We weren’t deaf to the innuendo, of course. Claudia and the Terrible Trio and I heard all the sniping about “Gloval’s Harem,” though people were very careful not to say anything around Claudia after she decked a cat crewman.
There is a loneliness to command, it’s no myth. But there’s also an area around the commander—where you’re not in charge but not part of the rest of the ship’s complement, either—that’s often a difficult place to be, too.
Lisa Hayes, Recollections
THE UNITED EARTH GOVERNMENT’S COMMAND COMPLEX WAS like a landlocked iceberg—only a fraction of it was visible aboveground. In fact, the communications towers, observation and surveillance structures, defensive emplacements, landing pads, and aircraft-handling facilities constituted less than half a percent of the cubic area of the enormous base.
It was still a highly classified installation. The fighters escorting the transport plane bearing Gloval and Lisa wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment to open fire on any unauthorized aircraft that entered its restricted airspace and failed to respond to their challenges.
Changing the angle of its engine blast, the transport eased in for a vertical landing. Lisa, glancing out her viewport, saw Battloids pacing on guard duty.
Once the plane’s authenticity and clearance were verified, its landing pad became an elevator, lowering it deep beneath the bleak, subarctic landscape.
Lisa and Gloval released their seat belts and gathered their things.
“I hope they’re prepared to listen,” Lisa said. “Captain, we’ve got to convince them! Surely they’ll listen to reason!”
“That would be nice for a change,” Gloval growled.
* * *
The Ikkii Takemi-designed fanliner rolled and soared, glinting in the sun.
“Woo-hoo-ooo!” Rick exulted. Piloting a Veritech through deepspace had its appeal, but there was nothing like feeling control surfaces bite the air and making a light stunt plane do exactly what you wanted it to.
“Having fun, Minmei?” He laughed again, and she joined in. He adored the sound of her laugh.
Maybe, he thought, he could just set down on some little island and say he wanted to check out the engine. Then he’d have a chance to talk to her, would have her full attention for a while.
While he was turning the idea over in his mind, a familiar voice came over his headset. “Veritech patrol to Minmei Special. Hey, Lieutenant! It’s Ben and Max!”
“Huh?” Rick saw them now, back at five o’clock. The fighters had their variable-sweep wings extended all the way for the extremely low speed needed to keep pace with the sport plane. He was a little embarrassed that they’d managed to sneak up on him.
“We understand you have a VIP aboard,” Ben went on.
“Some guys have all the luck,” Max added suggestively.
“We’re returning to base; have a nice date,” Ben finished, laughing. The Veritechs waggled their wings in salute, then peeled off onto a new course. Their wings swept back to an extreme angle as they picked up speed, punching through the sound barrier.
They were doing better than Mach 2 and still accelerating when Rick lost sight of them. “So long, wise guys,” he called over their tac net. “See you later.”
“Ben and Max are silly, but it does sort of feel like a date.”
He felt his pulse race. “Yep.”
She inhaled the cold, clear air, watching the glitter of the sun on the canopy. “It’s great to get away for a while, but when I get back, I have a whole lot of work to make up. You should see all the things they want me to do!”
Show biz again!
“I suppose it fills your time,” Rick snapped, vexed.
She hadn’t noticed his tone, ticking off her projects on her fingers. “Oh, yes! I’ve got to do a television show, and then I’m cast in a play. Why, I’m even supposed to do a movie!”
“Mmm,” Rick tried to sound elaborately bored. She still didn’t notice.
“That’s going to be really great,” Minmei gushed. “I expect to work really hard. This is my first movie, y’ know. Say! If I speak to the director, I might be able to get you a small part, hmm?”
That made him smile. Maybe she did think about others after all, notwithstanding the fact that he thought movies were a rather brainless occupation and definitely inferior to flying a fighter.
“Maybe some other time, Minmei. But, hey, where d’ you get all your energy? Flying heel-and-toe patrols is one thing, but I’d be exhausted trying to keep up with a schedule like that one. Minmei?”
He hiked himself around to look over his seat at her. “Minmei, are you all right? Speak to me!”
For a moment he was afraid the cockpit had lost pressure and looked to his instruments frantically. Then he saw what had happened. “Well how d’you like that? She’s asleep.”
Her chin was resting on her chest, and she was breathing softly. Again, Rick felt a wave of that fierce protectiveness he’d felt toward her when they were stranded. And tremendous affection rose up in him as well.
He turned back to his piloting with a fond smirk. I hope she wakes up long enough to say hello to her parents.
* * *
The streamlined tramcar, mounted on twin magnetic-lift rails, plunged deeper and deeper into the gigantic headquarters installation.
