What do I remember about those days in New Macross? …Anger, strident conversations, despair—it almost seemed as if Protoculture’s shape-shifting capabilities had taken hold of fate itself, changing and reworking individual destiny, transforming and reconfiguring lives…
Lisa Hayes, Recollections
THE SUN ROSE INTO CIRRUS SKIES ABOVE NEW MACROSS CITY, autumn’s first crisp and clear day. The stratospheric dust and debris that for two years now had led to blue moons, sullen sunsets, and perpetual winters was at last dissipating, and there was every indication that Earth was truly on the mend.
Minmei, dressed in a white summer-weight skirt and red sweater, stepped out of the White Dragon and took a deep breath of the cool morning air. She felt more rested than she had in months; the comfort of her own room and the company of her family were warm in her memory. A newsboy, brown baseball cap askew on his head, rushed by and dropped off the morning edition; she greeted him cheerfully and started off down the street, unaware that he had turned startled in his tracks, recognizing the singing star instantly and somewhat disappointed when she hadn’t stopped to talk with him for a moment.
She had a lot on her mind, but for a change she felt that there was all the time in the world to see to everything. The band would be expecting her for rehearsal, but that was still hours off, and she wanted nothing more than to walk the streets and say hello to the city in her own way. That’s no EVE projection up there, she had to remind herself, unaccustomed to sunny skies. She had been a creature of the night for too long, victimized by her own needs as much as she was by Kyle’s grandiose plans for the future.
Last night’s argument seemed far removed from the optimism coursing through her. If Kyle could only be made to understand, if he would only stop drinking and return himself to the disciplines that made him unique in her eyes… Sometimes he appeared to be as displaced as the Zentraedi themselves, yearning for new battles to wage, new fronts to open. He detested the presence of the military and continued to blame them for the nearly total destruction of the planet. Minmei pitied him for that. The military had at least managed to salvage a place for new growth. And as for their presence, the threat of a follow-up attack was a real one—not manufactured, as Kyle claimed, to keep the civilians in line. The Earth had been ravaged once, and it could happen again.
But these were dark thoughts to have on such a glorious day, and she decided to put them from her mind. There was beauty and renewed life everywhere she looked. Skyscrapers rose like silver towers above the rooftops, and Lake Gloval looked as though it had been sprinkled with gems…
* * *
In the outskirts of New Macross Rick had already commenced his morning run, in full sweats today, a beige outfit Lisa had given him for his birthday. The city was still asleep, taking advantage of the chill to spend a few extra moments cuddled under blankets, and there was no traffic to fight; so he jogged without any set course in mind, along the lakefront, then into the grid of city streets. Flat-bottomed cargo crafts ferried supplies to and from the supercarriers still attached to the SDF-1, while launches carried night-shift work crews away from the SDF-2, back to back with its mother ship and rapidly nearing completion.
Breathe in the good, breathe out the bad, he chanted to himself as he ran—and there was a great deal of the latter he needed to get rid of. If asked what he was so angry about, he probably wouldn’t have been able to offer a clear explanation. Only this: He was tense. Whether it had something to do with his situation with Lisa, or Minmei’s situation with Kyle, or Earth’s with the Zentraedi, he couldn’t be sure. Probably it was a combination of everything, coupled with an underlying sense of purposelessness.
“Both races seem to enjoy fighting,” Exedore had said. Rick regretted now that he had turned the briefing into a debate—he would have felt differently had he been able to make his point—but was still certain of his feelings: that the Zentraedi, for all their genetic similarities to humans, were no better than programmed androids. All one needed to do was look around to see that he was right: The Zentraedi were hungry for war—biologically hungry. They were deserting their positions, sometimes violently—the recent incident in New Portland was a case in point—to take up with their fellow malcontents in makeshift compounds in the wasteland, off limits to humans, who would not be able to withstand the lingering radiation. Perhaps a mistake had been made in attempting to band together despite the gains to New Macross. But Rick was certain it was only a matter of time before all the Zentraedi followed suit and returned to war.
