The politicians who kill troops
But leave no babe unkissed!
They’d none of them be missed,
They’d none of them be missed!
Bowie Grant, “With Apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan”
Dana yelled, “Zor, get out of there!”
Zor had the presence of mind to retro, rather than try some fancy maneuver or an uneven firefight. The reds’ shots stitched the flagship’s hull, passing through the airless spot where Zor would have been. He escaped with only a spider-webbing of his canopy, the effect of a grazing shot.
“That was close, but I’m all right,” he said calmly.
An Ajax unit had found a bowside cargo lock blasted open by another Terran barrage; the mechachoppers zipped in at it like angry wasps, under the same romp-and-ruin orders as the ATACs.
The command came to the Vada Primes from Dovak: “A new enemy combat group is attempting to enter the flagship. Readjust battle plan and destroy them at once.”
It took the Ajaxes a fatal few moments to realize that they were being attacked by mecha far superior to their own.
One A-JAC was blasted as soon as it came in, going up like a Roman candle. A second, already standing by the opened hull, was riddled and fell apart in fragments. The reds came in, maneuvering and firing in perfect cooperation. The Ajaxes’ counterfire had no effect on the Triumviroids’ battleshiplike armor.
“We’re no match for them in these Ajaxes!” Lieutenant Brown yelled to the few survivors left in his team. “Everybody pull back! Evasive maneuvers!”
Dana had her own plan of action. She sent her Valkyrie leaping high, imaging a change, her helmet sensors picking up the impulses and guiding her tank through mechamorphosis.
Components slid, reconfigured, rearranged; the tank went to Battloid mode. It stood in space, a Robotech Galahad, taking as its rifle the altered cannon that had rested along the tank’s prow moments before. She landed on the hull to make her stand, feet spread, rifle/cannon strobing. Angelo and Bowie landed next to her in the same humanoid mode.
Three reds swept in in echelon, their fire well coordinated, promising to sweep the Battloids before them. Angelo remembered what he had learned about the blue Bioroids. He stopped pouring out heavy fire and took deliberate aim.
He hit the lead Triumviroid’s faceplate; it shattered, spilling atmosphere and ruin. The thing’s Hovercraft began to waver gently, and the red itself went immobile.
“I got one! Hey Lieutenant, go for their faceplates!”
But as Dana looked around to see what was going on, the red’s ball turret exploded, the body of its Vada Prime pilot tumbling out into vacuum, breath and blood stolen away in a red mist.
They’re humanoids, she saw. They look … just like Zor.
But she said, “You all heard Angie! Faceplates! And make every shot count!”
Bowie prepared to fire, but a vision of Musica came to him, and he froze. Three more reds came in low over a hull projection, firing so as to scatter the gathering Battloids, and one burst knocked Bowie’s tank from its feet.
Dana and a trooper named Royce were almost shoulder to shoulder, putting out a heavy volume of fire, to cover him. The red broke off and banked away.
“You all right, Bowie?”
His Battloid began to lumber to its feet. “I think so.”
“Then start shooting, god damn you! Bottom line: They’re programmed to destroy you.”
Sean was isolated, his fireteam partner just a conflagration and a memory, the enemy closing in. “Somebody get these ’roids offa me!”
The answer came in the form of an angel of death; the Triumviroid so close to nailing him flew apart in a coruscating detonation. He picked himself up off the hull to see an A-JAC hovering loose. “Huh? I’m dreaming! I’m dead!”
Marie Crystal was on the 15th’s freq. “Neither, hotshot.”
“Marie?”
“That’s right, Phillips, you lucky swine you. You’re about four hundred yards from your squad, at one hundred seventy degrees magnetic. Get back to ’em and stay alert! I … I don’t want to lose you, Sean.”
“I won’t forget you said that. And I won’t let you. What d’you wanna name our first kid?” She could hear the smugness in his voice but didn’t mind a bit. His Battloid dashed away at top speed as Dana rallied her command.
Marie switched off her mike. “I won’t forget,” she whispered. Then she broke left, to try to help suppress the murderous AA fire from the teardrop cannon.
The interior of the flagship was a Hovertank job, and Ajaxes, Veritechs—no other mecha had any place in it.
