There are few more indicative incidents in the Robotech War, from my viewpoint, than this sudden transference of impulse and disobedience from Khyron to Miriya. The evidence of what was happening was all around them, but still the Zentraedi High Command was, in any meaningful sense, blind to it.
Zeitgeist, Alien Psychology
“SOUND GENERAL QUARTERS,” GLOVAL SAID, HIS CALM, LEVEL voice enveloping the bridge. “Prepare pin-point defense shields. Tell fighter ops to scramble Vermilions.”
The new attack had come, as Gloval had feared, right in the middle of his own political offensive—his effort to make an end run around the Council.
If anybody aboard the dimensional fortress was curious about his encrypted “back-channel” calls to unnamed addressees since his return from the Alaskan fiasco and his silence on the issue of the Council’s insane mandates, they’d kept it to themselves. Good crew! No one could ask for better.
The single enemy ship was drawing nearer. The exhausted and heroic logistics people, straining to do an impossible job of taking on the endless rations, ordnance, equipment, life support consumables, and the rest, had secured themselves; the ship was battening down.
The turnaround time for a supercarrier in pre-Global Civil War days, included shipyard overhaul and the rest, ran as much as six months; the United States Navy was doing well if it had half its carrier groups at sea at any one time. The SDF-1 had had less than a week to lick its wounds, and unless Gloval’s plan worked, it would get no more, but be driven out into space once again.
* * *
In the Disco Bamboo House, the three spies, sweating and exhausted from a brave effort to keep up with the torturous convolutions the Micronian females called “dancing,” were shocked and worried by the sudden alarms but also relieved. The Terrible Trio’s endurance on the dance floor was simply not to be believed.
The women dove for their things, about to head for the door. Sammie stopped to pat Rico’s cheek. “You have the strangest style I ever saw, but it was fun!”
Vanessa gave Bron a quick hug. “Let’s do it again soon, boys!” And Kim, blowing a kiss to Konda as she and the others hurried to go, yelled, “We really had a good time!”
Standing there and watching them go, Konda said wonderingly, “You know—I did, too.”
The other two looked at him for a moment but then nodded in agreement.
* * *
Khyron’s words had not seared long at Miriya’s pride before she’d taken action.
Now, her own attack cruiser threw off the heat of atmospheric entry unfeelingly, and she and her Quadrono stalwarts poised for the moment when they could go hunting.
Indicators signaled GO. Encased in their top-heavy-looking powered armor, the Quadronos stepped one after another into the drop bays.
They were released seemingly at random but all in a plan to assume a combat-drop formation, backpack thrusters blaring, forming up for the assault on the SDF-1.
Inside the green-tinted face bowl of her interior suit, the light gave Miriya’s complexion a verdant tinge. “I am looking for one particular enemy fighter,” she told the massed assault mecha behind her. “He will show himself by superior performance. When he has been identified, you will maintain distance and leave his execution to me, personally! Am I understood?”
That was confirmed all through her mingled force of Quadrono mecha and tri-thrusters. Miriya monitored her powered armor and contemplated her kill.
There were so many things that made this violation of standing orders so irresistible! There was the chance to show up that posturing fool Khyron; the opportunity to meet an enemy worthy of her mettle (for in his taunt, the Backstabber had been right on target—she’d never met an antagonist she regarded as her equal); a way to defy Azonia; a chance to have the Robotech Masters sing the name of Miriya; a crack at ending this war once and for all, to her own personal glory; and of course that ultimate thrill, flirting with complete disaster.
Because if she failed—and Miriya never had—then all would probably be taken from her, her life included. But what was any of it for, if not for the risking? She lived for combat and victory. It was as easy to keep bleeding prey from the jaws of a lioness, as it was to protect the foe from Miriya’s attack.
* * *
This time, the SDF-1 was ready.
Cat crews nosed up VTs in the launch boxes; the flight decks of the dimensional fortress and Daedalus and Prometheus were cluttered with combat aircraft, looking like toys under a Christmas tree from the lofty height of the bridge. The VTs’ wings were at minimum sweep, ready for launch.
Lisa Hayes had already given Ben and Max the go. Lt. Moira Flynn, cat crew officer, pointed to her shooter. A moment later, Max Sterling rode a rocket off a bow catapult at 200 knots, while Ben Dixon “Yahoooed” off a waist cat a moment later.
Lisa asked over the intercom, “Is Commander Fokker’s ship ready for takeoff?”
Claudia left her station—left it entirely!—and strode over to Lisa. “Is Roy leading that intercept flight?”
Lisa bit back what she’d been about to say: You mean he didn’t tell you? “Yes, Claudia.”
Roy pulled on his VT helmet—the “thinking cap,” as some liked to call it—as his own trusty Skull fighter’s forward landing gear was boxed up by the cat crew.
“Good hunting, Commander,” Lisa said, her face on his display screen looking as worried and self-contained as ever.
“I’m more interested in hunting for a pineapple salad,” he radioed back.
