My thanks to Shoji Kawamori and Studio Nue for the creation of Macross. Further thanks to Carl Macek and Harmony Gold for the vision that gave us the strange and wonderful alternate world that is Robotech.
Part 1 - Salvage
Chapter 1
January, 2014
Metal can scream. Even after the fighting stopped, even after the mangled, co-mingled wreckage of Khyron's command ship and the battle fortress SDF-1 settled into the vapor-filled crater of Lake Gloval, millions of tons of metal howled and groaned. The SDF-1, in its battle configuration, looked like an armored warrior struck down by its foe, broken and wreathed in flame.
Lieutenant Vanessa Leeds remembered the screams of crew mates and ship alike. Although mercifully rendered unconscious when the two titanic ships impacted, she still heard the overwhelming sound of the SDF-1's death throes. The noise did not stop even long after the search and rescue team reached the bridge superstructure and extracted her from her alloy tomb. The massive, irradiated carcass of the SDF-1 would not end its groans until the day of its burial beneath mountains of rubble and concrete and steel.
That day was still far off. Until then, grim faced recovery crews would work themselves beyond mad exhaustion to salvage all they could from the wreckage. Human lives and alien technology were both irreplaceable in the new order that existed on Earth. Ninety percent of all life had been stripped away by a war more apocalyptic than Vanessa could ever have imagined, and nothing could be wasted, no matter how battered and broken.
The screams faded to a dull ringing in Vanessa's ears, and finally gave way to the sounds of medical diagnostic equipment when she awoke. It was several minutes before her left eye, crusted over with disuse, opened and slowly focused. The lights were off for the night, but she could see a little by the screen of the heart monitor and the unfamiliar skyline beyond the hospital room's window. She could see she was not alone in the room.
He was looking at his clasped hands, slouching in an uncomfortable plastic chair. Vanessa's glasses were missing, but through her one unbandaged eye, she could see the thick jaw, the untamable red hair, and broad, clean-shaven face, given to joyful grins and glowering seriousness. All features given to him by the Zentraedi cloning process. In the next chair, leaning against the alien, was a very shabby Minmei doll, complete with blue yarn hair in buns and red traditional Chinese dress.
"Bruh-" she forced out through uncooperative lips, then swallowed with great difficulty. "Bron."
The name came out muffled. An oxygen mask covered most of her face. Nevertheless, he heard her. He opened red, bleary eyes and lifted his tear-streaked face.
"Vanessa?" His voice was even deeper and rougher than usual.
"Wh-" she began, and stopped. Where to even begin?
"Just wait a second, I've gotta get the nurse!" Bron cried out, and rushed from the room, knocking the doll to the floor.
"To be in love…" the doll managed to trill out, gesturing weakly before depleted batteries failed. Reality faded in a blur of compassionate but rushed and tired nurses and orderlies. There were examinations, lights, cold instruments, and hushed questions.
"Do you know your name?"
"Do you know what year it is?"
"Do you know why you're here?"
Each question she answered distantly, until the last one. She knew both too little and too much to answer it. Seeing the distress on her face, the last nurse simply said, "The surgeon will be here to tell you more in the morning. For now, try to rest. Don't worry about anything."
A few minutes passed before Bron re-entered. He held himself tensely, looking at once eager and hesitant to approach. He plopped the fallen Minmei doll back in its chair and slid his own chair up to the bed, then tentatively took her cold left hand in his warm one.
She was surprised by the contact, and surprised to see him. They hadn't spent any time together since Christmas Day, and it had been months since their relationship had made any meaningful progress at all. Now she was relieved to see him alive, and touched that he had sought her out.
"I'm sorry," he began. "They wouldn't let me back in until they were done. Captain Hayes got me special permission to be here outside visiting hours."
Hayes? Lisa made it! With that, one question rose above all others in her mind. "Are they ok?" she murmured.
"What was that?" Bron leaned in.
"Is everyone else ok? On the bridge?"
The ex-spy's eyes flicked to the window and back before he answered. "Uh, look, Vee, everything's gonna be fine, you should really try to sleep before you-"
Vanessa's face tightened in anguish and she squeezed her good eye shut. "Bron. I've told you, you have to stop lying so much." The words came out choked.
Fresh tears came to Bron's eyes. "I'm sorry, Vee. I'm so sorry."
