Genesis

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"All sections on execution standby?" Gloval demanded.

"D and G blocks are running a bit late but they'll manage," Kim sang out.

"Good; continue," the captain said.

"Counting four seconds," Claudia resumed. "Three… two…"

"Commence full-ship transformation," Gloval ordered.

The bridge crew took up the quiet, critical exchanges of the transformation, listening to their headset earphones and speaking into their mikes. What would have been soft-spoken bedlam to an outsider was instantly intelligible to Gloval.

Sammie: "Commence full-ship tranformation. J, K, and L blocks, stand to."

Kim: "Number seven reflex furnace, power up. Seven-eight section start engines. Not enough power, J block!"

Vanessa: "Activate main torque-sender units."

And the ghostly voices came back, complaining of trouble with substrata plasma warps, of injuries in a hundred different locations, of machinery that was being asked to do too much, of overtaxed components that simply could not do their jobs, and of civilians who, confused and disoriented, were not prepared for the upheaval that was about to take place. Through it all, the bridge gang worked selflessly, concentrating on their jobs and their responsibilities.

Gloval knew that no matter what was about to happen, he was proud of them, proud to serve with them.

"Full-ship transformation under way, sir," Claudia relayed.

With the ship trembling and vibrating all around him, Gloval drew on his reserves of inner calm, clasping his hands behind his back. Now, what would happen would happen; he'd done all he could, and the odds of numbers or the vagaries of engineering or happenstance or some higher power-or all of the above-would make the final judgment.

"Very good," he told Claudia.

Rick looked down at the city. People had streamed from the buildings, racing this way and that, with no clear destination or purpose. Some seemed to be headed for designated shelter areas, but others darted aimlessly, unable to bear another catastrophe so soon after the last.

Rick didn't particularly care, didn't feel any urge to find refuge. "Y'know, Minmei, sometimes I wish they'd never found us."

"I can't believe I'm hearing that from you! How can you be so spiteful? Oh, I hate you!"

He looked back at her. "The same goes for me. If it doesn't mean anything to you that you and I were-"

The vibration had reached a level that nearly knocked him off his feet as enormous pylons, each as wide as a city block, began descending from the gigantic compartment's ceiling. The grinding of the monster servomotors that moved them became deafening.

Rick and Minmei barely had time to get an inkling of what was going on, barely had time to begin to cry out, when the ground at their feet split apart, he on one side and she on the other.

The tower on which humans had so tentatively begun a garden had functions none of them had foreseen. In answer to the reconfiguration order, the tower halves swung away from each other.

Minmei lost her balance and fell, barely catching the brink of a metal ledge that jutted out a few inches below the soil level. The tower part to which she clung pivoted on its supports out over the roofs of the city; screaming, she kicked and scrabbled for purchase against a sheer cliff face of technical components, systemry, and equipment modules.

"Minmei!" Rick fought for balance as the tower segment on which he was standing shook, moving into place with a grinding of massive gears. The gap between the halves was growing wider. He took a running start and hurtled out over empty air, barely making the other side.

Rick knelt to where Minmei hung, legs kicking, hundreds of feet above the roofs of Macross. She'd lost one hand grip, and her fingers were slipping from the other.

He threw himself prone at the brink of the abyss and grabbed her wrist with both hands just as she let go. He gritted his teeth and pulled, but the leverage was difficult, and he hadn't had time to get a firm hold.

Minmei's wrist slipped through his grasp a fraction of an inch. She stared up into his eyes, terror consuming her. "Rick, help me!"

Again the monster cam devices rotated SDF-1's forward booms apart in preparation for the firing of the main gun. But other alterations were taking place, too; and the ship, particularly the stupendous hold where the refugees had rebuilt their city, was filled with devastation, injury, and death.

A hull structure the size of a billboard moved to one side like a sliding door to reinforce the new configuration; out through the gap in the ship's side poured a tidal wave of air, ripping up everything in its way, hurling cars and people and trees into space. An inner curtain of armor dropped to close the gap in moments, but not before part of the city had been sucked away to utter destruction.

Elsewhere, more pylons were in motion, this time rising from the floor, climbing up and up, crushing the buildings atop them flat against the hold's ceiling. Debris rained everywhere; the thousands who hadn't sought shelter or hadn't been able to find it were crushed or injured. Falling signs, toppling light poles, vehicles careening out of control, ruptured power lines, and tons of plummeting concrete and steel claimed as many lives as the Zentraedi had.

Roy bagged another kill, a pod that had very nearly bagged him, and brought his fighter around to locate Captain Kramer, his wingman, and get his bearings. Then he saw the SDF-1. "What in the…"

The Daedalus and the Prometheus were in motion, swinging on the giant elbow moorings that joined them to the dimensional fortress. In the blizzard of explosions and ordnance and fighter drives, the supercarriers swung from positions more or less alongside the SDF-1's stern, port and starboard, to a deployment that left them angled out from the hull.

Roy got a confused impression of movement along the hull, of realignment, of major structural features disengaging and then reshaping themselves. The entire midships area was turning. The great forward booms that constituted the main gun were on the move, and the bridge itself was shifting position. And the overall effect was-Roy stared, trying to believe it-the overall effect was of a human figure, a giant armored warrior something like a stylized Battloid.

