Robotech: The Enforcers' War

by GVincent

Sequel to- "Robotech: The Ashes of Empire" & "Robotech: The Smoldering Earth" The renegade Te'Dak Tohl Zentraedi forces of Supreme General Krymina launch their campaign to seize Zor's Battle Fortress and The Invid Flower of Life on an Earth in internal turmoil in their revolt against The Robotech Masters. Earth forces struggle to unite and to repel this new Zentraedi threat.

4. Wormwood

Chapter Three

Wormwood

"Damn- I hate it when I'm right…."

CDR Anne Weitzel

RDF Intelligence,

Information Fusion

Division Chief

A.R.M.D. II Space Platform,

"Archer 42"

Festive events aboard an A.R.M.D. II station had a diminished quality because of the fact that like all other things in a restricted space, they hey had to be run in shifts.

As with a copy, of a copy, of a copy the celebrations held later in the sequence had a faded and diluted quality about them.

So it was with the last of the parties being hosted in Crew's #1 Mess.

Subject to the rhythm and schedule of the station, the mess had welcomed its final lot of revelers into its decorated space that still smelled heavily of the smoke, alcohol, and the party fare of the previous two festivities at the time when the mess should have been emitting the more wholesome smells of a breakfast menu.

The party-goers had not commented on the residuals of these forerunners as they had arrived. The mood was already forced like a feigned smile that smarted just beneath the surface with the sting of canceled leave and dashed hopes of being anywhere for the holidays besides Archer 42.

The shared sentiment was oddly combative for the event.

Officers, NCOs, and enlisted alike were fighting the blues for something that could be held up as a semblance of joy.

Rather than relax and rejoice, all showed a quiet determination to simply unwind.

It was to be that kind of a party.

Lieutenant Commander Queffle retrieved another can of beer from the large tub of ice that had been garishly dressed in red velvet draping and set on the center of a mess table. Shaking it free of the cubes that clung stubbornly to its chilled aluminum skin, he cracked the tab,, poured the amber contents into a clear acrylic storage cylinder that normally would have held dry goods. Now its capacity was prized and would be used for a ritual that served an end completely out of step with anything that Christmas traditionally stood for.

The CO passed the improvised drinking vessel through a chain of hands that deposited it after a dozen exchanges on a table across from an identical container filled to the same mark. The stage for competition was now set in a contest that was a sprint-race to inebriation.

"-Now-", Queffle said as the foam head on the second vessel settled to roughly the same level as the first, "-As the official ranking and responsible party on deck, I want to make it perfectly clear that this is not a drinking contest-."

Lieutenant Amanda Kroft gazed through the side of the cylinder in front of her as another official of the event plucked her pilot's wings from the collar of her utilities and deposited them with an emphatic splash into the fermented bath. She could not tell definitely whether the blurred appearance of her occupational badge was because of the bending of light brought on by convex plastic and beer, or on the several shots of Mr. Daniels' black labeled libation that she already had under her belt.

As thoughts often did with drinking, an odd one zinged about the inside of her skull with a sense of urgency that was disproportionate to the question at hand:

Was it liquor before beer- blah, blah, something-?..

No-, beer before liquor?..

Oh- fuck it.

Whatever the limerick warned, a hangover was imminent in either case, and spicy chicken wings were almost as good in an encore performance anyhow.

Kroft was comforted somewhat that she would not be alone in this sad state. The lieutenant from the station's engineering division who sat across the table from her, ready to retrieve his occupational pin from the bottom of his own vessel of bear was sure to be hurting in the morning too.

The fair-haired, pale-skinned youngster who easily had ten kilos of mass on the pilot had a good "game face"- but after only a few shots of whiskey to warm up by, he was already flushed and sweating. He clearly hadn't trained for this sport the way Kroft had over the years.

-And besides- the pride of the squadron had to be maintained at all costs.

"You put that damn glowworm in his place, you hear me, Lieutenant?..", urged Kroft's XO in the Blue Banshees, Lt Chris "Ramrod" Staff who whispered the mandate repeatedly in her ear with a zealot's conviction.

In any other situation, Staff's "pep-talk" would have probably been easily misconstrued as an order- but in this venue, rank was being shrugged off as much as it could be without being totally abandoned. And besides, Kroft knew Staff well enough to know that he probably had a substantial wager riding on her drinking prowess.

Across the table, a butter-bar from the "below decks" set was psyching his drinking thoroughbred up similarly.

"-This is not a drinking contest-.", the CO repeated as he stepped back from the table and continued to speak to the fifty or so occupants of the mess, "-Lieutenants Kroft and Hackney are out of uniform and we are simply applying the proper positive encouragement for them to get in compliance with regs again."

Hoots and shouts echoed off the compartment walls over the long-since-ignored strains of Christmas carols being played on a portable stereo as last minute bets on the outcome were made.

Kroft mentally kicked herself for not getting in on that action. Hackney had weight on her, but this was beer and she did have substantial German blood in her-.

She was playing on home turf.

LCDR Queffle stepped back from the table and made an ushering gesture to Senior Master Chief Petty Officer O'Toole to take his place, saying, "Chief, can you please straighten these officers out?-."

"Aye sir.", O'Toole replied dutifully as though the station commander had ordered him to undertake a critical task, "The rules are as follow-. Once your lips hit the rim, they stay on the rim until the last drop. –No jokes please, you sick bastards.. Break away early, forfeit the match. Choke or puke- forfeit the match. The match goes to the first one to smile silver-. Ready?"

"You talk too fucking much, Chief-.", Kroft sneered without breaking eye contact with Hackney and finding a good grip on her cylinder, "I'm gonna whip this pansy glowworm's ass, and then yours-."

"Alotta beer between now and then, Lieutenant-.", O'Toole observed raising his hand in a manner more fitting to start a drag race than a drinking match.

"-Yeah, Chief?- Well get ready to have that big, freckled, Irish butt put into a sling anyway-."

Gong-Gong-Gong-Gong-Gong-Gong!

The familiar and regularly heard sound swept the mess, evacuating the joviality of the moment from the smoky air with its dire overtones.

The sounding of the general alarm was not a prank that would be played under the emotionally burdened conditions, and the only officer who was authorized to conduct an impromptu drill was on deck.

"General quarters, general quarters! All duty stations set to 1SQ.", came Lt Morris' voice riding over the chain of electronically generated alarm tones. His voice had a slight tremble that in itself precluded an exercise.

"This is not a drill! CO to the command center! I repeat, no shit- this is not a drill!"

Personnel- officers and crew alike scattered from their places around the contest table like a pile of dry leaves hit by a gust of autumn wind before they funneled out through the mess room's two doors.

LCDR Queffle was in the station command center whose lighting had been changed to combat-operations red less than a minute after the first sounding of general alarm. The short trip up one ladder and through two passage ways had been done without conscious thought on navigating the station's corridors. Queffle's mind was on what he would find when he arrived- the transit from point to point was more distant like a waking dream. It was only Senior Master Chief O'Toole's bumping into Queffle on his way into the command center that let the CO know he had not made his journey from the crew's mess alone.

He found all stations manned as he arrived and all going through their procedures and checklists smoothly and professionally- but with a strong aura of disbelief and managed fear.

This couldn't be real?- Could it?

Practice and drill had made the execution of tasks second nature, but there was a genuine sense of urgency now that no simulation had ever come close to approximating.

There was a reality tied to every step on a checklist now.

"-Sir-.", Lt Morris reported as he saw Queffle enter the command center, "Multiple tangos in our defensive sector and approaching our engagement zone-. First de-folds were just under two minutes ago, and they keep coming-. –Shit, there's a lot of `em…. ECM false position projection system is activated, barrier system is standing by, and weapons systems are charged and ready."

Queffle's eyes had gone to the holographic display table at the center of the CC the moment he had entered the compartment, and they had not strayed. The display had been switched into tactical display mode the moment that Archer 42 had gone to battle stations, and what it was showing was alarming.

Fed by not only Archer 42's sensor systems, but also augmented through InfoLink by multiple satellite and ground-based sensor systems, the tactical display showed that Archer 42's sector of defensive responsibility was crowded- choked- with icons depicting unidentified spacecraft clustered into small groups indicative of Zentraedi probing and assault formations.

At a glance, Queffle recognized that there were far too many in his command's sector for Archer 42 to effectively deal with- and the space outside of his sector belonging to the other A.R.M.D. III platforms of the defense constellation were no less saturated.

"Steady everyone- let's work the situation…", the CO said evenly.

The shooting had not started yet- unusual for a Zentraedi planetary assault. Standard Zentraedi doctrine treated orbital bombardment as less of a "precision" tactical exercise, and more as a broad stroke of destruction.

A loud buzz sounded from the area of the communications console. The ranking chief petty officer of the three crew at the station announced, "Command, Radio-. Flash coded traffic received on EAM Frequency One-. Message printing for authentication-."

A laser printer spat out a single sheet of paper before the chief at the communications console had completed his statement and had been snatched up by Senior Master Chief O'Toole before it had come to rest in the output tray. The chief from the communications console joined O'Toole and the printed message in its brief transit to the display table at the center of the compartment.

O'Toole studied the single sheet of paper carefully, noting that the form code and day code matched the values expected before handing the form to Lt Morris.

"Commander, we have a properly formatted Emergency Action Message."

Morris made the same examination, nodding all the while, "I concur sir, we have a properly formatted Emergency Action Message. Request permission to authenticate-."

Seconds slogged by century-by-century, and the temptation was great to simply order the opening of fire on what was clearly a hostile force. There were procedures to be followed though- Queffle was not in command of a squad of infantry on a firing line. Archer 42's arsenal was somewhat more substantial.

Lt Morris handed the CO the message form as he retrieved the authentication tables from their place in the small shelf built into the side of the display table. In the course of any given day, multiple coded signals could be received by a space platform and were in need of decoding.

It was however the first time that Morris had opened the binder to the EAM section with the expectation of finding a genuine message calling Archer 42 into action.

Queffle examined the form, verifying for himself what Morris and O'Toole had already stated- that the format was correct to accept and authenticate the message.

The large, bold-face type that occupied the text portion of the form read a simple and purposefully enigmatic:

"H7SV94WT"

"Ready to authenticate, sir.", Morris said, his voice edgy but with no signs of impending panic.

"Authenticate Hotel Seven Sierra Victor Nine Four Whiskey Tango."

Queffle handed the form to O'Toole who read the text out loud a second time, "Hotel Seven Sierra Victor Nine Four Whiskey Tango."

The communications chief received the message next, reading aloud, "Hotel Seven Sierra Victor Nine Four Whiskey Tango."

Finally, Morris had the form in hand, and once more all heard, "Hotel Seven Sierra Victor Nine Four Whiskey Tango."

"Message is authentic, sir.", Morris said, reading the corresponding text from the authentication ledger, "Scenario Wormwood- Clear indications of full-scale planetary assault. Action Plan Hector- Commanders are to engage and destroy or divert all hostile or unidentified craft entering their assigned EZ at all costs. Nuclear release is authorized at commander's discretion."

Queffle had imagined this moment as he was certain all commanders had- the moment when the training and preparedness of the officers and crew under his command might have to translate into execution. He had thought about the moment, but had never dedicated much thought into what bracing words he might offer his subordinates in the face of such horror.

In truth, he thought the words would come to him.

Queffle had none.

"Fire Control, lock all gun and missile batteries into LRATS and designate primary targets by proximity-. Chief of the Watch, retrieve the arming key from the safe please-."

"Aye sir."

Thuverl Salan Class, Destroyer 2913

Commander Iyos could not pinpoint the exact moment with certainty, but her apprehensions had evaporated suddenly with the approach of battle.

It was not battle itself that had given her pause, or even the fact that this was her first battle with charge of her own command, but rather the composition of her crew that had waken her at night from time to time over the past season and a half.

Destroyer 2913 was in all respects now reflective of The 7th Grand Army of the Te'Dak Tohl, and of the 5121st Destroyer Squadron- though no Warrior of the enforcer caste acknowledged it openly. The "improved" norghil caste showed no indication of even perceiving the situation, or its social peculiarity.

The Te'Dak Tohl that constituted her officers and sub-officers entirely did not speak of this for the same reasons that Iyos held her reservations. These "expendables" had been provided many of the same skill and memory encoding as the Te'Dak Tohl warrior grades to allow them to function with the superior caste- but they were still norghil. They had emerged from stasis aware of their duties and responsibilities the same as any other Warrior, and in exercise after exercise- each more rigorous than the last, they had borne their trials well. They had met the expectations of Supreme General Krymina and had validated the promise of the Tirolian scientists who had customized their engineering.

But still- they were norghil. Weren't they?

Iyos had recognized that the norghil warriors themselves were the least troubled by the social upset- probably because they were unaware of their disadvantage.

They did not recognize their own inferiority to the officers and sub-officers they passed in the corridors or from whom they received orders.

They did not know the history of the treacherous irony of their existence and employment- that they served Te'Dak Tohl aboard a ship that had served their own kind before it had been commandeered in a purge of the norghil crew.

A purge of two norghil armies in fact

Iyos recognized that they did not grasp this irony because they had no reason to suspect or suppose it- but her Te'Dak Tohl officers and sub-officers were very aware.

To these norghil, they were simply fulfilling the role in the world they had Awakened into. To them there was no question of loyalty or execution of Duty.

Iyos was weighted with the burden of truth.

She, and a good number of her officers and sub-officers she suspected, had waken from implausible nightmares of norghil failure or worse- insurrection- at critical moments of action. Horrific night visions of revolt driven by by a truth secretly discovered and plots secretly devised.

All of this was completely implausible though with no records of the purges for the norghil to discover. Certainly, no Te'Dak Tohl was going to divulge the secret.

Wasn't this the definition of that breed of horror though?- The realization of the impossible at the most inopportune moment?

But now at the moment when insurrection would be most devastating- there was no sign of anything but dedication to Duty- as the norghil had been programmed to understand it.

There was no slackening of or failures in Duty that Iyos could see from her chair high above the rear of the command deck within the command bubble. Norghil Warrior Specialists worked with Te'Dak Tohl sub-officers and officers in the numerous tasks required to fight the ship effectively. Mutiny was as far from the collective mind by all indications as failure.

