Captain, there’s something wrong with the engines! They’re just not responding!
Remark attributed to someone in the SDF-3 engineering section
On the far side of the Moon, the warships of the main fleet dematerialized from hyperspace—sleek, swanlike destroyers with long tapering necks and swept-back wings. They were enormous battlecruisers shaped like stone-age war clubs with crimson underbellies; dorsal-finned tri-thrusters and Veritech transports that resembled clusters of old-fashioned boilers; and of course the squadrons of new-generation assault mecha, the so-called Shadow Fighters.
On the bridge of the flagship, General Reinhardt waited for word of Admiral Hunter’s arrival, while the rest of the fleet formed up on his lead. Filling the front viewports was the Earth they had come so far to reclaim. Reinhardt regarded the world as one would a precious stone set on black velvet. Almost sixteen years, he thought to himself. Is this a dream?
He shook his head, as if to clear thoughts of the past from his mind, and turned his attention to the monitors above the command chair. Here were displayed views of local space, Earth’s silver satellite, and the gleam of a thousand hulls touched by sunlight. But there was still no sign of the admiral. Reinhardt slammed his thin hand against the chair’s communicator button. “Anything yet?”
“No sign,” the astrogation officer responded.
“That damn ship’s jinxed,” Reinhardt muttered to himself. “I told Hunter something like this would happen.…”
The bridge controller flashed him a look across the bridge. “Recommend we initiate attack sequence, sir. We can’t afford to wait much longer for the SDF-3. All approach vectors have been plotted and locked in, and conditions now read optimum status.”
Reinhardt drew his hand across his face. “All right,” he said after a moment. “Issue the codes.”
The controller swung around to his console and tapped in series of commands, speaking into the mikes while his fingers flew across the keyboard.
“All units are to proceed to rendezvous coordinates Thomas-Victor-Delta. Attack group three will remain and await instructions from SDF-3 command. Attack group two will continue to objective Reflex Point, activating cloaking device at T minus five minutes and counting.… Good luck, everyone, and may God be with us for a change.…”
Ground force units and their companion VT strike groups had already landed. Scott and the team had been on hand to greet them, and in the ensuing excitement everyone forgot about Marlene for a few moments. She hadn’t been seen since dawn, when the painful realization of her identity had led to her flight.
Sue Graham was dead.
The Invid hadn’t shown themselves either, which in itself was a positive sign. Scott still didn’t know what to make of the Human or humanoid pilots they were apparently using. He wanted desperately to believe that Marlene was in fact the amnesiac captive he had come to love—that that green blood was something the Invid had done to her—and that they would reunite when all this was finished once and for all. But there were just too many reasons to think otherwise, and for the first time in over a year he found himself recalling Dr. Lang’s theories concerning the Invid Regess and her ability to transmute the genetic stuff of her children into any form she chose. These were fleeting thoughts, however, glossed over while preparations got under way for a full-scale invasion of the central hive.
The irregulars had been attached to the ground forces under the command of Captain Harrington, a dark-haired, clean-shaven young man who thanked Scott for the recon information he had gathered and promptly dismissed it. They were all in a group now, atop a thickly wooded rise that overlooked Reflex Point’s centermost and largest hive, a massive hemisphere of what looked like glowing lava surrounded by five towering sensor poles and a veritable forest of Optera trees—those curious thirty-foot-high stalk and globes that were the final stage of the Flower of Life. There was no Invid activity, ible activity, except for random flashes of angry lightning, which in their brief displays suggested a domelike barrier shield that encompassed the hive itself.
“At last … we finally made it,” Scott was saying. He was in Cyclone battle armor, as were Lancer, Rook, Rand, Lunk, and most of Harrington’s troops. Veritechs had taken up positions in the woods all around the hive, and the grassy slopes to the rear were covered with squads of Cyclone riders.
“I don’t want to burst your bubble,” said Harrington, “but we’ve still got a Protoplex energy barrier and a couple of thousand Invid Shock Troopers to get through.”
Scott had a defensive reply in store for the captain but let it go. How could the man be made to understand what Reflex Point meant to Scott’s team? True, the Expeditionary Force had come a long way for this showdown, but Scott reckoned that the distance of the overland journey to this moment as incalculable.