"Who?"
"They- you and Captain Hayes are the only ones who made it. Her life pod landed safely by the lake shore. It took them two hours to cut through the hull around the bridge, and another three hours to free you."
Vanessa had felt numb since she woke up, due to pain medication, she assumed. Now a wave of dizziness and nausea washed over her. Sammie, Kim, Claudia, Admiral Gloval. Her family was gone. Bron squeezed her hand and murmured reassurances to her as she sank back into blackness.
Bron was gone again when the surgeon visited her the next morning and broke the news of her extensive injuries.
"Radiation exposure was a major concern, but the SDF-1's hull protected you from a great deal of it, and you were placed in a medical cocoon for the medevac here to Monument city. You will experience some nausea and disorientation during your run of medication. I'm afraid your hair will probably fall out, though it will grow back eventually. In the long term, you will recover fully from the radiation exposure, though you will need to schedule regular cancer screenings for the rest of your life."
The surgeon glanced uncomfortably out the window as he began the next part. "Now, your body suffered a great deal of trauma during the actual impact of the enemy ship. The wreckage immobilized you and put pressure on your lacerations, otherwise you would have succumbed to blood loss before the search and rescue team reached you. Your survival is a bit remarkable."
"I need to know the next part," Vanessa said as the surgeon paused. "The part you don't want to talk about."
The surgeon suppressed a sigh, and met her eye steadily. "You've had three surgeries in the week you've been unconscious. We stabilized all of your internal injuries, but we were unable to save your left eye, left leg, or right arm."
Vanessa was dumbfounded. She couldn't feel anything, could barely move any of her limbs. She had assumed her own weakness was the reason for the lack of response from her arm and leg. Her blurry vision had done the rest. Her glasses were no doubt lying shattered in the remnants of the bridge, her spare set forgotten in a dresser drawer in her irradiated apartment in Macross city.
The surgeon was still talking, describing facial scarring down her right eye socket and her lower jaw line. She continued to nod as he went on to the subject of physical therapy and prosthetics, but she heard little. He excused himself soon after.
Vanessa was staring at the ceiling when Bron returned. "Are you okay?" he asked.
"Everything's broken." Her body, her career, her closest friendships.
"Vee, you're lucky to be alive…. That's something to be grateful for."
Vanessa frowned. "Where are the others?"
"Um, what?"
"Rico, Konda, where are they? Why aren't they with you?" The trio of Rico, Konda, and Bron, ringleaders of the first defections, was more inseparable than a bond between siblings. In the past, it had been almost impossible to find time alone with Bron.
Bron's eyebrows lifted. "Oh, uh well, they've been helping at the refugee center and they're just kind of busy."
"Bron, you're- were they hurt?" Vanessa's blood went cold. Not them too!
"No! No, I promise!" he replied hastily. "It's just…. We all used to be so close. You and me, Konda and Kim, Sammie and Rico. They're not taking it very well, and… they don't really know how to be around you with you surviving and Sammie and Kim not."
Even after more than two years of human interaction, the Zentraedi were still unfamiliar with so many human emotions, and Vanessa realized this was making Bron more honest than he otherwise would have been. For all that she had admonished Bron time and again for his bending of the truth, Vanessa was badly stung by his admission.
"What are you saying? Are you saying they wish I had died and someone else survived in my place?"
Bron looked horrified. "Of course not! They just-"
"Because I could almost wish the same thing right now."
"Vee, don't say things like that! You're very important to us. To lots of people!"
"I'm not strong, like the others were. I never fired a weapon, or led anyone in battle. I just spent years watching a radar screen."
"You're only saying these things because of the shock. Things will get better, I promise."
As if to prove him wrong, a faraway rumble rattled the windows. The lights in the room and in the hallway flickered, then went out. An air raid siren howled across the city, and commotion broke out around them in the ICU. The charge nurse's voice cut across the chatter and brought order.
"We have an emergency, but I need everyone to remain calm. Everyone is to take shelter in the interior hallway in an orderly manner. We will begin moving patients to hardened areas of the basement sections as time permits. Stay away from windows and exterior walls."
"Bron!" Vanessa called out crisply. The man's mouth was an O of surprise and alarm. "Unlock the wheels on my bed and disconnect all the monitors. Get us into the hallway!"
