In quieter moments I find myself wondering about the men and women I have served with during these long campaigns. I think about the ones left behind, like Max and Miriya, and the ones sent away, like John Carpenter, Frank Tandler, Owen, and the rest. The list goes on and on. Would I have joined that crew had it not been for the Sentinels; abandoned these dark domains for even a chance at seeing Earth’s blue skies once again? I think: Absolutely. But what can my homeworld offer me now? Certainly not peace, that endangered species. Retirement, perhaps. How Lisa would laugh!
Admiral Hunter, as quoted in Selig Kahler, The Tirolian Campaign
Freeing the Veritechs and Cyclones from the snowslide proved to be a greater challenge than anyone had expected. The team brought the collective heat of their MARS-Gallant H90 hand blasters to bear against the massive chunks of ice that had been loosed during the avalanche, by sunrise they had succeeded in defrosting the Alpha Fighter. Tango-9 explosive and the VTs thrusters did the rest of the work in a tenth the time, but Annie and Marlene sustained mild cases of frostbite nonetheless. And despite Scott’s optimistic projection, it took the team several false starts and another two days to cross the Sierra range. But waiting for them was the desert with those warm highland winds, and with it came a renewed sense of purpose and determination.
This was the same arid expanse crossed by pioneers and adventurers during North America’s push toward its western horizon, but few would have recognized it as such. Over the course of the last two decades the region had seen periods of devastation to rival those of its geo-formative years. Dolza’s fleet of four million had not overlooked the cities that had grown up here, and neither had Khyron after New Macross had risen to the fore. Vast stretches of the territory were cratered from the thousands of annihilation bolts rained upon it, host still to equal numbers of rusting Zentraedi dreadnoughts, thrust like war lances into the ravaged land. Just north of the team’s present route were the remains of Monument City, which had played such a pivotal role in the Second Robotech War.
Population centers had grown up in some of the craters, but most of these were abandoned now, their onetime residents returned to life-styles more befitting the territory’s original nomadic tribespeople than the Robotechnologists who had once tried to breathe new life into the wastes.
Scott had listened intently to Lancer and Lunk’s information; he of course had read and heard accounts of Macross and Monument, and the team’s propinquity to those legendary cities filled him with an awe usually reserved for sacred places and archeological power spots. It made him think about the long road that had taken him back to this land of his parents’ birth and the treacherous one that lay ahead. The team was close to Reflex Point now—the presence of an Invid tower assured him of this much—but he had to wonder how many more twists and turns they would have to negotiate before they stood at the portal of the Regess’ central hive, how many Invid stood in their way, and how many more deaths their journey would entail.
There were many such communication towers placed around the hive complex, and Scott knew from past experience that the team’s further progress toward Reflex Point would depend on how many of these they could circumvent, or better still, destroy. Options were discussed while the team made temporary camp near a meandering river where cottonwoods and conifers provided a narrow green ribbon of safety and shade. In the end it was decided that Scott and Rand would recon the outlying area; nearby were the ruins of a deserted city and what appeared to be an inhabited town. Annie insisted on tagging along, hoping they would run across a cowboy or two.
The three freedom fighters set out on Cyclones, Annie in her customary place on the pillion seat behind Rand. Only Scott was suited up in battle armor. Rand had tried to talk him out of it but soon recognized that Scott fancied himself the only law and order between here and Reflex Point.
A short ride brought them into the town they had glimpsed from the Veritechs, a curious combination of high-tech modular buildings and wooden structures fashioned after centuries-old designs, complete with elaborate facades, shaded boardwalks, and hitching posts for horses and pack animals. The dirt streets were empty, but this no longer came as any surprise. Scott was certain the townsfolk were well aware of their arrival and were merely concealing themselves until the proper moment. As they powered the Cyclones down the town’s main street, he could almost feel the weapons being trained on them from upper-story windows.
The one thing he hadn’t figured on was getting arrested.
But that’s just what the residents of Bushwhack had in mind when they finally did show themselves, twenty or so strong, dressed in Twentieth-century garb and armed with antique rifles, shotguns, and revolvers. They formed a broad circle around the rebels and ordered Scott and Rand away from their mecha. Scott was willing to comply—even to go as far as removing his battle armor—until he saw the ropes come out. But by then it was too late to do much about it. He and Rand were stripped of their weapons, tied up, and led by the jeering mob to the sheriff’s office.