He exhaled harshly and increased his pace.
* * *
Just down the street from the White Dragon, only a few blocks from Rick’s present course, a delivery van pulled to a stop in front of a two-storied building with a red and white striped awning and a rainbow-shaped sign that read CLEANING. At the wheel was Konda, one of the three former Zentraedi spies.
“Rico! Gimme a hand with this!” Bron called from the sidewalk, a full basket of laundry in his brawny arms.
The door to the shop opened, and the founder of the Minmei cult stepped out, affecting oversized and unnecessary eyeglasses, convinced that they enhanced his appearance. Rico had also let his hair grow and was dressed in a short-waisted blue and white uniform that fit him like a leisure suit.
The three former secret agents had secured jobs with the cleaning service several months before, their fascination for clothing as strong now as it had been when they first experienced Micronian life in the holds of the SDF-1.
“Hey, guess what happened?” Konda said, leaning out of the van.
Rico was quick to respond, leaving Bron (a good fifteen pounds lighter than he’d been two years ago) to fend for himself. “What happened?” he asked excitedly.
“Guess.”
“What?” Rico repeated, enjoying the game but still vague about the rules.
“Minmei’s back in town—she stayed at the restaurant last night!”
“No kidding!”
“I got it straight from his honor the mayor himself.”
Rico made a puzzled gesture. “But I saw in the paper that Minmei’s got a concert in Granite City today.” He wanted to believe Konda, but still…
“Well, if she leaves early enough today, she can still make it,” Konda offered as an explanation.
Rico snapped his fingers. “Rats! If I had known, I would have gone to the restaurant last night to eat.” He dug into his pants pocket and produced a small notebook, which he immediately began to leaf through. It was possible he’d been mistaken about the Granite City concert. “Hmmm… let’s see… It looks like I’ve forgotten her concert schedule in my other notebook.” If Konda’s information was correct, then perhaps Minmei would be spending another night at the White Dragon.
Rico reveled in the idea of “having a mission.” He and his sidekicks had had their share of dull evenings lately. Things didn’t seem to be working out too well for the three of them and Kim, Vanessa, and Sammie. He was at a loss to explain the reasons for this but reasoned that it had something to do with procreation, that mystery of mysteries so important to Micronian females. Not everyone could be as fortunate as Miriya Parino and her mate…
Just then Bron appeared behind him, a neatly folded stack of sheets in his arms.
“Hey! We’re supposed to be dry cleaners, not gossipmongers.” Bron took his job very seriously, judging it to be one of the most important things a Micronian could attend to—next to cooking, of course. The care and maintenance of uniforms especially. “Now, either you ship up or shape out or I’m gonna just have to—huh?”
Bron shouldered Rico aside and advanced a few steps along the sidewalk, staring at a woman pedestrian headed their way.
“Hey… Am I dreaming?” he said. Then: “It is!”
“Huh?” said Rico, tempted to remove his glasses.
Konda leaned from the van. “Is that…”
“Minmei!” the three of them said together, unable to believe their luck.
“Hi.” She smiled, raising her hand. She hadn’t seen any of them in months—since her last open-air concert in New Macross, where they had had front-row seats and carried artificial flowers.
Rico and Bron ran to her, Kanda quick to bring up the rear. “Minmei, would you… well, would you like to autograph this?” Bron said, offering her his pile of pressed linen.
“Hey, Bron, that belongs to a customer,” Rico pointed out, confident that his knowledge of Micronian protocol would impress Minmei.
But Bron ignored him. “So what! I’ll buy the customer a new one!”
This found favor with Rico and Kanda, both of whom reached for the sheets simultaneously, touching off an instant tug-of-war for what hadn’t already fallen to the sidewalk.
Minmei backed up, worried that the battle might escalate; but finally she laughed and dug into her purse for a pen.
* * *
Elsewhere in the city a more violent battle was under way.