Lisa couldn’t quite believe her ears. She tried to get a confirmation on the pineapple salad transmission as Claudia laughed behind her hand and Gloval marveled at the resilience of young people.
* * *
Roy, Max, and Ben joined another flight of VTs off Prometheus. In command, Roy took them up and up, going ballistic, all of them eager for the dogfight that had been forced upon them. Roy looked at them, a bit dismayed. None of the VTs had fought with Quadronos on an even footing yet, except for Rick, who hadn’t come out of it so well.
But Roy remembered the souped-up Zentraedi better than anyone, and if the SDF-1 was facing a division of them, that was all she wrote. Endgame.
“Dogfight?” muttered Ben. “You Zentraedi ain’t hardly been bit yet! Now, it’s lockjaw time!”
* * *
Wow, where is this great enemy ace that Khyron fears so? mused Miriya as she and the first few of her armored Quadrono deployed under power to engage a slightly lesser number of enemy aircraft.
She howled a Zentraedi word, a Quadrono battle cry that translated as “Smite them from the sky!”
Immediately the Quadrono battle suits began pouring forth a cascade of fire. The Veritechs dove up into it eagerly, dodging and jamming missiles, betting their reflexes against the enemy’s.
Roy did a wingover and banked as a Quadrono’s red-hot beams ranged past him. Skull leader did a loop that would have torn the wings off any other fighter ever built, then centered the bulky, top-heavy-looking Quadrono in his gunsight reticle, and thumbed the trigger.
He had a lot of bad-tasting memories in his mouth of how an armored bogey just like this one had rousted him and cost him men in the attack near Luna’s orbit. A lot of that pain went away as he watched the Quadrono’s head module cave in, then be plowed to nothingness by high-density rounds.
The alien mecha fell, leaving a long, curlicuing trail of oily, red-black smoke.
“Scratch one,” whispered Roy Fokker to himself, and went looking for scratch two.
They fought their way up above the cloud cover. One Quadrono burst through, pursuing Ben’s banking VT; a second followed, folding into some sort of bizarre fetal configuration, only to bring forth a hornet’s nest of missiles.
The missiles moved faster than the eye could follow, detectable only by their flaming wakes and corkscrewing trails of smoke. Somehow, though, they weren’t fast enough to get Max Sterling; he twisted and rolled his VT through seemingly impossible maneuvers, jamming some of the missiles’ guidance systems, getting others to commit fratricide, and just plain outflying the rest.
He was putting his Veritech through mechamorphosis even before the last of them had gone by. Changing to Battloid mode, he leapt down at his attacker like a cross between a sleek, superswift gunship and Sir Lancelot.
Max fired his autocannon, riddling the Quadrono and blowing it to burning shreds that fell almost lazily. He turned just in time to catch a Quadrono that was trying to sneak up on him. The Robotech chain-gun made its howling, buzzsaw sound again, and the alien became nosediving wreckage.
Miriya had seen it all, the blue-trimmed VT’s latest victory in its rampage across the sky. No Zentraedi had been able to stand against it; who else could this be but Khyron’s vaunted Micronian champion?
She cut in full power, diving at him like a rocket-powered hawk. “Now you die!”
Except dying wasn’t on Max Sterling’s agenda today. He dodged her first volley and got a few rounds into her armor as she zigzagged past.
Miriya turned and loosed a flight of missiles that arced and looped at the Battloid, leaving ribbons of trail as graceful as the streamers on a maypole. He dodged those, too, while he charged straight at her, firing all the time. An unbelievable piece of flying.
“You devil!” Miriya grated softly, almost fondly, knowing now what a pleasure it was going to be to kill him. The powered armor and the Battloid whirled and pounced, the upper hand changing sides a dozen times in a few seconds. Miriya was astounded; could this Micronian have artificially enhanced reflexes and telepathic powers? That was certainly the way he flew his aircraft.
She went into a ballistic climb, and Max got a sustained burst into the Quadrono’s backpack thruster-power unit. Miriya’s mecha trailed sparks and flame as it tumbled back down but suddenly straightened out again; she played hurt and turned the tables once more.
Her particle cannon pounded away at the Battloid, knocking it back as several rounds hit home. Max regained stability by shifting back to Veritech mode and taking evasive action to get a little elbow room before going at it again.
Miriya laughed like some wild huntress and pursued him down through the clouds, crying, “You can’t dodge forever!”
“That’s very odd,” Lisa murmured. “Those alien mecha aren’t attacking us. In fact, they seem to be holding off, covering the one that engaged Max Sterling.”
Claudia nodded. “It seems like the leader, or whoever it is, has a personal vendetta against Max.”
“Who can understand the mind of a combat pilot?” Gloval shrugged. “Especially an alien one?”
“There must be some reason Max has been singled out:’
She was right. “Order the lieutenant to retreat. If they continue to pursue him, it will mean that the target isn’t SDF-1.”