“I want to make certain that the main Alpha force stays out of this until we punch a hole in the barrier,” Harrington was advising his subordinates. “We don’t want to repeat yesterday’s mistake and get them too stirred up. We’ll let them think we’re of no consequence.” Harrington turned to Scott. “Lieutenant, I’m counting on you to be ready with your fly-boys as soon as you receive my word, understood?”
“Sir!” said Scott. Lancer and Lunk joined him in a salute.
“I’m so excited I could just scream!” Annie enthused from the sidelines.
“It’s going to be awesome,” Rand said beside her.
Scott threw Rand, Rook, and Annie a stern look. “Forget it, you’re not coming. This is strictly a military operation.”
“You’re lucky to be out of it,” Lancer added at once and almost cheerfully, hoping to mitigate Scott’s pronouncement somewhat.
Rook went from sadness to anger in an instant. “Well, we sure don’t want to interfere now that the big boys have arrived, do we? I mean, all that action we’ve seen together—that was just play fighting, right?”
Rand, too, was seething but was determined not to show it. “Personally, I’m in no hurry to get myself killed, Lieutenant, so it’s fine with me.”
Annie looked up at her two friends, then over at Scott, Lancer, and Lunk. “But it’s not fair to break us up like this just ’cause you guys were soldiers. We’re still a team—a family! You can’t just tell us to split up!”
Rook tried to soothe Annie while she cried. “I suppose this is good-bye, then.” She had packed away all her snide comments. “Good luck, Scott.”
Harrington gave orders for the attack to begin before Scott could answer her. Veritechs configured in Guardian mode lined out of the woods to direct preliminary fire against the hive, filling the air with thunder and felling scores of Optera trees. And as fiery explosions fountained around the hive, awakened Invid Shock Troopers emerged from the ground to engage the Earth forces one on one. Scott rushed to his fighter, but Lancer stopped to say a farewell to his friends, even as Veritechs roared by overhead.
“I can’t say it’s always been fun, but it’s certainly been terrific,” Lancer yelled over the tumult. “You three take care of yourselves, okay?”
“You take care,” said Rand. “Remember, I expect to see Yellow Dancer perform again.”
Lancer smiled coyly. “Don’t worry, you will.”
“You promise?” Rook asked.
Lancer leaned over to kiss her lightly on the cheek. “Till we meet again.”
It was a little too sweet and fatherly for her liking, but Rook said nothing. Lancer behaved the same toward Annie.
“Now, don’t go and get married behind my back.”
“I won’t,” Annie said tearfully.
Lunk pulled up in the APC to wave good-bye as Lancer headed for his Alpha. “I’m a soldier again,” he shouted, gesturing to his spotless battle armor. “I’ll be seeing you guys!”
Rand watched his friend drive off. “A soldier again? What the heck does everyone think we’ve been doing this past year?” He frowned at Rook. “They’re all riding off into battle, right? So how come I feel like we’re the only ones without invitations to a party?”
A short distance away, Scott waved good luck to Lunk and threw a salute back to his former teammates.
“That tears it!” Rand cursed. “I should’ve figured he’d say good-bye like that. A robby, through and through.”
“Would you want it any other way?” Rook asked him, returning Scott’s salute and smiling.
Rand thought it over for a moment, then brought the edge of his hand to his forehead smartly.
Scott turned to his console and displays, lowering the canopy and activating the VTs rear thrusters.
Good-bye, my friends, he said to himself. Whatever happens now, at least I’ll know the three of you will get out of this alive.
Veritechs and Invid Shock Troopers were clashing throughout the field now. Hundreds of Pincer Ships had joined the fray and were buzzing around the hive in clusters four and five strong. Only a few Cyclone riders had reconfigured their mecha to Battle Armor mode; most of them were riding against the hemisphere in a kind of cavalry charge, pouring all their fire against the hive’s flashing barrier shield.
Bursts of blinding light strobed across a sky littered with ships and crosshatched by tracer rounds and hyphens of laser fire. Rand watched from the edge of the woods as Veritechs swooped in on release runs and booster-climbed into the sunlight. The sounds of battle rumbled through the surrounding hills and shook the ground beneath his feet. He could see that the battalion was meeting with heavy resistance, despite what Captain Harrington had said about underplaying their hand. The Invid knew exactly what was at stake, and they weren’t about to be tricked.
I can’t do it, he thought. I can’t just stand here and watch them go!
Without a word to Rook or Annie, he donned his helmet and made for his Cyclone. They called out after him.