Mayor Tommy Luan had been attending to his morning ritual (putting on a tie, then taking it oft), when he saw something fly past his second-floor bedroom window—something large and red that had about as much business being in the air as a tie had around his neck. He moved to the window in time to see a compact car crash to the street and explode. Pedestrians were screaming and fleeing the scene. Some idiot’s driven off the roof of the parking garage, Luan told himself as he made for the stairway.
By the time he reached street level, flames and thick smoke had engulfed what was left of the car. But he had scarcely stepped from the building when a second explosion filled the air, more ground-shaking than the first. Luan saw a second black cloud rise over the rooftops from somewhere nearby and ran toward the direction of the smoke, revising his earlier hypothesis. Was this a sneak attack or some new terrorist group at work?
As he approached the intersection, an airborne girder took out a streetlamp, sending up a fountain of sparks and stopping him in his tracks. From around the corner came two Zentraedi giants, one brandishing a long pipe and carrying a large sack stuffed with who knew what. Luan had begun a slow retreat down his street, but the two saw him and began to pursue him. Spent after a block, the mayor stopped, collapsing to his knees in front of his home.
The Zentraedi stood over him, threatening him with the pipe.
“I beg you—h-have pity.”
“I’ll spare you if you give me everything you’ve got!” growled the pipe wielder instinctively, with no real purpose other than intimidation in mind.
“T-That’s easier said than done,” Luan answered him, trying to figure out just what he might possess that would appeal to a sixty-foot warrior.
Inside the house, Luan’s wife, Loretta, having glimpsed the terrifying street scene from the living room window, had already raised the base on the phone. The clenched fist of one of the aliens filled the picture window behind her.
“Right… right,” she was saying, growing panic in her voice. “They’ve suddenly become very violent and extremely dangerous. They’re trying to take our food and our possessions and everything we—”
Something took hold of her, cutting off her breath.
Now she was being lifted off the floor and carried through the front door, her narrow shoulders and fragile neck pinched in the grip of giant fingers. The warrior, who had gone down on both knees to fish her from her home, held her ten feet above the sidewalk, choking the life from her while he roared into her face.
“Whaddaya think you’re up to? Sit down!” he said gruffly, slamming her to the concrete. This knocked the wind out of her and dislocated her back. Through the pain she recognized that she was sitting in a most unladylike position, her pleated blue skirt up around her thighs, but there was nothing she could do about it. Then suddenly Tommy was beside her, holding her and spitting at the aliens:
“You monster! You’ve hurt her.” Luan wrapped his beefy arms around his wife. “Be strong, darling. We’re going to get you to a hospital as soon as we—”
“You’re not going anywhere!” the two Zentraedi bellowed, moving in to cast a grim shadow over both of them…
Rick was breathing hard, pushing himself into a sprint, when he heard his name called. He forced himself to stop, doubled over with hands on his knees, panting for a moment, before he turned around. Lisa! He had purposely avoided his usual route for fear of bumping into her. There had been some awkward moments between them these past few weeks. She had stopped coming by his quarters—even (in a roundabout fashion) returned the key he had given her. She thought he was seeing Minmei again, but he wasn’t. Not really.
“What are you doing up so early?” he asked as she approached.
She stammered, “Um… well, I wasn’t sleeping too well.”
“Why not?” Rick said, feeling a sudden concern.
“Something’s wrong.”
“Wrong? Whaddaya mean?”
Lisa stared at him. Was he ever going to be able to talk to her? “I don’t know,” she told him. “I’m not really sure…”
“Well, working on patrol has made me pretty sensitive to what’s going on—there’s some tension, but we can handle it.”
Was he talking about tension between the two of them, or did he mean tension among the Zentraedi? Lisa asked herself. Patrol was making him sensitive… to what? She wanted to believe that this was Rick’s way of apologizing.
“I’d better be reporting in,” he said, motioning toward the SDF-1. “It’s breakfast time.”