Aboard, Captain Gloval sat with arms folded across his chest and cap visor pulled down over his eyes, as if asleep. He would have loved a meditative pipe but knew how unpleasant that would have been for Lisa.
Lisa shifted nervously on the padded passenger bench. “Will it take long to reach the Council chambers?”
Gloval lifted his visor. “Just a little longer. The shaft goes down almost six miles.” He didn’t remark on his disdain for all this burrowing and hiding—Earth’s governing body skulking at the bottom of a hole in the ground like frightened rabbits! When the Zentraedi were capable of blowing an entire planet to particles!
“By the way, that reminds me,” he went on. “Have you heard anything about this Grand Cannon?”
Lisa’s face clouded; the words sounded so ominous. “No, what is it?”
“It is a huge Robotech weapon that’s been under construction here for almost a decade now.”
Gloval gestured to the illuminated schematic of the base that was displayed by the tramcar’s access doors. The elaborate details of the sprawling underground complex were mostly represented in coded symbols for security’s sake; but the essential layout was in the shape of a gargantuan Y. The blinking light representing the tramcar was moving down one arm of the Y, heading for the vertical shaft.
“The Grand Cannon uses Earth’s gravitational field as its main energy source,” he told her. “In fact, the shaft we’re traveling in at this moment is the barrel of the weapon.”
Lisa looked around uncomfortably. “You mean, if this base were attacked right now and Command decided to fire the cannon, we’d be blown away?”
Gloval chortled. “Well, I’d like to think they’d clear the barrel first.”
He knew she was astute enough to see the major disadvantage of the great gun: Even with the Y arrangement and the titanic rotating gear, the Grand Cannon’s field of fire was very limited—and even United Earth Command hadn’t come up with a way to tilt and traverse the planet Earth to bring the weapon to bear on inconvenient targets. Arrangements to overcome the problem were part of the plan, of course, but…
Gloval had been one of the loudest voices against the project; wars, he maintained (with history on his side), aren’t won by defense but rather by offense—by an SDF-1 that could go out and confront the enemy, not by a Grand Cannon in a hole in the ground.
He had gone head to head with Lisa’s own father during that argument, taking the opposite side from a man who had been a valued friend and a comrade in arms until then. It had been the beginning of a rift that had only widened and deepened in the years since.
It made him sad to reflect on those days gone by—they had saved each others’ lives… they were bonded by more than mere blood. Yet Admiral Hayes had become an opponent, almost an enemy.
Henry Gloval knew the way of the world and of highest-echelon politics; he was as shrewd as anyone who played the game. But there was still something in him, something bred in the bone, that found it bewildering and saddening that there could be such a falling out between men who’d served together in war.
I suppose it’s just as they say, he thought. I’m a peasant at heart, and there’s no changing that.
He shook off his brief distraction. There was an Isaac Singer story he’d taken to heart—”The Spinoza of Market Street”? Perhaps; in any case, the point was that the virtue lay in behaving in accordance with one’s ideal, not necessarily in being it.
And one of Henry Gloval’s ideals was steadfastness in friendship. So he asked Lisa pleasantly, “Your father never brought you down here before?”
“A few times,” Lisa answered, “but I was never allowed to come down the main shaft. Now I understand why.”
“Yes, this Robotech project was top secret. Only a few outside officers had access. It made the old-time Los Alamos reservation look like open house!” He chuckled; there were fond memories of those days among the bitter.
“And no civilian visitors,” he finished, “not even an admiral’s daughter.”
Lisa wore a puzzled look. “But then, why did they let Father in?”
Gloval said staunchly, “Who else was there? He was the visionary. He pushed for the creation of this complex when no one else thought it was necessary.”
She looked around again, looked to the vast schematic on the wall. “My father was responsible for all this? I didn’t know that!”
Gloval drew a deep breath. “Your father was always decisive.” How could he talk to her of friction and resentment? He couldn’t.
“When I was serving under him in the Global Civil War, a problem came up about inadequate rations for the troops. When Admiral Hayes didn’t get satisfactory action from headquarters, he led our entire Combined Action Group in a raid on the logistical depot. Camo face paint; real guerrilla stuff!
“He personally sat on the log-command three-star general while we got something to eat. There were a lot of brave and deserving men and women who had their first real meal in a long time that night.”
Lisa was laughing heartily, one hand at the base of her throat. “My father got away with that?”
Gloval was laughing again. “It’s true. The general thought sappers had infiltrated the base, kept sending down orders for us to find them. There wasn’t a woman or a man in that entire unit who wouldn’t have done anything, anything, for your father, Lisa. Would’ve followed him to hell if he’d given us the word.”