“I’m not going to sit it out after coming this far,” he told them. “I figure the time has come for a little well-meaning insubordination.”
Rook tried again to stop him, to talk some sense into him, but her words lacked conviction—even she didn’t believe what she was saying. “That idiot’s going to get himself killed without somebody to look after him!”
Annie saw what was coming but didn’t bother to try to stop her other than to shout a halfhearted, “Wait!”—and that was only because she didn’t want to be left behind. She began to chase after them, leaving the woods and risking a mad unprotected dash across the battlefield, but it was Lunk she ultimately caught up with.
He had been riding escort to various Cyclone squads, adding his own missiles to the riders’ laser-array fire, when an Invid command ship he had finished off with heat-seekers almost toppled on him, sending the APC out of control. Suddenly he was flung into the shotgun seat, and the vehicle was skidding to a halt in the thick of the fighting. And the next thing he knew Annie was in the driver’s seat, practically standing up to reach the pedals and shouting: “I’ll show you how to handle this thing!”
“What the heck are you doing here?” he demanded, grateful and concerned at the same time.
Annie accelerated, pinning him to the seat.
“What’s it look like I’m doing?!”
“Come on, Mint, gimme the wheel—”
“Forget it!” she yelled into his face as he made a reach for it. “I’m not gonna be left behind anymore, Lunk!”
Lunk backed off and regarded her. She was a trooper, he had to admit, a regular workout.
Deep within the hive, the instrumentality sphere glowed with images of the battle—a Cyclone charge, an aerial encounter, death and devastation. A living flame of white energy now, the Regess beheld the spectacle and understood.
“The Earth people have risen in great numbers against us,” she addressed her troops, in position elsewhere in the hive. “And now they dare to attack our very center, to threaten all that we have labored to achieve. But this time we will put an end to it. Corg, I call upon you to defend the hive. Destroy them, as they would us, for the greater glory of our race!”
“It will be my pleasure and my privilege,” Corg answered her from the cockpit of his command ship. Behind him, his elite squad of warriors readied themselves as the hive began to open, the subatomic stuff of the barrier shield pouring in to fill the drone chambers with white radiance.
But Corg was suddenly aware of a Human-sized figure silhouetted against that blinding light. “No, wait! You mustn’t!” it shouted.
Ariel, in her Human guise and garb, was below him, searching for sight of him in the cockpit. “So, you’ve returned.… What do you want?”
“I want to speak to the Regess. Let me through—this madness must be stopped!”
“Madness?!” he shouted, stepping his ship forward menacingly. “What are you saying?”
Ariel gestured to the outside world. “They’re only fighting to regain the land that is rightfully theirs … the land we’ve taken!”
“You’ve lived among them too long, Ariel,” Corg told her. “Or should I call you Marlene?… Now stand aside!”
Corg leapt his ship over her head, nearly decapitating her, but she had ducked at the last instant and was on all fours now, weeping, Sera’s pink and purple ship towering over her.
“Sera, you must listen to me,” Marlene pleaded, getting to her feet. “Have we forgotten our past? You yourself opened my mind to these things. Have we forgotten that our own planet was stolen from us? What gives us the right to inflict the same evil on these people?”
Sardonic laughter issued through the ship’s externals. “So suddenly our Ariel remembers,” sneered Sera. “And you would have us surrender.… Well, we have traveled too far to concern ourselves with this barbaric life-form’s needs. Soon this will be our world, and our world alone.”
“We’ve traveled far, and yet we have learned nothing.”
Sera engaged her ship’s power systems and leapt into the light, the roar of the thrusters drowning out Marlene’s anguished pleas.
Outside, the barrier had been breached by antimatter torpedoes delivered against it by two Veritechs and subsequent blasts from the battalion’s destabilizer cannons. Cyclone riders and Battloids were now punching through the rend and batting Pincer Ships on the ground nearest the hive wall.
The outpouring of Protoculture energy released from the shield was working a kind of seasonal magic across the landscape, reconfiguring not only local weather patterns but the life processes of the flora itself. Rand and Rook, riding at the head of a contingent of Cycloners, moved from winter to spring in a matter of seconds. Spores and pollen clusters the size of giant snowflakes were wafting through the newly warmed air; young grass was spreading like some green tide across the valley, and trees and flowers were blossoming in vibrant colors.
