There is some truth to the claim that Corg contributed to the Invid’s defeat, such as it was; but only in the sense that his premature blood lust succeeded in alienating Sera that much sooner. On the other hand, the so-called parallels with the Zentraedi Khyron are rather forced and remain unconvincing. To be honest, who can we point to that did not contribute to the defeat? One might as well blame Marlene, Sera, Zor, for that matter. Lay the blame on love, if you will, on Protoculture.
Dr. Emil Lang, The New Testament
Corg assembled his Urban Enforcer squadrons at the northern tip of the island and commanded them to begin a southward march, sanitizing the city top to bottom. Shock Trooper ships would back them up, creating apocalyptical fires to flush the Humans from their dwellings.
The residents thought they were witnessing some sort of drill until the first streams of annihilation discs hit the streets; then there was sheer panic. People fled from burning buildings only to be caught up in volleys of fire from the Invid ground troops. Block after block burned, filling the evening sky with infernal light. The brick and concrete facades of buildings collapsed into the avenues, sending up storms of glowing embers and acrid ash. Hundreds were trapped in the rubble, and hundreds more perished in the alleyways and streets, in shafts and courtyards. No one could comprehend what was occurring. Had they brought this on themselves somehow? Had they transgressed or violated some Invid regulation no one had been aware of? Or was this simply the way it would always end from now on? No more old age or disease, no more heart attacks or accidents; just random bursts of blinding light, spurts of systematic extermination …
Corg smiled down on the ensuing destruction from the cockpit of his command ship. There, Princess, he laughed to himself. Observe your life-forms now!
Downtown, in Simon’s dance theater, Jorge held a note that had just been delivered by one of the underground’s black eagle courier birds. The sounds of distant explosions had already reached into the building, and an atmosphere of dread prevailed. “Listen up, everybody!” he announced. “The Invid are on a rampage. They’re offing everyone! Sweeping through the whole city, north to south!”
“Oh, my God!” muttered Simon. “They’re through with us! I knew it would come to this someday!”
Lancer looked over at Rand, his face all twisted up. “It’s because of us, Rand,” he seethed, just loud enough for his friend to hear. “We brought this on. Just our being here …”
Rand accepted it with a kind of shrug and took another bite from the sandwich Jorge had fixed him before all hell broke loose.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” one of the dancers was telling the rest of the troupe. “They’re getting closer!”
The man was right, Lancer realized; the explosions were louder now, near enough to shake the theater itself. The first blast to strike the building threw everyone to the floor. The lights flickered once and went out; a few people screamed.
“We have to help these people get to shelter,” Lancer told Rand when intermittent power returned. Dust and particles of debris filled the air. Lancer had his weapon drawn.
Rand, who had almost swallowed the sandwich whole, pulled it from his mouth and gasped for his breath. “Get them to shelters? What about them getting us to shelters?”
Jorge was standing beside them, helping a petrified Annie to her feet. “We can reach the subway from the basement,” he said rapidly. “We’ll be safe there.”
“Depends on how serious they are,” Rand started to say. But Jorge was already herding his fellow performers toward the exits.
Two more crippling explosions erupted in their midst just then, and all of a sudden the interior of the theater was in flames. Most of Simon’s troupe had already made it through the exit doors, but the director himself was standing stock still, as though in shock. Lancer ran over to him and spun him around, catching the look of devastation in his eyes.
“Simon, you’ve got to leave!”
“My theater …”
Lancer put his hands on Simon’s shoulders, steering him away from the blaze that had already scorched both their faces. “Listen to me … The theater’s gone. And it won’t help anybody if you go up with the rest of it.”
“It’s over,” Simon said flatly, overcome.
“Come on, man. There’ll be other shows; we’ll get through this.”
Simon offered a wan smile. “Maybe …”
A column collapsed behind them, bringing down a portion of the balcony and fueling the fire.