He was a short, stocky man with curly black hair and a handlebar mustache. He was wearing a beat-up felt fedora and a sheepskin coat. Scott didn’t see any badge displayed, but when the sheriff pointed a six-gun at him, he stopped looking.
“Anybody who goes around dressed like that is just lookin’ for trouble,” the sheriff told him, gesturing to the heap of Cyclone armor Scott had piled in the street. “I reckon you’re under arrest, strangers.”
“But we haven’t done anything!” Rand protested, struggling against the rope coiled around his arms. Silently he cursed himself for having listened to Scott’s harebrained logic about uniforms and earning respect.
“Well, you look like you might do something,” the sheriff answered him, putting the muzzle of the revolver close to Scott’s head.
“It’s illegal!” Scott argued, trying to step away.
“Yeah, you can’t arrest us without charges,” Annie added.
The sheriff’s dark eyes narrowed. “Z’at so? Well, I reckon I’ll be the one to decide that, young ’un. You renegade soldiers and your catch try to take over everything. But we’re not lettin’ you take over this town.”
“Who’d want to, anyway?” said Annie.
“But we’re not renegades,” Scott argued. “I’m from Mars—”
“From Mars?!” The sheriff laughed and turned to the crowd. “Here that, folks? He’s from Mars!” The crowd started whooping it up. “Reckon you better tell it to the judge, robby.”
“Fine,” Scott said through gritted teeth. “Lead us to him.”
The sheriff flashed a smile and pushed his hat back on his head. “You’re lookin’ at ’im.”
Again the crowd got into the spirit, laughing and jeering. One dangled a noose in front of Rand’s face, while a second began to inspect Rand’s boots with an evil glint in his eye. There was what amounted to a festive atmosphere brewing, so much so that no one took notice of the two strange figures who were watching the scene from nearby. One was perhaps two feet shorter than his companion, but both were clothed alike, in bottletop goggles, helmets, cowls, and full-length cloaks.
“Looks as though these strangers are going to be occupied for a spell,” said the taller of the two.
“Then I guess they won’t be needin’ their Cyclones, huh, Roy?”
“I feel it only right that we see to it that no harm comes to them.”
“The Cyclones, you mean.”
“Now what else would I mean?”
“Well, you coulda meant the strangers.”
Roy made a face. “Now, have you ever heard me express any concern for strangers before?”
“No … but—”
“And is it likely that I would be concerned about the strangers?”
“Well, no. But—”
“Then I think it would be prudent for you to adhere to our original plan.”
“Adhere, Roy?”
“As in ‘stick to.’ ”
“I should get the truck?”
Roy let out an exasperated sound. “Yes, Shorty, you should get the truck.”
Back at the camp on the outskirts of town, Lancer, Lunk, Rook, and Marlene were doing what they could to camouflage the VTs with strategically placed branches and bunches of sagebrush and tumbleweed. They had moved the fighters to a kind of natural shelter Lancer discovered, a rock outcropping with plenty of surrounding scrub. It seemed a senseless task, but at least it was keeping everyone busy.
Lancer hadn’t been in favor of Scott’s heading off into town; whenever Scott disappeared, it usually spelled trouble for the rest of them. It was some comfort to know that Rand and Annie were with him, but not enough to keep Lancer from worrying. The major source of his concern, however, was Marlene. She had said little these past two days, and it was obvious to Lancer that her confrontation with the Human pilot of the Invid command ship had had a devastating effect. Was it possible, he asked himself, that Marlene herself had once been used in a similar fashion? Perhaps she had escaped after her own command ship had been destroyed. There was a certain logic to it, since, like the blond pilot, Marlene seemed to have no recall of her past life.
I don’t belong with you, Lancer could hear her say. I’ll just bring trouble.
Marlene was aware of Lancer’s concerns and smiled weakly at him as she continued to tug handfuls of tall grass from the sandy earth. Then suddenly she was down on her knees, moaning and clutching her pale hands at her temples. Lancer jumped down from the radome of the Alpha, but Rook beat him to Marlene’s side and was already stroking the tortured woman’s long hair and speaking soothing words into her ear by the time Lancer got to her.
“She must be sensing the Invid again,” Rook told Lancer and Lunk. “I told Scott this would happen if we camped too close to that communications tower.”
Lunk shook his head. “We’re not that close to the thing. But maybe there’s a Protoculture farm around here.”
Lancer knelt down to take Marlene’s hand. “Marlene, can you tell us what you’re feeling? Can you tell from the pain whether it’s a patrol or a hive?”
