The Zentraedi version of psychology could only be termed primitive, of course, except as it applied to such things as maintaining military discipline and motivating warriors. And even there, it was brutal and straightforward.
No surprise, then, that when those particular three Zentraedi were quick to accept their spying mission, Breetai scarcely thought twice about it.
But of course, he hadn’t spent as much time watching transmissions of the swimsuit portion of the Miss Macross contest.
Zeitgeist, Alien Psychology
THE SDF-1’S SURVIVAL OF THE LATEST ZENTRAEDI ATTACK HAD buoyed morale all through the ship—at least in most cases; there were those whom the lessons of war had made too wary to quickly believe in good fortune. Even with Earth looming large before it and the long, dark billions of miles safely crossed, the battle fortress was dogged by the enemy—now more than ever. Continued vigilance was imperative.
One of those acutely aware of the continuing danger was Claudia Grant, who was acting as the vessel’s First Officer in Lisa Hayes’s absence. Though Claudia and Lisa were friends, Claudia had always felt a little put off by Lisa’s single-minded devotion to duty, her severity. But now, elevated to the responsibilities of her position—especially at this moment, with Gloval off the bridge—Claudia was seeing things in a different light.
The members of her usual watch, the female enlisted-rating techs, Sammie, Kim, and Vanessa, were off duty for a long-postponed pass into Macross City. Lisa, Claudia, and the other three had formed something very much like a family, with Gloval as patriarch; they had become a highly efficient team both under everyday stresses and demands and under fire.
The turmoil of the war had brought an assortment of other techs to the bridge on relief watches, and Claudia didn’t trust any of them to really know what they were doing, just as Lisa hadn’t. So even though she was almost out on her feet with fatigue, Claudia had refused to be relieved of her duties as long as Gloval was away.
There was no telling how long that would be. The glorious news of the rescue of Lisa and the others was tarnished by the fact that the SDF-1 was still surrounded by the enemy armada. Debriefings and command conferences might go on for a very long while.
Claudia looked up wearily from her instruments as she heard one of the relief-watch techs say wistfully, “Boy, is that beautiful! D’ you think we’ll ever set foot on Earth again?”
The tech had brought up a long-range image of their blue-white homeworld on the screen before her.
Claudia was a tall woman in her late twenties, with exotic good looks and glowing honey-brown skin. Her dark eyes twinkled and shone when she was happy, and flashed when she was angry. Right now, they were flashing like warning beacons.
“Why don’t you go ask the commander of that Zentraedi fleet? Go ahead, take a look at them! Maybe they’ve gone away!”
The tech, a teenage girl who wore her auburn hair in a pageboy and still didn’t look quite comfortable in uniform, swallowed and went a little pale. Claudia Grant’s temper was well known, and she had the size and speed to back it up when she needed to.
The tech worked her controls obediently, bringing up a visual of the Zentraedi fleet. They were all around the battle fortress, standing out of range of the ship’s secondary batteries and lesser weapons. They were like a seaful of predatory fish—cruisers and destroyers and smaller craft in swarms, blocking out the stars. And farther away, the instruments registered their flagship: nine miles of armor and heavy weapons.
The tech gasped, eyes big and round.
“Still there, huh?” Claudia nodded, knowing full well they were. “All right, then, let’s not hear any more about wanting to go home; not until our job’s done. Understood?”
The tech hastened to say, “Aye aye!” as did the rest of the watch.
Claudia eased off a bit, looking around at the watch members. “There are a lot of folks depending on us. And I guarantee you, you don’t want to know what it feels like to let people down in a situation like this.”
* * *
In a far-off compartment of the SDF-1, three strange beings skulked and crept around. They were not Zentraedi, at least not any longer; they were of human scale. But neither could they fairly be called human, though that was the appearance they gave; until a few hours before they had been members of the giant warrior race.
The devastatingly fast and ferocious enemy mecha that had wreaked such havoc among the VT—the one the humans hadn’t seen before—had put this threesome aboard. The one thing they could accurately be called was “spies.”
They had hastily retreated from the metal canister in which they’d arrived. The mighty Quadrono Battalion mecha that had, in its lightning raid, torn open a section of the SDF-1’s hull to toss them inside had also (understandably enough) attracted a certain amount of attention. If the canister was found before it quietly dissolved, it might set off a massive search.
The smallest of the three, Rico, said, “Okay, let’s start spying!” He was dark-haired and wiry.
The sturdy Bron, a head taller, said sourly, “But we can’t spy in these clothes; they’ll know who we are!”
Even though the Zentraedi military had little experience in espionage—out-and-out battle was what the warrior race preferred—it was obvious that Bron was right. The Zentraedi fleet carried no wardrobe in human size, of course, and so the three wore improvised, shapeless knee-length robes of coarsely woven blue sackcloth. The sleeveless robes were gathered at the waist with a turn or two of Zentraedi string, more or less the thickness of clothesline. Not surprisingly, the spies were barefoot.
It all had them a bit shaken, this matter of dress. The Zentraedi drew much of their sense of self from their uniforms. The best the trio had been able to do was agree to maintain the attitude that they were wearing the special attire of an elite unit. A very small elite unit.
Konda, nearly Bron’s height but lean and angular, shook his hair back out of his eyes. His hair was purple, but intelligence reported that the color wouldn’t stand out much in light of current human fads. “Then, let’s find some other clothes,” Konda proposed.
They’d been given some briefings and rather broad guidelines by Zentraedi intelligence officers, but to a great extent they were improvising as they went along. Still, Konda’s idea made a lot of sense. The spies leapt from hiding and set off down a passageway, slipping among the shadows and peering around corners, much more conspicuous than if they’d simply strolled along chatting.
