Second Chances
Chapter Nine
SDF-1
Next Day
Captain Henry Gloval allowed a small smile to appear on his face as he studied the latest status reports. After a few minor teething problems the evacuation of the civilians from the shelters of the deep frozen Macross City had proceeded with remarkable pace and in surprisingly good order. Soon the last shuttle load would be aboard then they could really start implementing the plan Lisa had presented to him in the hours after their translocation here to the farthest edge of their suns domain. A plan to systematically transport as many buildings from the deep frozen, airless asteroid that had once been Macross Island to the SDF-1 as possible so reconstruction work in one of the ships largest holds could begin.
And that is going to be a very tricky, time consuming exercise, he thought. Though he was no architect or any form of structural engineer common sense told him it would take a considerable period of time to bring the buildings aboard. Lisa's plan for accomplishing it was simple; once suitable anchoring points had been set up and connections to the ships power, water and waste reclamation systems had been established squads of destroids would be sent down to the deep frozen city. Once there they would use their lasers to carefully cut the most intact buildings free of their foundations, whereupon a combination of destroids, shuttles and battloid mode veritechs would carefully transport the building to the hold. After which the building – in zero gee for easier manoeuvring – would be attached to its new foundations and utility connections made. Any buildings too damaged to be salvaged in that way would be stripped – the owners contacted to recover any personnel possessions that could be salvaged – then broken down, before being recycled into new build structures inside the ship.
At the same time they would recover what soil they could from the island, cut away as much of the ocean ice as they could for processing either into fresh water or to extract additional supplies of deuterium for the secondary fusion reactors. While the flash frozen marine life would form a good basis from which they could clone fresh supplies of meat – vegetables wouldn't be problem as they already had hydroponic facilities set up for that. Facilities that were fully capable of catering for the needs of everyone aboard the ship, including the civilians stranded out here with them, for the long voyage home ahead of them.
The estimated time for all the work was a fortnight. Though the pace would be extremely challenging Gloval was confident that they would manage to achieve all their goals, before beginning the long sublight flight back towards Earth. A flight that he knew was going to be fraught with dangers, the least of which would be the aliens if they were still hanging around, as no manned ship had ever been out this far before. They simply had no idea what challenges and dangers awaited them out here at the edge of Sol's domain. Though there was hope that Doctor Lang and the engineering crews would be able to fix whatever was wrong with the hyperspace fold systems allowing them to jump back home much quicker, he was planning for the worst.
The chirp of the desk comm. unit jolted him out of his thoughts about the mission ahead. Now what, he thought with a slight sigh of resignation before pressing a button on the offending device. "Yes," he asked.
"Captain its Doctor Lang," a familiar German-accented voice replied. "Could you come to my office in engineering please? There is something you need to see."
"I am quite busy, Doctor. Can it wait," Henry asked.
"I'm afraid not," Lang replied with a note of firm resolve in this voice. A note that clearly communicated that whatever he had to show him it was something extremely important and genuinely couldn't wait until a more convenient time.
Henry sighed. "I'll be right there, Doctor," he answered before signing off and standing up, before heading into the outer part of his office to let the harassed yeoman who served as his secretary know where he was going. Moments later he was on his way.
Chief Engineer's Office
That Same Time
Doctor Emil Lang smiled slightly as he heard Gloval sign off. That had been easier than he'd thought, getting the other man to agree to come see him. He had expected a bit more resistance than that, but then for him it had been decades since he'd last dealt with Henry Gloval. Maybe we'll be able to prevent his death this time, he thought knowing having Henry Gloval live would be a huge benefit to them. Gloval at least listened when offered counsel unlike that idiot Supreme Commander Anatole Leonard, or Colonel Leonard, as he currently was.
"He's coming," he said turning his chair around to look at the other people in the room with him. He hadn't been surprised a few minutes ago when Lisa had shown up with Rick in tow, the body posture of both of them indicating that despite appearances they were – like him – from the future. He had kind of expected they would be among those coming back here into the past. What had surprised him was that Max was another time traveller, and that with them they had Roy and Claudia who clearly knew about them all.
"Excellent. The sooner Captain Gloval knows what the real stakes are here the better things will be for all of us," Rick replied, despite his young and civilian appearance it was clear from his body posture and manner of speaking that he was actually talking to Admiral Hunter.
