The Robotech Expeditionary Force had been stranded on the far side of the galaxy as the result of damage to their Super Dimensional Fortress during the battle with the Invid hordes. Their chances for survival were slim.
Suddenly, a starship unlike anything that had ever flown before appeared -- manned by an incredible assortment of beings who meant to challenge the might of the Invid Regent himself! REF volunteers signed aboard, with their might war mecha in tow, for a campaign that would either mean the total destruction of the freedom fighters or liberty for the planets of -- The Sentinels.
Release date:
April 30, 2014
Publisher:
Del Rey
Print pages:
208
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
All I have learned of the Shapings of the Protoculture tell me that it does not work randomly; that there is a grand design or scheme. I feel that we have been brought here, kept here, for some reason.
Yet, what purpose can there be in SDF-3’s being stranded here on Tirol for perhaps as long as five years? And during that time will the Robotech Masters be pursuing their search for Earth?
Since tempers are short, I do not mention the Shaping; I’m a little too long in the tooth, I fear, for hand-to-hand confrontations with homesick, frightened, and frustrated REF fighters. Dr. Emil Lang, personal journal of the SDF-3 mission
On captured Tirol, after a fierce battle, the Humans and their Zentraedi allies—the Robotech Expeditionary Force—licked their wounds, then decided it was time to mark the occasion of their triumph. It was, as nearly as they could calculate, New Year’s Eve.
But far out near the edge of Tirol’s system, a newcomer appeared—a massive spacegoing battleship, closing in on the war-torn, planet-sized moon.
Our first victory celebration, young Susan Graham exulted. What a wonderful party! She was just shy of sixteen, and to her it was the most romantic evening in human history.
She was struggling to load a bulky cassette into her sound-vid recorder while scurrying around to get a better angle at Admirals Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes Hunter. They had just stood up, in full-dress uniforms, clasping white-gloved hands, apparently about to dance. There had been rumors that the relationship between the two senior officers of the Robotech Expeditionary Force was on shaky ground, but for the moment at least, they seemed altogether in love.
Sue let out a short romantic sigh and envied Lisa Hunter. Then her thoughts returned to the cassette which she was bapping with the heel of her hand. A lowly student-trainee, Sue had to make do with whatever equipment she could find at the G-5 public-information shop, or Psy-ops, Morale or wherever.
At last the cassette was in place, and she began to move toward her quarry.
In Tiresia, the moon’s shattered capital city, the Royal Hall was aglow. The improvised lighting and decorations reemphasized the vast, almost endless size of the place.
The lush ballroom music remained slow—something from Strauss, Karen Penn thought; something even Jack Baker could handle. As she had expected, he asked her to waltz a second time.
And he wasn’t too bad at it. The speed and reflexes that made him such a good Veritech pilot—almost as good as I am, she thought—made him a passable dancer. Still, she maintained her aloof air, gliding flawlessly, making him seem clumsy by comparison; otherwise, that maddening brashness of his would surface again at any second.
They were about the same height, five ten or so, he redheaded and freckled and frenetic, she honey-blond and smooth-skinned and model-gorgeous—and long since tired of panting male attention. Jack had turned eighteen two months ago; Karen would celebrate her majority in three more weeks.
They had been like oil and water, cats and dogs, Unseducible Object and Irrepressible Force, ever since they had met. But they had also been battle comrades, and now they swayed as the music swelled, and somehow their friendly antagonism was put aside, at least for the moment.
The deepspace dreadnought was a bewildering, almost slapdash length of components: different technologies, different philosophies of design, even different stages of scientific awareness, showed in the contrasts among its various modules. From it, scores of disparate weapons bristled and many kinds of sensors probed.
With Tirol before it, the motley battlewagon went on combat alert.
On the outer rim of the ballroom, members of General Edwards’s Ghost Squadron and Colonel Wolfe’s Wolfe Pack traded hostile looks, but refrained from any overt clashes; Admiral Lisa Hunter’s warnings, and her promises of retribution, had been very specific on that point.
Edwards was there, a haughty, splendidly military figure, his sardonic handsomeness marred by the half cowl that covered the right half of his head.
Per Lisa’s confidential order, Vince Grant and his Ground Mobile Unit people were keeping an eye on the rivals, ready to break up any scuffles. So far things seemed to be peaceful—nothing more than a bit of glowering and boasting.
Hanging in orbit over the war-torn ruin of Tirol, Super-dimensional Fortress Three registered the rapid approach of the unidentified battleship.
SDF-3 had been tardy in detecting the newcomer; the Earth warship’s systems had been damaged in the ferocious engagement that had destroyed her spacefold apparatus, and some systems were still functioning far short of peak efficiency.
But she had spotted the possible adversary now. According to procedure, SDF-3 went to battle stations, and communications personnel rushed to open downlinks with the contingent on Tirol’s surface.
