Genesis

CHAPTER FOUR

High above Macross Island, an unusual aircraft began to descend into the complex flight patterns of Launching Day, following course five-seven for landing, just as Lisa Hayes had instructed.

Rick Hunter whistled as he got a better look at the SDF-1. The descriptions and the newscasts just didn't begin to do justice to the astonishing size of the thing! The two supercarriers anchored among the flotilla of ships in the harbor were of the new Thor class-each longer than a 150-story office building resting on its side-yet they were modest in comparison to the battle fortress.

And the sky was full of the sleekest, most advanced-looking fighters Rick had ever seen-Robotech fighters, the newscasts had called them. Whatever that meant. For a moment Rick couldn't blame Roy Fokker for dedicating himself to this Robotech stuff.

After a decade of secrecy, the United Earth Government promised the wonderful new breakthroughs made on Macross would be revealed. To Rick, it simply meant that Roy wouldn't have to be so hush-hush about what he was doing, and perhaps their friendship could get back on its old footing.

Rick maneuvered his ship smoothly through the traffic, relying not on his computers but on his own talent and training-a point of pride. He was the offspring of a proud, daring breed: last of the barnstormers, the stunt fliers and the seat-of-the-pants winged daredevils.

He was eighteen years old and hadn't been outflown since-well, long before his voice had changed from a kid's to a young man's.

His plane was a nimble little racer of his own design. A roomy one-seater, white with red trim, powered primarily by an oversize propfan engine but hiding a few surprises under its sleek fuselage. Rick had named it the Mockingbird, a fittingly arrogant name for the undisputed star of the last of the flying circuses.

He tossed a dark forelock of hair back and adjusted his tinted goggles, then went into a pushover and power dive for the SDF-1. This Robotech stuff looked impressive… but maybe it was time somebody showed these military flyboys that it was the pilot that mattered most, not some pile of mere metal.

Far out beyond the orbit of Earth's moon, a portentous tremble shook the spacetime continuum as if it were a spiderweb. It was only a preliminary disturbance, yet it was exacting and of great extent. A force beyond reckoning was making tentative contact on a day that marked a turning point in the history of the unsuspecting earth.

On Macross Island, in the shadow of the SDF-1, Roy didn't have time to notice the tiny racing plane making a pass over the ship's bow, thousands of feet above him. The public address system carried an announcement to the tens of thousands gathered there.

"And now we present an amazing display of aerial acrobatics, demonstrating the amazing advances we have made through Robotechnology. Lieutenant Commander Roy Fokker, leader of the Veritech fighters' Skull Team, will describe and explain the action for us."

Roy made his entrance to enthusiastic applause; he was known to and well liked by most people on Macross Island. Tall and handsome in his uniform, the blond hair still full and thick, he stopped before the microphone stand. He gave a snappy salute, then fell into parade rest and began his address.

"Today, ladies and gentlemen, you'll see how we've applied human know-how to understanding and harnessing a complex alien technology."

Overhead, a half dozen swift, deadly Veritech fighters peeled off to begin their performance.

"Keep your eyes on planes two and four," Roy went on as two and four lined up for the first maneuver, engines blaring. "Flying at speeds of five hundred miles per hour, only fifty feet above the ground, they will pass within just a few yards of one another. Robotechnology makes such precision possible."

Roy looked out over the crowd with satisfaction. All eyes were gazing up in amazement at the onrushing fighters.

But the show would build from there. Precision flying was nothing compared to the other forms of control Robotechnology gave human beings over their new instruments. At long last average citizens would get to see Guardian and Battloid modes in action, Robotechnology applications that until now had been used only in restricted training areas or drills far out at sea, when the Veritechs were launching from the decks of the Daedalus and the Prometheus.

Those people in the throng, the ordinary citizens of Macross, were the ones who deserved the first live look at what the SDF-1 project had brought forth. They'd earned that right-much more than all the politicians, who had merely voted how much time and work and money would be spent-time and work and money that were invariably not the politicians'.

Today, all the rumors and speculations about Robotechnology would be put to rest, and the people of Earth would find out that the reality surpassed them all.

Roy was thinking about that happily as he spoke, waiting for the inevitable gasps from the crowd as the first high-speed pass was executed. It took him a few seconds to realize that the people below the speakers' platform weren't gasping.

They were laughing.

Roy whirled, craning his head to look up. Two and four had been forced to peel off from their pass by the sudden appearance of an interloper, a gaudy little stunt plane, absurdly out of place among the modern miracle machines.

A circus plane! "Oh no-o-o!" Roy didn't have to guess who it was; he'd arranged for the invitation himself, and he was regretting it already. He grabbed the microphone out of its stand and flipped the switch that would patch him through to the aircom net.

"Rick! Is that you, Hunter?"

The little Mockingbird gave a jaunty waggle of its wings in salute as Rick banked slowly overhead. His reply came patched through the PA system.