Marlene pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead and made an agonized sound.
“You’re asking a lot of her, Lancer,” said Lunk.
“Look,” Lancer said, turning around. “I know what I’m asking. But it could be that Scott and Rand are in danger, and Marlene might be able to lead us to the source of it.”
Rook looked at him as though he had just sentenced Marlene to the rack. “The closer she gets, the more unbearable the pain becomes. I don’t have to tell you that.”
“No, you don’t. But all of us are at risk here—not just Marlene.” He touched Marlene’s cheek with his fingertips, and she opened her eyes. “The decision’s yours. Do you think you can lead us to the source of your pain?”
“I can … try,” she responded weakly.
Lancer tightened his mouth and nodded. “Then we’re going out together,” he said, getting up.
Rook and Lunk were dead set against it, but Lancer convinced them that there was really no other choice. Marlene was part of the team, with strengths and weaknesses just like the rest of them. And it only made sense to exploit her strengths, especially when that early warning system of hers was kicking in. So an hour later Lancer and Marlene were cruising out over the wastes, side by side in the APC that Lunk had reluctantly given up.
“Are you all right?” Lancer asked her after they had been driving for some time.
She nodded without saying anything.
“Is the pain still there?”
“Not now. It’s like someone just switched it off inside me.”
“It would help if you could remember something about your past.”
“I feel like I was born on the day you people found me, Lancer. There’s nothing beyond that—I’m empty.”
He looked over at her. “Still, you had a life. We just need to find out who you were.”
Marlene shrugged. “How much do you remember about the day you were born?”
“Not very much,” he started to say. Then all at once there were two men on horseback positioned in front of the vehicle. Lancer brought the APC up short, instinctively extending his right arm across Marlene; the horses reared, their riders leveling rifles.
“One false move and I’ll make a lead mine outta yer innards!” warned one of the men. “How’s that fer threats?” he asked his partner.
The second rider repeated the warning to himself and shook his head. “I don’t like it. Too … cryptic” He brought his rifle to bear on Lancer. “Supposin’ you tell us what yer doin’ in these here parts, Lavender Locks.”
Lancer suppressed a grin. The man had on a bandanna and a tiny pair of tinted goggles. His voice sounded like sandpaper on cement. “We were just out driving around, and we got lost,” he told them sheepishly.
“Yeah?” said the first rider. “Tears to me you had sumthin’ on yer mind ’sides yer drivin’.” He began to laugh knowingly, leering at Marlene.
Lancer smiled and put his arm around Marlene, pulling her close. “Well, shucks,” he mimicked the rider. “Iffen you have to know, we’re newlywed honeymooners.”
“Well, no wonder yer all distracted,” the rider exclaimed, lowering his weapon. “I would be, too!”
“Stop cackling and tend to business, Jesse,” his cohort told him. “You folks might not know it, but there’s an outlaw gang operatin’ out here, an’ yer lucky ya didn’t go and git yer car ’n’ everythin’ stole out from under ya.” He disarmed his weapon.
“Worse’n that, yer headed right smack dab straight into Invid territory.”
“Garldarn,” said Lancer, playing it up. “Me and my little bride ’preciate yer bein’ so neighborly as to warn us like that.”
The gruff-voiced man seemed to offer a grin beneath the bandanna. “Seems we speak the same language, stranger, so I tell ya what we’re gonna do: We’re gonna show ya where you can buy some mighty fine weapons to defend yerselves.” He tugged at the reins to bring his mount about. “Ya jus’ follow us.”
The two riders began to gallop off. Lancer kept the APC close behind. Their trail angled east along the remains of a once-broad highway.
“Why are you trusting them?” Marlene asked.
“I’m not. But I’m curious about these weapons. Maybe there’s a resistance group operating around here.”
The highwaymen led them down into one of the devastated crater cities Scott and Rand had flown over earlier that day. Its once-tall towers were nothing but empty shells now, burned and collapsed like fallen layer cakes. Some time ago a river had altered course and turned most of the crater into a polluted lake. But adjacent to the resultant waterfall, practically beneath its thunderous flow, was a massive tunnel that led to an arena of some sort, and it was into this that the riders disappeared. “Hole in the wall,” they called it. Inside, however, was an even greater surprise: the rusting remains of a Robotech battle fortress. It had put down on its belly and somehow seemed to be fused to its ruined surroundings.