"I don't get this! What the hell's going on? What do you want the old man to see?" Roy asked hoping he would get at least some answers. They hadn't really gotten any in Lisa's quarters yesterday after the revelation of just who everyone was. Both himself and Claudia had been trying instead to reconcile the people they'd known with who they were now, and truth be told he was still having a hard time of it.
It was quite difficult after all to reconcile his little brother with the apparent admiral he'd become, would become – as Rick had said yesterday keeping time travel tenses straight in your head was a right pain – in the future. What was especially confusing was how Rick could seemingly instantly switch from being the fun loving, easy going sibling he'd always known into the kind of officer who he'd happily follow into battle in an instant and then back again just as quickly.
"It's really quite simple, Roy," Rick replied, he was able to tell that Roy was still somewhat off his game after yesterday's revelations. This really isn't fair to him, he thought feeling more than a slight stab of guilt for putting Roy so off balance, especially when dealing with him as there was no denying that he wasn't the same Rick Hunter he'd been when Roy had last seen him. "We need to show Captain Gloval just what is it this war – and if were not careful three more wars after this – is really about."
"Once we've shown the captain what we need to show him then we can tell him about us," Max added, "and what needs to be done if we're to save not just humanity but a dozen other species from certain annihilation."
"But what?" Roy asked, "It this ship or something on it?"
"Something on it," Rick answered, "as class wise this ship is nothing special, it's what hidden aboard that makes the SDF-1 special."
"But… we went through this ship completely before rebuilding her," Roy objected. "We woulda found it then."
"We didn't find it because it's in the sealed off section of the ship," Lisa answered, "the section we were never able to get into the first time around because no one knew either where the exact entrances to those parts of the ship are, or how to override the security lockdown on those sections."
"But you do," Claudia said knowingly.
"Of course," Lisa replied, "after all the four of us spent the last twenty or so years – from our perspective – on or in orbit of Tirol."
"What's Tirol," Roy asked.
"The homeworld of the Tirolians, the people who originally built this ship. They're also the ones who first created the science we know as robotechnology," Lisa answered calmly. "We ended up liberating the planet after it was abandoned by the ruling upper class of Tirolian society at the time, the Robotech Masters and their society of triumvirate clones. With them away the planet only had antiquated pre-Robotech ground and orbital defence systems. They were no match for the Regents faction of the Invid when they overran the Masters disintegrating empire. An empire that fell apart without what is hidden aboard this ship, what the Masters must never be allowed to possess."
"But what is it?" Roy asked again a little more hotly as he was starting to get frustrated with the somewhat evasive answers. You better give me some straight answers soon little brother or future admiral or not there will be hell to pay, he thought.
Rick sighed but decided he might as well answer. "Protoculture, Roy," he said. "There is a… well a kind of factory on this ship. The only one of its kind left."
"Protoculture, Roy," he said."There is a… well a kind of factory on this ship. The only one of its kind left."
"Protoculture," Roy repeated. "What's that?"
"The alien super-fuel we found on the SDF-1," Rick answered.
"Protoculture is the single greatest source of cheap, clean energy in the known universe," Lang elaborated. "Unfortunately the very versatility of protoculture has been a source of great conflict across this galaxy, practically ever since the first time Zor demonstrated it."
"Who's Zor," Roy asked.
"I would also like to know the answer to that question," a Russian-accented male voice said from the doorway prompting everyone to look over. To see that Captain Henry Gloval had arrived and was frowning at them all.
"How long have you been standing there sir," Rick asked his tone respectful. It felt… well strange to be in the same room as Henry Gloval once again as it had been – from his, Lisa, Max and Lang's perspective – so many decades since he'd last seen the man alive. It was all he could do not to stand at attention. While he'd long been Gloval's equal in rank to his mind – and the minds of many others of his generation – the spiritual head of both the Robotech Defence Force and the United Earth Expeditionary Force would always be Henry Gloval. Only self-control, and mentally reminding himself that he wasn't in the military at this point in the timeline, prevented him acting on that sudden impulse.
