Genesis

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"It looks like they're fighting down there!" Minmei said.

It doesn't matter; we've got nowhere else to go. "Don't worry." He cut in the boosters, nursing them along exactingly to line up his vector, praying no debris got in his way because there was no hope of dodging anything.

In the fury of the battle back on Earth, human defenders had overlooked the fact that one of the first Zentraedi landing ships, loaded with Battlepods, had been heavily damaged and forced to set down on Macross once again, unable to fly. And so it, too, had been transported into deep space by the fold maneuver.

While the landing ship was no longer operable, the pods were. They'd immediately resumed their attack on the ship, no doubt in response to their assigned mission but moved, too, by the awareness that they were somewhere far from their fleet and that if they couldn't take the fortress, they wouldn't survive for long out by Pluto's orbit.

The island in space was now complete bedlam, with alien mecha massed in suicidal assault waves, while the ship's guns blazed away. Rick Hunter rocketed into the midst of this with a ship he could barely control.

Still, he did the best he could, gradually bringing the little racer in end for end through judicious use of the boosters, his only method of halting being a retrofire. He made microburns, slowing, trying to line up his approach. It seemed hopeless.

Then a bad situation became even worse. All the landing bays were closed, sealed tight. "I forgot, they shut them during combat," Rick said, tight-upped. Minmei blinked, looking at him as if he'd said it in another language.

A mortally damaged pod went tumbling past them, trailing fire like an erratic meteor, victim of an armor-piercing, discarding-sabot round from SDF-1-so close that it all but singed Mockingbird's wingtip. Rick and Minmei shrank from it in reflex, but it was already impacting the SDF-1.

Rick had to crane around, glancing over the back of the plane, to see what happened. The pod gave up all its destructive power in one great explosion, hitting at the confined area of a recessed maintenance causeway.

It was a million-to-one shot, but the explosion acted as a shaped charge, blowing a gaping hole in the dimensional fortress's armored hide. And it was toward that hole that the plane was going.

Until the explosion's shock wave hit it.

Mockingbird was jarred, stopped in midflight, spun. It ended up with its nose more or less pointed at the SDF-1 but moving away from it.

Rick was already feeling a little light-headed, and breathing was an effort. Moreover, the boosters didn't have very much left to give. "Maybe we can get through the hole the invader made!"

Minmei nodded, too short-winded to answer. Rick cut in the boosters, steering as best he could.

Another pilot would have died then. But Rick knew Mockingbird well, even under circumstances as bizarre as these. He nursed the racer along with minute bursts of thrust, knowing there'd be no time to flip and retro, hoping he and Minmei could survive a crash.

But they would have to endure one more bad break to even the balance of the sudden luck that had come their way: A thick curtain of armor was descending over the hole, the reaction of an automatic damage-control system.

Rick cut in all boosters full throttle, seeing his only chance of survival disappearing. He cranked up the propfan in full reverse, hoping that it might stop the ship once it hit atmosphere.

He'd calculated that most of the outsurge of air from the breached compartment would have spent itself by the time he got there. There was no point in thinking-otherwise; neither boosters nor propfan could take Mockingbird «upstream» against the terrific pressure of such a monster air leak.

He wasn't too far off. In fact, he did a piloting job worthy of a place in the record books until the descending armor curtain sheared the racer's uppermost wing off.

Still, the little plane shot into the vast compartment, more or less intact, aimed at a far area of the ceiling. The propfan howled as the blades got some bite in a very thin atmosphere. The armor patch clanged into place.

And there was gravity. Mockingbird's upward climb topped out and became a crash dive. We almost made it, Rick realized. The deck whirled at the canopy.

But they'd happened into an area still strung with hoisting cables, rigging slings, and tackle-a jungle of them. Mockingbird was successively snagged, whirled, flipped, and caught in a matter of seconds, with more pieces broken from it.

Rick and Minmei felt themselves blacking out but shook it off a few seconds later to discover themselves hanging upside down, the deck only a yard or, two below the cockpit dome. The rumble of life-support equipment pumping air back into the chamber was already loud.

Mockingbird hung ensnared in the lines and cables, upside down but stable for the time being. A last piece of good fortune: None of the lines had caught across the canopy to hold the cockpit shut and imprison them.

Rick had no reserves left to think of elegant solutions. He hit the release, and the canopy swung down. He lowered Minmei with the last of his strength and, resigning himself to a fall, released his safety harness. He landed on the deck at her feet, saying only, "Oof!"

She knelt next to him. They looked themselves over with wonder, having resigned themselves to being dead. Then they looked at each other and burst out laughing at the same moment.

It was the best, loudest laugh either of them had ever had. Somehow, it was immeasurably important to Rick that he share it with Minmei.

"We just shot down the last enemy Battlepod, sir," Sammie relayed the information.

"Very good." Gloval nodded. "Any contact with headquarters yet?"

That was Claudia's hot potato. "No, Captain. I've tried, sir, but nothing works. We can't raise them."

Sammie broke in, "Are you sure there's no system malfunction?"

"Negative," Claudia shot back tersely.

"None at all," Vanessa said, backing her. "It's operating perfectly."

Gloval didn't want to indulge his fears; he had a pretty good idea what had happened, but if it were to prove true, the consequences would be dire indeed. Still, there was no avoiding the inevitable. "Give me the reading on our position."

Vanessa was prompt and precise in answering. "The planet Pluto's orbit, according to the computer plot."