Lisa was still laughing, shoulders shaking. But her laughter no longer had anything to do with the story about her father. The sudden freedom from the SDF-1, the astonishing size of headquarters base, the very emphatic and yet somehow empty joy of being home again had cast a certain familiar pall over her. It was strangely overwhelming; there was nothing she could do but laugh.
Lisa Hayes had realized a long time before that a life in the military didn’t exactly make for happily-ever-after, particularly for a woman. Nevertheless, there was a warmth of that moment, something between people who’d served together, something no outsider could have ever shared.
“It’s good to hear you laugh again, Commander.” Gloval smiled slowly. “I think this is the first time I have heard you laugh since you escaped from the enemy, no?”
Lisa said, “Ahh,” and “Umm,” trying not to think of a particular VT pilot, trying to keep the warmth and the laughter alive, doing her best not to be vulnerable to desires and attractions and yet be open to Gloval’s confessions. A small part of her wondered if male subordinates of female flag-rank officers went through this.
“But I wonder if we’ll feel much like laughing after this meeting with the governing council,” Gloval went on. “It’s crucial that they be made to understand that the aliens are only interested in the battle fortress and its secrets, not in our world.”
Gloval tilted his cap forward on his brow again. “I hope you’ve thoroughly prepared your arguments, Commander Hayes.”
Her chin came up; her eyes shone. “Ready to go, Captain,” Lisa said, managing a smile as she was reminded of the loneliness she felt.
All her life, it had been so difficult for her to establish a relationship with men her own age, even men in the military. But it was not surprising, really; she had been surrounded by men like Gloval, men like her father. How many men like that could there possibly be? One in a hundred thousand? In a million?
Hard to match, in any case.
Gloval was saying, “Mm-hmm, that’s good.”
Lisa replied, “I’m sure we’ll be able to convince them. After all, we’re the only ones who’ve had close contact with the aliens!”
Yes, Gloval reflected, it would seem so cut and dried to her; Lisa’s father was one of the most powerful people on Earth, but despite that—perhaps because of that—Lisa herself was completely naive about political machinations.
He knocked a bit of ash out of the bowl of his pipe and tamped down some new tobacco, as was his habit when he was thinking. Just as he struck one of the old-fashioned kitchen matches he so loved, a surveillance eye in the wall lit up and a feminine computer voice said, “ATTENTION! SMOKING IN THIS CAPSULE IS FORBIDDEN! PLEASE EXTINGUISH ALL SMOKING MATERIALS IMMEDIATELY!”
Gloval yanked his briar from his mouth guiltily. “Ah? Can’t I smoke anywhere? If it’s not my bridge crew warning me, it’s these machines!”
Lisa was clearing her throat meaningfully. “Captain, are you worried about the SDF-1? Sir, is something going to happen to us?” Gloval’s aching conscience made him leap on the question, “Why do you ask?”
Lisa only smiled and said, “When something’s bothering you, I’ve noticed, you always pull out your pipe and make a big production about lighting it.”
Gloval lowered the pipe slowly and, not caring who might be listening on some bugging device, said, “Hmmph! I must confess I’m very worried about this meeting. I’m not sure these—” he made a gesture with his head to indicate his disdain for anyone who would protect themselves underground while ordering brave men and women to die “—not sure these men will listen to us with open minds. And Lisa, it’s vital to our future that they do so, do you understand?” Gloval spread his broad, brown peasant’s hands on his knees and looked down at them.
Lisa nodded slowly. She was Admiral Hayes’s daughter, used to having people view her as an access road to the highest levels of decision; that was one of the things that set Lisa Hayes so far apart from her contemporaries.
She’d seen power politics in excelsis all her life, had sickened of them and the unspeakable people drawn to them.
After Karl Riber had died she felt she would never heal from that hurt. But surely there were others out there, people who were kind and patient and true? The image of Rick Hunter suddenly came to her. Though she refused to admit it to herself, Rick Hunter had come to mean very much to her.
“What will happen if we can’t convince the Council?” she asked Gloval.
He answered in a grim, level voice. “Then the Earth will go to war against the aliens.”
Before, he had always spoken of triumph and the need to win; this time, with only Lisa to hear his confession, Gloval mentioned nothing about that. Lisa knew him well enough to know what that meant: Captain Gloval’s estimation of the human race’s chances against the Zentraedi were very bleak indeed.
The tramcar came to the bottom of the Y’s arm and began the vertical descent to the innermost chambers of the United Earth Defense Council.