"Since Commander Fokker mentioned protoculture," Henry answered frowning at the young man, barely out of his teens, standing nearby. There was something in his posture and in his eyes that said that somehow this man was, despite appearances, anything but a civilian. Which was more than a little confusing as while quite fit he didn't look fit enough to truly be a soldier. Plus he was sure he'd seen him before somewhere. "I am curious what more do you know about it mister…"
"Hunter sir, Richard Hunter," Rick replied resisting just the impulse to use his military rank, a rank he technically didn't yet have since he was still supposed to be a civilian. "And I know a lot about it, not as much as Emil here of course," Lang inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement of the compliment, "but quite a bit more."
"How," Gloval asked recognising the young man now. He'd been the talk of various flying magazines for months what with winning the international amateur flying competition eight years in a row. He was also the adopted younger sibling of Roy Fokker who like any good elder brother was extremely proud of his sibling's accomplishments.
"How I know, how all four of us know," Rick answered gesturing to Lisa, Emil and Max as well as himself, "well that's very complicated and before we tell you everything there is something that you need to see. And something you need to know."
Gloval felt a slight chill at those words. Somehow he knew whatever it was, whatever young Mister Hunter had to say it was something momentous and truly world shattering. "And what is that I need to see," he asked softly.
"Why what this war is really about of course," Rick replied. "And why the Zentraedi are here."
"The who?"
"The aliens, sir," Lisa answered, "Their species is called Zentraedi."
"And how would you know that, Commander," Gloval asked turning to look at the beautiful young woman who was acting as his default XO at least till he got the chain of command aboard this ship sorted out. They really hadn't been ready to launch, not having anywhere near the full crew compliment they should have had, when the aliens attacked Macross Island. Though he was hopeful the crews from the Prometheus and Daedalus would go a long way towards addressing their manpower shortage.
"As Rick told you sir how we know what we know is complicated," Lisa replied, "sir all we're asking is that you trust us. Once you've seen what you need to see then we'll be able to answer your questions."
Gloval scowled at her for a moment. He considered briefly ordering her to answer him. But he paused as something told him that wouldn't be a very good idea, and truth be told he did trust Lisa. They'd been working together for months now as final preparations for the maiden flight were made, in all that time she'd never once given him cause to doubt her trustworthiness. "Very well, Commander," he said at last. "Show me what all this is about."
"This way, Captain," Lang indicated getting up, having already decided – in concert with Rick and Lisa – that he'd be the one to lead them to the section of the ship that contained the hidden protoculture matrix. He did after all know the layout of the ship, especially the engineering spaces, better than either of them did. Without further comment he led the way out of his office.
Gloval raised an eyebrow as he turned to follow, wondering just where Lang was going to take them. Only to blink startled when he saw Lisa approach young Mr Hunter and slip her arm through the loop he formed with his left arm. It was a surprisingly intimate move on Lisa's part as she tended to be somewhat standoffish with males – and had been ever since her fiancée had died on Mars four years ago. Yet the extremely natural way she'd done it, with absolutely no hesitation at all, indicated that she'd done it before with the younger man.
Do they know each other, he thought before giving a mental shrug and following Lang. Lisa's private life was, after all, none of his concern. Footsteps echoing on the tough composite alloy deck let him know that everyone else was following him. His thoughts turned to what they'd said and where Lang was taking them. It was immediately clear to him that Doctor Lang, Lisa, Mr Hunter and the blue haired man who'd been listening knew more about what had happened, who'd attacked Earth just thirty hours ago, than they were letting on. How that could be he had absolutely no idea, and from the faintly creped out looks Commander Fokker and Lieutenant Grant had been wearing that this was news to them as well.
Which meant something deeply strange, and deeply mysterious, was going on here. Something centred on those four individuals. What it was he didn't know but he had the distinct impression that whatever it was he would soon be let in on it; and that filled him with a strange apprehension. As something told him whatever it was, it would be something truly earth-shattering. And that unnerved him.
Unnerved him a lot.
A Few Minutes Later
"Why have you brought us here, Doctor," Gloval asked as he looked around in curiosity. They were at the end of a short corridor that branched off from the corridor leading to the reflex furnace control room. A short corridor that ended in a dead end, due to the proximity to the reflex furnaces and the plasma transfer lines to the ships fusion engines they'd never dared cut a hole in this bulkhead to find out just what was on the other side.
"Because this bulkhead is more than it seems, sir," Rick answered for Lang. "It might not look like much, just another of the bulkheads that divide up the ship, but there is a hidden entrance here to where we need to go."