"The planet Pluto?" So much worse than even he had suspected. Gloval dipped deep into the fortitude that develops when death has been cheated a hundred times and comes back for a rematch. Relentlessly.

The bridge gang was gathering around Vanessa, even rocklike Lisa. "Pluto?" "Impossible!"

"It can't be!" Claudia was proclaiming, knowing very well that it was. "I was against this fold jump business all along!"

More than just about anyone else alive, Gloval knew when it was time to play martinet (rarely) and when it was time to play patriarch (the manner in which he had won every important citation there was, some several times over).

"Now, now, now. Settle down; don't panic." His voice was calm and sure. It brought order and discipline back to the bridge by its very measured resonance. "All we have to do is refold to get back to where we started."

That made them all exchange looks and get a grip on themselves. Gloval was four steps ahead of everyone, as usual; everything was all right.

Far aft, in the engineering section, Lang stared up and laughed, then doubled over, slapping his knees-a laugh that seesawed between the hysterical and the Olympian. The techs and scientists and crewpeople around him looked at him dubiously.

It had been going on for a half minute or so, and each time he took a fresh look, Lang laughed again. Tears had begun squeezing out of the corners of his strange eyes for what he perceived as a monumental joke.

Before anybody around him could act, Lang forced himself to stop. Cosmic jokes weren't something you could share with everybody; the gift of humor didn't run that deep in some people.

Lang straightened and caught his breath, gathering himself, shaking his head.

"Somebody get me Gloval."

"There's absolutely nothing to worry about," Gloval was saying.

"I hope not, Captain," Lisa muttered, back at her duty station. And that was when the hot line rang.

"Now what?" Gloval got it, growling like a bear. "Yes? What? Are you absolutely sure? Stand fast; I'll be right there."

Gloval slammed the handset down. He ignored the questioning faces around him and headed for the hatch. Lisa stood rooted, stunned by the idea that the captain would even think about leaving the bridge at a time like this. "Captain? What happened?"

Gloval paused at the hatch. "Doctor Lang informs me that the fold system has vanished into thin air."

The bridge gang let out stifled cries and moans; Sammie and Kim hugged each other, fighting back tears. Everyone there knew just as well as Gloval what that meant.

"We'll never get back," Claudia whispered.

Outside the hatch, Gloval stopped to fire up his evil-smelling old briar. There was no point in doubting Lang's news; the man was obsessed with Robotechnology but otherwise quite rational. That left Henry Gloval to calculate matters of current orbital positions, distance, life support, and engine performance profiles.

He blew out a cloud of smoke, considering the tobacco in the pipe's bowl. I'd better cut down; what I have is going to have to last me quite a while.

"Hmm. Well now," he said aloud. "Gonna be a long trip."

Fantastic as it seemed, Lang was right: The fold engines were gone.

Gloval returned to the bridge to try to salvage this seemingly hopeless situation as best he could.

"I don't know what happened exactly," Gloval shouted into a handset. "But our first priority is to get the civilians onboard this ship as soon as we can!"

He slammed down the handset and turned to his bridge gang. "Well?"

"Captain, we can't raise the Daedalus or Prometheus," Lisa told him.

His gaze went to the forward viewport. At a distance of a few hundred yards, the titantic shapes of the two supercarriers could be seen clearly amid the cloud of debris and wreckage, the drifting automobiles and furniture, and the more ghastly remains of human victims of the tragedy.

"They're aircraft carriers; all atmosphere would have bled away at once, as soon as the fold force field disappeared." No one needed to be told what that meant; all hands lost in the wake of the jump, like every other unprotected human being. "What a catastrophe!"

But other matters were too urgent for him to dwell on the horror of what those last few seconds must have been like in the supercarriers. Chances of survival and a safe return to Earth were slim, but it was up to him to make the most of them.

Like a handful of others throughout history, Henry Gloval was uniquely suited for this particular moment and situation. History was to record it as a singular stroke of good fortune for the human race.

"Commander Hayes, order a squadron of rescue vehicles to maneuver the carriers alongside the SDF-1. We will make fast to them and get crews working round the clock to make them airtight and operational once again." He shunted aside the thought of what a grisly job the clean-up would be.

Lisa looked surprised. "Captain, is it more important that we link up with them than with Armor One or Ten?"

"Yes. I believe their onboard weapons will still be functioning, and there are Veritechs onboard both of them."

"I hope it works, Captain," Lisa said.

"It must be done quickly," Gloval added.

Claudia muttered, "That's for sure."

Gloval went to stand by the viewport. All those lives lost! How could I have been so stupid? But he knew, deep down, that he was being unfair to himself. He'd taken the only option open to him. If he'd chosen another course of action, the SDF-1 would now be in the hands of the alien invaders, and all would have been lost.

"We will also deploy boarding tubes to the shelters and begin transferring all occupants to the SDF-1," he gave the order over his shoulder. "Instruct Colonel Fielding and his staff to drop everything else and begin making temporary living arrangements for them at once. Detail EVE groups five and six to start salvage operations; tell them to bring in all usable materials, with special emphasis on foodstuffs and any water ice they may be able to find."

The bridge gang hopped to it, taking notes, as the orders went on. Inventories of all resources; requirement and capability projections from all division chiefs; long-range scans for any signs of enemy presence or activity.

There was particular attention to that last item. They found us once, Gloval thought. Heaven help us if they do again.