Perhaps the strangest pair at the celebration was Janice Em, the lovely and enigmatic singer, and Rem, assistant to the Tiresian scientist Cabell.
Janice was Dr. Lang’s creation, an android, an artificial person, though she was unaware of it.
Lang shook his head and reminded himself that the Shapings of the Protoculture were not to be defied. He was really quite happy that the two were drawn together.
He turned to Cabell, the ancient lone survivor of the scientists of Tirol.
What were once the gorgeous cityscape of Tiresia and magnificent gardens surrounding the Royal Hall, were now only blasted wasteland.
Above was a jade-green crescent of Fantoma, the massive planet that Tirol circled. Its alien beauty hid the ugliness that Lynn-Minmei knew to be there in the light of Valivarre, the system’s primary. The green Fantoma-light cast a spell with magic all its own. How could the scene of so much death and suffering be so unspeakably beautiful?
She shivered a bit, and Colonel Jonathan Wolfe slipped his arm around her. Minmei could feel from the way he had moved closer that he wanted to kiss her; she wasn’t sure whether she felt the same or not.
He was the debonair, tigerishly brave, good-looking Alpha Wolf of the Wolfe Pack—and had rescued her from certain death, melodramatic as it might sound to others. Still, there was a danger in love; she had learned that not once but several times now.
Wolfe could see what was running through Minmei’s thoughts. He feasted his eyes on her, hungered for her. The Big, Bad Wolfe, indeed—an expression he had never liked.
Only this time, the Big Bad was bewitched, and helpless. She was the blue-eyed, black-haired gamine whose voice and guileless charm had been the key to Human victory in the Robotech War. She was the child-woman who, unknowingly, had tormented him with fantasies he could not exorcize by day, and with erotic fever-dreams by night.
She hadn’t moved from the circle of his arm; she looked at him, eyes as wide as those of a startled doe. Wolfe leaned closer, lips parting.
I love her so much, Rick thought, as he and Lisa went to join the dancing. His wife’s waist was supple under his gloved hand; her eyes danced with fondness. He felt himself breaking into a languorous smile, and she beamed at him.
I can’t live without her, he knew. All these problems between us—we’ll find some way to deal with them. Because otherwise life’s not worth living.
The music had just begun when it stopped again, raggedly, as Dr. Lang quieted people from the mike stand. The ship’s orchestra’s conductor stood to one side, looking peeved but apprehensive.
Everyone there had already served in war. Something inside them anticipated the words. “Unidentified ship … course for Tirol … Skull and Ghost squadrons … Admiral Hayes and Admiral Hunter …”
The war’s come between us again.
Rick started off in a dash, but stopped before he had gone three steps, realizing his wife was no longer with him. Fortunately, in all the confusion, only one person noticed.
He looked back and saw Lisa waiting there, head erect, watching him. He realized he had reacted with a fighter jock’s reflexes, the headlong run of a hot scramble.
It was the argument they had been having for days, for weeks now—tersely, in quick exchanges, by day; wearily, taxing to the limit their patience with one another, by night. Rick was a pilot, and had come to the conclusion that he couldn’t be—shouldn’t be—anything else. Lisa insisted that his job now was to command, to oversee flight-group ops. He was to do the job he had been chosen to do, because nobody else could do it.
Rick saw nothing but confidence in his wife’s eyes as she looked at him, her chin held high—that, and a proud set to her features.
Sue Graham, wielding her aud-vid recorder, had caught the whole thing, the momentary lapse in protocol, in confidence—in love. Now, she rewound the tape a bit, so that the sight of Rick Hunter dashing off from his wife would be obliterated, and began recording over it.
Just as people were turning to the Admirals Hunter, Rick stepped closer to Lisa. In that time, conversation and noise died away, and the Royal Hall itself, weighted by its eons of history and haunting events, seemed to be listening, evaluating. Rick’s high dress boots clacked on an alien floor that shone like a black mirror.
He offered her his arm, formal and meticulously correct, inclining his head to her. “Madam?”
She did a shallow military curtsy, supple in her dress-uniform skirt, and laid her hand on his forearm. The whole room was listening and watching; Rick and Lisa had reminded everyone what the REF was, and what was expected of it.
“Orders, Admiral?” Rick asked his wife crisply, loudly, in his role as second-ranking officer present. By speaking those words, he officially ended the ball and put everyone on notice that they were on duty.
Lisa, suddenly their rock, gazed about at them. She didn’t have to raise her voice very much to be heard. “You all know what to do, ladies, gentlemen.
“We will treat this as a red alert. SDF-3 will stand to General Quarters. GMU and other ground units report to combat stations; all designated personnel will return to the dimensional fortress.”
There was already movement, as people strode or hurried to their duties. But no one was running; Lisa had given them back their center.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