Dana and the first of her 15th leapt right down into a cobra pit.
Her transmissions were patched directly through to Emerson; the ATACs were Earth’s best hope now. “General, we’re pinned down in the entrance gap by heavy fire from red Bioroids! We’re about at a standstill and request assistance—A.S.A.P.!”
Emerson was out of his command chair. “We’ve got to force the enemy mecha back and make that entrance bigger. Any suggestions?”
Green was giving him a dead-level look. “Ramming them is the only way, Rolf.”
It didn’t even take Emerson a second to make up his mind; Earth could never mount another assault like this, and it was make-or-break time. “Then make ready to use this ship as a battering ram at once.”
Emerson’s crew acted instantly, and still it looked as though it wouldn’t be soon enough.
If the enemy mother ship’s fire had been as intense as it was when the Masters first arrived in the Solar System, the Human battlecruiser would have been holed and immolated as soon as it came close to the invader. But great hunks of armor and superstructure were blasted away from the enemy ship, and Emerson’s flagship was able to stay on course, bearing down on its enemy.
And it provided a welcome diversion, permitting Dana’s troops to break contact with the devilishly fast and powerful Invid Fighters and scatter. Even the Triumviroids’ power wasn’t enough to stop the heavyweight Earth dreadnought.
The wedge-shaped bow drove into the long rift in the invader; the impact sent Bioroid and Battloid alike sprawling and bouncing across the hull. Dana had no idea what power it was that generated gravity on the surface of the enemy ship, but she was grateful for it then—grateful not to be sent spinning into infinite blackness.
With the outer armor breached, the battlecruiser experienced less resistance from the mother ship’s internal structure. Bulkheads and decks and vast segments of systemry were crushed or bashed aside as secondary explosions foamed around the cruiser like a fiery bow-wave.
Then Emerson’s ship was through, having lengthened and deepened the hull breach to three times its former size, all the way through to the mother ship’s port side. As the battlecruiser lifted clear, more explosions from the alien lifted the armor even further, as if peeling back aluminum foil.
Dana got word from the cruiser that the entryway was clear, and for the moment the reds were nowhere to be seen. She hated the thought of leading her command down there where so many explosions had already gone off, but this was the only chance to go through the opening.
“Let’s do it, Fifteenth! Follow me!” The 15th, all in Battloid mode, dashed toward the opening, huge metal feet pounding against the hull, rifle/cannon ready. Angelo was close behind Dana, and then Bowie. Sean Phillips, Zor, Louie Nichols—those were all of the squad that got through.
Several others were annihilated right at the verge of the gap. Still more raced for cover. The sum accomplishment of the biggest Human offensive of the Second Robotech War was to get exactly one officer and one NCO and four enlisted men of ATAC aboard the enemy command vessel.
Aboard his flagship, Emerson was hoping he had given the 15th the margin it needed. No other mecha had succeeded in reaching a position that would allow them to board, and, for the time being at least, none seemed likely to.
Emerson was calling for more diversionary strikes, to keep the Masters busy and eliminate as many red Bioroids as possible, when his flagship was battered by another massive volley.
Colonel Green picked himself up off the deck, checked the incoming reports and called to his commanding general, “It’s another alien mother ship, sir!” He checked damage readouts. “And we’re in no shape to take ’em on, Rolf!”
After the battle and the ramming, Emerson knew that was only common sense. But he said, “The battle plan does not allow for withdrawal at this time—”
A second barrage, even stronger than the first, rattled them all around like dice in a cup. Emerson saw that it wasn’t just one mother ship coming to the rescue, but at least three. There was no choice; his forces would be utterly obliterated if he didn’t at least fall back to regroup.
And there was no time for an extraction mission to recover the 15th; it was committed. Its few young troopers were very likely the last, best hope of Earth.
Marie, back aboard her attack transport to rearm and refuel, heard the announcements and commands over the PA and went cold, as the Earth fleet began to break off contact and withdraw. Oh, Sean!
The 15th spotted the two Triumviroids in the corridor ahead of them before the reds spied the 15th. The ATAC Battloids charged almost shoulder to shoulder, unavoidably bunched up, putting out the heaviest volume of fire they could.
