Chapter 3
Rick's fanjet, aka the Mockingbird, wasn't designed for deep space travel, given the huge air intake manifold and turbofan which took up more than half of his plane's weight.
As he gently fired the various thrusters located around the huge turbofan to guide his small craft, he located one of the fighter bays used to launch the SDF-1 fighters.
However, in combat situations, the bay doors have been closed; Rick saw that similar fighter bays along the fortress' portside were shut as well.
A few moments earlier, he and Minmei had witnessed the destruction of one of the alien fighter crafts that were heading in their direction by the ostrich-shaped pods.
As a result, he wasn't eager to be caught any longer in any firefight and he reached for his radio.
"Come in, Roy. Big Brother?"
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Rick? Roy wondered as he blew another enemy pod into oblivion, what on earth is he doing on the squadron's comms channel?
As Roy dove past the SDF-1 towards the portside, he nearly collided with the red-and-white circus fanjet hanging around one of the closed fighter bay doors.
"Little Brother, didn't I tell you to stop wandering about?"
"He just wanted to send me back to Macross Island..." a sweet voice sounded over the radio.
Stifling a choke, Roy pointed to Rick, "Well, if you want to get to Macross Island, why don't you let it come to you?"
At Roy's prompting, Rick and Minmei stared out the Mockingbird's cockpit, at the icy and lifeless state hulk of Macross Island, the moored supercarriers, the rolling hills and Macross City itself, alone in the cold, dark of space.
"SDF-1, this is Skull Leader. Could you open up Port Bay 6 for a while? I've got an incoming craft..."
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The ovoid-shaped craft that took out Trellis was blindingly fast - and deadly.
As another ovoid was blown into oblivion, he saw one of the defending fighters changing from a sleek aerospace fighter into a humanoid figure.
Then it clicked.
In past DCMS briefing sessions at Luthien, he'd seen the schematics of such transformable fighters used during the Star League era.
These are Star League mechs! He was quite certain that the alien fighters were Land-Air-Mechs - the Stinger and Wasp LAMs.
LAMs had been notoriously expensive to produce and were delicate machinery, unsuited for mass production and deployment, so history books went. DCMS sources reported that most LAM manufacturing technologies had also been lost during the Succession Wars.
But seeing more than 3 wings deployed by the alien vessel, Reno wondered, could General Kerensky be back?
Chapter Commentaries *spoilers*
With the disastrous fold to IS space, the SDF-1 did reappear on the far side of the moon, just not in the right time and universe.
I didn't get Rick and Minmei to stick around in an abandoned part of the fortress - for a reason. Will be made clearer in later chapters.
Thanks to FraserMage for clarifying some of the finer details in this chapter :)
Any further feedback is much appreciated.