Lisa smiled to herself. It was like pulling teeth… but she wasn’t going to give up on him. Not yet.
“Mind if I walk with you? I don’t feel like going back to the barracks by myself, okay?”
“Come to think of it,” Rick said as they started off, “you may be right about there being trouble.”
It was as prescient a comment as Rick had uttered in quite some time—although subsequent events would erase it from his memory—because Minmei happened to be walking up the same street Rick and Lisa had entered when they rounded the corner scarcely ten paces ahead of her.
Minmei froze, sucking in her breath, as the haunting memories she had experienced in her room last evening returned. Seeing Rick now, practically arm in arm with another woman, only strengthened her earlier longings and, worse still, reinforced her worse fears. What had she done?
“Oh, listen,” she heard Rick tell Lisa. “I forgot to tell you—I put your picture in my album.”
“You did? That was sweet.”
Rick turned to Lisa and started to say, “I hope you don’t mind, but I—”
Then he saw her standing there.
The moment was full of real-life drama, but Minmei held the edge. She stood still long enough for him to hear her sob and see the tears; then she turned and ran.
Her performance wasn’t lost on Lisa. But Rick was fully taken in, already chasing after her, calling for her to wait.
Why? Lisa yelled at herself. Why does she have to manipulate him, and why does he fall right into it, and why am I chasing him now when he’s chasing her?
Rick and Lisa were right behind Minmei when she turned the corner, but all at once she was nowhere in sight.
“How could she have disappeared so quickly?” Rick said, looking around.
Lisa was out of breath. She had figured—correctly, in fact—that Minmei was hiding in one of the storefronts up ahead.
She was about to suggest they try a different direction, when a thunderous bass voice suddenly yelled: “I said shut up!”
Rick and Lisa turned. Towering above the building situated diagonally across the intersection from them, two Zentraedi workers were faced off in an argument. The red-haired one stepped forward and threw a sucker punch, catching the second across the jaw and dropping him to the street with a ground-shaking crash.
“Come on!” Rick said, hurrying toward the fracas.
By the time Rick and Lisa arrived on the scene, the red-haired Zentraedi was straddling his opponent, pummeling the other’s face. A third Zentraedi, obviously allied with the winner, stood smiling off to one side. Tommy Luan was cowering on the sidewalk nearby.
Rick braced himself and stepped forward. “Stop that fighting right now!” he yelled. “Stop it, I said!”
The mayor, supporting his injured wife, ran to Rick’s side from across the street.
“Commander! Thank goodness you’re here!”
“What’s this all about, sir?” Rick asked him.
“They were threatening to kill us! Then this one showed up, and they started arguing—”
“I can’t live here anymore!” bellowed the red-haired Zentraedi, pinning his opponent to the street.
Luan, encouraged by Rick’s presence, stepped forward to address the giant. “I told you—I understand your problem, but you have to be reasonable about—”
“Be quiet, fatso!” the former warrior said, getting to his feet. “I’II squash you, got it?!”
Luan and his wife hid behind Rick.
“Tell him not to get angry about it, Commander.”
Just then the streets began shaking with a recognizable thunder. Civil defense sirens blared as four Excalibur MK VIs took up positions on either side of the Zentraedi, their twin-cannon arms raised. Bipedally designed relatives of the MAC II cannon, the mecha bristled with gatlings and were capable of delivering devastating volleys of firepower.
Rick wasn’t sure what he was going to say next, but the sudden arrival of Robotech mecha on the scene was a booster shot to his confidence.
“The authorities are here. Now will you stop fighting?”
The upper gun turret of the lead Excalibur slid forward, and the mecha’s commander elevated himself into view.
“Zentraedi!” his small but amplified voice rang out. “Stop! We’ve got you surrounded!”
The giant who moments before had been flat on his back got up and stepped out of harm’s way, leaving the red-haired one and his cohort center stage. Rick, recognizing the voice of the mecha commander, cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted: “Dan! Hold it!”