The apprehension had passed- even if only temporarily- and had only afflicted those knowing the "truth". It had been a symptom of something like conscience- only where no true offense had been committed.

They had only been norghil of course.

The alien world lay ahead now, occupying the height and breadth of the main viewscreen- its darkened hemisphere defined clearly by the background of the celestial field. Sensor and tactical overlays to the image identified clearly the primary targets both in high geosynchronous orbit and on the continents of the planet itself.

Iyos was familiar with them all, at least of their target classification and priority, from countless tactical and pre-operational briefings that in turn had been reinforced by as many simulations.

In simulation, every conceivable scenario had been played out- even those that seemed unrealistic in the extreme. Iyos and her command had performed well in most, exceeded expectations in many, and per the unspoken intent of simulation had died the Warrior's death in enough to learn valuable lessons.

As most of the "realistic" simulations had anticipated, the alien population had not- in the short time the assault force had been out of hyperspace- commenced defensive operations.

Surprise had been achieved completely by all indicators.

Why were Te'Dak Tohl forces not initiating the action then?

That was a question that only Action General Trefna could answer.

Iyos had come to know Trefna by his conduct of operations through a dozen campaigns or more. He was a meticulous planner with foresight and an eye for details that may have seemed trivial to other commanders- and likely for these reasons he had been chosen for the initial assault on the alien world.

Iyos also knew that his adherence to his "plans" could also be Trefna's weakness. He preferred what he considered the certainty of a well-developed battle plan to the random variables of quickly-initiated, improvised action. This inflexibility had cost the lives of warriors in the past, and so long as Trefna held command authority it would again- but as long as the action general's command philosophy yielded the desired result it was a philosophy (and the associated flaw) accepted by the higher echelons.

From Supreme General Krymina's perspective, it was perhaps even more accepted since a higher percentage of the "lost" was now to be norghil.

The answer to Iyos' main question of why the attack had not yet been ordered to commence was actually quite simple.

Trefna was waiting to have all of his units in place to initiate.

Trefna was no fool- he had no doubt calculated for the casualties it would cost him, and those losses to him were acceptable to adhere to the plan He had numbers- a surplus- to expend and simulation showed it would take the enemy time to thin those numbers.

In Trefna's mind, he therefore had time.

Iyos' perspective as part of the "numbers" was different- chiefly this was what drove the urge to attack- now.

The wait for the order seemed interminable- but it came-.

"All units commence attack on assigned target objectives."

The order, passed over the command frequency felt to Iyos like the falling away of heavy shackles. She was under orders still, but free to a measure to act in the interest of her new command.

"Weapons Control", Iyos ordered, "Lock on to primary orbital targets and commence firing by battery salvo-."

The main viewscreen lit with brilliant streaks of outgoing particle beam fire- not only from Destroyer 2913, but from the gun batteries of the other destroyers in the 5121st Squadron. The barrage was joined from all points around the edge of the viewscreen as other units joined in at the same command.

The tactical display, sharing the split main screen with the less functional visual display showed the track of outgoing fire and identified hits on target with a flicker of the appropriate target icon. Some target icons blinked repeatedly when contact was made by an "outgoing fire" track, while others remained constant despite energy rounds passing cleanly through them.

Iyos was too much an acquaintance with battle to be distracted by the spectacle of action to not notice immediately the puzzling results of what should have been a uniformly devastating gun barrage on the alien space stations picketing their homeworld.

"Weapons Control- verify battery tracking with your firing solution on primary targets. Why do the targets remain?"

"Command, Weapons Control-. Liege, our firing solution is consistent with the target plot- but we have negative impacts. We are checking target acquisition and turret training systems now."

Iyos thought for a horrible moment that perhaps her irrational fears about the norghil members of her crew might not be as irrational as she had convinced herself of them being.

A report from another duty section, equally crewed by norghil assured her that she was not witnessing the opening of an elaborate mutiny-suicide pact conceived of by her "improved" norghil crew.

"Command, Sensor Control-. Liege, narrow band sensor scans of the target positions are revealing- shadows are the only way I can describe them. We may be firing on a false image-."

Iyos knew the solution to this problem immediately, unsophisticated as it was.

"Weapons Control, discontinue directed salvo fire on targets that have not yielded confirmed hits. Switch to broad pattern fire on those targets and rapid-fire the guns. Reset your firing solutions on detected impacts!"

"Yes, Liege!"

The orderly pattern of outgoing fire from Destroyer 2913 dissolved into a scattered spray of energy weapon fire as the ship's guns became an extension of its sensory systems.

There was a moment's humbling that came with not being able to perform so simple a task as identifying and engaging a target after seasons of planning and training. A sense of pride followed quickly for Iyos though, that she had recognized the failing and improvised a solution in the span of seconds- and an appreciation of the resolve being displayed by the crew.

They were in the fight now, and not showing signs of being frustrated or dissuaded by the unexpected.

Iyos wondered if Trefna would have shown the same resilience.

There was the disquieting fact however that within the first minutes of the first battle of the campaign- a campaign so meticulously planned for and rehearsed- that the enemy had displayed a capability that had not even been conceived of.

Iyos was suddenly aware that her inclination to charge into the attack and drive into the enemy could, under the circumstances, be an ill-advised mode of operation.

There was now a question of what other abilities the aliens had that she and the Te'Dak Tohl were unaware of.

Trefna's meticulous planning had no allowances for the unexpected.

Compensating took place at Iyos' level and with the commanders of the other ships around her.

This was battle now- and survival, and more importantly victory was dependent upon skill, cunning, and the intangible whims of Fate.

A.R.M.D. II Space Platform,

"Archer 42"

The hangar deck of an A.R.M.D. II space platform had never resembled what Kroft had considered the conventional definition of a "hangar".

Hangars on ground installations and even to some extent the hangar decks aboard larger REF spacecraft were open, expansive spaces. Their functional design and operational flow centered on the aircraft they serviced much like ladies in waiting around a Regis.

Hangar decks on A.R.M.D. II platforms had always had the feel of a factory production line to Kroft- a high-tech production line, granted- but a production line nonetheless.

Aircraft when not actively in use were kept in a maintenance/storage compartment at the center of the station in "racks" not completely dissimilar from those one might expect to find in a large warehouse with the exception of bracing and anchoring gear designed to keep the inactive craft secure until they were called for.

When the call came, automated hoists and shuttles extracted and ferried the war machines from their berths through heavy, flash-proof airlocks into the "tube room" where aircraft was married to armament by yet more automated gear and was received and inspected by their pilots.

While the spaces and equipment were painstakingly designed for efficiency, and the movements of machines and deck crews carefully choreographed- there was something coldly industrial about the process. It was a production line for effectively turning out slaughter.

Kroft could only equate the sensation she felt at seeing it each time to a scene from Metropolis in which the distinctions between flesh and machine were blurred and blended.

But wasn't this the Faustian proposition accepted by Man in adopting Robotechnology?

The sensation production line slaughter was still with Kroft as she hurried, trying not to look panicked, from the pre-flight room to the deck of Tube Room- Port Three. The sensation was with her still, but muted by the numbing effects of sheer terror and waning mild intoxication.

She and the other pilots who had prepared themselves quickly for flight in the locker room had done so with minimal conversation and only a few obligatory attempts at bravado and humor. Kroft was certain it was for the same reason.

No pilot ever felt fear for themselves of course, because it was always something that happened to someone else.

If there was fear it was fear for those who would not be "strapping in" in a Veritech cockpit within moments to do battle. They were impotent in their own defense- dependent upon others.

It was fear for those that the pilots had left on Earth and who had become known to the other pilots of the squadron by photo and story and shared letter- and on rare occasions when families had come together during periods of leave or rotation.

Kroft felt fear that grew and spread like creeping vines fro- the uncertainty of what was happening on Sol's fourth planet while so much was unfolding near to the third.

The tube room was alive with activity at a frenzied pace. Aircraft handlers, ordinance crews, and deck personnel worked in a near blur but retained an air of control that kept the sense of hazard minimal despite the rate at which tasks were being executed.

All of the tasks, of 39 NCOs and station crew- some as young as 18 or 19 years of age- centered around the three Alpha Veritechs locked in their shuttle frames and in place over the launch tube apertures in the deck.

As Kroft located her fighter situated over Tube 7, she found that the ordinance crew was in the process of inserting fuses into the four MAPM-7 Basilisk missiles attached to the Alpha's hard-points. Kroft had championed the addition of external weapons mounts to the Alpha platform with many others- but at the moment when events seemed to vindicate her efforts, there was far less gratification than she had expected.

Maybe it was that four Basilisks seemed a pittance against the force that rumors had already told the pilots of.

"Goddamn if this doesn't beat all-!"

Kroft had barely noticed her wingman Lt "Snuffy" Dane until he had muttered the words that seemed grotesquely understated.

"Yeah, don't it though?", was all that Kroft found herself able to reply to the statement before regaining her focus, "Get on my wing as soon as we're clear of the tube. I don't expect bandits to be waiting, but they can't be far off."

"I'm the guardian angel on your shoulder, boss.", Snuffy said as he parted ways with the CO and headed for his own fighter that was next down the line.

Kroft made a quick, cursory examination of her fighter from the tail to the nose as she walked up along the port wing outside of the shuttle frame. She had worked with the crews who had just completed prepping her aircraft throughout the course of her tour on Archer 42, and they had never failed in even the smallest of details in readying her ship for flight.

Saucer-eyed as they all were, there was no reason to suspect that they would begin now- and moreover, Kroft was now feeling the pressing weight of time.

Moments spent on deck were moments not spent closing with the enemy- so contrary to standard practice, she opted for only the most minimal visual inspection.

There was a heightened sense of urgency as Kroft's plane captain helped her into her cockpit and began to work with her on her straps and suit attachments. There was no small talk this time as though any possible distraction from what the pilot was about to engage in would have dire consequences.

As Kroft secured her helmet to the collar of her pressure suit, the plane captain tapped on the top of her head.

"You getting air?"

Kroft nodded and gave the thumbs up- her vocal cords were not working properly she found and she didn't want to squeak out an answer that sounded in any way feeble.

"Good hunting, Lieutenant- give `em hell."

The plane captain stepped down and away from the cockpit as the canopy came down and settled into place with an assuring click of a good, hard seal. Kroft got a last glimpse of the deck crew looking back at her as the plane captain gave a thumbs-down signal into his palm and the fighter descended smoothly in its shuttle frame down through the launch tube aperture.

The receiving chamber of the launch tube glowed a soft read from the interior illumination as the hatch above slid again into its closed position. Kroft normally considered this her moment of peace in her solitude- now she only felt alone in it. She considered briefly taking out the picture of Kevin, Martin, and Meagan to brace herself up- but there was no time for it.

The logical and trained portions of her brain were taking over now.

There was some cold comfort in that.

Kroft touched the "START" icon on her main MFD and observed carefully the processes as the fighter came to life around her.

"Tube Seven Shooter, this is Raven- I'm coming on-line now. Engine start is good port and starboard. Life support is green and air supply on the top peg. Nav is go-. Coms and InfoLink are go-. Radar and IFF are go-. Weapons master safety is on, and master arm switch is safe. –Put me into space."

"Copy that Raven. Power up and stand-by."

A small signal lamp just over the launch tube began to flash yellow as the air that had not been pumped back into the station's circulation system was evacuated and the inner tube doors were opened. Kroft eased the throttles of her fighter up to the firewall and felt the vibration and strain of her ship against the shuttle frame clamps.

As the name implied, the shuttle frame was at its simplest function a bracing structure connected to the magnetic rail shuttles of the launch tube that carried the Veritech down the tube's 75-meter length, and would open at its termination like a clam shell to release the fighter into space.

At this moment though, it acted as an arresting force until the magnetic catapult operator, or "shooter" saw fit to release Kroft from Archer 42's grip.

The flashing yellow signal turned a solid green that meant a moment until-

Kroft was slammed back into her seat that she had already pressed herself into as the magnetic rail shuttles and thrust from her own fighter cooperatively hurled her through the featureless black of the launch tube toward the star-dotted patch of space that marked the end of the tube's run.

The launch tube and Archer 42 were left behind in literally the blink of an eye, and as the Alpha's acceleration stabilized, Kroft found herself lighten into the feather-like state of weightlessness that was unique to space flight. This was the only facet of this sortie that promised to be "normal" though, Kroft suspected. "Normal" was about to be redefined.

Kroft's eyes, keen by nature and trained to observe and quickly assess picked up almost immediately on the flash and zip of outgoing energy weapon fire from A.R.M.D. II platforms in the defense constellation.

It was not until a heavier enfilade began to reply, seemingly from the void itself, that the reality and not just the fear of the moment set its teeth into Kroft.

"Shit- we're next.", Snuffy muttered, speaking the exact thought that all combatants had a silent agreement not to voice.

"Not without a fight first.", Kroft replied, wanting to be more coarse in her correction of her wingman There was no point in escalating the stress of the moment though. She would correct him later.

The last thought was darkly amusing to Kroft even as she thought it.

"Archer 42, this is Blue Banshee Leader, we're going to need a vector to get into this fight."

"Copy that Banshee Leader. At this time you're ordered to take the fighter group fifty kilometers off from the station and orbit to await further orders-."

Kroft's first instinct was to ask for a repeat of the orders given- even though she had heard them quite clearly. She had been dressed for the ball and was now not being allowed onto the dance floor.

The explanation she was wanting came to her after a moment's thought.

The fight was not yet hers to have- or any of the hundreds of pilots who like she were now in a holding pattern. The enemy was still too far out, and to advance past the sphere of the A.R.M.D. II constellation was to fly into the teeth of the beast as it chewed at both sides with the escalating exchange of fire.

No- the only sensible thing to do, if battle allowed a "sensible thing", was to wait for the fight to reach them.

"Roger that Archer 42, we're withdrawing to orbit. Banshees, form up in column by loose deuce on me and follow- will designate our orbit area by InfoLink. Fierce Fowls, you're in trail-."

