Genesis

CHAPTER SIX

The ground had stopped shaking, and the sky was clearing. The Veritech fighter stopped its trembling dance, and Rick Hunter caught his breath. The air seemed a little hotter in his lungs, but not terribly so.

He called back to Roy in a subdued voice, "Wow. What were all those fireworks about?"

Fireworks! Roy thought. 'Fraid not! Aloud, he said, "I dunno. I better go check. Wait here; I'll see what's goin' on."

He put aside his flight helmet-the "thinking cap," as Rick had called it-and hiked himself up out of the fighter cockpit. If what Roy feared the most had come to pass, Rick would be as safe where he was as anywhere else. And he'd also understand why some people could spend their lives preparing for war.

"The space monitor report's coming in," Sammie sang out. "It shows what our gun was firing at."

"I have it here, Sammie," Lisa cut in, studying her monitors. "Two large objects, probably spacecraft, origin unknown, on Earth-approach vector, approx two hundred miles out."

Gloval was nodding to himself without realizing it. The ship could be raised or lowered, the booms traversed for-what, a few insignificant minutes of arc? And the SDF-1 hadn't been moved, except to lift it onto the keel blocks, since it crashed. The range was incredibly long, making for a greater field of fire; but still, such a shot, such a series of events, could only come about with some forewarning, or intuition, or-We forgot that whoever built this vessel had to some extent mastered time; could, perhaps, see through it. Could see this very moment?

"Both objects were struck dead center by the beam and were destroyed-disintegrated," Claudia said. "Orbital combat task forces are deploying for defense, with Armor One and Armor Ten-sir? Captain Gloval?"

Sammie, Vanessa, Kim-they exchanged looks with one another as Lisa and Claudia traded facial signals. Gloval was laughing, a deep belly laugh, his shoulders shaking. Claudia and Lisa saw that they were both thinking the same thing: If Gloval, their source of strength and calm, had lost his grip, all was lost.

"Captain, what is it?" Lisa ventured. "What are you laughing about?"

Gloval stopped laughing, crashing his fist against the observation-bowl ledge. "It was so obvious! We should have known! A booby trap, of course!"

Claudia and Lisa said it at the same time, "Booby trap, sir?"

"Yes, it's one of the oldest tricks in military history! A retreating enemy leaves behind hidden explosives and such."

He clamped his cold pipe between his teeth. "The automatic firing of the main guns means that enemies have approached close enough to be a threat to us." He drew his tobacco bag out of the breast pocket of his uniform jacket.

"Captain Gloval!" Sammie was up out of her chair. Everyone turned to her, wondering what the new alarm was.

"No smoking on the bridge, sir!" Sammie said. "Strictly against regulations!"

Claudia groaned and clapped a hand to her forehead. Lisa reflected, Nothing throws Sammie.

"I was just holding it; I wasn't going to light it," Gloval said defensively. The unreality of the situation retreated with Sammie's interruption. There were both good things and bad things about having one's bridge crew be like family.

But doubts were past now. Gloval barked, "Hot-scramble all fighters and sound general quarters! I'm declaring a red alert!"

Down below, the crowds milled uncertainly as helos and other aircraft veered away to report to battle stations. Suddenly, launch crews were scrambling to get Veritechs into the air. Out on the carriers, all catapults were busy, while the SDF-1's own warcraft rushed up from the ship's interior and groundside runways to establish a protective shield overhead.

Out in the void, armored spacecruisers, human-designed vehicles incorporating some of the principles learned from Robotechnology, moved their interceptors and attack craft out of the bays and into fighting position.

It wasn't long before the swarm of human defenders had sensor contact, then visual sighting, on the aliens; the Zentraedi wouldn't have had it any other way.

A Scorpion interceptor pilot reported back to Armor One over the tac net, "Enemy approaching on bearing niner-zero. We are engaging. Commence firing!"

Scorpions and Tigersharks and a dozen other types of Earthly combat spacecraft, ranging up to the mammoth Armors themselves, rushed to close with the aliens' first attack wave.