Gloval frowned. "I don't see how that can be," he commented, "I know we used laser scanners to probe the bulkhead, they showed no sign of an entrance hidden or otherwise."
Rick smirked slightly. "That's because you weren't looking right," he replied knowing while laser scanners could pick up the smallest of details the means the Tirolians had had of hiding doors – when they wanted to – kind of rendered them useless. "If the door was merely camouflaged the laser scan would have found it, but it's not, not in that way."
"So how's it hidden little brother," Roy asked.
"You'll see, Roy," Rick answered, before nodding at Lang. "Open the door."
Gloval's frown deepened and he looked thoughtfully at the much younger man. There had been a clear note of command in his voice as he spoke to Lang. And from the way that Doctor Lang was immediately moving towards one part of the bulkhead it was clear he was used to receiving orders from Rick Hunter. And now that he looked at him he saw, for a brief moment before it was masked, a clear command presence in his manner and posture. Which only added the puzzle the young man – barely out of his teens – was presenting him with.
Seeing the look on his CO's face Roy inwardly chuckled, though there was no humour in it. Clearly Captain Gloval was really starting to suspect that there was a hell of a lot more to Rick than met the eye – that he clearly wasn't the young man just out of his teens that he appeared to be. Though Rick had been quick to mask that he'd briefly, probably without even realising it, gone into what he'd already termed – in his head at least – 'admiral mode' Gloval now clearly knew – or at least suspected – that whatever the else Rick was he was in no way a civilian.
Mentally shaking himself, Roy watched as Lang reached a section of bulkhead. For a moment nothing seemed to happen, as the German genius was apparently studying it as though looking for something, then Lang's hand shot out and pressed against a section of wall but only for a few seconds. There came a soft whirring sound, almost like the sound a Valkyrie made when undergoing mechamorphosis, and a small section where Lang had touch glowed. Before the startled eyes of himself, Claudia and Gloval the section of wall recessed back then slid aside.
Inside the now open panel was a small touch screen control board. One covered in strange alien symbols similar to the ones they'd found all over the ship when they'd been first surveying it. Similar but at the same time different, those symbols had been very angular, very harsh while these were sleeker and curved. "What language is that," Roy found himself asking.
"Tirolian, specifically old Tirolian," Lisa answered watching as Lang typed in Zor's password. A password that he'd long ago shared with Cabell, which had enabled them to access a secret facility of Zor's hidden in the ancient catacombs beneath the Tirolian capital Tiresia – catacombs long forgotten by the ruling Robotech Masters. A facility in which they'd found a complete, but at the time inactive, second protoculture matrix, one that incorporated a few advancements Zor had made over the original matrix. With Cabells help they'd gotten it aboard the SDF-3 and working, replacing the one destroyed on Earth when Zor Prime blew up the Masters mothership right over the ruins of this very ship. It had served them well afterwards at least until the traitorous Haydonites attacked them.
Lisa shook off the memory of that discovery, and the later Haydonite attack that had killed them all, and forced herself to focus only on the here and now. She watched as Lang finished typing in the pass code, which was a line from an old Tiresia poem that in English translated to 'in hope of a better tomorrow'. For a second nothing happened then the familiar humming of the advanced robotech systems of the Tirolians filled the air. Once again a section of the wall began to glow this time forming a large doorway two and a half meters tall by one and a half meters wide. As with the hidden access panel the doorway slipped back slightly then split open right down the centre exposing another hallway beyond.
"Whoa that's some way to hide something," Roy commented, "so what's behind here?"
"You'll see," Lisa replied.
"This way," Lang said walking into the newly opened corridor, prompting everyone to follow him.
It was immediately obvious to Roy, Claudia and Gloval that this hidden part of the ship was completely different to the rest of the SDF-1 as she'd been before the refit. Instead of being made of bare metal sheets the bulkheads were made of an odd light green material that seemed completely seamless. Darker areas of green snaked through the metal making it look like the walls had been carved out of a kind of marble. The deck itself was a dark grey material while overhead the ceiling was divided up into a series of rectangular segments filled with an odd translucent red material through which they could faintly see various conduits. Light came from oval shaped features surrounding by a four point starburst design every few meters, providing more than enough illumination for everyone to see clearly.