Kroft randomly picked an empty patch of space the ordered distance from Archer 42 and marked it with a few taps of her fingers on her navigational MFD as a rallying point. One area of the void was as good as another- the critical element was that it kept her and her pilots out of the duel between the heavy units that was at most minutes away.

Oddly a sense calm and order had returned to Kroft.

She had orders to execute and command to occupy her mind for now.

The demons would surely return at some point when the Archer 42 fighter group was circling lazily, awaiting the fight. The wondering would come back about Kevin, Martin, and Meagan like Amanda Kroft's own personalized hell that was the long period of waiting for the first moments of sheer terror that was war.

"-Pardon sir, you want me to what?", Senior Master Chief O'Toole asked- not in insubordination, but genuine shock.

Queffle received the nuclear arming key from Master Chief Phelps and Petty Officer Agra who had both been required to open the dual-combination safe that had contained it.

"You heard me Chief-.", Queffle repeated feeling himself short of breath from a growing tightness in his chest. Not panic, but the weight of knowing that he had a function to perform and a limited and shrinking amount of time to do it in.

The command center's tactical display was showing a growing number of the other A.R.M.D. II platforms in the constellation engaging in a fight that was heavily in favor of the other side. Queffle had ordered the coms channels to be taken off of the command center's speakers because he did not want his officers and crew to be distracted by the inevitable soundtrack of what he was seeing at glances now on the tactical display.

A.R.M.D. IIs would loose their missiles and engage their guns in defense of the planet, as was their function. Then, having attracted the attention of the enemy, the reply would come down on them like the hammer of God Almighty himself and in short order each engaging A.R.M.D. II would be cut to pieces.

Queffle was close enough to the communications suite to hear through the headsets of the Coms team the confusion and terror of the final moments of people on other stations broadcast out on common command channels. Try as he might, Queffle could not totally block that out and did not want those around him tasked with specific and critical functions to have to try.

"-Get emergency evacuation procedures started.", Queffle continued, "Pull whatever non-essential hands you need to get it rolling by word of mouth and start moving people down to the shuttle deck. Chief Phelps will assist with the launch of our weapons, we'll set everything into automatic mode, and then I'll sound the evacuation alarm."

O'Toole nodded, slightly shocked by the order as a single shot had not been fired or received yet, but understanding as he was seeing and comprehending all of what the CO was privileged to.

The darkly affectionate nickname for A.R.M.D. crews of "The 90 Second Club" for their expected longevity in any kind of a real fight had suddenly taken on a dire reality.

"Aye, sir."

O'Toole vanished from the command center faster than someone of his full figure should have been able to move, and Queffle's last glimpse of him was of the Senior Master Chief appropriating for his new task two crewmen whose battle stations were with damage control in the Operations module of the station.

"Master Chief Phelps, report Pegasus battery status-.", LCDR Queffle ordered moving to the supervisor's console in the command center's fire control suite.

Phelps, a rail-thin and sickly pale, middle-aged man with sharply contrasting dark hair was already performing his role and had procedures for weapons release in progress.

"One-sixty in the pods, sir-. One-sixty showing green and safe.", Phelps reported, "Sensors are tracking passively and Fire Control has identified priority targets by proximity. We just need command authorization for launch, sir."

Without pomp or ceremony, Queffle inserted the large, brass command key that had been retrieved from its safe only moments earlier into its slot in the fire control console. He had done this before, normally turning the key 90° left of center to the hash mark labeled "SIMULATE".

This time, Queffle turned the key 90° right, to- "ENABLE".

"Commander, we show good system enabling across the board. All pre-flight boxes are green.", Phelps announced, "They're ready to fly."

"Tactical offensive recommendation?", Queffle asked attempting to show no great apprehension as the icons denoting enemy warships in Archer 42's defensive sector moved progressively closer with each refresh cycle of the display.

Lt Morris, who had joined the senior officers and staff in the fire control suite was reviewing the output from the Tactical Situation Assessment Computer, replied, "Commander, TSAC recommends an intermediate-range full sortie of our Pegasus missiles for target saturation in depth followed on by gun engagement of proximal targets."

Queffle smirked, "-Damn computer costs ten times what I'll make in a lifetime and it doles out the obvious like it's Yoda's mentor… Lock in the flight programs and release profile."

Morris nodded to the senior fire controller who with a series of keystrokes affirmed the TSAC's recommendation and translated the program to Archer 42's main weapons battery.

"Profile loaded, Commander. Arming run set for twenty thousand kilometers."

"Remove firing safeties.", ordered the CO.

"Removing firing safeties, aye… Firing safeties off."

"Shoot."

Four launcher pods, each the size of luxury home yet virtually weightless in the constant plummet of orbital flight, had already raised out of their storage niches on extending gimbals. In the face of each launcher, forty muzzles gaped darkly, tracking in deliberate and fine movements a patch of distant sky. Each tube contained a Pegasus Mk -4C ASM, with each electronic mind already contemplating and calculating the interception and destruction of an inbound space cruiser too distant to even be seen by their human masters.

Deep within the A.R.M.D. II station, a decision to commit was made and a trigger closed sending a command out to the weapons riding on electrical impulses.

In rapid succession and with the control and precision only achievable by a computer, each tube in each of the four launchers emitted what appeared to be the gentlest puff of white smoke as the primary rocket stages of each weapon fired sequentially. Missiles ten meters in length sailed free, looking like a swarm of arrows over the fields of Agincourt before their main, sub-light drive engines engaged and carried them off like bolts of lightning into the void.

A Pegasus, no different in configuration or purpose from any of the other 159 of its siblings loosed by Archer 42 followed with single-minded determination the flight path assigned to it. In all of the complexities of computer processors executing line after line of carefully refined and tested code, there was no comprehension by the weapon that it was racing to a goal of its own destruction.

Rapid pulses of electro-magnetic energy searched a pattern in the void looking to confirm a target that the initial guidance and target acquisition programs assured would be there.

A pulse return matching the search parameters came back to the Pegasus, focusing the sensors' efforts and prompting the weapon to make slight alterations in course for an intercept.

The Pegasus penetrated the forward screening units of the Zentraedi assault force, ignoring smaller scout vessels as targets in the pursuit of a single vessel chosen at random by another computer for its position within the task force. Range on target was devoured at a rate that two decades earlier would have been deemed impossible based on the propulsion technologies available.

Even at these great speeds though where actions and reactions were played out in the span of nanoseconds, the Pegasus Mk-4C detected and adjusted for an attempt at evasion by its quarry as its terminal approach.

A Zentraedi Thuverl-Salan Class destroyer, built and operating on behalf of The Robotech Masters since the time when the pinnacle of human flight technology was piston engine driven monoplanes met the Pegasus Mk-4C nearly head-on. The weapon, an incalculable fraction of the size of its target, met and pierced the armored outer skin of the warship with a penetrating shaped charge. The tongue of focused plasma easily broke the surface tension of solid terilium hull and frame, boring through structural elements and interior decks where the bow of the vessel began to slope more dramatically into her midships region.

It was doubtful that the destroyer's crew was even aware of the missile's impact before the nuclear warhead that had ridden through the hull breech in the wake of the shapd charge's plume detonated.

Much of the vessel sublimated with the heat equivalent to a star's corona. What was not instantly rendered gaseous was ripped apart by the pressures generated by the expanding metal vapor and scattered as unrecognizable debris into space.

Destroyer 2913

Action Commander Khlothe was gone, as was Destroyer 7790 that had been both post and home to Iyos since her first memories after her Awakening.

They were gone- officers and warriors whom Iyos knew by name, and those whom she had only come to know by sight and recognized in the corridors.

Gone was the familiar and unique feel of the ship, along with its sounds, smells, and particular quirks that gave the "perfect copy" of every other Thuverl Salan its unique character.

Gone, it was, in the best way a warrior or a ship of the Fleet could hope to pass into oblivion.

Gone in execution of Duty.

And gone in a blink of the eye.

Destroyer 2913 had holding station in trail, high and right of Destroyer 7790 in the advancing wedge formation when Khlothe's vessel had been hit.

More accurately, Destroyer 2913 had had this vantage point to witness the flash that had filled the viewscreen and cast long shadows over the command deck at the transitional moment for Destroyer 7790 between being a functional participant in battle, and then a churning, rolling cloud of burning metal vapor.

It was cleaner death- a better death for a Warrior than many were fortunate enough to have- certainly better than languishing in agony and expiring from wounds, or being torn to bits by Invid.

Fate had favored Action Commander Khlothe in this way.

And Iyos found that this distinction was not making the least bit of difference in the reaction welling up in surges from her warrior's core.

"Nuclear weapon technology-.", Iyos' first officer, Berr said with an indignant tone of distaste- as though Destroyer 7790 had been felled by a sling and stone.

"-Uunsophisicated."

Berr, also a former tactical actions officer from Destroyer 7790, had not been Iyos' first choice for a second-in-command. He was competent, but his imparting of the obvious as though it was profound wore relentlessly at Iyos' patience.

"-But effective-.", Iyos added, finding herself sounding winded as though having just run the length of her command.

Action Commander Khlothe was gone- meaning a void had been opened at the top of the chain of command.

Iyos forced her eyes to traverse the short distance from the viewscreen to the tactical display to assess what other losses the 5121st Destroyer Squadron had suffered.

Alarmingly, five vessels were missing from the late Khlothe's command- abscesses in the advancing wedge gaping now where identifying icons had been a moment before.

And the 5121st was not the only unit to have suffered clear losses. Trailing squadrons, advancing staggered parallel columns showed holes also where ships should have been in their formations.

"Communications-.", Iyos proclaimed before the thinking of it had fully run its course through her brain, "-Send to the squadron that I am assuming command…"

This may or may not have been a breech in the order of succession to Khlothe's former position- but Iyos was sure that if there was a surviving officer with seniority over her, command- and its responsibility- would be quickly wrested from her.

"Order all units to break station and proceed on mission on the course of the commander's choosing."

"Yes, Liege!", came the reply from the communications officer on the command deck as the orders were relayed.

Iyos' edict was completely symbolic by this point and only legitimized what the surviving commanders and their destroyers were already executing. Freed of the obligation to hold station in a formation, each ship was free to act first in its own defense.

Based on how quickly Khlothe and five other commanders had been taken by the alien defenses, Iyos was uncertain as to how much her first order would matter-.

But it gave each unit a better individual chance.

"Helm, institute random and radical zig-zagging in both axis to our next objective waypoint -. Do not provide them a steady target!"

"Acknowledged, Liege!"

"Sensor Control, find me a target to shoot back at!"

A.R.M.D. II Space Platform,

"Archer 42"

Lieutenant Commander Queffle watched as the last weapon track representing one of the Pegasus missiles fired by his station found its target- absorbing the target icon into a flashing orb (the "kill bubble") that depicted a warhead detonation.

Twenty-three seconds.

It had been twenty-three seconds between the moment when the fire control officer had closed the launch trigger and when the last weapon had completed its programmed flight.

131 kills.

11 misses- where the weapons could not acquire and intercept an alternate target before exhausting their fuel and self-destructed by program.

8 intercepts with weapon malfunction resulting in failure to detonate.

All was silent in the command center.

Knowing the statistics and specifications on Zentraedi warships well, LCDR Queffle was aware in a distant way that he and the three other individuals directly involved in the launching of the weapons had just killed more sentient beings in a matter of seconds than had been killed in many human wars.

It did not register in any emotional way though.

It was not supposed to, and in truth there was no time for such a reaction.

Archer 42's individual tally was mirrored with minor deviation by the other A.R.M.D. II platforms in the defense constellation's hemisphere. Per prediction and war game simulation, there was significant decimation apparent in the Zentraedi force's lead elements.

The realization and accuracy of this prediction was blunted somewhat in the satisfaction it brought to Archer 42's crew because the prophecy of this particular scenario had not fully played out yet.

Archer 42- the constellation's hemisphere as a whole- had inflicted almost unthinkable carnage on the hostile force- but the gaps opened in the alien lines were already beginning to close and any indication of casualties suffered by the Zentraedi was diminished by their numbers remaining.

The analogy of trying to sweep back an ocean wave with a push-broom crossed Lieutenant Commander Queffle's mind.

Another analogy that came to mind was that the A.R.M.D. II constellation was a heavy weight boxer with a single, powerful punch to him.

That punch had been thrown and had landed a solid blow- bloodying the nose of the Zentraedi, and even showing some signs of mildly stunning them.

The effect would wear off though, and all knew that the battle would then take on a radical change of course.

"We're done here.", Queffle announced calmly, but with the volume and conviction to convey his sincerity to his subordinates without having to repeat himself.

"Chief Phelps, engage barrier system and lock our guns and Ballista batteries into auto-fire mode- prioritize targets by proximity."

"Aye sir."

Queffle looked at his XO, saying, "Mr. Morris, sound the general evacuation alarm. All hands are to abandon post. Let's get the hell out of here before they start to hit back-."

"Aye sir."

The GS-95 Robotech Factory

Well disciplined chaos.

Paradoxical as the term sounded, even in his head, it was the only description that Petty Officer Orson Cobb could conjure as he ran with Petty Officer Thatcher- and a pack of over eighty officers, NCOs, enlisted- and even a number of contractors- through the broad main corridor of this module of the GS-95.

As the corridor joined with connecting passages and companionways, bodies both uniformed and in civilian contractor attire would split off as well as join the "stampede".

That was another good word, Cobb found himself thinking- stampede- and perhaps more appropriate than disciplined mayhem.

The pack, that at a glance now contained both human and indoctrinated Zentraedi, had a collective sense of direction and urgency in their movement. And like the mass, panicked movement of cattle- there was the danger of being trampled underfoot should one not keep up or stumble.

Herd… Wasn't it a herd then and not a "pack"? Wolves "packed", cattle herded to the-.

Cobb stopped the thought before he could think it to completion.

He had a ship to get back to,.

Cobb could not even recall how long he had been running, or the point at which he had started. A personnel tram- the system of which ran constantly in the massive station- had carried him and Thatcher as far as the junction between the core module of the Factory and the connective arm of this one.