"Roy! It's good to hear your voice, old buddy! They tell me you're a lieutenant commander now. The army must really be desperate!"

Furious, Roy yelled into the mike. "Are you crazy? Get that junk heap out of here!" He forgot that he was still patched through the PA, so that the whole crowd followed the exchange. Of course, as loud and angry as Roy was, the people up front would've had no trouble hearing him anyway.

The people below thought it was great, and the laughter started again, even louder. Roy was shaking one fist at the little stunt plane, holding the mike stand aloft with the other, like Jove brandishing a lightning bolt: "Hunter, when I get my hands on you, I'm gonna-"

Roy didn't get to elaborate on that; just then the bottom half of the telescoping mike stand dropped, nearly landing on his foot.

Roy caught it just in time-at thirty, he was one of the oldest of the Veritech fighter pilots, yet his reflexes hadn't slowed a bit-but couldn't quite get it to fit back together. Fumbling, forgetting what he'd been about to say, he was ready to explode with frustration.

He abruptly became aware of the laughter all around him. The crowd was roaring, some of them nearly in tears.

One young woman in front caught his eye, though. She looked to be in her mid teens, slender and long-legged, with a charming face and hair black as night. She was standing behind a kid, possibly her brother, who was laughing so hard, he seemed to be having trouble breathing.

At some other time, Roy might have tried to catch her eye and exchange a smile, but he just wasn't in the mood. His face reddened as the laughter washed over him, and he unknowingly echoed Lisa Hayes's sentiments of a few moments before: Why today, of all days?

Roy covered the mike with his gloved palm and stage-whispered to one of the techs. "Hey, Ed! Switch this circuit over to radio only, will you?" It was going to be awfully hard to chew out his men about com-procedure discipline after today.

It took only a second or two for Ed to make the change.

"What're you trying to do, Rick, make a perfect fool of me?"

Roy could hear the laughter in his old friend's voice. "Aw, nobody's perfect, Commander!"

Roy was just about grinning in spite of himself. People who didn't watch their step every moment were liable to become Rick Hunter's straight men. Roy decided to give him back a bit of his own. "You haven't changed a bit, have you, kid? Well, this isn't an amateur flying circus; my men are real pilots!"

"Amateur, huh?" Rick drawled. He looked off in the distance and saw the Veritech fighters in a diamond formation for a power climb, preparing to do a «bomb-burst» maneuver. "I'm gonna have to make you eat those words, Commander. Comin' in."

"Stop clowning around, Rick-look out!"

Mockingbird swooped down in a hair-raising dive, barely missing the speaker's platform, so low that Roy had to duck to avoid getting his head taken off. A lot of people in the crowd hit the dirt too, and most of them cried out in shock. Roy caught another glimpse of the pretty young thing in the front row; she seemed thrilled and happy, not in the least frightened.

Roy spun as the Mockingbird zoomed off, building on the acceleration it had picked up in its dive. Suddenly, as the little aircraft was safely away from the crowd, covers blew free from six booster jet pods mounted around the turbofan cowling at the rear of the ship, and powerful gusts of flame lifted it into a vertical climb. The crowd went "Oh!"

Leaving streamers of rocket exhaust, the Mockingbird went ballistic, quickly overtaking the slower-moving formation of Veritechs.

"Get out of there!" Roy yelled up at him, not even bothering with the mike, knowing it was pointless. «Headstrong» was a word they'd invented with Rick Hunter in mind.

Rick cut in full power, came up into formation perfectly, becoming part of the display, as the Veritech fighters completed their climb and arced away in different directions, like a huge version of the afternoon's skyrockets.

The crowd was applauding wildly, cheering. Roy shook his fist again, furious-but a part of him was proud of his friend.

Out in space, vast forces were coalescing-nothing Earth's detectors could perceive yet, though that would happen soon. Soon, but too late for Earth.

Contact had been made; an inconceivable gap was about to be bridged, a marvel of science put to hellish use.

As Mockingbird floated in for a perfect landing, Roy leaped from the speaker's platform, so eager to get at Rick that he forgot to let go of the mike, yanking the stand over and nearly tripping on the microphone cord. The cord snaked along behind him as he ran.

Rick raised the clear bubble of the cockpit canopy as he taxied to a stop, his forelock of dark hair fluttering in the breeze. He pushed his tinted flying goggles high on his forehead. "Whew! Hi, Roy."

Roy was in no mood for hi's. "Who d' you think you are? What were you trying to do, get yourself killed?"

Rick was nonchalant, pulling off his headset and goggles and tossing them back into the cockpit as he hiked himself up. "Hey, calm down!"

Not a chance. Roy still had the mike in one hand, a few yards of cable attached to it. He flung it down angrily on the hardtop runway surface. "And while we're at it, where'd you learn to do that, anyway?"

Rick had his hands up to hold the much bigger Roy at bay. He gave a quick smile. "It was just a simple booster climb. You taught it to me when I was just a kid!"