“This sure wasn’t in the forecast!” Rand commented over the net.
“Look at all these wildflowers! Poppies, marigolds—”
“Yeah, but I don’t like the look of that big cornflower up ahead.”
Rook saw a blue Enforcer ship surfacing in front of them, its cannon tips already aglow with priming charges. “Fan out,” Rand ordered the rest of the Cyclone group as energy bolts were thrown at them. The two freedom fighters launched their Cycs and changed over to Battle Armor mode.
“Draw its fire!” said Rook, boostering up and off to the left.
Rand remained at ground level, taunting the blue devil with trick shots, while Rook came in from behind to drop the thing. But a second Invid suddenly appeared out of nowhere and swatted her from the air with a cannon twist that smashed one side of the armor’s backpack rig, shearing away one of the mecha’s tires. She went into an uncontrolled fall with her back to the larger ship, but Rand swooped in to position himself between the two of them.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you covered.”
“Leave it to me!” she told him, voice full of anger, as Rand triggered off a series of futile shots.
“If I’d left it to you, you’d be a pile of smoking rubble by now, and I’m just too fond of you to let that happen!”
“You’re what?!”
Rand risked a look over his shoulder at her. “You heard me—I’m fond of you, dammit!”
It was a hell of a time to be confessing his feelings, she thought, but it was turning out to be one of those days. “I—I don’t know what to say.…”
Rand swung back to his opponent and saw that the Invid ship’s cannons were about to fire. “Don’t say anything,” he yelled in a rush, “just moooove!”
The cannons traversed and followed the Cycloners up, but the pilot’s aim was off, and Rand managed to sweep in and bull’s-eye the ship from behind.
“Nice shooting there, cowboy,” Rook said, coming alongside him later. “I bet you try to impress all the girls that way.”
There was a sweetness in her voice he had never heard before and a smile behind the faceshield of her helmet that lit up his heart. “No, only the ones who can outshoot me,” he laughed.
They were both some fifty feet off the ground, almost leisurely in flight, as though the battle had ended. Then, without warning, there was something up there with them: a kind of towering diamond-shaped flame of white energy inside of which, naked and transcendent, was a Human female with long, flowing red hair.…
The vision, if that indeed was what it was, also appeared to Lunk and Annie, who were down below in another part of the arena.
“What the devil is that thing?!” Lunk said, back behind the wheel of the APC now.
At that the flame seemed to tinkerbell across the sky, as though calling to them. Annie swore to herself that she was seeing Marlene up there but dismissed the thought as wishful thinking. The flame, however, did seem to be beckoning to them.
“Do you get the feeling it wants us to follow it?”
“That seems to be the idea,” said Lunk, putting the vehicle into gear. “And I’ve learned that you never say no to a hallucination.”
At the same time, almost directly over the hive, where the fighting had been fast and furious, Scott and Lancer were reconfiguring their fighters to Battloid mode in the hope that some of the Expeditionary Force fly-boys would follow their lead. The air combat units had been sustaining heavy losses, and Scott reasoned that the boys had been flying far too long in zero-gee theaters. He recalled the fear he had felt when Lunk first surprised him with the Alpha—and back then he was only going up against two or three Troopers ships, nothing like the swarms of Invid craft that were in the skies today.
Reconfigured, the two teammates demonstrated what a year of guerrilla fighting had taught them; they dropped down close to the hive, rifle/cannons blazing, and took out one after another Invid ship—even the most recent entries to the aliens’ supply: the Battloid-like Retaliator ships, upscale versions of the Invid Urban Enforcer street machines. Lancer went so far as to bat a couple of them with the rifle/cannon, showing just how to make gravity work to one’s advantage.
Then suddenly there was a kind of flame whisking along beside them, tipped on its side and incandescent.
Lancer said: “It’s some sort of vapor cloud, I think. But I can’t get a decent fix on it. See if you can get close to it.”
Scott banked his fighter toward the apparition and trained his scanners on it. But it was his eyes that gave him the answer: Inside the flame cloud a naked figure swam, larger than life and recognizable.
No, it can’t be! Scott thought.
All at once Lancer’s voice pierced the cacophony of sounds coming over the tac net.
“I’m hit, Scott! The gyro-stabilizers are shot! I can’t get myself turned around! Can’t get the canopy up, either. I’m down and out, buddy!… A memory!”