Bron recovered, and his demeanor shifted. He straightened, and something changed in his eyes. "Right away!" he barked and bent to work. Within seconds he was finished and wheeled her bed into the corridor. There was none of the comic panic and flailing she had seen Bron and his fellow ex-spies display in the past. Bron finished wheeling her bed against the interior wall, relocked the wheels, and met her eye expectantly.
"Other patients need to be moved," Vanessa told him. The thunder of four more detonations somewhere outside punctuated her words. "Help the nurses."
"Yes, Lieutenant Leeds," Bron replied, and hurried off to assist staff moving beds out of the next room. Vanessa had never seen him like this. She had only ever known him as a clumsy spy or a civilian defector. Had something of the old Zentraedi soldier reawakened at her command?
Floor mounted emergency lights stuttered to life while Bron was bringing the next patient out. Vanessa saw the injured man was completely covered in blue burn gel and white gauze. Somewhere nearby, a battery powered radio squelched static, cradled in the arms of another patient.
"- MBS reporter Aria Stockton, reporting on the battle from the roof of our broadcasting studio. Go ahead, Aria."
"Yes, Stan. I have a good view of the combat." Some distortion cut through the reporter's voice in time with another rumble of explosive ordnance outside. Vanessa thought the woman might have been a survivor from the former UK, by her clipped, composed voice.
"- attackers are a mixed group in powered armor, possibly fugitives from Zentraedi warlord Khyron's suicide run that destroyed the SDF-1 six days ago." There was a roar of turbine engines and a ripping growl of rapid cannon fire that Vanessa was sure came from a Valkyrie veritech fighter approaching at high speed and unloading its gun pod before Stockton's voice resumed.
"I can see veritech fighter aircraft approaching from the north. It looks like the Jolly Roger insignia on the tail wings, so I believe them to be from the U.N. Spacy's famed Skull Squadron. The unit has been pursuing stragglers almost continuously since the main battle ended."
More staccato bursts. "Aria, weren't we told by Defence Force spokespersons that the fighting had moved well away from populated areas?"
"Yes, Stan. It's uncertain how this group slipped through, but now they are causing a great deal of damage in the streets of Monument. Defenders are clearly having difficulty engaging the enemy in the built up urban areas."
Vanessa knew that the destruction of the SDF-1 and the devastation of the surrounding military facilities must have left a gaping hole in Earth's defenses and early warning capabilities, not to mention the loss of so many veteran officers. If only I wasn't here, broken and useless, she thought bitterly. I should be in the Operations Center. I might have been able to track the fugitives before they endangered the city.
Vanessa started as Bron was suddenly by her side again in the near darkness. "We're going to get you moved to one of the sub-levels, where it's safer. Everyone's out of their rooms."
"N-no," Vanessa said distractedly. "The critical cases should be moved first." A thudding vibration could be felt through the floor in a familiar rhythm.
"- Civil Defense destroids moving into the area, and the giant Zentraedi are engaging the fifty foot tall machines in hand to hand combat," Stockton continued her narration.
Bron scowled. "What are you talking about? You're one of the critical cases!"
"I'm not- other people should be taken care of first!" Vanessa replied hotly. She didn't feel like a critical case, in spite of her injuries, and the military officer in her couldn't bear to be carted off, away from the radio and her one connection to what was happening outside.
Before Bron could respond, Stockton's smooth, professional commentary cracked. "My God! She- that is, uh, one of the powered armors is pulling, pulling the arm off of a Civil Defense Tomahawk. Swinging and throwing the arm into-"
There was a shattering of glass from Vanessa's empty room, then a terrifying crash of crumbling concrete and rending steel girders. The muzzle of the Tomahawk's elbow mounted particle cannon was driven into the hallway and continued through the opposite wall, crushing the burn patient's bed ahead of it.
Screams filled the ward. Daylight flooded in as more of the hospital's facade tore apart. Bron threw his burly frame across Vanessa, shielding her from material tumbling from the ceiling, but she could feel the floor beginning to shift under them. "Bron, we have to move!" She wrapped her one good arm around his shoulders.
"Right, I've got you." Bron lifted her effortlessly and ran. Her IV ripped painfully from her arm, but he had moved just in time. The section of hallway continued to tilt and drop. Vanessa's bed, still locked down, skidded on the tile floor, then cartwheeled out into empty air. A ten meter wide section of the building slumped like crumbling pastry. A cloud of dust burst up around them, and Bron rushed blindly through it, cradling Vanessa.