Dan looked down from his cockpit seat, surprised to find Rick in the middle of this. “Commander! What happened here?”
“Let me handle this,” Rick told him.
Dan gave a verbal aye-aye, and Rick moved in angrily to confront the giants.
“Now, you listen to me, and listen good! I know life with us is hard for you, but the authorities want to help you with your problems—if you’ll give them the chance.”
The red-haired Zentraedi, clutching his sackful of valuables once again, went down on one knee to answer Rick, equally confident and angered.
“Wait a minute!” he growled. “If your government is so worried about us and so concerned about our welfare, why don’t they let us go out and be with our own people where we belong?”
“Uh, well, that’s—”
“I am a warrior, understand?”
“Well, what about it?” asked the second Zentraedi threateningly. “Bagzent wants to fight—can you help him?”
“I’m good with my fists, and I can handle practically any weapon,” continued the one called Bagzent. “So what do you say? Can you help? Speak up, I can’t hear you… Well?… Are you gonna help me or not?”
The scene was turning ugly again. Mayor Luan, his wife, and Lisa sensed it and began to back away. The CD mecha shifted slightly, their guns traversing somewhat.
At the corner, unseen, Minmei gasped.
“Well,” Rick began, “we have no firm guarantee you won’t band together and attack us again. If you want to—”
“Huh!” Bagzent grunted, tiring of the game. “If you can’t help me solve my problem, then what’s the point in saying that you or your government will talk about it?” All at once his right hand had moved forward. “Micronian!” he uttered in disgust, flicking his forefinger.
Rick took the full force of the movement. The Zentraedi’s log-sized forefinger caught him full body, from knees to chin, lifting him off his feet and tossing him a good ten feet through the air. Dazed and bloodied, he landed solidly on his rump at the clawlike foot of one of the Excaliburs.
Startled gasps went up from the humans pressed together on the street corner, but those were not as bothersome to the Zentraedi as the sounds of weapons being leveled against them.
“On my signal,” said Dan. “Blast ’em!”
The two Zentraedi backed away, suddenly afraid. Gatlings were ranged in.
“Wait,” one of them pleaded. “Don’t shoot.”
Rick shook the pain from his body, struggled to his feet, and raced back to the center of the arena. He raised up his arms and shouted to Dan again, “Hold your fire!” Then he held his face up to Bagzent, blood running from the corner of his mouth.
Bagzent snarled. “Listen to me, Micronian,” he started to say.
“No! You listen to me,” Rick interrupted him. “We’ve given you sanctuary and this is how you repay us?!”
The corners of Bagzent’s mouth turned down. “I’m sorry,” he grumbled—not apologetically, but as if to say: I’m sorry it has to be this way.
Bagzent and his companion turned and began to walk off, but the third Zentraedi stepped forward now, calling to them.
“Come back! You’ll regret this! When we first came here, you thought their culture was a great thing—you were so impressed by Minmei’s songs.”
The Zentraedis stopped for a moment as if considering this, then continued their heavy-footed retreat.
“Stay and give it one more try!” the third was shouting. “It’s worth the effort, isn’t it? We’ve come so far, we can’t give up now!”
When he realized his words were having no effect, he added: “Stupid cowards! Come back!”
Concealed from Lisa and the Luans, Minmei brought her hand to her mouth to stifle her sadness and terror. When she could no longer contain herself, she fled.
Lisa was at Rick’s side now, watching the Zentraedis move stiffly away.
“They’re getting more and more dissatisfied,” said Rick, spitting blood. “We’re gonna have to do something.”
“I wonder… what’ll they do after they leave here?”
“I know one thing,” the mayor interjected. “Whether they survive out in that wasteland or not… we’re responsible.”
Rick spun around, angry and confused to find yet another sympathizer in his midst. But the mayor stared him down.
“That’s right, Rick,” Luan said knowingly. “We haven’t heard the last of this.”