“Of course there will!” Lancer yelled. “Unless we don’t get you out of here right now!” Rand was by the door, one hand shielding his face from the heat, yelling for them to get a move on. Lancer grabbed hold of Simon’s hand and led him off at a run.
“Unbelievable,” Scott was saying on the rooftop across the river. “It looks like they’re trying to destroy the whole city and everybody in it.” He scanned the infrared binoculars north to south, then lowered them.
Rook and Lunk stood silently by the retaining wall, mesmerized by the fiery spectacle. Marlene was off to one side, hugging her arms to herself. Scott swung around to Lunk.
“How much Protoculture will we have if we cannibalize the Cyclone power systems?”
“Maybe a dozen canisters.”
“We have to act quick,” Rook told Scott. “Annie and the boys are somewhere in the middle of that firestorm.”
Scott tightened his mouth. Why haven’t they contacted me as planned? he asked himself, already dressing them down. With a dozen canisters of fuel, they would have just enough to power the three Veritechs for a short time. But unless they were able to resupply afterward, that would effectively finish the mecha, fighters and Cyclones both. And even the instrumentality nodes of Reflex Point were a good three hundred miles west of the city.
“Come on, Scott,” Rook was saying, her mind made up. “Let’s switch the canisters and get out there.”
Scott issued a silent nod of consent and went down on one knee by Marlene’s side while Rook and Lunk moved off. “You better stay behind,” he told her. “I don’t want to risk bringing you any closer to that place. I can see what you’re already going through.”
“I-I’ll be all right here,” she stammered, as though chilled to the bone. “But promise me you’ll be careful, Scott.”
They touched briefly, and he was gone.
In the central hive, Sera had been alerted to the wave of death her brother was unleashing against the populace. She sat rigidly at the top of the mushroomlike dais now, hands clasped tight to the arms of the throne, as views of the destruction reached her via a circular projecbeam.
“This is intolerable!” she screamed to her Enforcer guards, who stood unflinching below the dais cap. “Corg is deliberately sabotaging the experiment! The defeats he has suffered at the hands of the Humans have affected his conditioning!”
Everywhere the projecbeam took her, the scene was the same: buildings ablaze, Human life-forms in postures of agony, and more. But all at once Sera gasped as an image of Lancer filled the holo-field. He was out in the madness, his Gallant stiff-armed in front of him, returning insignificant blasts of vengeance against the overwhelming power of Corg’s war machine.
The Earth rebel who has caused so much disturbance within me! she kept saying to herself. But Lancer’s presence meant that Ariel must be nearby. Sera leapt from the dais and headed straight for her command ship.
If Sera had continued watching the projecbeam a moment longer, she would have realized that Lancer’s shots were not to be so easily dismissed. True, an H90 seemed insignificant when compared to Corg’s mobile arsenal, but Lancer and Rand had nevertheless managed to clear the streets of more than a dozen Urban Enforcers.
“That’s that,” Lancer was saying now as number fifteen fell, its chest plates laid open and oozing green nutrient fluids.
Annie, Jorge, and Simon stepped out from cover to join them in the street. Most of the ground troops had moved further south, but in their wake the city crumbled and burned, turning night to day.
“At least no one in the company got hurt,” said Jorge. “Everyone made it into the subway tunnels in time.”
“I wish the rest of the city was that lucky,” Annie added, stifling a sob.
Lancer checked the blaster’s remaining charge and frowned. “We better get underground ourselves.”
Suddenly Annie raised her arm and let out a bloodcurdling scream. Two Trooper ships had dropped to the street out of a slice of orange sky, their cloven hooves ripping into the pavement.
Lancer and Rand raised their weapons at the same moment and fired, instinctively finding the same target. The Trooper caught both blasts just above its scanner and ruptured like a lanced cyst, spewing thick smoke and sickly fluids. The second turned to watch its companion go down, then swung back around, its cannon tips aglow with priming charge. But out of the blue something holed the thing with a perfectly placed shot to the midsection, and it too dropped, almost crushing Rand and Annie on the way down.