Bron and Vanessa stopped up against a set of double doors, choking and coughing as the worst of the dust began to disperse. The radio was gone, along with whoever had been holding it, but they no longer needed Stockton's report. The battle was unfolding right in front of them. The reptile green Queadluun-Rau powered armor stood over the wreckage of the dark brown CD Tomahawk and discarded the fallen mecha's other cannon arm. The multi-ton weapon embedded itself in the asphalt where it landed. The war machine scanned the end of the street with its sensor package, red and bulbous as a cyclopean eye. It fired its backpack thrusters, flitting out of the path of a burst of gun pod fire aimed from far above. The street ripped apart under the salvo, but stopped just short of the nearest building.
A white, black, and yellow Valkyrie dropped out of the sky in guardian configuration, leg thrusters flaring to cut the speed of its meteoric descent. The gun pod was braced in its arms, lining up for another burst. It has to be Skull One, Vanessa thought. Captain Hunter!
Bron staggered back to his feet, still holding her close. He was coated in a fine powder of crushed masonry and drywall dust, and blood was dripping from a head injury. "Just… a little further… to the stairs…" he bit out.
Vanessa's ears were ringing and her stomach was knotted with a fresh wave of nausea. She shook her head to clear it, but it felt as if spikes of pain were piercing her skull.
"Stop," she muttered.
""What?" Over Bron's shoulder, she saw Skull One shift to battloid mode. With a combination of years of battle experience and born talent, Hunter turned the motion of his Valkyrie's drop into a forward roll in mid transformation. The battloid's shoulder hit the street just as the fuselage finished folding and reconfiguring, the aircraft now a warrior armored for close combat. The move saved Hunter's life. A stream of blue energy darts passed above the battloid's helmet-like laser turret a half-second before it rose to its feet.
"I said stop! I need to see this." Vanessa felt like she was experiencing tunnel vision. The enormous powered armor, hunchbacked with powerful thrusters and internal missile storage, was advancing on the Valkyrie. Hunter clearly wasn't willing to open fire with his cannon. There had been no chance to evacuate the surrounding buildings. The posture of the battloid was communicating his hesitation, and now he was at a disadvantage this close to a larger, heavier foe.
"I'm sorry, Vanessa, but we can't stay here!" Bron yelled over the clanging of car sized metal feet and the whine of huge servo-motors. He shouldered through the double doors with her in his arms. The door swung back once, giving her a split second glimpse of the powered armor raising a three fingered fist above its head. Skull One lifted its gun pod in a two handed grip, struggling to ward off the attack. The door swung back, plunging Vanessa into darkness again.
"Stop!" Vanessa yelled in Bron's ear. "I said stop, dammit!" Bron's breathing was ragged with adrenaline. He carried her into a stairwell dimly lit by emergency panels. Crouching survivors with frightened faces blurred past as he descended three levels. The building still shuddered with apocalyptic booms and roars of weapons fire, but Vanessa could no longer make sense of it. She would have struck at him if she hadn't needed her one arm to hold on. "Bron! Put me down!"
They reached an empty landing and Bron gently lowered her to the cold floor. It was hard enough to make out any details of his face without her glasses, but the pain in her head was now matched with glowing spots in her vision. Bron leaned over her. "What's going on, Vanessa?" His voice was anxious. "Were you hit?"
Vanessa could only feel pain and anger. "No! I told you to stop! I need to know what's happening! You had no right to ignore me!"
"I don't understand. There was no way I could let you stay there! I had to keep you safe."
Her stomach was churning again. Her vision was going black at the edges, but she was still furious. "Safe?! You'll keep me safe? Where were you six days ago, you and your friends?"
"Vanessa…" Her name came out quiet and strangled. Blood, black, thick and shiny in the emergency lights, was dripping into his eyes.
"Hiding in a hole while we were fighting and dying! Safe in a shelter while my body was torn to pieces!" She felt dizzy, and the pain was worse than ever. She clutched at her head with her hand, and a mass of her hair sloughed away in her grip.
Vanessa screamed. She thought she heard Bron call out to her one more time before the wall of vertigo and pain blocked all thought.
Next chapter... reawakening, a reckoning, and hope…