Lancer couldn’t help but register his astonishment. The ship was nothing like the cruisers developed during the Second Robotech War; it had more in common with the organically fashioned Zentraedi battlewagons of the First. And yet it was not quite Zentraedi, either. The sleek sharklike bow and massive triple-thrustered stern were closer to the hybrids he had heard about—ships constructed on Tirol and sent home under the command of a certain Major John Carpenter. Lancer said as much to the two riders. They had dismounted and doffed their helmets and cowls; in place of the techno-outlaws who had stopped the APC stood two silver-haired old-timers with thick mustaches and faces aged from a myriad of suns.
“Yep, and she’s old and rusty, just like her crew,” said the one called Jesse, who affected a headband and had a crazed way of laughing.
“Then you were part of Admiral Hunter’s command,” said Lancer.
“That’s something we don’t talk about around here, sonny,” returned Frank, who may have had a few years on his saddlemate. His hair was shorter than Jesse’s, and his mustache lacked the same outlaw droop.
Just then a third member of the gang stepped through an open hatchway in the grounded ship. He had a cooking pot in one hand and a ladle in the other. With his clean-shaven face and trimmed black hair he appeared to be much younger than either of his companions; moreover, he wore a sky-blue uniform that bore some resemblance to Scott’s. Lancer saw, however, that there was no sign of life in the soldier’s dark eyes. He tried to question the man as he passed by the driver’s seat of the APC but got no response.
“Don’t pay no attention to him,” Jesse told Lancer. “Gabby hasn’t spoken a work to anybody since he came here.”
Frank motioned them toward the ramp that led to the hold of the battiecruiser. “Come on in here, stranger, so’s we can show you what we got.”
Lancer and Marlene followed them in. Piled high inside were high-tech crates Lancer knew to contain laser-array ordnance of all description.
Jesse made a broad sweep with his arm. “Welcome to the best-stocked tradin’ post in the whole West!”
Back in town, the sheriff was trying to follow the rapid, angry flow of Scott’s words. He and his men had tossed the three renegade soldiers into a cell, but it hadn’t put an end to the leader’s ranting and raving.
“Just in case you’re interested, Sheriff,” Scott was saying now, his hands gripped on the bars of the cell, “I happen to be an officer with Mars Division. We were sent here from Tirol by Admiral Hunter to liberate Earth from the Invid’s hold. As far as I know I’m the only survivor of the assault group, but regardless, my orders are to locate and destroy the Invid Regess and the central hive at Reflex Point. Short of that I—”
“Enough!” the sheriff shouted, holding up his hands. The man had been going on like this for more than an hour, and he couldn’t take much more of it—all this talk about assault groups and an attack fleet on its way to Earth from the other side of the galaxy.… Every so often one would hear this sort of thing from people who had come wandering in off the wastes looking like they had just received communiqués from the Lord Almighty, but that didn’t mean that he had to sit still and listen to every last one of them. “You’re just wastin’ your breath if you expect me to believe such a cock-and-bull story. Besides, I heard tell of a better one than that by the last group of waste wackos who showed up here.”
Scott was about to take up the argument from a different front when he heard a shot ring out from outside the sheriff’s office. A moment later one of the sheriff’s men burst through the front door.
“Rustlers, Sheriff! They got the motorsickles!”
Scott shook the bars and cursed.
Rand shouted: “Don’t let them get away, Sheriff!”
The sheriff made it to the door in time to see two of his men emptying their revolvers at a truck that was tearing down the main street. He could just discern a figure in the open back, a cloaked and helmeted figure yelling above the noise of gunfire: “Much obliged, Sheriff! We never woulda gotten away with ’em iffen you hadn’t locked away the strangers!”
The sheriff glanced in at the jail cell through the open office door, then once more at the truck.
“You’re responsible for this, Sheriff!” Scott called out, furious.
“You’ve endangered our entire mission,” said Rand.
“You dumb hick!” Annie added.
The sheriff contemplated his position: the rustlers were well known to him, and he certainly didn’t fancy tangling with them. At the same time, he was responsible for the strangers’ property. So it only made sense to let the strangers go after their own machines. He turned to one of his deputies and said: “Saddle up a coupla fast horses.”
“This model must date clear back to the war against the Robotech Masters,” said Lancer, hefting one of the samples from the opened crate. It was really not much different from the laser rifles the team was used to, except that the muzzle was somewhat thicker and the trigger mechanism more complex.
“Gen-yoo-wine army issue,” Jesse said proudly.
Lancer brought the rifle up to high port position. “Guess it wouldn’t be considered good taste to ask where you got them, huh?”