Another difference between this corridor and the rest of the ships original layout was the scale of it all. While the rest of the ship had been designed to accommodate fifty to sixty foot tall giants, with everything being scaled accordingly, these corridors were all on a very human scale. Clearly the people who they were built for were around the same height as them.
"This way," Lang said breaking them out of their momentary paralysis before he began walking down the corridor, everyone followed quickly. In moments they came to the end of the corridor, a pair of doors that had to have some kind of proximity sensor as they opened automatically as they approached them.
Beyond the doors the corridor became a walkway across a large open space that curved away to port and starboard. Small flight of steps led down from each side of the walkway to allow access to the wide toroid-like space. A space that was filled with pedestals on the top of each was a transparent globe which seemed to contain flowers of all things suspended in a nutrient bath of some sort. Every now and again one of the flowers would emit an oddly glowing cloud of pollen or spores that glimmered like gold dust. Spores and pollen which were immediately drawn up into a slender transparent pipe rising from the top of the globe. Pipes which ascended to the ceiling before turning and disappearing into the next compartment.
"What are those flowers?" Claudia asked, peering closely at the closest globes which were within touching distance of the walkway they were on. The plant was strange and reminded her somewhat of a vine crossed with ivy and which had these pink trumpet like flowers which seemed to both have three petals and were also bunched together in threes. "They're beautiful. And why are they in these bio-globe things?"
"In our language they're called the Flowers of Life," Rick answered, "they come from a distant world called Optera, the homeworld of a species called the Invid. As for why they're in those globes – they precisely replicate the flowers natural environment down to the smallest detail. Enough to keep the plants happy and fertile as its only healthy, fertile plants that produce the oils that are the raw ingredients for making protoculture."
"So you're saying that the fuel that powers all our new tech is a biofuel?" Roy asked shocked as while biofuels on Earth were nothing new he knew of no organic fuel with anywhere near the energy densities that protoculture had.
"Partially," Rick confirmed, "but the fuel itself is really only a transfer medium. It's what's trapped in it that makes protoculture so powerful."
"Which is?" Gloval asked.
"Zero point energy," Lang answered before Rick could, recalling how he'd met Zor himself when he'd been in the white void following the destruction of the SDF-3. "The Flower of Life is one of the cosmoses few true wonders. It's tapped into the very fabric of the space-time continuum on a basic level, just enough to trap minute amounts of ZPE in its cellular structure."
"Incredible," Gloval replied stunned. "Are these plants what I needed to see?"
"Part of it," Lisa confirmed. "But as Rick said these are just the start of the process. And there are still other fertile Flowers out there on various worlds, but it's what happens next that makes this ship so important."
"Then we had best continue on," Gloval decided, even as his mind whirled with questions. All of them variants on the same theme. The theme of how did Lisa and the others know all this? How did they know how to access this section of the ship? If he didn't know it was impossible he would have thought they'd been through this before, had been here in this part of the ship before.
"This way," Lang said before leading them onwards, deeper into this previously hidden part of the SDF-1.
Within a few moments they had left the toroid-like room containing the Flowers of Life behind and were walking down another corridor. However this corridor while still made of the same light green composite as the earlier one had a somehow more industrial look to it. Also from up ahead they could all here a distinct thrum of powerful machinery. The corridor came to an end at a set of double doors that as before opened automatically to allow them access to what was clearly a control room of some kind.
Consoles stood in three clusters of three workstations each, with what was clearly a desk off to one side. A desk that had its own separate workstation and was covered in a variety of advanced looking pieces of equipment. At the far end of the room a glass-like door let out onto a viewing deck. It was to that viewing deck that Lang led them.
What they saw next had Gloval, Claudia and Roy's metaphorical jaws on the equally metaphorical floor.
Standing in front of them filling a large silo-like space was an incredibly complex looking piece of alien technology. The pipes they had seen earlier, filled with the golden glowing spores and pollen of the Flower of Life, entered a large sphere at the top of the machine, a sphere surrounded by conduits that glowed brightly with all the colours of the rainbow. Descending from the very southern pole of the sphere was a brilliant column of energy. Which itself then disappeared into a large device that vaguely resembled the spinning tops children played with. A device that like the sphere was glowing but with a strange spectral aura that made the hairs on the back of everyone's necks stand on end.