* * *
Max received Roy’s order with a good deal of bewilderment. “Retreat? Wa-wait, I don’t get it!”
It would not be exactly true to say that he was having a good time, but he was doing what he did best—did better than anyone else alive. Bashful, unassuming Max Sterling could afford to be deferential and mild-mannered on the ground. It was a kind of wide-eyed but honest noblesse oblige, because in aerial combat he lived life at lightspeed and ruled the sky.
“That bandit on your tail is trying too hard,” Roy explained. “They want to find out what his game is.”
“You got it,” Max said amicably. He thought there was something different about this one. At any rate, whoever this alien was, he was one hot pilot.
Max shoved his stick into the corner for a pushover and dove for the surface of the ocean. The Quadrono powered armor streaked after.
* * *
Watching the instruments on the dimensional fortress’s bridge, Gloval came to his feet. “So, now we know.”
* * *
Roy’s gift box hadn’t contained a bathrobe at all but rather his treasured and superb collection of miniature aircraft.
Rick’s favorite was also Roy’s: a fragile yellow World War I fighter, a German Fokker triplane with black Iron Cross markings, made at the time of that conflict and nearly a century old. “Fokker, Little Brother, that’s me!” as Roy liked to say.
The door opened, and Rick looked to it uninterestedly. Then, abruptly, he was sitting bolt upright in bed. “Minmei!”
She was looking very stylish in a long, red suede coat with white fur collar and cuffs and a pair of yellow tinted aviator glasses. “I hope you don’t mind; you didn’t look like you were sleeping, so…”
He hastily put the toys aside as she came over to him. Whatever subtle things the movie makeup and hairstyle people were doing to her looked great. “Nice big room,” she said brightly, glancing around. Her eyes fell on the flowers for a moment.
“It’s wonderful to see you.”
“I must look an absolute mess,” she fished a little, “but I came right over from the studio when I heard you were hurt.”
“How’d you find out? Not many people know.” Casualty figures and many details of the war were still classified.
“Commander Fokker told me. He came by the set this afternoon to visit me.” She patted the bed. “D’ you mind if I sit down?”
That’s another one I owe you, Big Brother! thought Rick.
“Mm, this is nice,” Minmei said, stretching out at the foot of the bed. Her eyes fluttered, and she yawned charmingly, then laid her head on her arm.
“You look tired.”
“I’m exhausted, Rick. There just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to do the things I’m supposed to do now.”
“Would you like to just lie there and get some sleep for a little while, Minmei?”
Her eyes were already closed. “That would be wonderful! If I could just stay here… for a little while…”
She was asleep in seconds. Watching her, he mused, I don’t understand what’s happening to our world, Minmei, or what’s going to become of us. But your safety and well-being makes everything worthwhile to me.
He sat with his knees drawn up under the sheet, arms folded across them and chin resting on his arms, watching her sleep. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so happy.
* * *
“Let’s get on with it!” howled Roy Fokker, putting a final burst into a damaged Quadrono mecha and sending another Zentraedi flier to the great beyond. The skull-and-crossbones VT banked and dove, looking for new quarry in a sky crowded with missile tracks, alien beams and annihilation discs, gatling tracers and explosions.
The enemy leader and Max were still battling it out for the championship, but Roy and the other VT pilots weren’t about to let the rest of the invaders hang around like wallflowers. The RDF fliers were ready and willing to fill their dance card.
The Quadronos didn’t hesitate, either. And so: the dance of death.
Captain Kramer, Roy’s Skull Team second in command, had shown up with reinforcements when it became clear that the single combat between Max and the enemy leader wasn’t simply a diversionary tactic.
Now, Roy pulled out of an Immelmann, split S and zapped another Quadrono just as he saw Kramer zoom past with a Zentraedi on his tail. Roy went after to help, but he was too late; the captain’s ship was already in flames.
“Kramer, punch out, damn it!” Roy yelled, waxing the one who’d hit Kramer. “You’re clear, boy! Punch out!”
Kramer ejected as another Skull pilot called the SDF-1 air-sea rescue. The captain should have left his chute undeployed until he had fallen well out of the dogfight, but it opened for some reason. Roy figured that meant that Kramer had been hit and his ejection seat’s automatic systems had taken over.
Roy circled anxiously, determined to make sure none of the invaders took advantage of Kramer’s vulnerability. The grizzled captain had been with Skull Team for years, had flown off the old flatdeck Kenosha with him in the Global Civil War. Kramer was the oldest VT pilot on the roster, and Roy meant to see that he got older.
The Skull Leader was so intent on watching over his friend that for once he was careless. He didn’t realize it until bolts from a Quadrono chest-cannon blew pieces from his plane.
“Ahh,” he groaned, with pain like white hot pokers being thrust through him. Ben Dixon came to his rescue and engaged the Zentraedi before it could make another pass, but Roy’s VT began losing altitude, trailing smoke.
The dogfight raged away from him like a tornado of combat ships and weapons fire as Kramer’s limp form glided peacefully toward the sea.