A strange thing happened; the enemy mecha whirled and froze. ATAC rifle shots spattered their torsos and faceplates, blowing them out, and the Triumviroids dropped like puppets whose strings had been snipped. The ATACs had had the advantage of numbers and surprise, but it was still a remarkably easy win in comparison to the harrowing battle on the outer hull.
The 15th never even broke stride, but charged on further into the ship, weapons ready. But even as Dana leapt her Battloid over one red’s body something occurred to her. Two—there were only two this time. And the reds had been working in threes up above. Presumably there was at least one more around down here, perhaps damaged or crushed by Emerson’s ramming maneuver.
She had no time to pursue the thought, though, as she led her squad along a curvy passageway built to mecha scale. The deck and bulkheads seemed unremarkable here, but the overhead looked like a big, metallic neural network. No time to stop and study, however.
“Must be kinda familiar, huh, Zor-O?” Angelo taunted. “Which way d’we go?”
“I wish I knew, but I don’t remember, Sergeant,” Zor answered, unruffled.
“I’ll just bet ya don’t, alien!”
Dana snapped, “Knock it off, Dante! Stay sharp, all of you!”
The warning was well timed. A moment later, a diamond-shaped hatch slid open before them and three Triumviroids leapt into the opening.
But the 15th was so juiced up on adrenaline and the heat of battle that they opened fire instantly. For some reason these enemy mecha, too, were slow in responding, and with their faceplates shot out, they went over like bowling pins.
“Shoot for the faceplates, that’s their weak spot!” Dana confirmed, as the ATACs rushed the hatch, covering one another. “If y’get one or two away from the third, it slows them down; if you get a trio, hit them at exactly the same moment. Looks like that overloads ’em somehow.”
“They have discovered an inherent weakness of our Invid Fighter,” Shaizan said tonelessly. It seemed that the single-thinking Human animals were a match for the Three-Who-Act-as-One.
Dag said, “Then, we must reactivate Zor Prime’s programming, and resume full command of his mind and actions.”
A perfect solution. There could be no chance of malfunction, since Zor was so close to the Protoculture cap.
Bowkaz touched his long, nailless fingers and his palm to a mottled patch of the cap, and the patch shone with radiance. “It is done.”
“Lieutenant, somethin’s wrong with Zor!”
It was odd to hear concern in Angelo’s voice.
Dana and the others stopped and pounded back to where Angelo’s Battloid faced Zor’s, which stood stiff as a mannikin.
The power of Protoculture coursed through Zor’s brain, taking control of every corner of his mind in moments.
Dana shook the paralyzed Battloid a little. “Zor, what’s wrong? Are you hit? Answer me!”
Suddenly the Three-in-One lashed out, grabbing the enormous alloy fist of Dana’s Valkyrie in its own, bending it in a take-away hold, threatening to rip it off.
Angelo yelled, “Zor, that’s enough!” He had his rifle up, but Dana was in his line of fire.
She worked a quick hand-to-hand trick, rotating her mecha’s wrist out of the grip and yanking herself free. “What’s gotten into you?”
But Zor’s Battloid was already running in the other direction, off toward a side passageway.
Dana only had a second to decide, and no time to sort through her various motives. A part of her simply could not bear to see Zor go off, perhaps blanked out again or suffering some mental seizure, to be captured or slain. Furthermore, he was an important resource to her mission and to the Southern Cross, perhaps her best hope of doing her job in the mother ship and getting her unit out alive.
But she couldn’t risk her whole squad trying to tackle one berserk trooper. “Angelo, come with me! The rest of you set up security here and maintain radio contact!”
They had barely started to chase Zor when another threesome of the reds tried to block their way. Dana felt sure the Triumviroids were covering Zor’s escape, that he had given them the order to do so.
Dana managed a broken-field run through them, but Angelo took one out with a shoulder block, slamming it against the bulkhead, as the disc guns opened up and the rifle/cannon replied. The passageway was an inferno of close-range firing.
Sean yelled an obscenity as he, Louie, and Bowie set up the heaviest fire they could, distracting the enemy from Dana and Angelo. The Triumviroids seemed to hear an unspoken order, and turned their attention on the remaining troopers. The mecha blasted at each other, blowing holes in deck and bulkheads, brilliant spears of novafire skewing across the small distance separating them.