Naturally, SDF-1 had no internal security measures against Zentraedi spies, since it was generally assumed that a fifty-foot-high armored warrior wouldn’t be difficult to spot in the average crowd.
There followed a period of ducking and darting, of peeping into various compartments and avoiding any contact with the occasional passerby. The spies knew the general location of the battle fortress’s bridge and worked their way in that direction, since the ship’s nerve center was something the Zentraedi wanted very much to know about.
As the motley trio peeked out from concealment, they heard a very strange and appealing sound, something none of them had ever heard before. It was human; Konda wondered if it was some alien form of singing, even if it didn’t sound very military.
The sound was coming in their direction. They yanked themselves back out of sight. The oddly interesting sound stopped, and the spies heard human female voices.
“Where d’you want to go tonight, Sammie?”
There was the sound of slender shoe heels clicking along the deck. The human females were coming their way, so the spies drew back even deeper into darkness.
“Oh, I really don’t care, as long as I can get out of this uniform,” Sammie answered.
“Mine feels like it’ll be glad to get off me!” Vanessa said.
The Terrible Trio giggled together again; they’d been laughing with delight ever since the relief watch had shown up on the bridge to give them a brief taste of freedom. The hatch to a complex of enlisted ratings’ quarters compartments slid open for them and they entered. The hatch closed, shutting off the giggles.
The accelerated course in human language the three spies had been given let them understand the words perfectly, but the content was another question entirely. “What did all that mean?” Konda wondered, rubbing feet that had been made very, very cold by the deck plates.
Little Rico was thinking of a uniform wanting to get off somebody. Can these creatures have sentient clothing? Perhaps with artificial enhancements? That would indicate a supreme control of Protoculture! “It seems these Micronians have some great powers.”
“Micronians” had always been a derogatory Zentraedi term for small humanoid beings such as Homo sapiens. Now the spies weren’t so sure that the condescension was justified.
Bron nodded. “Well, let’s keep watch and see what else we can find out.”
It seemed like a very long time before the hatch reopened. The Terrible Trio emerged, each dressed for a night on the town in a different, fetching outfit. They laughed and joked, going off in the opposite direction, leaving the very faint but heady fragrance of three perfumes in the passageway.
“Different clothes!” Rico exclaimed softly. With different powers, perhaps, specialized for a particular mission?
“I know!” Bron said with a certain surprising emphasis.
“Do these people change uniforms every time they do something?” Konda posed a tactical question.
But why, then, did the clothes all look different? The spies somehow knew what they’d just seen weren’t uniforms. But how could the Micronians bear to lose their identity by not wearing their uniforms? It was all too unsettling for words.
Not to mention the fact that the three Micronian females looked and sounded, well, somehow delightful. Beguiling. It was very puzzling. The three looked at one another.
“Incredible,” Bron summarized.
“Uh, but what does it all mean?” Rico said with troubled brow.
Konda rubbed his jaw in thought. “They changed their clothes in that compartment down there. So that means… we can get disguises!”
“Good thinking!” Bron cried. “Let’s go!” Rico exploded.
They dashed down the passageway, bare feet slapping the deck. After first making sure nobody was still inside, they piled through the hatch together, anxious to blend in with the Micronians. And though none of them admitted it to the others, they were all thinking of those three intriguing Micronian females but trying not to.
They’d had a previous close encounter with the human enemy, monitoring SDF-1 transmissions that were confusing and puzzling but ever so fascinating. What they’d seen was the swimsuit competition of the ship’s Miss Macross pageant. Though they hadn’t been able to make head or tail of it, and neither had Zentraedi intelligence analysts, the experience had made Rico, Bron, and Konda eager to sign up for the spying mission.
Inside, various small subcompartments opened off a narrow central passageway. The spies began searching through them, looking for garments that might fit.
They approached the clothes tentatively, timidly. The human fabric constructions seemed unthreatening enough, hanging there docilely; but if they somehow incorporated Protoculture forces, there might be no limit to what they could do. The threesome moved as carefully as if they were in the midst of a pack of sleeping Dobermans.
When at last they worked up the nerve to actually touch a dangling cuff and nothing catastrophic happened, the Zentraedi proceeded with more confidence.
A pattern emerged: The lockers in those quarters on the forward side of the passageway tended to have rather recognizable clothing suited to normal activities, even if the cut was a little strange. The ones on the aft side, however, had frilly things, as well as trousers and the skirt-type uniforms the females had worn, as well as more elaborate designs of the same undivided lower garments.
After a lot of rummaging and trying on, Konda and Rico, now in human attire, stepped back into the main passageway. Konda wore dark slacks and a yellow turtleneck, settling the collar uncomfortably. Rico had found blue trousers and a red pullover.
“Hey, Bron, let’s get moving!” Rico called.
“This uniform is very unusual,” Bron said, lumbering to catch up. “But it’s all I can find that fits me. I dressed to conform with a two-dimensional image I saw in that compartment. What d’ you think?”
Bron held out the hem of his pleated skirt, standing awkwardly in the large pumps he’d found. His white silk blouse was arranged correctly, its fluffy bow tie and the tasteful string of pearls exactly corresponding to the fashion photo he’d seen.
“Y’ look fine, Bron! Now, let’s get started,” Rico snapped. Bron looked wounded.
Rico was edgy; he and the others had come aboard unarmed, since all Zentraedi weapons were now far too big for them to handle or hide. They’d found no Micronian weapons at all in the humans’ personal quarters except those of a makeshift and unsuitable sort. How could these creatures feel any peace of mind without at least a few small arms close at hand? It all made less and less sense.
Bron glowered, and Rico subsided; it was unwise to get the big fellow irritated. Bron gave his skirt a final hitch and said, “Ready.”
They fell in together and trooped off in the direction the Terrible Trio had gone, ready to bring triumph and glory to the mighty Zentraedi race.