Whether it was "fortunate" or not, was yet to be seen but they had stumbled off the tram along with around a hundred other personnel just as the massive blast doors were beginning to close. Had they not been on that tram, or had the multi-carriage conveyance been forty-five seconds later in arriving, then the two Trackers would have been hopelessly separated from the Factory module in which their ship, the Gordon P. Samuels was moored for rotation into the repair yard.

At least now, if they could keep from being run down by their fellow starfarers, they had a chance to get aboard before-.

Before what?

The thought had not crossed Cobb's mind until this moment- but what exactly was the Samuels going to do from a slip in the repair yard?

Something… Anything…. Who knew?

The "who" who knew and would decide was Commandeer Devereaux.

If she had to push the Gordon P. Samuels out of the spacedock doors herself and then throw rocks from the foredeck at the enemy, Devereaux would have her ship in the fight. Cobb knew that much.

The only real question was whether he and Thatch would be able to get aboard to be part of the action.

As the jetty opened into the dockyard that serviced half a dozen repair slips, the crowd around Cobb and Thatcher dispersed into three almost, equal-sized groups that deviated in the directions of the three ships being serviced on the yard.

It was as the group belonging to the Samuels bore left toward the main gangway accessing their ship that Cobb noticed that for the second time in the evening he and Thatch were in the company of Lt Randall and his Star Streaks.

-Most of them anyway.

If there had been an air of superiority about the fighter squadron commander and his officers earlier over Cobb and Thatcher from whom they had stolen a promising evening, there was now concrete evidence of equality- at least in terms of their situation.

Faces red and sweating with the exertion of running, hair horribly unkempt- they were every bit the image of men caught off guard as the two sensormen they now were keeping pace with.

Cobb had never been a great believer in karmic "pay-backs"- but in a moment both sadistic and woefully removed from the gravity of unfolding events- he found himself wishing sincerely that the alarms had started to sound just as things had begun to get really engaging for Randall.

"C'MON DAMNIT! We're droppin' lines!"

The warning came from inside the inner doors of the station-side gangway airlock connecting the Samuels to the GS-95 Factory-. A Seaman First Class who was likely all of nineteen but looked all of twelve with fear was beckoning with broad swipes at the air from inside the Factory-side airlock.

Fear may have exaggerated the seaman's youthful appearance, but had not embellished in the least the urgency of his warning.

The airlock doors were beginning to slide close.

Once shut, whether it was by fifteen meters of gangway or fifteen light-years of space, those members of the crew not aboard the Samuels would be severed from the ship.

Peculiar as it was to Cobb, the prospect of missing the moment he'd drilled and trained for- of failing in his obligation to his shipmates- was more terrifying than the near certainty of full-scale fleet action.

The crowd around Cobb and Thatcher surged collectively at the seaman's warning- finding that reserve of strength needed to run the last stretch in an all-out dash.

The mass of Samuels' crew crushed and ground into one another as they funneled through the shrinking aperture of the closing airlock doors

In this manner, Cobb found himself swallowed by the gangway beyond- and carried at a running pace, stumbling through the airlock of the Gordon P. Samuels. Confronted there by a bulkhead after only a short span of corridor, enlisted, NCOs, and officers alike mashed into a panting heap not unlike a clumsy pile-up in an improvised back-lot game of football.

Unflustered and seemingly amused despite the unfolding crisis, the Marine who had been standing watch at the ship's lock simply greeted all with a general-

"Welcome aboard…"

SDF-3

"What do you mean, not cleared to leave port?"

Vice Admiral Lisa Hayes-Hunter among her many well developed skills and abilities had the ability to convey great displeasure with only a phrase or a brief hold in her icy stare. Even if the displeasure was not directed at the individual on the receiving end of the words or gaze, it was universally agreed to be among the more unpleasant experiences that human flesh was heir to.

It was Captain Julian Hollenkamp's turn to "feel the freeze" (as staff discretely put it), and in his reply from his place on the bridge, one was aware that the effect of Hayes-Hunter's displeasure was not diluted by the conveyance over intercom.

"Fleet Command has denied our request to depart, Admiral. We are instructed to hold position and stand by for further instruction."

The Combat Information Center of SDF-3 crackled with the energy expected of a ship preparing to leave port and readying to do battle. There was a frenzy of activities that seemed to blend together in an incomprehensible jumble- of checklists being run and system functionality being verified. Despite all of the indications of chaos, each activity was focused on a particular task contributing to a common goal.

That goal however was being blocked by an exterior force that no shipboard procedure or flash of improvisation could offset or overcome.

SDF-3's crew was sprinting toward remaining bottled up.

Standing across the CIC's central tactical display from Hayes-Hunter, and also quite visibly frustrated through the layers of holographic imagery between them was her husband- Lieutenant General Rick Hunter.

Lieutenant General Hunter's frustration could not be said fairly to equal that of Vice Admiral Hayes-Hunter- a condition whose weight Hunter was only now beginning to feel.

Lisa was separated from action and execution of her duties only by the order to deploy.

He, on the other hand, had in a moment been removed completely from the equation of battle.

Before frames had begun to be fixed to the main structural girders of SDF-3, Hunter had been involved heavily with Breetai, Lisa, and an immediate staff of hundreds in the advanced planning of the "expedition" to Tirol- the home world of The Robotech Masters.

Once deployed, Lisa would facilitate all of the Fleet activities required to execute the expedition plan- but overall operational command was Hunter's.

In the time it had taken tonight to identify a Zentraedi assault on Earth- those operational plans and the years of effort required to produce them had been swept aside- rendered moot.

Lieutenant General Rick Hunter was no longer an operational commander.

He was not even a billeted fighter pilot anymore.

He was a three-star observer until the situation clarified and a new role could be found for him.

.

There were larger issues at hand than intellectual effort lost and matters of professional self-worth though. There was the real possibility that in the time that The United Earth had been hastily planning a "preemptive" attack on The Robotech Masters to shift the battlespace, and in that the nature of the conflict- that The Masters may have been planning something similar.

Though too early in the fight to determine the strategic intent of the attack, the possibility that this was some sort of spoiling action was as feasible as any other.

Determining intent and operational objective required more information than what was available now, and in fact both intent and objective of the enemy were low on the scale of importance.

What was of prime importance was the developing battle and the enemy's ability to influence or direct it.

Earth and satellite-based tracking systems were showing a formidable Zentraedi force- more than intelligence had predicted was remotely possible- within and just beyond Lunar orbit.

Nearly a thousand were being tracked, all of either the Thuverl-Salan destroyer class, or the considerably smaller but still lethal Salan Class of scout vessel.

More alarming than the overall number of vessels now occupying the most critical region of Sol System space, was the exercised and methodical staging of their movements in approaching the Earth. There were no sudden thrusts toward the planet, no berserker-style outlashings by individual commanders as could sometimes be seen with Zentraedi when revenge was a motive for battle.

The first waves of Zentraedi to de-fold and advance had had done so with the clear purpose of engaging and eliminating the A.R.M.D. II defense constellation. Per their intended role in Earth's defense, the space platforms had loosed a massive and devastating volley of Mk-4C Pegasus missiles upon the aliens- inflicting crippling, and in some defense sectors total losses in the ranks.

Only the fact that Zentraedi reinforcements were folding in as the first wave was bludgeoned and continued to fold in prevented the actions of the A.R.M.D. IIs from being characterized as a devastating repulse of the enemy. The fighting spirit had not left the platforms, though their full complement of primary weapons had, and the battle had quickly shifted to a gun duel in which the platforms were woefully outmatched.

The minutes since the first exchange of energy salvos had seen the numbers of the A.R.M.D. IIs rapidly and steadily wither as station after station was knocked out of action with metronome-like regularity.

Still, there was no frenzy to the Zentraedi assault- no undisciplined reaction to the growing scent of proverbial blood in the water.

Instead the methodical assault continued, becoming a "clearing" action as the A.R.M.D. constellation was pulverized over the Earth's darkened hemisphere and continued with the approach of the Zentraedi vessels.

Keen to the tactics of space warfare and planetary assault, Vice Admiral Hayes-Hunter noted how the leading Zentraedi units were positioning themselves to engage the A.R.M.D. IIs that were now in the lee of the Earth, but that would be rising soon in orbit over the planet's horizon. In this way, the Zentraedi force would only have to deal with one trans-latitudinal "line" of viable platforms at a time.

The mental image that came to Hayes-Hunter's mind was that of peeling an orange. Once the pulpy flesh of the fruit had been exposed in one section, as was now being accomplished by the Zentraedi assault force on the Earth, the remaining skin was easily stripped away.

This tactical scenario did not render the A.R.M.D. IIs in the Earth's lee helpless or combat ineffective by any means. This scenario had been envisioned as a possibility and planned for, and the plan for that contingency was going into effect even now.

Parabolic missile shots, arching over the planet's poles or sweeping around the Earth's lines of latitude like great haymaker punches thrown in a street brawl were being made with regularity and in increasing numbers.

The known drawback to this mode of engagement by the A.R.M.D. IIs manifested itself quickly though.

Even at its lowest speed setting, the Mk-4C traveled at a sub-light velocity making its parabolic path from its point of launch over one hemisphere to a target somewhere in the space over the other a lengthy one and very near the weapon's maximum range. The flight programs of weapons were also prone to a higher degree of error because designation and acquisition of defensively maneuvering target vessels was being performed through the remote sensor assets of InfoLink and not those of the launching A.R.M.D. II platform.

Missiles reaching the end of their run found that targets were not where they had been anticipated to be, and with little fuel remaining to execute a target search many Mk-4Cs passed through the kill box without acquiring a target and self-destructed harmlessly in space beyond.

As the crew in SDF-3's CIC watched in real time, the trans-hemispheric Pegasus attack by the surviving A.R.M.D. IIs of the defense constellation was being staged in smaller volleys. For every Mk-4C that found a target, one would miss.

Reliability in the monitoring the battle- literally on the other side of the world- was reduced as ground tracking stations and orbiting sensor platforms were reduced by the Zentraedi. Fortunately and with lingering collective memories of the Zentraedi Holocaust, only the half-dozen ground tracking stations and a number of conspicuous military and civilian targets in North and South America had been subjected to orbital gunfire.

This was a puzzling relief to Admiral Hayes-Hunter who saw on her tactical display a force of Zentraedi ships within gun range that could have as easily been systematically razing two continents to the ground.

Open coms channels on SDF-3's CIC speakers, and multiple status boards showing available units that could be utilized by the flagship's Cooperative Combat System spoke of scores of REF vessels, building toward hundreds that were powering up and readying for battle.

Like SDF-3 many of them were still at mooring.

Also like SDF-3, none appeared to be making any real progress in leaving port.

The ship's chronometer and the tactical display tied into the greater InfoLink network showed Hayes-Hunter that the GS-95 Factory was twenty-three minutes from entering night and the field of fire of the assaulting Zentraedi force. This was assuming that the Zentraedi did not elect to change the direction of their attack to focus on the GS-95.

In either case, moments that could have been used to sortie the Fleet were being squandered in woeful inactivity.

The name, turned symbolic phrase of Pearl Harbor came to Hayes-Hunter's mind.

"Admiral-.", the CIC communications officer said from her post, "Fleet Operations on the line-."

Hayes-Hunter pointed vigorously at her post by the tactical station, "Pipe it here!"

Almost without hesitation, the Admiral stabbed at the control to open the channel on the intercom to speaker.

"This is Vice Admiral Hayes-Hunter- who am I speaking to?"

There was a pause and then the stern reply.

"This is CNO Admiral Coolidge, Vice Admiral-."

Surprised and mildly shocked that at a moment of crisis the Chief of Naval Operations was calling directly, Hayes-Hunter also recognized that she was at the disadvantage of one star in arguing her position.

"Admiral, sir-.", Hayes-Hunter said, choosing her words and tone carefully at the non-verbal behest of her husband across the holographic table from her, "-SDF-3 is fully armed, crewed, and powered-up to depart and I am being denied permission by the harbor master to move out. –We need to be in this fight, Admiral."

"You need to follow orders, Vice Admiral.", Coolidge replied evenly- the tension in his voice accented by a sudden and notable pop and hiss of static that only came from the inevitable effect of heavy energy weapon use in the proximity of communications satellites.

"-And the orders are not mine, Lisa… They come from the MCS himself, so they are non-negotiable to either of us."

Coolidge's words were flooring to Hayes-Hunter.

After all of his advocacy for the highly secret SDF-3 construction program, after his keen interest in the ship's specifications and designs, to have Breetai hold her- to hold SDF-3 back at the critical moment was nothing short of dumbfounding.

"Take solace that it's not just SDF-3, Admiral Hayes. General Breetai is holding back all units that are not already engaged."

"Then he has a plan-.", Hayes-Hunter said with equal parts hope and curiosity.

"-And only he knows exactly what it is.", Coolidge said, echoing some of the frustration that Hayes-Hunter was feeling, "We have to trust in that for the moment. Stay on station, Vice Admiral and stand by for further orders. Naval Operations, out."

The channel went dead and with it any chances of arguing her appeal.

"Breetai has a plan.", Lt Gen Rick Hunter assured her, repeating the words Hayes-Hunter found on a loop in her head.

It was assuring because while Breetai was not always right, he had never been wrong.

Hayes-Hunter looked at the tactical display and the movement of the GS-95 toward the terminator. REF vessels outside of the station had flocked to the massive facility like birds to shelter in the face of an approaching storm.

Hayes-Hunter said, trying to sound confident in what was still an enigma to her, "We have twenty-one minutes until we find out what that plan's worth."

A.R.M.D. II Space Platform,

"Archer 42"

Order and discipline was never a question.

The progression of crew, single-file down steep stairways and through narrow deck hatches was without panic- but the sense of fear was omnipresent and growing.

The fear had started, appearing like the first cells of a malignant cancer, just under thirty minutes before with the sounding of the station's general alarm and the proclamation that the alarm was in response to a real threat. Those cells of fear had been kept in check, had been compartmentalized and suppressed within each crew member with the intense focus that came with the performance of duties.

Then, with the completion of duties- the readying of Archer 42 for action, the prepping and launching of fighters, the strict rituals of nuclear weapons release- there was nothing left but the waiting for reciprocation.

The fear was no longer held in balance by activity.

The cancer was no longer being resisted.