"Ahhh!" Roy reached out, grabbed Rick by the upper arm, and began dragging him off across the hardtop.

"Hey!" Rick objected, but he could see that he'd taken a lot of the voltage out of Roy's wrath with that reminder of old times.

"I have to admit, those guys up there were pretty good," Rick went on, jerking his arm free, straightening his dapper white silk scarf. "Not as good as me, of course."

Roy made a sour expression. "You don't have to brag to me, Rick. I know all about your winning the amateur flying competition last year."

"Not amateur; civilian!" Rick bristled. Then he went on with great self-pleasure. "And actually, I've won it eight years in a row. What've you been doing?"

"I was busy fighting a war! Combat flying and dogfighting kept me kind of occupied. Hundred 'n' eight enemy kills, so they tell me."

"You're proud of being a killer?"

They'd touched on an old, sore subject. Rick's late father had rejected military service in the Global Civil War, though he would have been the very best. Jack «Pop» Hunter had seen combat before and wanted no more part of that. He had instilled a strong sense of this conviction in his son.

Roy stopped, fists cocked, though Rick continued walking. "What?" With anyone else, a serious fistfight would have resulted from this exchange. But this was Rick, who'd been like family. More than family.

Roy swallowed his fury, hurrying after. "There was a war on, and I was a soldier! I just did my duty!"

They made a strange pair, crossing the hardtop side by side: Roy in his black and mauve Veritech uniform and Rick, a head shorter, in the white and blazing orange of his circus uniform.

They stopped by a vending machine unlike any Rick had seen before, which offered something called Petite Cola. Rick fed it some coins while the machine made strange internal noises. He took a can of ice-cold soda for himself, giving Roy the other.

"You promised my dad that as soon as the war was over you'd come back to the air circus. Why'd you go back on that, Roy?"

Roy was suddenly distant. "I really felt guilty about letting your father down, only… this Robotech thing is so important, I just couldn't give it up."

He pulled the tab on his soda, torn by the need to explain to Rick and the knowledge that some parts of the original mission to Macross Island, and of Robotechnology, were still classified and might be for decades more. He felt a debt, too, to the late Pop Hunter.

Roy shrugged. "It gets into your blood or something; I don't know."

Rick scowled, leaning back against the Petite Cola machine. "What is Robotech, anyway? Just more modern war machinery!" Somewhere, he could hear a kid raising a ruckus. "And the aliens-huh?"

He couldn't figure out how he'd lost his balance, sliding along the vending machine. Then he realized it was moving out from behind him.

The Petite Cola machine was rolling eagerly toward the child, a boy of seven or so who was throwing a terrible tantrum.

"Cola! I wanna cola! You promised me you'd buy me a cola, Minmei, and I want one right now!" He was dressed in a junior version of a Veritech pilot's uniform, Rick saw disgustedly. Teach 'em while they're young!

Roy looked around to see the commotion. He was suddenly very attentive when he saw the person trying to reason with the kid-"Minmei"-was the young lady who'd been standing at the edge of the speaker's platform.

She was charming in a short red dress, pulling on the boy's arm, trying to keep him from the vending machine that was closing in for the sale. "Cousin Jason, behave yourself! I already bought you one cola; you can't have any more!"

Jason wasn't buying it, stamping his feet and screaming. "Why? I wanna cola-aaahh!"

To Rick's amazement, the scene turned into a combination wrestling match and game of keepaway: Minmei was trying to prevent Jason from reaching the machine and was crying, "Cancel the order, please, machine!" while Jason struggled to get past her. In the meantime, the machine, circling and darting, made every effort to reach him short of rolling over Minmei. With its persistence and agility, the vending machine somehow gave the impression that it was alive.

"Never saw anything like that." Rick blinked.

Roy gave him an enigmatic smile. "Robotechnology has a way of affecting the things around it, sometimes even non-Robotech machines."

Rick groaned. "Robotech again?"

"Jason, you'll make yourself sick!"

"I don't care!" Jason wailed.

"Maybe you could tie a can of soda to a fishing pale and lure him home, miss?" Roy suggested.

Minmei turned to him, still deftly keeping the kid from scoring the Petite Cola. She broke into a winsome smile. She was of Chinese blood, Roy figured, though she had strange, blue eyes-not that he was interested! Claudia would probably take a swing at him (and connect) if she found out he was roving. Still, something about Minmei's smile made her irresistible.

"Oh! You're the officer from the stage! You were very, very funny!" Minmei giggled, then turned to the little boy sternly.

"That's it! We're going home! Come on, Jason; don't make me spank you!" She lugged the boy away as the Petite Cola machine made halfhearted attempts to clinch a sale against all hope.

"Well, Roy," Rick commented, elaborately droll, "I see you're still a big ladies' man."

In deep space, dimensions folded and transition began; death was about to come calling.