Missiles-Stilettos and Piledrivers and Mongooses-were launched at extreme range so that all but the glows of their drives were lost to sight until the blackness blossomed with the spherical explosions characteristic of zero-g, the bursts overlapping one another, thicker than a field of dandelions.

The Zentraedi ships-of-the-line forged through the intense fire with few losses, closing the gap in seconds. The formations broke up to lock in a fierce, pitched battle.

The Armors launched all their missiles. Lasers, kinetic energy weapons-rail-gun autocannon and such-were the other main Terran weapons. The Zentraedi's were far superior; their warcraft simply outclassed the defenders', whose design involved fewer Robotech innovations.

Earth's forces fought with savage determination, but the unevenness in technologies was instantly apparent.

Aboard the alien command ship, Breetai studied the engagement solemnly in the projecbeam images and monitors, listening to his staff's relayed readouts with only a small part of his attention.

"Very heavy resistance, sir," Exedore observed.

"Yes," Breetai allowed. "But why are they using such primitive weapons? Our lead ships have broken through. It's unbelievable, this sacrifice they're making! Some sort of trick, no doubt."

Exedore considered that. "Yes, it is puzzling."

Breetai whirled on him. "It makes no sense, then? Even to you?"

"There has to be a reason, but it's beyond me. Surely, the Robotech Masters-"

He was interrupted by an urgent message from the tech at the threat-prioritization computers. "Commander Breetai! Two enemy cruiser-class vessels are approaching; they could be the ones who launched the missile bombardment."

Breetai smiled, but his single eye was chilly. "Destroy them!"

Specially designated main and secondary batteries opened fire: phased particle-beam arrays and molecular disruptors, long-range and fearsomely powerful.

Armor Two was hit on the first volley as hundreds of spears of high-resolution blue fury ranged in on it. It tried to evade the barrage; house-size pieces of armor and superstructure were blown from it. Many of the smaller defending craft were completely disintegrated.

Breetai, waiting for effective counterfire, lost patience. Perhaps the foes' hesitation to use reflex weaponry fit into some strange plan, but to forgo use of any advanced technology, to sacrifice troops to this kind of slaughter, was perverse.

Incredulous, Breetai wondered if somehow this victory was going to be far easier than it had seemed when that first mighty bolt rose from Terra. "Those idiots behave as though they don't even know how to use their own weapons! Full barrage, all cannon!"

The Zentraedi command ship cut loose again with all forward gun turrets. Armor Two was instantly holed through in a hundred places, the enemy beams penetrating it like ice picks through a cigar box.

Hull integrity went at once, and internal gravity; hatches and seals blew, and space began sucking the atmosphere from the cruiser, tossing crew and contents around like toys. Still more hits made a sieve of the pride of the orbital defense command and destroyed its power plant. A moment later it disappeared in a horrendous outpouring of energy, while lesser ships all around it met a similar fate.

Lisa, more pallid than ever, kept her voice even as she reported to Gloval: "Armor Two is destroyed and Armor Ten is heavily damaged, sir. Other losses extremely heavy. The Orbital Defense Forces are no longer even marginally effective. Alien fleet is closing on Earth."

Gloval sat in his command chair, fingers steepled, chin resting on pressing thumbs. "I had hoped this moment wouldn't come in my lifetime. SDF-1 kept us from exterminating ourselves and let us achieve worldwide peace, but now it has brought a new danger down upon us. We face extinction at the hands of aliens whose power we can only guess at."

Henry Gloval's mind ranged back across a decade to that first investigation of the wrecked SDF-1. Miracles have a price. And this one, I think, will be very, very high.

Claudia and Lisa and the other members of the bridge crew swapped quick, worried looks.

"I had hoped that war was a thing of the past. We all had." Gloval looked up from his distraction like a knight at the end of his prayer vigil, ready to take up a shining sword, a gleaming shield.

"But here we go again, like it or not." He rose to his feet, shoulders back, and a vivid current of electricity that hadn't been there a moment before hummed in the air. Gloval was suddenly strong as an old oak.