It was free to grow in the individual, and with the call to abandon post and the rallying of crew to move to the shuttle deck- the fear was free to spread.

Fear spread, leaping from individual to individual like a brush fire- gaining strength and intensity with each hop.

There was order, and there was no panic- but even the collective and Herculean effort at concealment could not hide the fear felt by all.

It was the fear of only having the task of escape left, and the calculations of obstacles and time between ones' self and escape to occupy the mind.

Three decks, four corridors, and a compartment- that's all.

The mind raced, even going so far in some cases to estimate the number of steps that would be taken between where the thinker stood at that moment and an assigned seat on one of four shuttles now powering up in Archer 42's belly.

And didn't Archer 42 have the advantage?

False position projection and other forms of ECM had been left running full blast.

The station's power was running strong and a cold plasma barrier stood at full integrity between Archer 42 and the guns of the Zentraedi.

All of this was a serious handicap for the dittos to overcome in time required to move down two ladders, to navigate four familiar corridors, and traverse a single compartment.

-Wasn't it?

And then the first particle beam bolt struck.

Not a direct hit by the strong tremble through the station's decks and structure, but likely a glancing blow to the barrier that had not even made secondary contact with the station's outer hull- but a hit nonetheless.

The handicaps in place against the Zentraedi seemed less formidable in that instant- the vastness of space in which a particle beam had to find a relatively small target had shrunken to diameter of a target's outer ring.

Archer 42 seemed to gasp around its crew, though it was the crew in reality that was inhaling sharply. It was the collective flinch to an anticipated blow. It was the false drawing of a "last breath"- only to find that there was still air to breathe.

It was also a sign to the crew that they could expect more, and expect worse.

Hands held the rails of steep ladders a little tighter- not just to offset the possibility of a more violent blow, but also to conceal the palsy of fear that was racking all to some degree.

LCDR Queffle had in his Academy days had met in part the physical education/sports requirements by taking boxing- a gentleman-officer's sport.

He had never had any illusions about being anything but a man of medium stature and build at best- even in his "prime"- but Queffle had decided that he would prove something to himself and to others by entering eagerly a sport dominated by more substantial Midshipmen.

What he had proven in the final analysis was that though a technically proficient boxer, he was distinguished only in his ability to take a beating with determined resistance.

He had learned other things too though- as was the point of the Academy's insistence of many non-academic pursuits. And what had stuck most with Queffle form his boxing experience- besides an odd clicking in his jaw that was courtesy of a sneaky left hook that he had never seen coming- was something that an instructor had told him after his first of many memorable sound beatings in the ring.

You only know the character of your opponent, the character of the fight, and your own character after the first blows are traded.

The A.R.M.D. constellation had landed heavy body blows on the Zentraedi, and the aliens had pressed through salvo fire of nuclear destruction with as little hesitation as had they been walking into a stiff and frigid headwind.

The Zentraedi had then replied measure for measure, giving with every bit as much ferocity as had been shown by their human adversaries- and the A.R.M.D. IIs had quickly massed the "butcher's bill" a platform at a time. Only for the humans (and their indoctrinated Zentraedi allies who comprised a small but measurable percentage of the overall A.R.M.D. force) there was no immediate replenishment of losses- no relief or support had folded in immediately to close the gaps in the ranks.

The decimation effect on the defense constellation was both striking, and permanent.

In the first minutes of the war, both sides had shown their character as Queffle's Academy boxing coach had alluded to.

Both had shown unreserved bravery in the face of peril.

Neither had shown lack of resolve, or had failed in any execution of duty.

The initial tallying of character showed both sides flush and square.

What chilled Queffle's blood was that while "character" was a valued commodity in battle, the Zentraedi invariably waged battles- wars- with the goal of extermination.

This was also demonstration of Zentraedi "character"- and in combat it was the prevailing and determining trait.

LCDR Queffle suspected that he may have been slightly more attuned to being in retreat before a force whose goal was his extermination because he was literally taking up the rear. Whether it was tradition or procedural doctrine, the station CO could not honestly remember at the moment- but he was "last man out".

Senior Master Chief O'Toole stood at the base of the ladder waiting for Queffle, looking much the way his father had when he had climbed to the top of the playground ladder as a young boy. While O'Toole was not there to catch him should he fall, Queffle found the sense of having that safety there reassuring in a remote way.

Foremost on the CO's mind as he descended through the hatch between decks was the urgency he was feeling to leave. Orderly and well-executed evacuation of the station was critical- but it wasn't until the shuttles were free of the station- away from the "bull's eye"- that any meaningful measure of safety was gained.

And that moment was feeling centuries away.

Still, discipline and performance of duty kept Queffle methodical in his task.

Though O'Toole and the section chiefs under him had positively accounted for every member of the station's crew and had shepherded them down through the decks toward the shuttles, Queffle still paused on the ladder with his shoulders level with the deck being evacuated and took a final look to verify that no one was being left behind. Then with a spin of a wheel, he would bring the hatch down, dog it when closed, and continue to the next deck- the last deck to be traversed.

Halfway down the ladder, Archer 42 bucked violently nearly dislodging its commander from his hand and foot holds as a great shudder was felt through the decks. Unaware of any other considerations, the space platform's thrusters fired to offset the kinetic force of a solid hit and to maintain attitude.

The lights remained strong and without even a flicker, but from above and through the muffling effect of decks and sealed hatches, a low metallic groan filtered down to the ears of all and joined many human groans as well.

Queffle found himself thinking analytically, forensically- coldly.

The pressure hull had been penetrated somewhere and the sound was that of the interior bulkheads accepting the new stress of differential pressure. It was a stress that they were designed to withstand.

The sound was not indicative of pain, though a deep-seeded, primal part of the mind wanted to believe-.

"They got us now-."

Senior Master Chief O'Toole's words were no less coldly analytical than Queffle's thought had been- but in what they implied, they seemed indifferent to the CO.

O'Toole was correct though, and Queffle knew it.

Somewhere sensory returns indicative of a "hit" were being relayed to a gunnery officer who had probably been wading through the frustration of identifying a target through waves of ECM and the specters of projected, false sensor images.

There was no mistaking an explosion though, and in moments other guns in a battery- possibly every applicable battery of a warship would be tracked in on Archer 42.

O'Toole's assessment was coldly analytical- but both prophetic and correct.

The enemy had them now.

Queffle felt O'Toole's powerful hands pull him down from the ladder- forcefully but not violently- and press him on toward the final hatch and ladder between them and the shuttle deck as the station continued to rock underfoot with the minor adjustments of attitude thrusters.

The urgency of the situation was now visibly understood by all as the movement down through the hatch was happening quicker and with less space between bodies as they descended. All comprehended what was happening to the upper decks and instinctively all wanted to distance themselves from it.

If there was whimsical attachment to Archer 42, or a sentimental bond that might have prevented the crew from leaving the station- it was not apparent.

A third and fourth blow struck Archer 42, sledgehammer-like. Lights flickered now and the groan of metal turned into a wail that was accompanied by the rattle of spall and debris ricocheting through penetrated compartments and passageways.

Mid-step as Queffle and O'Toole moved toward the final deck hatch, the artificial gravity fluttered and both men found themselves prancing in weightlessness at the moment when their weight should have transferred from foot to foot.

Training took over in both men and they groped for the ceiling that was just out of reach- looking for any purchase and means to control their movements. According to casualty response training- any purchase on a fixed object was better than floating. The theory was great, but achieving the end it professed was proving more difficult than training in a zero-G mock-up had led either to believe.

Queffle found himself making an absurd mockery of the breast-stroke by the strobe of flickering lights and was almost in a position where he thought he could reach a cluster of overhead cable trunking when the bundle was snatched away from his fingertips.

More precisely, the station bucked around him.

Queffle did not recall hearing the impact of the Zentraedi particle beam bolt, but the linear and angular world of the passageway seemed to topple and spin around him like a spectator's view inside of a catastrophe.

That was until another salvo struck.

This one Queffle actually felt more than heard- as invisible hands boxed his ears, but not deafening him enough to dull out the crunch and groan of metal all around.

The sound gained physical reinforcement as the deck lurched up to meet Queffle as though inpatient at waiting to have him slam into it. The corridor quickly became the interior of a tumble-dryer with debris and struggling bodies bouncing between the bulkheads, the deck and ceiling.

Queffle rebounded from a metal surface like an overshot from the three-point line of a basket backboard and found himself in the perfect position to catch a crewman's heel across his left face and jaw. Blood, salty and warm, squirted into his mouth and found its way down the wrong channel of his throat causing him to choke with the sensation of drowning in zero-G. It was also the sensation that kept the commander from passing into unconsciousness as the white and purple bursts of color that filled his vision rapidly faded into dark.

Queffle fully expected to strike a metal surface headlong and slip into the dark completely- but instead, he felt a hand firmly catch his shirt by the collar at the back of the neck and with his returning vision the station commander found himself hauled down through the last hatch onto the shuttle deck.

On the shuttle deck, seamen clung to the trunking and piping of what was now arguably the ceiling by their legs and formed a "bailing brigade" from the shuttle deck side of the hatch back to the shuttle embarkation compartment. As a struggling shipmate would pass close enough to the deck hatch, the first man in the brigade- Seaman Mendez who Queffle recognized from the station's machine shop- would snatch him through and pass him off to the next set of waiting hands and like a bail of water pass each toward the waiting shuttles.

Queffle was vaguely aware of assurances of safety as each set of hands passed him rapidly along to the end of the brigade- a pair of petty officers who pulled the CO into the comparatively brilliant emergency lighting of the embarkation compartment.

"How many left topside, Skipper?!"

Queffle struggled with the question in his head that was still ringing from multiple blows that made him wish for the "tender days' of boxing at the Academy. Looking out into the compartment he had just been handed through, he could see Senior Master Chief O'Toole progressing in the same manner toward him.

Who was he speaking to?- Queffle struggled with the wholly irrelevant question that would not leave him. He saw and spoke to this Senior Chief every day, but his name would not come out of the hazy periphery of his mind now.

Chief Fayouzat- that was it.

"Maybe ten, Chief-.", Queffle replied, putting his hand to the throbbing of his head and pulling it away to find it slick with his own blood.

"We've gotta-."

Archer 42 was tossed as though the Hammer of God had been brought down upon it with all of His might.

A great squeal of rushing air and tearing metal boxed Queffle's ears along with a sudden and noticeable drop in pressure. The sharp pain in from within his eardrums was almost enough to make him miss the fact that the sudden flow of air was sucking him toward the hatch through which he had just been pulled by the improvised bailing brigade.

There was no purchase within reach as Queffle accelerated toward the hatch, feeling like a bullet running the length of a barrel. At an arm's length, when it was clear that he would pass through the center of the hatchway beyond the reach of any bracing point to stop himself- Queffle saw the yellow warning light above the hatch flicker to life as the emergency pressure door snapped shut.

Queffle felt the jolt all along his spine as his face worked with the sealed hatch to stop his forward motion. The heavy thudding of fists on the hatch sounded loudly and formed a savage drum rhythm as faces peered through the small viewing port back at Queffle.

At the center was Senior Master Chief O'Toole's, bright red and tight-lipped like the other faces that drifted in and out of view with their resistance to dropping atmospheric pressure.

Queffle glanced down to where the frame of the pressure hatch met the deck and saw the protrusion of the control box he was looking for. Within was the hydraulic motor that drove the piston that was holding the hatch shut.

"-Fayouzat, open the panel and cut the goddamn hose-!"

The senior chief opened the blade of a pocket knife (still a "standard" piece of gear for seafarers turned starfarers) and clenched the blade in his teeth as he worked at the motor box's access panel release catches with both hands.

Queffle pounded back with his fists on the hatch, yelling back through the viewing port at desperate faces,-

"HANG ON! WE'RE ALMOST THERE!"

"C'mon, Chief!", Queffle barked at Fayouzat, looking down to see his progress.

Queffle could see the viewing port full of faces through the corner of his left eye when another crushing blow was landed upon Archer 42.

He did not feel the impact in the sense that he had felt every other hit taken by the station since the beginning of the exchange- but rather sensed the crushing, mortal blow to his command.

He also saw through the viewport the compartment beyond fill with a radiant light that dissolved and swallowed the familiar faces that had been there a moment before in the instant before the vision in his left eye darkened and the bulkhead collapsed inward at him.

Queffle felt himself punted like a football in a desperate play in the final seconds of a game, and like a football he felt himself sail through the air to be roughly intercepted by a strong set of hands.

He was no longer in the shuttle embarkation compartment aboard Archer 42- he no longer heard the dying groans and shrieks of the station with muffled hearing, nor did he hear the howl or feel the rush of escaping air.

Pressure at his shoulder , at his waist, and over his groin told him he was being secured with restraints into a seat on an escape shuttle- even though the images he was perceiving through the blurred vision of his right eye was not making sense to him yet.

A familiar voice was speaking to someone nearby with authority-.

"We're secure! Let's get gone before this bucket comes apart around us!"

RDF Headquarters,

Yellowstone City

Military Chief of Staff, General Breetai stood near his desk and studied the movements of Zentraedi warships as they were represented in the large holographic display over the briefing table that occupied a portion of his office.

At an instinctive level he had perceived it in the opening minutes of the attack, but observation since had confirmed his fear. The introduction of aggressor units into Earth's defensive sphere was neither rushed nor hap-hazard. There was structure and order to their movements- thought- organization-.

This was not the maddened and reckless assault of one of Dolza's surviving warlords who had scraped together a force with promises of Honor, glory, and bloody revenge.

This was a well-planned, structured deployment of forces by someone else.

The "who" was unimportant at the moment, Breetai knew despite the curiosity that gnawed hungrily at his intellect.

What was critical was what the "who" was doing.

Earth's first lines of defense were now almost spent.

The A.R.M.D. II constellation over the darkened hemisphere was now combat-ineffective as a force, and would be smashed completely out of existence in ten minutes at the current pace of punishment being dealt to it.

Ground-based missile silos- refitted from their original purpose of housing pre-Robotech ICBMs- now stood empty. Their contents, Pegasus Mk-4C rocket-ascent-stage missiles- having been fired at roughly the same time as the opening salvos from the A.R.M.D. II stations- but acting as a "second volley" with the time delay involved in allowing the weapons to escape the atmosphere.