Simon, Jorge, and the freedom fighters looked up in time to see three Veritechs swoop through the canyon formed by the buildings and fade into the glow.
“It’s Scott!” Rand shouted, amazed. “How the hell did they find us?!”
“I don’t think they did,” Lancer said, watching the VTs bank out of sight. “Just be glad that they chose to zero in on that particular Trooper.” He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned.
“Lancer, I’ve got an idea,” said Simon. “I want you to help us go ahead with the show.” He paid no attention to Lancer’s look of disbelief. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but we’re going to need help if this city is to survive.”
Lancer thought it over; over Simon’s shoulder he could see Annie and Rand nodding their heads in encouragement. “Sure,” he said at last.
Jorge flicked his fingers together with an audible snap. Ejole! “This’ll be the show of a lifetime!”
The three Veritechs flew north to the edge of the worst conflagrations and split up to double back. The thruster fires of Invid Trooper ships were just visible in the southern skies. “Let’s make sure the streets are clear of any ground units,” Scott told the others over the net. “Then we’ll go after the ships.”
“Nothing on my scanners,” Rook reported a moment later.
“Mine either,” added Lunk.
Scott looked out over the city and shook his head in despair. The Invid had cut a north-to-south swath of death four blocks wide along the west side of the island. Searching for any signs of Enforcer activity, he dropped down into the canyons again and was almost at street level when his radar displays suddenly came to life.
“Hold on, I’ve got something!”
By the time he realized what it was a blast had seared the upper sections of his fighter, nearly destabilizing it, but he managed to pull the Beta up and out of its plunge and soon had a visual on the enemy ship even as the displays were flashing its signature.
“Command ship,” said Scott, staring down at the orange and green crablike thing that was hovering below him at rooftop level. “It’s that damn command ship! Let’s take it!”
Corg, as though reading Scott’s designs, chose that moment to loose his first stream of annihilation discs. Scott banked sharply and fell; the Invid ship shot up at the same time, and Human and alien ended up exchanging places, discs, and laser-array fire in an aerial duel. Rook streaked in from behind and landed two heat-seekers, but Corg’s ship shook them off and stung back, igniting a row of rooftops with its misplaced shots.
Scott and Rook went wingtip to wingtip to launch a salvo of missiles, but again the Invid outmaneuvered them, diving down into the city’s hollows, where Lunk almost fell victim to the command ship’s wrath.
“That thing is dangerous!” he shouted over the net as explosive light lit up the inside of his cockpit.
“All right, let him go for now,” said Scott. He turned to make certain the Invid was willing to give it a rest and exhaled with relief when he saw the ship arrow off. “We’ve got to find Lancer.”
“Yeah, but where do we start looking?” asked Rook, disheartened by the inferno below, to say nothing of the complexity of the city’s intact landscape and terrain.
“Just keep your external receivers open,” Scott told her.
Hopeless, she thought. Just what kind of sign does he expect us to see from up here?
Two hours later, the three Veritechs were still circling. They were all running dangerously low on fuel, and there had been no sign of Lancer, Annie, or Rand. Or the Invid, which was a lucky break. Then Rook picked up something on the receiver and reported her coordinates to Scott and Lunk. She supplied them with the frequencies as they came into view on her display screen.
“Tune in and tell me who that sounds like.”
Lunk fiddled with his controls, listened for a moment, and heard the strains of “Look Up” coming across the cockpit speakers.
“Hey, that sounds suspiciously like an old buddy of mine.”
Rook laughed shortly. “Scott, you wanted a sign, huh? Well, how’s that one down there at three o’clock?” She tipped the VTs wings once or twice over the source of the transmissions: a tall, squeezed pentagon of a building whose rooftop was currently the scene of some kind of concert or show.
Scott completed a flyby and signaled Rook in a similar manner. He could discern the words PAN AM at the top of the building, above a huge lightboard sign that was flashing the word HERE.
