Few of us were fortunate enough to have seen the interior of the SDF-1 before Dr. Lang’s teams of Robotechnicians had retrofit the fortress with bulkheads, partitions, lowered ceilings, and doorways and hatches proportioned to human scale; so our entry into the enormous lower hold of [Breetai’s] flagship proved to be a veritable assault on the senses. Although I learned much later that human-size enclosures did in fact exist aboard the SDF-1 prior to reconstruction, here were all the things Sterling, Dixon, and I had been hearing about from members of the early exploratory teams: the three-hundred-foot-high ceilings, thirty-foot-wide hatchways, miles of corridors… It was not surprising, then, that our minds refused to grapple with these new dimensions. We didn’t experience the hold as human beings entering giant-sized spaces; it was instead as if we had been reduced in size!
The Collected Journals of Admiral Rick Hunter
EVEN BY ZENTRAEDI STANDARDS, THE SOLDIER WHO LEAPT from the hold gantry and decked Rick Hunter’s Battloid was enormous.
Max calculated the giant’s height at sixty-plus feet. He wore knee-high utility boots and a blue uniform trimmed in yellow at the collar and sleeves; over this was a long, sleeveless brown tunic adorned with one bold vertical blue band. At breast level was some sort of insignia or badge of rank—almost a black musical note in a yellow field. But the most memorable thing about him was the gleaming plate that covered one side of his head, inset with what appeared to be a lusterless cabochon. He had jumped more than 200 feet from the catwalk, yet here he stood glaring at them, ready to take on the entire Robotech Defense Force single-handed.
Max didn’t have to be told that he’d met one of the Zentraedi elite.
Sterling allowed these diverse emotional reactions to wash through him; he then relaxed and began to attune his thoughts to the Battloid’s capabilities. Quickly positioning his mecha behind the giant, he swung the depleted gatling cannon across the warrior’s chest and held it fast with both hands, pinioning the giant’s arms at his sides. Displays in the Battloid cockpit module ran wild as the Zentraedi struggled to free himself. Max could sense the extent of the enemy’s will reaching into his own mind and grappling with it on some newly opened front in this war, a psycho-battleground.
The Battloid’s arms were stressed to the limit, threatening to dislocate with each of the giant’s chest expansions. The Zentraedi was growling like a trapped animal, twisting his head around, each deliberate move calculated to bring that gleaming faceplate into violent contact with the canopy of the mecha. Max knew that something was going to give out soon unless he changed tactics.
The Battloid’s environmental sensors indicated that the hold was indeed an air lock; it could therefore be depressurized. Max wasn’t certain what size hole would be necessary to achieve the effect he was after, but he had to take a chance. He raised Ben on the tac net, all the while struggling with foot pedals and random thoughts, and ordered him to fire his warheads at the ship’s hull directly overhead.
Ben triggered release of the missiles; the explosion tore a gaping hole in the ship. But something unexpected was happening even before the smoke was sucked clear: The hull was actually repairing itself! Max couldn’t believe his sensors; the process was almost organic, as though the ship was… alive.
But he lost no time thinking about it. He fired the mecha’s foot thrusters, launching himself, along with the Zentraedi, toward the ceiling. Just short of the healing rend, he released his grip on the cannon. Momentum carried the giant out into space seconds before the hull patch completed itself.
Back on the floor of the hold, Rick had picked himself up. He had snatched Lisa from midair during the depressurization and was holding her in the Battloid’s metal-shod hand now, ignoring her protestations. Max brought his Battloid down beside him.
“Nice work, Max. Guess we won’t be seeing that character again.”
“Not unless he can survive deep space without an extravehicular suit.”
“Now what do we do?” Ben asked.
The three men panned their Battloid video cameras across the hold, searching for a way out.
Breetai, meanwhile, who was made of much sterner stuff than any of the Earthlings realized, was not only alive but was at that moment pulling his way along the outer skin of the flagship, using as handholds the numerous sensor bristles and antennae that covered the ship. The gaping hole had of course closed itself too quickly to permit reentry into the hold, but he had managed to recollect his strength by latching on to a jagged piece of the ruptured hull before beginning his trek across the exterior armor plating.
His genetic makeup allowed him to withstand the vacuum of deep space for a limited period only, but he had nothing less than complete confidence in his ability to survive. Thoughts of vengeance drove him on: That Micronian was going to pay dearly for this.
Inside the ship, the diminutive Lisa Hayes had resumed command of the three pilots in their Battloids. She spoke into her helmet communicator from the open hand of Rick Hunter’s mecha, instructing Max and Ben to use their top-mounted lasers to burn through the port hatch.
“You’ll have to do it quickly,” she advised them. “They’re going to be on us any second now.” She then swung herself around to face Rick. “And Lieutenant, would you mind putting me down now? I know how you enjoy holding me, but you’ll have to learn to admire me from a distance.”
Rick mumbled something into his headset and set his commander back on the floor of the hold. Max and Ben were taking alternate turns on the air lock to keep their lasers from overheating.