Waves of these missiles regardless of their source had met the Zentraedi advance head-on, while the Moon bases had attacked from within their ranks- and all with a stunning but ultimately futile effect.

For every Zentraedi ship badly damaged or destroyed by a Pegasus missile in the interplanetary space between Earth and Moon, ten de-folded beyond lunar orbit to take its place like the Hydra replacing its severed head.

The Zentraedi had thrown themselves onto the Earth's defenses to sap them, and had while still making steady progress toward the objective itself.

Ground-based gun batteries were now engaged, but as fixed positions were averaging only two to three minutes of operation before being targeted by the Zentraedi vanguard and being reduced to ineffectiveness by counter-fire.

Strangely though, and quite contrary to standard Zentraedi planetary assault doctrine- only active military ground positions were receiving orbital fire- primarily.

If it was peculiar to Breetai that entire regions of the planet were not being saturated with energy weapons' fire to raze them or prepare them for landing operations- it was dumbfounding that particular ground targets that normally would have garnered little Zentraedi interest were being engaged.

Ground-based tracking stations, communications centers, and even civilian power grids were receiving restrained punishment enough to render them useless.

Breetai could only feel muted relief for the civilian population as it seemed that instant obliteration was being traded for a purpose that only the enemy knew at this moment.

This was somehow more disquieting.

These questions were academic at this moment, of course.

More pressing matters had to be attended to.

"General, sir- The President is on the line now.", Colonel Kalehahea, the MCS Administrative Officer said.

The Polynesian officer had his attention drawn in two directions that only in these circumstances could have both been in step with one another. As was his primary function, he still saw to all of the support required for the Military Chief of Staff to perform his duties. At the same time, he was now overseeing the systematic destruction of all of the systems and files in the MCS's office suite required to support those functions.

It was a necessary paradox though, as Breetai had made it clear that his flag would not be remaining at the Headquarters facility long.

"Thank you, Pate´.", Breetai said, reaching over to the phone built into his desk to activate the speaker, "Mr. President, are you hearing me clearly?"

President Valterven replied with his distinctive Swiss accent providing some concealment to the leader's understandable level of anxiety.

"Yes, I am hearing you clearly General-. My Military Advisor tells me that we have not deployed the Fleet to meet the attack-. Explain this."

Breetai replied, confident in his decision, 'Mr. President, to borrow a quote from Earth's own history, if we were to fight now we would only prove our ability to die gallantly. The Fleet, as it stands now, could offer a respectable resistance for a short period of time against the Zentraedi force we are tracking- but victory or prolonged resistance in any meaningful sense is highly unlikely."

"We have confirmed that they re Zentraedi then, and not Robotech Masters or Invid?"

"Yes, Mr. President.", Breetai replied, "We are have positively identified and are tracking just under sixteen hundred Zentraedi vessels inside of Lunar orbit, executing a planetary approach to Earth. We are tracking smaller hostile task forces that are in the process of assaulting from orbit our instillations on the Moon and on Mars. Their pattern of attack and mode of execution strongly suggests a high level of planning. –And Mr. President, they are communicating by the same triple-encryption code you were briefed on. It appears that the threat was more extensive than anyone could have reasonably predicted."

Valterven interjected bluntly, "I understood that the rogue Zentraedi forces had no strong cohesion or organization, General-."

Breetai's response was equally frank, "They do not, Mr. President. We are therefore being attacked by a Zentraedi force whose command was not fragmented by the destruction of Dolza's Imperial Fleet. Their exact identity is of lesser importance right now than what they are accomplishing, Mr. President."

"And that is?"

Breetai surveyed the tactical projection and found that the snare was continuing to close as he expected- progressing as he would have ordered if he had been in the position of the anonymous commander.

"Mr. President, let me state up front that I believe that the purpose of the attack we are under is the landing of an invasion army and not the outright extermination of the Earth's population.", Breetai said with calm, even tone at a measured pace that was urgent but at the same time composed. It was the balance that acknowledged peril without suggesting or provoking panic, and it was a demonstration of the characteristics that had led to Breetai's appointment to and unquestioned retention in his position of Military Chief of Staff.

"We are looking at a spearhead, or vanguard force right now conducting a sweep-and-clear operation on a massive scale- preparing the battlespace for the larger force that has not yet materialized."

Valterven's voice was steadier now in the minor indicators that had shown apprehension to the observant moments before. His questions came pointedly though- blunt inquiry was as much a part of his responsibilities as dispassionate analysis and action was a part of Breetai's.

"How can you be certain of this?"

Breetai grimaced with the dark irony of the moment- the situations that demanded the most certainty rarely allowed for it.

"Nothing in war is certain, Mr. President- however I am confident in my assessment. I recognize the methodology of this attack. It is refined- more carefully planned in the details of its objectives than one might expect from Zentraedi- perhaps- but I recognize the general structure. The enemy has nearly exsanguinated our planetary defenses- paving the road, I believe is the term. When substantial resistance has been quelled, the landing force will materialize and begin that phase of the operation."

"The Earth has been targeted directly though, General-.", Valterven observed in protest.

"Yes.", Breetai agreed readily, "Though in a very limited, restrained execution. Military posts, defensive installations, tracking stations, some critical infrastructure. This is not the attack staged by Dolza's force. This is to soften us enough to allow for the landing of forces. They do not want to destroy us outright-. Either they are looking for something, or their objective is occupation of the Earth itself."

The President's tone showed no signs of elevation by Breetai's surmise. "General Breetai, I'm sure that you can empathize in that subjugation is only marginally preferable to extermination."

Breetai countered quickly, "Marginally preferable is still preferable, Mr. President. War is bearing the unbearable. –But we still have options. And depending upon the core objectives of our enemy, we may have very favorable options."

Options and the implications of deciding on an option and its course of action was familiar to Valterven- this was the sphere in which he thrived. In this moment, it was also a grappling point he could use to actively engage in and affect the developing situation.

"General Breetai, you said that this pattern of attack by the Zentraedi might indicate that their objective is not the Earth itself- but possibly something on it. You meant of course the wreckage of SDF-1?"

Breetai affirmed the President's suspicion immediately, "That is correct, sir. The last contact any organized Zentraedi force had with Zor's Battle Fortress and was able to report back to The Robotech Masters was Dolza's final engagement. Based on no credible, subsequent intelligence and the catastrophic defeat of Dolza's force in the context of the Fortress's supposed capabilities- it is reasonable to speculate that an organized Zentraedi force could be attempting to complete my original assignment."

"That is a high stake wager on questionable odds, General Breetai.", Valterven said with clear reservation.

"And entirely irrelevant, Mr. President- for the moment.", Breetai agreed in part.

"What are you suggesting, General Breetai?", Valterven asked, driving to the point of the matter and the only issue worthy of discussion at the moment.

"Mr. President", Breetai said, speaking plainly as he could think of no way to soften the central point of his assessment- and finding no potential benefit in attempting to, "-We have already lost this battle. Our best- our only viable course of action to ensure the continuation of this civilization is to withdraw from this fight, to gather the required intelligence on our enemy for meaningful analysis, and to plan a response making best use of the assets we still have at our disposal. That begins with and depends heavily upon maintaining a functional Government and a viable war production complex."

Valterven's tone became leaden in spirit, but accepting.

"I fear that I know what you are about to recommend, General Breetai."

Breetai replied solemnly but firmly, "It gives me no pleasure, Mr. President- however my best recommendation- the only recommendation I can make with any degree of confidence in the eventual, acceptable outcome is the immediate and full implementation of the Exodus Contingency."

Valterven was silent for a moment- an interminable moment it seemed to Breetai. Long enough for the Military Chief of Staff to fear that the President might be contemplating another decision.

Valterven replied though with equal parts resolve and resignation, "General Breetai, Earth may very well curse our names for all eternity for this-."

Breetai was unaffected, "If Fate is kind, there will be an Earth to curse us that long."

"Order Exodus.", Valterven said as plainly as asking for cream in his tea, "We will reconvene aboard the GS-95 when the proper Government and military entities have assembled."

"Yes, Mr. President.", Breetai replied, now having orders to carry out, "Your Guard should have you and your family in transit in minutes."

"Breetai-."

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"I know that Exodus is a highly conditional plan-. With the Zentraedi attack advancing at the pace it is- do you feel we have a chance of clean execution?"

Breetai forced what he knew to be the "best case" scenario given the situation, "The window of opportunity is closing, Mr. President- but we are well within the threshold. I will see you aboard the GS-95, sir."

"Then God be with you until then General-. And then with all of us."

"And Fate with you, Mr. President."

The secure line on which the President and MCS had been speaking closed with a heavy, nearly mechanical click like the punctuation mark of an irreversible decision.

"Pate´-.", Breetai said as the tactical display continued to show the systematic progression toward the inevitable, "You heard the President's order. Execute the Exodus Contingency."

"Yes, General."

Mars

Some missions contributed to achieving a specific tactical or strategic objective of a campaign.

Others supported tactical or strategic gains- garnering muted glory from the arguable point that they prevented interference with or disruption of an operation's core and critical activities.

The 1797th Chal-Noth Shock Division was engaged in the latter.

Action Commander Nikhur, his officers, sub-officers and warriors knew that this was the mission that Fate and Command had elected to assign them, and dutifully they had trained relentlessly to know their objective for the purpose of neutralizing it.

The division, which with the growth of the 7th Grand Army had suddenly taken on a 30% composition of norghil had deployed to a distant world- thousands of light-years away- for the purpose of exercise. Similar gravitational, atmospheric, and geographic characteristics between that world and his- even to the point of a comparable mountain to stage assaults against- had made it ideal for the purpose.

Still- despite the constant occupations and exhaustions of training, there was a lingering sense of exile felt by the 1797th- and felt more acutely by none than by Action Commander Nikhur.

Nikhur was a competent officer and an acceptable leader of warriors in combat.

His rate of successes, casualty figures, and overall performance in previous campaigns all fell within the average.

This was neither excellent nor disgraceful.

What Nikhur had come to realize though was that to neither excel nor to be disgraced was to not be distinguishable.

What Nikhur had also come to realize was that to not be distinguishable was to become an assumed factor or variable in the eyes of Command- like the percentage of operationally capable Regults in a unit, or the effective rate at which a ship's air purification system could recycle a given volume of air.

Mediocrity was to be a known and constant value in an operational equation- and not a critical variable.

It could be argued that this assignment was a result of being labeled as such.

Nikhur had come to the belief early on in his own life that a leader- any warrior, really- was made by two factors: his own skills and aptitudes, and the opportunity to demonstrate them.

Nikhur was certain of the first factor in himself, but the second had always seemed to elude him like an agile enemy force resisting engagement.

It was a factor- an element- in his composition that that would have to come to reckoning before he could reach and be recognized for his potential.

Inglorious as this assignment was on the fourth world of an alien star system, this was the best opportunity Nikhur had been given in some time to earn consideration for the next prestigious assignment.

Certainly this was a possibility Nikhur recognized- especially given the level of resistance that had already been shown by the aliens.

Preliminary reconnaissance had identified the presence of the alien outpost on this fourth world early in the planning stages of Supreme General Krymina's campaign. A muted signature of Reflex energy detected almost by accident in a place where no such trace of Robotechnology had any right to be.

Cautious and closer investigation had revealed that there was indeed an alien presence that had imbedded itself into the solid rock of the planet's largest mountain- an engineering endeavor that both provided concealment from all but targeted surveillance and shelter from direct orbital fire.

It had also posed possibilities that could not be fully brought to determination until the moment of action arrived.

Indications were that this outpost was the solitary operational one on the fourth planet- the evidence of an earlier outpost that had been destroyed during Khyron's participation in Breetai's original campaign to seize Zor's ship being a crater that still crackled with the bio-ethereal energy of a Reflex furnace intentionally over-run to the point of detonation. But it was an alien outpost, and being of undetermined purpose had to be considered a threat- even if a remote one.

Indeed, the existence of the outpost here was the only factor that gave any value ot an otherwise strategically insignificant body of inhospitable rock orbiting an unremarkable star.

The fourth world was too far from the third to provide any reasonable position for defensive operations of the alien homeworld. It's orbital path and relative positioning to the third, inhabited world even made it of minimal value as a tracking or early warning station monitoring the great reaches of space for threats. Even its value as a staging area for military operations was offset distance from the third planet and the logistical difficulties that was presented.

Still- there was an outpost here.

It was an outpost of undetermined purpose, and in that uncertain designation of purpose, it was a threat.

Threats- even those whose significance were suspected to be minimal could not be afforded indifference when the resources to neutralize them were at hand and in abundance.

So the fate of this outpost had been decided from the moment of its discovery for no other reason than its being, and with so low a level of urgency that its successful neutralization was not even counted amongst the dependencies on which the advance of the greater campaign plan hinged.

It was under these conditions that Nikhur had and his shock division had been assigned.

As Fate would have it though, even in a seemingly trivial assignment on the very fringe of the campaign's opening operational area- there was the potential for something of greater significance to be achieved.

Though Krymina's intelligence staff and operational planners had not been able to attach a significance to this outpost, the aliens clearly assigned some importance to the installation as it had been defended fiercely from the first moments of the assault task force's de-folding and approach.

Ground-based missile and gun batteries, lethal even by Zentraedi standards, had inflicted heavy losses on the landing and picket ships before they had even come within striking range to sortie their transports to land the assault forces. This was why there was only the 1797th assaulting this approach to the alien outpost, and not two divisions.

Four landing ships and seven destroyers in all had been lost before the formerly undetected missile batteries on both of the fourth planet's two moons had been knocked out of action.

The surviving landing ships of the assault task force had reset their orbit to a higher latitude to escape direct fire from gun and missile emplacements on the fourth planet itself as they underwent the vulnerable process of deploying their landing forces.

The remaining destroyers of the squadron assigned to escort the task force, eight in total, meanwhile were forced to absorb the brunt of what the alien defenses had left to offer while "preparing" the target site with orbital fire.