“That’s Lancer all right,” Scott started to say. Then he noticed that his radar display was active once again: The command ship had returned with reinforcements. “Follow my lead to the street,” he told his teammates. “And activate cluster bombs on my mark.”
The Invid ships pursued them just as he had hoped they would, and when the three VTs were properly positioned, he called for a multiple missile launch. Warheads streaked from the fighters, arcing backward and detonating in advance of the Invid ships; several of the Troopers were destroyed, and even the command ship was brought up short by the force of the explosions.
“I’m going back for Marlene,” Scott reported as the Veritechs climbed. “I’ll rendezvous with you at the source.”
Rook and Lunk kept their fighters airborne until the concert ended; then they hovered down in Guardian mode, just as Scott was returning from the Jersey side of the river. Yellow Dancer, who had borrowed makeup and a flashy pink outfit for his part of the show, was already out of character by the time everyone regrouped.
“I got a bone to pick with you three,” Scott yelled as soon as the VT canopy went up.
“Save it, Scott,” Rand answered him from the roof. He tossed a canister of Protoculture fuel up to Rook. “Figured you might be a quart low by now.”
Scott lost most of his stored anger while he listened to a quick rundown of the events of the day. He couldn’t really find fault with their actions, especially in light of what had followed. There was certainly no going back to the storage facility now, but what they had managed to carry out was more than enough to take the team the rest of the way to Reflex Point. Once they finished here, of course.
Scott pulled Marlene aside while Lunk set about refueling the mecha energy systems. “We’re going to have to go back up,” he explained, his hands on her shoulders.
“Yes, I know.”
He wanted to say more, but Lancer was now standing alongside them, urging Scott to hurry it up. “I don’t mean to break you kids up, but we’ve got lots of work to do.”
Embarrassed, Scott withdrew his hands. “See you,” he said, blushing, and ran for the Beta.
Lunk and Annie remained with Marlene as the two Alphas and the now separate components of the Beta lifted off. Hurry back, Marlene was saying to herself when Lunk stepped up behind her.
“You miss him alread—”
An explosion erased the rest of his words and threw both Lunk and Marlene ten feet or more in opposite directions.
Marlene was first to come around. Unsure how long she had been out, she stood up and coughed smoke from her lungs. One section of the roof was holed and in flames, and she could hear screams of panic in the darkness. Lunk was on his back nearby, apparently unconscious; Annie was nowhere in sight. Someone yelled, “Ariel,” and for some reason she found herself turning around.
It was the green-haired woman they hadn’t seen since the mountain attack. She was stepping from the flames that were licking at the armored legs of her towering command ship.
“Ariel,” the woman repeated, and again Marlene felt something stir within her. “I am Sera, princess of the Invid, and I have come for you.”
Trembling, Marlene stared at her. “But my name is … Marlene. I don’t understand why you’ve come for me.…”
“Because you have turned against your people and I must know why, before we begin transmutation of our race. Why have you disobeyed the Regess?”
Marlene gasped. What is this woman talking about? “I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” she said, as if Sera were some hallucination she could banish through an effort of will. “I’m not an Invid.”
Sera was taking steps toward her now, her crimson eyes flashing a kind of anger that burned deep into Marlene’s soul. “You were placed among the people of Earth to learn their ways, so that we might profit from your discoveries. The Regess has been awaiting your reports, and yet you choose to ignore our commands. Do you expect me to believe that you have forgotten who you are and why you are here?”
Marlene shook her head back and forth; she tried to deny the words her heart seemed eager to affirm. “No … it can’t be.”
The woman regarded her quizzically. “What can’t be, Ariel? Search your thoughts, search them for the truth.”
“You’re lying! You must be!” Marlene screamed as an explosion tore up another section of the roof.
Sera leaned away to shield herself. “I must stop Corg, before the battle comes any closer,” she said. Then her eyes found Marlene. “I will deal with you later.”
Marlene watched Sera race off to her ship. Behind her, Lunk was coming around, wondering aloud what had happened. But she hardly heard him.
It can’t be true, she thought. It can’t be true!