"All right. Give the order to move out!"

"Yes, sir." Lisa relayed the command crisply. "All forces, deploy in accordance with Contingency Plan SURTUR."

More Veritechs launched all across the island as Lisa's words reverberated to every corner of it, like the gods' final war song. "We are under attack by alien invaders in sector four-one-two. This is not a drill, I say again: This is not a drill."

Roy Fokker, clambering into his fighter, pulling on his flight helmet, gasped, then hissed. He'd been so busy saddling up Skull Team when word came that there was trouble that he'd forgotten all about Rick!

Then he calmed. The fighter in which Rick was sitting had been seconded from active duty for the public relations events; it wasn't as if some angry pilot would be wrestling him out of the cockpit. So Rick was as safe there as anywhere else for the time being.

Lisa's voice rang across the airfield. Roy didn't mind it, but he couldn't help wishing it were Claudia's.

Then Roy got back to the job at hand, settling the all-important helmet on his head. He switched on the tactical net, trying to sound casual, just about bored. The fighter-pilot tradition; dying was something you sometimes couldn't help, but losing your cool was unforgivable.

"Well, boys, you heard her. This is the real thing." Roy practically yawned.

The sky was filled with climbing flights of fast-moving aircraft, vectoring off to their assigned coverages. Dozens, hundreds had arisen from the carriers and the island. The flattops were making ready to stand out to sea so that the foe couldn't concentrate his attacks; that would take some time. But at least with the combat squadrons aloft, Earth wasn't as vulnerable to a single, concentrated strike.

Lisa's voice came over Roy's flight helmet phones. "Wolf Team has cleared. Skull Team, prepare for takeoff."

"Skull Team ready." Roy knew the men in the other parked Veritechs would be watching him as well as listening over the tac net. He gave a quick thumbs-up. "Awright, boys; this is it."

More fighters were streaking up from the flight decks of the carriers, launched out from the waist catapults or propelled out into the air over the Hurricane-style bows.

"Let's go," drawled Roy Fokker. Robotech engines shrilled.

"What a disorderly arrangement!" Breetai exclaimed, studying Macross City on long-rage scanners. The populace, the military forces-they were so unbelievably concentrated! "These people must be completely ignorant of spacewar tactics!"

The sensor image panned until an image-interpretation computer locked it in. Breetai leaned closer to the fishbowl surface that protected his command post.

"What's this? The battle fortress! But-what's happened to it?"

Exedore took that as leave to speak. "It appears to have been completely redesigned and rebuilt, perhaps by the inhabitants of that planet."

Breetai set his fists on his hips. "Mere primitives couldn't possibly have captured a Robotech ship."

Exedore fixed Breetai with his great, protruding eyes, their eerily pinpoint pupils hypnotic, mystical. "Perhaps it crashed on their planet and they managed to salvage it."

"But what about the crew? Zor's traitors wouldn't just let these creatures have the vessel!"

"Maybe they perished in the fighting with the Invid, or in the crash," Exedore suggested delicately. It was an answer of high probability; Breetai saw that at once, chose not to contest it, and congratulated himself on having a friend and adviser like Exedore.

"Even so…" The commander sidestepped the discomfitting idea that the primitives were antagonists to be feared. "The ship would have been terribly damaged. And these primitives wouldn't have the technology to repair it."

This Zentraedi arrogance of ours gets worse with every generation, Exedore thought, even as he readied his answer. Someday we may all pay for it.

"I know, sir, but is there any other explanation? It is a Robotech vessel, and we know they have-"

"Reflex weaponry!"

"Precisely. And this makes them very dangerous. So we must exercise extreme caution."

Breetai turned back to the projecbeam displays, uttering a feral growl. The instruments and transparent bowl rang with it.

A command center coordinator's voice came up over the intercom. "Target pinpointed, Commander. We're launching fighters!"

Breetai and Exedore contemplated the image of the dimensional fortress.