Nikhur and his warriors had been aware in a real sense of where the alien installation was from the dropping of the Re-Entry Transport gangway ramps.

The zip of particle beam fire from supporting destroyers pierced the modeled red sky from seemingly random points. The momentary streak of each radiant blue bolt terminated with an associated flash below the horizon formed by jagged and irregular ridgelines that blocked the assault force's line of sight on the target. The thin atmosphere and the heavy trudge of hundreds of mecha conspired to drown out any sount that might have carried from the focal point of the ongoing devastation, but Nikhur was certain that even through the rumble of his division on the move and the sound insulation of his Glaug Officer's Pod he could hear evidence of the punishment that the alien outpost was being subjected to.

Or perhaps it was just a projection of his mind based on past experience.

The 1797th's advance across broken and irregular terrain had been rapid and uncontested since the moment of de-embarkation from the transport pods. Navigational computers pre-programmed with the critical positions and waypoints of the assault operation kept units in proper step to set the pace that would put the division's leading elements into striking distance of the objective simultaneously- but this artificial guidance was unnecessary. A great, dark mass of dust had since boiled up into the thin air, marring the uniform red hue of the sky. The orbital gun barrage continued all the while seeming to lance the beast of its making.

Reaching the peak of a ridge, Action Commander Nikhur paused to survey the objective with the perspective of distance while that was an option to him. The great mountain already filled the horizon before him and its steep slope glowed in dots and clusters like a dense starfield through the thinner patches of dust rising from the impact of particle beam gunfire.

Nikhur felt a sense of relief when through the same cloud he briefly glimpsed a hemisphere of soft green light standing out from the same slope- an energy shield, without question. The alien outpost remained despite the savagery inflicted by the destroyers far above.

The veteran of many an Invid Hive's destruction, Nikhur reveled in this clear indication that the aliens were enduring in this fashion. Because they were cowering behind their shield, this meant that they were already in defensive mode and probably bracing for the siege that they rightfully suspected to be coming. Also, as a veteran of such sieges on Invid Hives, Nikhur realized that by assuming the defensive posture the aliens were only elongating the timeline of their defeat and not altering the outcome.

Executed correctly, Nikhur recognized that the taking of this fortification and its destruction was an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the skill required for recognition from the higher echelons of Command- and the likely path to the choice assignments it would bring.

"Lord-.", Commander Lund, Nikhur's executive officer, said from his Nacht-Rau combat suit just below and behind the rise his superior's Glaug and the Regult Scout that stood with him surveyed what was to be the battlefield.

"The division has reached the assault phase line and is awaiting your order to advance. I would suggest deploying probing elements however-. I find the lack of alien ground forces guarding or even monitoring the approaches disturbing to the point of warranting heightened caution."

Action Commander Nikhur was as aware of the apparent absence of alien ground forces as his executive officer. His Glaug, though less versatile in almost all modes of combat than the Nacht-Rau combat suit, did provide a superior platform for command and control of forces. With its multiple displays versus the combat suit's one, the Glaug allowed its officer pilot to better perform his duty monitoring and directing a battle whereas the Nacht-Rau combat suit enticed the more impulsive to engage in it.

Nikhur had been aware of the enemy's lack of deployment before his Glaug had even dirtied its articulated feet in the red soil of this world. Sensor downlinks from the supporting destroyers and landing ships had shown Nikhur and his fellow commanders the enemy's lax defensive posture while they had still been in transit to the world's surface.

During the opening minutes of the assault, Nikhur had understood and expected this lack of movement as being the natural lull that was created in the space between the initiation of a surprise attack and the defender's ability to react. Then, as ground-based missile and gun fire had begun to reply to the orbital barrage from Zentraedi warships- Nikhur had interpreted the failure of enemy ground forces to appear to be a sensible decision by the alien commander to reserve his forces for when they would be needed. Certainly even the most junior commander had to recognize that to deploy forces under heavy orbital bombardment was to squander fighting forces that would be needed later.

-But now…

Now the enemy commander's actions were puzzling to Nikhur.

There was no way that he could not know that a sizable force had landed in proximity to his position. The alien commander also could not reasonably expect the energy barrier he cowered behind to last forever- it was already showing clear signs of weakening.

To not deploy at this point- to not meet Nikhur and his forces in the field or the defensible approaches to his outpost, the alien commander was essentially inviting the inevitable battle to take place at his front gate.

That was, of course, unless the alien commander was aware of a variable that Nikhur, the other Te'Dak Tohl commanders, and their forces were not.

That was of course unless the alien commander wanted the Te'Dak Tohl to charge recklessly forward.

This was what was giving Nikhur's executive officer pause, and raising similar suspicions in the action commander as well.

Had the 1797th landed with the full weight of the allocated ground force- had it landed with all of its own numbers- then like an epic clash between norghil and Invid, perhaps battering head-on through alien resistance would have been feasible.

The alien ground-based fire against landing ship and transport had been far more robust and effective than had been anticipated though, and conservation of forces was a legitimate concern now.

"Detach probe units.", Nikhur said, sounding more frustrated to himself than he expected, "I want our main avenues of attack swept quickly, but thoroughly right up to the enemy's energy perimeter. Any defenses he may have outside of his energy shield may not be deep- but I expect he would have designed them to slow our advance and pile up our numbers within range of direct fire."

"Like Invid-.", Lund observed having experienced himself the very tactic Nikhur was predicting from the Zentraedi's original adversary.

"Like Invid-.", Nikhur agreed, "Though we should expect a longer reach from missiles and gradually increasing resistance as-."

Far left of Nikhur's position, the sky above the 1797th's flanking units seemed to dim comparatively as though the ambient light had been sucked into a single point- an immensely brilliant orb of light that surpassed a thousand times over the meager light from a distant sun.

Nikhur only had a split second with which to comprehend what had happened to his left flank- what was happening to his division- before it happened to him as well and his existence ended with a last sensation of searing heat.

The Mobile Assault Cannon, more commonly known as the M.A.C. II "Monster" had, as the largest of the Generation 1 Destroids been accused of many things since their conception.

It had been accused of being a dinosaur in an age of progressively smaller and more agile mecha at 26 meters in height, with thick armor, and with a gross weight of just under two hundred metric tons. The Monster's top speed of 32 Kmph, and the thunderous noise raised by its massive bi-pedal feet when moving at that speed seemed to support justification of the description.

It had been accused of being too over-engineered and cumbersome to participate in the "fire and maneuver" tactics that were solidifying as operational doctrine- unable to even keep pace with its smaller siblings of the same generation to even allow the M.A.C. IIs to even be incorporated into composite units.

What the M.A.C. II Monster had never been accused of with its main battery of four 16-inch/50 caliber magnetic rail rifles- gun tubes like which had not been seen since battleships had roamed the Earth's oceans supreme- was not making an impression on the enemy.

The M.A.C. II had seen few opportunities to impress the enemy during The Robotech War, and only slightly more during the post-apocalyptic years that had followed and the question had rightly been asked as to whether the Monster dominated a niche that time and advances in warfare had already passed by.

Who was to be the next enemy, and would the M.A.C. II's attributes be of any value?

The answer had come.

Major Inid Castaigne, "Dragon" Company, 73rd Battalion, 18th Heavy Mecha Armor Regiment had arrived with her unit at Schiaparelli eight months before on an eighteen month rotation with two guiding precepts.

The first was that she and her company were not on Mars to benefit from the post-tour advantages of volunteering for "The Big Red"- often movement to the top of the list for more choice assignments and billets. Dragon Company for every day of its eighteen months was there with the expectation that they would fight.

The second was that if Dragon Company was to fight, it would fight in a manner reflective of the company's name and that it would be a fight that the enemy would not be eager to experience a second time.

Mars was not a human being's natural environment, but it was now human by the species' determination to claim it. A battle had already been fought by which humans had defended that claim, and if The Battle of Sera Base fought years ago now had taught anything it was that a small force properly trained, equipped, and motivated could hold off a larger one.

Major Castaigne was an avid student of this lesson and a staunch believer that given certain conditions Schiaparelli Base could be defended for extensive periods against a heavily disproportionate force. She also believed that the M.A.C. II could contribute to that defense.

On Earth, the rail-accelerated 16 inch rifles could hurl a projectile weighing over a thousand kilograms 51 to 53 kilometers with remarkable accuracy. On Mars, with an atmosphere of one-tenth density to Earth, and 40% Earth's gravity- the rifles could throw the same projectile 84 kilometers and drop every shot of a salvo into a 75-meter ring.

Of course, accuracy of that kind at that range was scarcely required when firing projectiles with a 5-kiloton tactical nuclear warhead- as two M.A.C.s, of Dragon Company just had.

-But it was comforting to know that the capability was there.

"Comme il est beau, c'est terrible…", Castaigne muttered, reverting in a moment of awe to the tongue of her native, southern France.

"Holy shit…", was the somewhat e less eloquent reaction from Castaigne's gunner, Lowe, as he too peered through his viewer at the twin pillars of thick dust that were still ascending and had not yet collapsed to create the caps of mushroom clouds in the low Martian gravity.

"Nothin' lived through that, Major."

Lowe was correct, Castaigne knew.

Even with Mars's thinner atmosphere, nothing could survive two nuclear air bursts so proximal as the salvo her Monster had thrown downrange.

The elation of the moment was brief for Castaigne as her mecha's radar returned a mixed tactical image of wrecked metal mass, inert hostile mecha- presumably out of action but still recognizable to the sensor systems as mecha, and a small handful of Zentraedi mecha in retreat.

Castaigne's euphoria was doused by suspicion brought on by experience and common sense. The number of transport pods that had made planetfall had a capacity far greater than the number of mecha that the major could account for. Zentraedi were many things, but foolish in the ways of warfare was not one of them.

It was unlikely that the force that Schiaparelli's ground-based radar and Dragon Company's was seeing the entire picture. The satellite constellation was gone, having been destroyed by the landing force on its approach, and the seismic monitors scattered about Olympus Mons on the logical approaches to Schiaparelli were useless because of the heavy orbital bombardment.

Castaigne, pleased as she was by what she saw was more concerned by what she did not. She could not provide defense against what she could not train her guns on- and there were almost certainly more targets to be had.

The heavy frame the M.A.C. II swayed (Monsters never "shook" unless directly struck) as several diminished particle beam bolts from the orbital assault penetrated the double-density barrier field put up by Schiaparelli and cratered lifeless Martian soil.

The disturbing fact was that the rounds had penetrated meaning the barrier system was beginning to weaken.

"Dragon One Actual to Phoebe-.", Castaigne said via coded communications channel to the Schiaparelli Operations Center, "I have negative enemy contact. Request UCAV recon support and instructions Over."

Captain Abe Agena, REF, believed vehemently that there were always options even in the direst moments of command.

Having lived through many of these moments, he knew with equal certainty that sometimes all of the options were unfavorable.

This was revealing itself to be one of those moments.

The nuclear incineration of a landed Zentraedi force had raised spirits and a cheer throughout the Schiaparelli OC for a little over a minute before the heavy reality facing the outpost descended upon them again.

The Zentraedi owned the "high ground" of space, and from there could provide air dominance with fighters from their ships' fighter wings against the technologically superior, but vastly outnumbered Alpha and Beta Veritech squadrons of Schiaparelli's fighter wing. The warships, making their criss-crossing bombardment runs across the sky could also dominate the battlefield beyond the base's barrier perimeter with the same gun fire being used now to pulverize the force field itself.

And without a doubt, Agena was certain that additional Zentraedi ground units lurked somewhere over the horizon- waiting.

Agena had a formidable Destroid detachment available, but dared not send it out from under the protective umbrella of Schiaparelli's barrier. They- not even the near-indestructible M.A.C. IIs- would not survive long under the orbital barrage- and not in great enough numbers to provide more than a symbolic resistance to a Zentraedi force of any size.

Schiaparelli's fighter wing might offset the Zentraedi ground forces temporarily- but it would be a one-way trip for any pilot leaving the cover of the base's defenses. The barrier could not be lowered to recover fighters- and once their ordinance was spent, they would be totally at the mercy of the enemy.

A fighter scramble was still an option, but it would be one of last resort.

Like a caste of medieval times, Schiaparelli Base was under siege and despite the infinite technological advances that set the Mars outpost apart from a fortification of stone and wood, the basic scenario of siege was the same.

Schiaparelli required outside assistance to break the grip held by the enemy upon it.

Outside assistance was not likely to be coming any time soon.

Lieutenant Colonel Manuel looked grimly through the OC's central holographic display that was now fully in tactical display mode with all functional layers engaged and displaying an overwhelming diversity of information.

Among the combat actions it was tracking was the latest volley of Mk-9 Ballista ASMs fired from Schiaparelli's rotary fed, hardened launcher emplacements recessed skillfully into the rock of Olympus Mons much as the base was itself.

With less range and fewer homing and guidance refinements than its larger cousin the Mk-4 Pegasus, the Ballista was still a lethal anti-warship weapon with the ability to severely damage with a conventional Protex warhead- and to kill with a 2 kiloton nuclear option.

The weapon was lethal of course only when it could be employed properly- and the Zentraedi after the loss of a pair of destroyers to mixed Ballista and ground-based anti-warship gun fire had discovered how to offset the weapon's use.

Agena followed the track of the Ballistas through the direction of Manuel's eyes as he watched the weapons reach low orbit, exhaust their primary ascent stage, and then fire their sub-light engines to vanish harmless to the enemy into the void.

The Zentraedi had discovered that in making high-speed, low orbit passes they could enter effective firing range on Schiaparelli- a fixed target- perform what was for all intents and purposes a "strafing run" with heavy particle beam batteries, and escape below the sensor horizon of the REF outpost before the Ballistas could rise to acquire or meet them.

Schiaparelli's battery captains had tried launching the weapons into the anticipated path of warships as soon as they had been detected, as well as firing wide spreads of the weapons to compensate for errors in anticipating the target's flight path. Neither tactic had been successful with the marauding warship either simply steering around the rising fusillade of missiles, or aborting their runs with a radical directional change in low orbit.

In either case, the target vessel was well outside of the search "cone" of the Ballista's seeker head when it activated.