The flattops resembled pincer-equipped arms, the tremendous aft thrusters were like legs and feet, and the bridge and the structures around it were a blank-visored helmet. And standing high above either shoulder, like uplifted wings, were the booms; with the shifting of the entire midships section, they were now in position to receive energy.

Somehow, Roy found himself accepting the strange apparition as a logical thing; Robotechnology seemed to have, as a primal component, a quality involving shape shifting, and anthropomorphic structures.

"So, that's the transformation," he breathed. Now, if it only works!

"Right wing section, modification percentage seventyfive," Kim relayed to Gloval.

"Left wing section, modification percentage at eightythree. Main gun up," Sammie added. There was more booming and reverberating as the last components were mated and the final connections made.

"Modular transformation completed, sir," Lisa announced. "SDF-1 is now in Attack mode."

"Captain, another enemy assault wave is approaching from one-zero-niner-three."

"Disregard," Gloval ordered. "Fire main gun at designated targets."

"Yes, sir." Claudia thumbed the safety cover off a red trigger button and pressed it with her forefinger. There was a fateful little acknowledging click.

Out between and around the forward booms, the red flash flood of energy began building again, just as it had that day on Macross Island. A wash of energy a quarter mile in diameter sprang across space, instantly destroying all the alien pods in its path as well as pods on the periphery of the beam, out to a radius of a mile and more. They lit up, superheated by the eddy currents, their shields overpowered in seconds, armor heated to cherry-red and then white-hot before the occupants could take any evasive action or retreat.

They simply blazed in the stream of the main gun's volley for an instant, giving off trails like meteors, then disappeared.

The beam hit the decoy reconnaissance vessel and its escort ships, making them pop open like chestnuts in an arc furnace, then run like quicksilver and vaporize.

The glare of it lit Breetai's command post. "What's happening?"

Exedore looked out on the carnage, thinking of the strictures from the Zentraedi ancients. Try as he might, he couldn't fathom the workings or the strategies of these Micronians. He was intrigued, as he always was when he found something new to study, but he was also beset by doubts and misgivings.

Somewhere, somehow, Micronians had evidently given the Zentraedi good reason to shun them. But why?

"I wonder…" he said aloud, only partly in reply to Breetai's question.

"Enemy ships disintegrated!" Vanessa cried. The bridge was in a joyous uproar.

What those people at NASA used to call a "whoopee," Gloval reflected, recovering his hat from where it lay on the deck.

He cleared his throat, and the «whoopee» was over. "Get me a full damage report on all sections immediately," he said. As after-action reports started coming in, the thought of the losses the people in the Macross hold had suffered seriously dampened the festive mood.

In the shattered ruins of Macross, people were moving around again. Ambulances and stretchers and rescue teams swarmed through the aftermath of the latest disaster.

A voice on the PA was saying, "We have suffered grave losses both in the military combat squadrons and within SDF-1. However, we fired our main gun and completely destroyed the enemy attack force that was attempting to obliterate us. We thank and salute the residents of Macross City for their gallantry and courage."

There was more, about where to bring casualties and how the clean-up would proceed. And the rebuilding, of course. Rick Hunter, looking down from the tower, knew that rebuilding had become a part of the people of Macross. Whatever didn't kill them made them stronger and more determined to overcome any adversity.

Minmei stood beside him. Her brush with death had left her in a strange state-flushed with life and yet remote somehow. Rick knew the feeling, knew that all he could do was wait for her to come out of it before they started the long descent to Macross.

"Well, Rick," she said softly. "You said once that you wouldn't mind if the whole town were wiped out of existence, remember? How d'you like it?"

He stared down at the ocean of human suffering before him. "I didn't actually want anything to happen! I never wanted this."

She tried to identify city blocks from the fallen remains of buildings. "I wonder if the White Dragon is still there."

He turned to her. "Minmei, I'm gonna do it." He drew a deep breath. "I'm gonna join the defense forces."

"What?"

"You're right. It's no good, my moping around, especially when we're in the middle of a thing like this. I don't know if my father would understand; I think he would, though. I'm gonna enlist."

They turned to take a last look at the shattered city before going down to be of what help they could. Minmei took Rick's hand.

Roy had Skull Team back in some order, and the other surviving VT teams were forming up too. Instruments indicated that the aliens were withdrawing. Roy didn't blame them a bit, after that shot from the main gun.

Human losses had been considerable, though, and that was from an attack that could have involved no more than a tiny fraction of a percentage of the enemy forces. It was a sobering thought, and he tried not to think too hard about what the next set-to would be like.

No time to sound doubtful now, though. "Awright, boys," he drawled over the tac net, "let's head for home."

Yessir, mosey along. But as the other Veritechs formed up on his ship and their drives lit the eternal night on the solar system's edge-as they returned triumphantly to a ship that was now an armored techno-knight dominating its part of space-Roy couldn't help wondering how many more miracles were left in the magic hat.

Luck doesn't hold out forever; it never does. There were too many gaps now in the elite ranks of the Veritechs. Too many; filling them must be top priority, starting today. The very best of the best had to be in those seats.

Roy knew who it was that must be persuaded to join the Robotech warriors. Even if I have to ram his head against a wall!

The surviving VTs sped home; the Zentraedi paused for cold calculation. Decisions were made, and all eyes looked to the overwhelming distance SDF-1 would have to cross in its journey back to Earth.

Unknowns… the situation was filled with unknowns. And the only good thing about unknowns was that they allowed marginal room for hope.