A pipe as thick as Roy was tall descended from the base of the second machine. As with the pipes at the top it was made of a transparent material but this time was filled with a thick, syrup-like green fluid that gave off its own faint spectral glow. Looking over the guard rail at the base of the silo they could see the pipe enter a device that split it into a number of smaller pipes that carried the fluid out of sight.
"What is it," Gloval asked not understanding what it was he was seeing.
"This sir is the protoculture matrix," Rick explained, "it is this device that is the cause of so much conflict and death, this device the Zentraedi want to recover to return to the Robotech Masters but which they must never be allowed to gain possession of."
"Why?" Gloval asked.
"Because with it the Robotech Masters would have the means to conquer the universe. Something they cannot currently do as while Tirolian technology is extremely advanced they lack a sufficient power source to use their Robotech systems at full capacity."
"How do you know all this?" Gloval asked, "Who are you Mister Hunter? Who are you really?"
"That's a long complicated story but we did promise you answers so," Rick sighed before letting the admiral part of him out of his box completely. "I better reintroduce myself," he continued his whole body posture shifting into that of the CO of the entire United Earth Expeditionary Forces. Prompting faint grins to appear on the faces of Lisa, Max and Lang as they recognised Rick going into full on admiral mode. The same mode that almost never failed to cow even the most hawkish of commanders into obedience, indeed it had only failed once but none of them really wanted to think at all about that traitorous bastard T.R Edwards.
"Fleet Admiral Richard Hunter at your service," Rick continued, inwardly smirking at the utterly gobsmacked look that appeared on Gloval's face at that. "You already know Doctor Lang and of course my wife Ambassador Lisa Hayes," he gestured to Lang and Lisa in turn, "and this is Colonel Max Sterling, the best veritech pilot you're ever likely to meet."
"Aw shucks skipper you're making me blush," Max commented looking down slightly embarrassed by the praise, especially given who it was coming from. After all, as he'd shown during the battle over Macross Island, Rick was an incredibly gifted combat pilot himself being almost literally born to fly.
Roy for his part blinked in surprise before glancing at the slender blue haired teenager, thoughtfully. He didn't look like much but he could tell Rick – or maybe I should think of him as Richard when he's in admiral mode, he thought – was being genuine in his praise of the other man. If he was as gifted a combat pilot as Richard was implying he was then he would make an excellent addition to their squadrons – despite the fact that he wore glasses – as even with the extra pilots from the Prometheus their fighter wings were still seriously understrength. He made a mental note to have a word with Rick later, see if he could remember anyone else among the civilian population who would make a good veritech pilot.
He forced himself to pay attention as Rick continued to speak. "…we've been sent back in time and merged into our own past selves," Rick explained before smirking slightly, "which did take a bit of getting used to but it was nice to wake up and not have any arthritic pain for once."
"Agreed," Lisa commented recalling the daily pain she experienced in her legs. Arthritis having really started taking hold in her legs in the years since her near death at the hands of Edwards and the Invid Regent. In that regard Rick was slightly better off than being both younger and fitter though even he'd been experiencing some arthritis in his knees recently. Though good thing about being in our own younger bodies, she thought, we won't have to worry about arthritis for a long time to come.
"If you're from the future then why are you here and now? And in your own younger selves' bodies?" Gloval asked his mind awhirl with incredulity and shock. He wanted to deny it, wanted to say 'Admiral' Hunter was lying, that time travel in any form was impossible. But somehow he knew that he was telling the truth and it would certainly explain how he knew what he knew about this ship, what all four of them knew about this ship. If only it wasn't so incredible, he thought.
"The simple answer," Rick said, "the simple answer is we're here to save not just our own species but a dozen other species throughout this galaxy."
"Save us from what?"
"Annihilation."
Authors Note: Well another chapter bites the metaphorical dust. I hope you all like the idea for there to have been a second inactive protoculture matrix hidden on Tirol by Zor. It was the only solution I could see that was remotely practical for solving the paradox present in Robotech canon regarding the matrix, after all how could it have been hidden in the ruins of the SDF-1 to be destroyed by Zor Prime in the Masters Saga only to be intact and aboard the SDF-3 in New Generation/Shadow Chronicles? So I choose what I hope was the simplest solution to that particular dilemma.