“Why should you care?” Jesse wanted to know.
“Good customers don’t ask too many questions,” cautioned Frank, swigging from a bottle of whiskey.
Jesse laughed. “Frank’s right, Lavender. But I reckon there’s no harm in tellin’ ya.”
He came across the hold to explain himself, close enough for Lancer to see the space madness in his eyes.
“Way back when, we was soldiers. The army issued these weapons to us.”
“So you’re part of this ship’s rusty old crew.” Lancer grinned. “Then why aren’t you out fighting the Invid with all this firepower instead of playing rustler?”
Jesse scowled and looked away for a moment. “We had our fill of fightin’. We were with Admiral Gloval on the SDF-1; after, we signed up fer duty with the Expeditionary mission. Traveled clear across the galaxy, sonny, a godfersakin’ place called Tirol. Then we made one heck of a mistake and tied in with Major Carpenter. ’Course, we finally made it back all right, but by then General Leonard and his boys had their hands full with the Robotech Masters. So we jus’ kinda retired, if you know what I mean. Now we sell supplies to resistance fighters, so I reckon we’re doin’ our part.”
Marlene saw Lancer’s face begin to flush and did what she could to calm him down by sliding under his arm and laying her head against his shoulder. But Lancer’s anger was not so easily assuaged.
“Making a nice profit for yourselves, aren’t you?”
Jesse laughed. “Reckon we are at that.”
“You’re nothing but a pack of deserters,” he started to say. But suddenly there were new sounds wafting in from outside the hold. A truck had pulled up in the arena. Lancer heard someone shout: “Look what we got!” followed by a wild “yahoo!”
Jesse and Frank were standing by the hatch. “Wonder where they stole those?” Jesse said before the two men stepped outside.
Lancer heard the Cyclone engines.
“Why don’t you see if you can make a little more noise?” yelled Frank. “I don’t think them thangs can be heard more’n twenty miles away!”
“Aw, the sheriff didn’t even bother to send a posse after us,” the new arrival yelled back, laughing as wildly as Jesse had a moment before.
“Keep that talk down, Shorty,” Frank ordered. “We got company.”
As Lancer and Marlene were stepping down the hold ramp, Jesse swung around to ask them if they were interested in buying a couple of Cyclones. Lancer saw two men in cloaks and helmets astride mecha they had ridden out of the back of the truck. It took him a moment to recognize the Cycs, and he had to quiet Marlene before she said anything.
“Young folks, meet Roy and Shorty,” said Frank, gesturing to the men. Roy was tall, with a blockish, bald head. Shorty had crossed eyes and a pinched-up face. He bristled at Frank’s introduction.
“I told you not to call me Shorty, Frank!”
“Well, we gotta call you something” Frank answered him.
Jesse leaned across the Cyclone’s handlebars to thrust his chin at Shorty. “We’d call ya by your real name if ya could remember what it was, Shorty!”
Shorty raised himself on the footrests. “That ain’t funny!”
It looked as though he might have taken a swing at Jesse just then, but Gabby appeared out of nowhere with his pot and put a quick end to it by ladling some hot stew onto Shorty’s bare hand.
Shorty screamed and clutched himself, while the rest of the band had a good laugh.
“Gabby ain’t too fonda Shorty,” Jesse told Lancer and Marlene. “Ain’t that right, Gabby?”
Gabby stood still, almost catatonic, oblivious to it all.
“Fact is, Gabby ain’t too fond of nobody,” Frank chimed in. “He’s a little funny in the head.”
Lancer looked over at the uniformed man and experienced a rush of compassion. Gabby seemed to pick up on it and walked toward the hatchway, proffering the pot of stew to Marlene.
“Look out, folks!” Shorty warned them. “He might throw it at ya!”
But instead, he simply held the pot out until Marlene took it from his hand.
Frank felt his chin. “Well, I’ll be hornswaggled. He’s offerin’ it to you.”
Marlene thanked him.
“Well, isn’t this a day for surprises?” said Roy.
Shorty nursed his burned hand. “First time I ever seen him do anything nice for anyone.”
“He tried to rejoin Hunter’s outfit when those kids from the 15th ATACs got hold of Jonathan Wolfe’s ship,” Frank explained. “But his Veritech got shot down before he could make it.”
Jesse snorted. “Durn fool wuz tryin’ to git back into the war agin. He’s gotta be crazier’n a bedbug.”
The four old veterans collapsed in laughter.