Rick stepped forward to join them. He was motioning Ben’s Battloid aside when he heard what sounded like a war cry—not through his headset but shattering the air of the hold itself. He spun the Battloid around in time to see the returned Zentraedi leap from an open hatchway overhead. The giant attacked like a samurai warrior; he held aloft a thick, pipelike tool that he brought down with gargantuan strength on the head of Ben’s Battloid, dropping the mecha to the floor with a resounding crash.
The Zentraedi stood victorious over his fallen enemy, then turned his attention to Max and Rick. Issuing a guttural sound, he gripped the tool with both hands and thrust it in front of him.
Max and Rick separated some and raised their useless cannons, gripping them palms down like battle staffs. The Zentraedi was moving in slowly, each step calculated and deliberate.
“He’s getting ready to charge,” said Max.
Rick risked a step forward, motioning Max to fall in behind him. He brought the cannon up over his head and stood his ground, waiting for the charge.
The Zentraedi launched himself with a basso yell. Rick planted himself and brought the cannon down like a sledge, putting every ounce of strength he could summon into the blow. Metal met metal with fusion force.
Breetai swung his weapon like a bat, sending the gatling flying from the Battloid’s hands. It hit the floor nose first, almost flattening Lisa Hayes.
Now six more Zentraedi soldiers in helmets and full-body armor arrived on the scene. One of them rushed forward with some sort of satchel and sacked the dazed Micronian pilot.
Max witnessed it, but three soldiers now stood between him and the commander. Regardless, he moved in to engage one of them. The Zentraedi tried to wrestle the gatling from his grip, so Max turned the sallow-faced man’s strength to his own advantage, relaxing his own hold on the cannon for a moment, then using the soldier’s uncontrolled momentum to heave him to the floor. But he was hardly in the clear: A cluster of five more were opening fire on him with shock guns. Max tossed aside the cannon and leaped up, firing the Battloid foot thrusters as he did so. Halfway to the ceiling of the hold he reached for the mode levers, reconfigured the Guardian, and began returning fire, dodging blue bolts of energy that shot past him and impacted on the inner skin of the ship.
Rick had been knocked flat on his back by the Zentraedi commander. The giant stood over him now, preparing to pile-drive the tool through the Battloid’s abdomen. Rick brought the mecha’s right leg up, bent at the knee, and fired the foot thruster full into the face of his assailant. As the Zentraedi went back, clutching his face and losing his grip on the weapon, Rick pulled his thruster lever home and went in for the kill, catching the giant’s midsection and somersaulting him into a midair front flip. But the giant somehow managed to reverse the throw. Although Rick landed on top of him, he found himself facing the Zentraedi’s feet. And the next thing he knew, he was being pressed into the air by the standing Zentraedi and launched across the hold.
Rick engaged the shoulder retros to cut his airspeed. He executed a neat front flip with a half twist that left him standing face to face with the Zentraedi, but he was unfortunately off balance and stunned. A right cross followed by a front kick sent him down to the floor again. This time his opponent was playing for keeps.
Breetai grabbed the mecha by its right aim, spun it into a three-sixty, and hurled it against a set of bulkhead cargo spikes; these perforated the Battloid’s arms, chest, and shoulders and left it hanging there, pinned to the wall.
Identifying with the mecha, Rick felt like the victim of a careless circus knife thrower. The Battloid was immobilized, half its systems disabled, and now this giant with the faceplate was coming in to finish him off. Valiantly, Rick fired the top-mounted lasers, but the Zentraedi dropped himself out of range in the nick of time.
Rick was suddenly looking at foot-long life and love lines—the giant had brought his hand up over the canopy and was beginning to crush it. One by one the life support systems began to fail. And now the giant was working on the chestplates, literally tearing the Battloid apart! He ripped the armor from the mecha and tossed it aside as though it weighed nothing.
Grinning, the Zentraedi peered in at him now through the torn cockpit module, taking obvious delight in Rick’s fearful situation. Rick armed the mecha’s still-functioning self-destruct warhead and in desperation, reached down under the seat for the manual eject ring and gave it a wholehearted tug. The head of the Battloid lolled forward, its explosive charges crippled, but the cockpit seat managed to launch itself.
The Zentraedi, too, launched himself with a powerful jump. He snatched Rick from the air, crushing him in his fist, bringing on blessed relief from further fear…
Witnessing the giant’s catch, Max, his Guardian still moving through the hold dodging laser bolts, was certain that the lieutenant had been killed. Hunter’s murderer was going to pay in kind, Max decided. He nose-dived the VT, preparing to loose all the firepower he had left.
But all at once the remains of Rick’s Battloid exploded. The Zentraedi was thrown off his feet, a breach was blown in the hull, and Max’s Veritech was sucked from the air lock.
The hull quickly sealed itself, and the Zentraedi soldiers gathered around their fallen commander. Breetai was flat out on his back, his tunic and uniform torn and tattered. But he was made of sterner stuff than even they realized. He said as much as he got up.
His right hand was still clenched. Carefully he relaxed his grip to regard the small creature held there, strapped to its ejection seat, unmoving and as quiet as death.