ajaxes followed suit, screaming after the enemy with back and foot thrusters blaring.
The Ajaxes launched missiles, and three more Bioroids got waxed. The rest broke off their chase, to turn on their tormentors. Aircav One and the rest of the relief force were already disappearing for their rendezvous with Luna.
The Black Lions hit the Bioroids with everything they had, driving them back, until Marie judged that the evacuation force had enough of a head start. With the enemy ranks drastically thinned out and their attack broken, the Ajaxes got in a final barrage that blew one of the invader assault ships to atoms. As before, destruction of their field-command nerve center confused and demoralized the Bioroids; the Ajaxes took advantage of that to break contact and return to their convoy at max thrust.
Soon Earth loomed huge and blue-white before them.