Down below, the battle was raging in the streets. Reconfigured to Battloid mode, Scott’s section of the Beta was backed against a building, the rifle/cannon in both hands laying down a thunderous sweep of fire into the face of an advancing Trooper. Elsewhere, two Pincer Ships pursued Lunk through the city’s right-angle canyons. Two more had ganged up on Rook’s red Battloid, forced it into a corner, and were now attempting to open it with their claws.
She called for help over the net. “These cursed things are trying to rape my ship!”
Rand came to her aid a moment later, his Battloid hovering overhead and taking out each ship with a single shot. But the next moment he was facedown in the street, felled by a blast to the back by none other than Corg himself.
The Invid put down behind the crippled Battloid and moved in to finish it off, but Lancer blew it back into the air with a massive Bludgeon release from the reconfigured burly hindquarters of the Beta. At rooftop level, Corg countered with a wave of annihilation discs that pinned Lancer to the wall, but the Invid prince recognized that he was outnumbered and darted off to muster support.
Scott moved in to check on Rand’s status, the rifle/cannon upraised and ready for action. Rook joined him shortly.
“Looks like they’re pulling back,” said Lancer, while his ship launched and reconfigured. “What do you say we call it a day, Scott?”
“We’re not done yet; there’s still the hive.”
Rand whistled over the net. “The hive! Don’t you think you’re asking a lot out of four little fighters?”
“Yeah, Scott,” Rook chimed in. “Have you got a secret army or something?”
“No, but I’ve got a plan,” he told them. “Obviously the Regess never figured on a direct attack, or she wouldn’t have had her workers build the hive in such an accessible spot. My bet is we can bring the whole thing down with a few well-placed cobalt grenades.”
There wasn’t much time to discuss the pros and cons because Corg had returned with three Pincer Ships to back him up. So the three Battloids launched to join their leader and boostered off toward the hive, the four Invid ships in close pursuit.
In the hive, the Regess’ voice reached into the very thoughts of her unsuspecting children.
“Attention, perimeter guard: Four Earth fighters are preparing to launch an attack against the hive.”
But Sera was nowhere to be found, and without her the Invid drones and Enforcers could do little more than scurry about in a kind of blind panic. And by the time Corg understood the Humans’ intent, it was already too late to stop them.
The VTs had climbed to an altitude of several thousand feet and were now falling on the hive like metallic birds of prey. They directed their warheads into the conical summit of the tall structure that housed the hive, and the energy of the ensuing explosions funneled down through the building like a bomb dropped through the top of a chimney. The hive took the full force of the contained blast and blew apart, raining great clumps of organic mass to the streets.
Corg felt the collective deaths pierce him like a lance. In the face of the hive’s collapse he broke off his pursuit and cursed the Humans for their barbaric act.
I will have my revenge for this day, he promised the stars.
Lancer insisted on saying good-bye to Simon.
“There’s no way we can ever thank you for what you and your friends have done,” Simon told him. “Why don’t you stay here and leave the rest of it to them, Lancer? Surely you’ve done your part by now.”
The city’s survivors were leaving the subway shelters, taking stock of what had been leveled against them. Simon, Jorge, and the freedom fighters were near Carnegie Hall, having just finished loading the VTs with as much Protoculture as they could safely carry.
Lancer knew that Rand had heard Simon’s remark and was waiting for his response. Lancer flashed him a brief look and said: “I’ve been with these people for a long time, Simon, and I plan to be with them right to the end.”
Simon offered an understanding nod.
“This was just a skirmish in a much bigger war,” said Rand.
“Well, I hope all of you will return someday. And when you do, we’ll have the celebration you deserve.” Simon embraced Lancer and wished him luck.
On their way out of the city (Lancer, Annie, and Marlene squeezed into the Beta’s cramped storage space), the team flew over the remains of a metal statue that had once stood proudly in the harbor. It had once symbolized liberty, Lancer explained.
Scott regarded it and said: “I only hope we can return that to the world someday.”