The Mk-9 had never been intended as a comprehensive anti-warship defense system- especially not in a ground-based configuration. Its ground-based configuration was intended to be only part of a multi-layered defensive strategy.

That system was being dismantled a piece at a time around the ears of the garrison of Schiaparelli.

"We can at least deter them from straight attack runs-.", Manuel offered Agena weakly, "-Force them to fire on different angles and absorb the damage in different areas of the barrier system."

Agena nodded with false approval of the assessment, "It may be the best we can do until we receive Fleet support-. Communications, have we had any success raising REF Operations on any frequency?"

"Negative, Captain- the entire subspace band is being heavily jammed. The automated emergency beacons on Phobos and Demos may be getting through if the concentration of warships is holding Mars orbit, but there's no way to be sure."

"Well find a way to be sure, Coms-. I don't want to rely on the chance that someone in the Ops Center on Earth just happens to notice that we're not transmitting anymore to indicate we're in distress here."

"Aye, sir.", replied the communication officer now confronted with a near-impossible tasking.

"Command, Recon-.", came an urgent call to attention from the Flight Ops Station in the base's OC.

A small team of specialists whose duties most often were to supplement the capabilities of either the Sensor Ops or the Air Ops teams, Reconnaissance operated the variety of UAVs, UCAVs, and UGVs supplied to Schiaparelli.

This was no normal day however, and since the loss of the Martian surveillance satellite constellation, Reconnaissance Ops had become the eyes of Schiaparelli.

"-We have enemy ground forces observed, positioned one-two-five kliks west."

"I thought we'd lost contact and control of our Cosmic Hawks?..", LTC Manuel said, his tone accusatory as though his subordinates were responsible for the content of the report that they were delivering.

"We lost direct control, sir-.", the Reconnaissance Ops lead replied, "The UAVs are programmed to autonomously fly a search pattern in a pre-determined square for a set time before returning to base in the event that ground control is severed. We've been getting bits of their video and sensor streams through some of the thinner jamming-."

"Let's see it-.", Agena said turning his focus to one of the holographic displays visible to the entire Ops Center.

The screen flickered, coinciding with a tremor that ran through the base from a direct and partially penetrating particle beam strike to the barrier system and the rock face of Olympus Mons.

The holographic screen flickered with a number of secondary systems in the Ops Center, partially dissolved, reformed, and in a grainy, degraded image whose integrity was heavily supplemented by computer augmentation showed the irregular Martian foothill terrain- and the distinct forms of Zentraedi Regult Battle Pods in distinct staging formations.

"They don't seem to be in any hurry to advance.", Manuel said, trying to sound hopeful, "Maybe they've learned the lesson our M.A.C.s taught the last assault group-."

Agena acknowledged what every face his eyes crossed was already saying silently, "They have- and they've no need to advance. They'll let the cruisers soften us up a little more before moving in to mop up."

Manuel now wore the expression of a man on the losing end of a battle who was looking for the most acceptable way to lose.

"Captain, they've learned about long-range artillery- but it might be time for a lesson in cruise missiles-."

A slight, barely visible smile turned up the corners of Agena's mouth, "Warm up the launchers. I'm of the mind of going out myself in an environment suit and throwing rocks before we let them set a single food onto this post-."

The OC shook noticeably as a salvo of particle beam bolts penetrated Schiaparelli's defense barrier to further pit the face of Olympus Mons.

Combat conditions in Schiaparelli Base's Engineering Control Center were not that dissimilar from standard operations. Though in the adjoining compartments that housed the base's primary and redundant Reflex furnaces there was a larger number of technicians and DC personnel to be found to address any systemic machinery problems that might arise- but the ECC required and in fact had no additional staff manning its various posts.

Computers hummed the same whir of power flow and cooling fan and blew their faintly ozone-smelling breath out into the carefully climate controlled room.

Specialists monitored the same power generation and conversion functions while others monitored base-wide power flow, distribution, and consumption.

Extra care was given to monitoring the power supply to Schiaparelli's weapons and defense systems that normally were only in a "stand-by" mode. Now, fully employed, the monitoring effort was the same but the criticality higher and the operating parameters being monitored were that of a set of systems being put under active operational stress.

And there was the tension too.

There was the tension felt by all that numbers and graphic indicators being monitored had ramifications beyond the possibility of power loss or brown-outs about the base. Life was immediately linked to the flawless continuity of the services they maintained and monitored.

Lieutenant Commander Kevin Kroft was feeling that pressure increasingly and acutely with every dip and spike of power flow and with the diminishing effectiveness of the base's barrier system.

The thought of being buried deep in the ancient Martian rock of Olympus Mons had in times past provided Kroft with a cushion of solace when those terrifying "what if" moments struck him in the dead of night and he obeyed the compulsion to check his children sleeping in their bunk beds to assure himself that they were safe. Now, with the tremors being felt even so far into the mountain from the orbital pounding being received by the base- he was not so certain that the solace he had felt wasn't just false comfort..

Naked rock was an excellent layer of defense from an orbital attack by energy weapons, true- but it also had the ability to be chipped away at gradually- steadily- and was prone to collapse if the Corps of Engineers study was not flawless in its assessment made years before of the stability of the site into which Schiaparelli had been built.

A powerful vibration that set an empty coffee cup left on a work station to rattling coincided with a noticeable dip in the graphic that displayed barrier field density on one of the many ECC monitors.

"Grid Three field density down to fifty-eight percent-.", reported the specialist at the station, "Field matrix integrity down to sixty-one percent."

Commander Schlosser, Schiaparelli's Chief Engineer and well-versed if not expert in all of the mechanical and systemic processes that provided or protected life on Schiaparelli was prompted by these readings into action.

Anyone who had read the operations manuals on the DB-2 series of cold plasma barrier systems was aware that at a certain level of plasma field integrity and density, the shield became for all practical purposes useless, and in some extreme cases of system stress could become potentially dangerous with the possibility of overload.

The Schiaparelli barrier was approaching that threshold.

"We could cycle the field generators for each grid, one at a time and extend the other grids to compensate while the plasma field re-integrates.", Schlosser suggested to LCDR Russ whose area of responsibility was the base's defensive systems.

Russ considered her superior's suggestion- that in fact did not have to come to her as a suggestion, and replied, "It may restore some integrity to each grid, Commander, but cycling one grid at a time may cause problems when we try to sync the entire plasma field back into harmony- especially if it is taking heavy fire. We could open ourselves to a catastrophic overload."

Schlosser glanced at the digital clock on the ECC wall, "We've been averaging seven minutes between heavy bombardments. Recycling a grid at a time takes about five, maybe slightly more- that's not a terribly narrow margin of error, and a hell of a lot less chancy than letting the Zentraedi pound the barrier down to nothing."

"That it is-. Just pointing out the risk.", Russ said, agreeing with the suggestion without overtly agreeing.

It was the best option.

Schlosser picked up the duty phone to buzz the OC.

The pick-up on the command end was instantaneous.

All in the ECC followed the half of the conversation they could hear between Schlosser and his superior, the base commander.

"-Yes sir, we're aware of that and have an option that could stretch the life of the barrier if successful-."

Schlosser's face tightened with a reply from Captain Agena that only he was privileged to.

"I recommend a staggered cycling of the barrier system, sir."

Schlosser made a series of small nods through the response from the OC.

"-Yes sir, that is a risk- but the barrier will hardly be effective much longer as it stands-."

The ECC tensed, sensing the impending decision and poising to act.

"Yes, sir-. We just need to coordinate to execute at the moment of lightest enemy activity-. –Now?.. Understood, sir-!"

Schlosser motioned to Russ, the phone still to his head, and snapped his fingers while mouthing the word, "Go."

"-Yes sir", Schlosser said into the phone, "-the moment cycling is complete-."

LCDR Russ and the technicians in her charge were already a controlled frenzy of activity with fingers flying over console keyboards to override set safety protocols and restart the processes that required restarting.

Kevin Kroft forced himself to return his attention to his area of responsibility, the strong and steady flow of power from Schiaparelli's Reflex furnaces to its critical systems. Russ and her team would oversee their element, but were relying on Kroft's team to see to theirs.

For a moment Kevin's mind then turned to Amanda.

Undoubtedly she was actively involved- either preparing for or engaged in action in her role as a pilot. As he thought of her, Kevin also hoped that he, Martin, and Meagan were the farthest thing from her mind. As a pilot, she required her focus to be wholly on the fight.

Or; if she was thinking of them the way that Kevin was thinking of her- he hoped that she could delude herself into imagining them safe within the defenses of Schiaparelli Base.

From where he stood though, Kevin Kroft had his doubts.

"You're going outside the lines…", Martin Kroft warned his younger sister, Meagan.

Martin preferred to draw things on his own and then color them, but when his father had waken he and his sister to go three doors down the hall to Mrs. Feinstein's apartment to stay with her- he had not thought he would need to pack any drawing paper.

Every now and then, he and Meagan had to stay the night, or part of the night at Mrs. Feinstein's because Dad's work would call and he did not want to leave them alone. So, they would pick up what Dad called their "GO" bags, move down the hall to get a cup of hot cocoa (Mrs. Feinstein made the best hot cocoa) and they would spend the night on the couch- which was fine except sleeping toe to toe, Meagan always kicked in her sleep and would wake him up.

Tonight was different though.

Mrs. Feinstein had given them their hot cocoa, had put them to bed on her couch as she had always done- but had waken them and told them that they had to go to the shelter the way that they practiced in school.

The hallway leading to the closest shelter was crowded with people who were not happy with being waken-up by the alarm and the flashing lights that continued to go off a lot longer than they ever had during emergency drill at school.

Some were even crying- but Martin knew exactly what to do because he was a junior monitor for his class, and knew where to go.

The shelter had filled quickly, and when the shelter monitor had made sure that everyone who was supposed to be there was there, she closed the heavy door. Martin had helped with this in other drills, but Mrs. Feinstein wouldn't let him this time, and the shelter monitor did not ask.

This was okay though, because Marin saw six other kids from his class and two from Meagan's with either a parent or a sitter like Mrs. Feinstein. Tonight though, the adults were keeping them close where in other drills they were allowed to play. It must have been because of the late hour that they kept their children to themselves, and maybe also why they looked so upset.

It didn't matter to Martin.

Meagan had brought a coloring book of Disney cartoon characters and was spilling the red outside of Mickey Mouse's trousers with rapid and careless strokes of a crayon.

Martin tried to ignore this and focus on tracing the inside of Donald's bill with an orange crayon that his sister had worn down to a rounded nub point making it almost useless for fine, detailed work.

Martin knew that h had colored that way once, because when he got angry at his sister for it Mom and Dad told him so.

She would grow out of it they told him.

The table at which Martin and Meagan sat at the side of the shelter's main room shook beneath them- enough to rattle against the metal wall to which it was mounted. The crayons, out of their box already took to rolling and two dropped from the table.

Meagan continued to scribble in uneven strokes leaving Martin to recover the crayons from the floor.

Martin found the crayons to be on the run, and seeming to hop with little quivers that ran through the floor. The red overhead lights made it difficult enough to see, but the flickering that they were doing made the crayon hunt harder. Martin knew he could not lose any crayons, because like Dad said- they were hard to come by on Mars- and these, though worn down were all he and Meagan had for a while.

It was Christmas tomorrow though, and Santa probably knew that they needed more.

"Lord, we've established contact with surviving units of Action Commander Nikhur's Division- several companies strong.", reported Commander Omra of the 89th Heavy Shock Division to her superior, Action Commander Balko, "-And we've been able to make contact with many of Action Commander Dihr's unit."

"Coordinate consolidation of what remains of both units and assign command to the highest ranking officer we can contact. The merged unit is to cover in the foothills and await orders to advance.", Balko instructed from inside his Nacht-``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````Rau combat suit as he surveyed the objective to the northeast, "Nikhur's unit was in the open and there were survivors. Dihr was moving up through more substantial terrain. There will be survivors from his unit as well. They are just coming back to their senses-. We may salvage a combat effective division out of the pieces yet."

Balko was confident in his assessment of the situation.

As a civilization of lesser and evolving technology, the probability of tactical nuclear weapons had been one that had been understood in the planning phases of the assault on this planet.

Nikhur, impulsive as Balko had always known him to be had sacrificed the safety of his unit in moving them across open ground for the possibility of positioning himself to more quickly join the battle when it came.

His hastiness had cost him his life apparently, and more unfortunately a good portion of his division had been lost as well.

Dihr had consistently been more cautious in his unit's movements overland, and had been slightly less impulsive than Nikhur. He had elected to move his division by loose, parallel columns through the broken terrain north of the path selected by Nikhur. He had surmised, and correctly so, that the orbital barrage would be a lengthy one and as a result it was more vital to guard from casualties and to arrive in mass than to arrive quickly at the final rallying point.

Events were proving his decision correct.

The enemy's use to use nuclear weapons was not surprising to Balko- even with their reduced effectiveness in the thin atmosphere of this world, they were the most destruction that could be wrought with the most minimal exposure of his own forces.

The move was logical, but at the same time Balko sensed an air of weakness behind his opponent's tactical decision. The enemy had struck only the most visible elements of the assault force.

He wasn't seeing the force in its entirety-only those units carelessly exposed by their commander.

The enemy was now feeling to Balko like an animal cornered into a hole- swiping savagely at anything that attracted its attention.

The enemy's de-evolution into a primitive state was not Balko's concern.

Eliminating the objective was, and for that he was willing to make the sacrifice of a brief pause to wait.

"Inform all remaining units that I am assuming overall tactical command on the ground.", Balko said to his executive, "All units are to cover and hold position for now. We'll allow orbital support to reduce the enemy further."

A tight salvo of particle beam bolts ripped down through the sky and vanished behind the crest of a foothill that partially obscured Balko's view of the saturated target area.

A great flash illuminated the entire slope of the towering mountain- a more substantial secondary blast than Balko had seen up to this point.

The enemy was weakening, and the Fleet only required time before the operation would be handed in its entirety over to him.

It would not be long.

Earth Orbit

"Shit-.", muttered Lt. "Blotto" Franklin from Blue Banshee's B-Flight in a tone and at a volume that wasn't quite an exclamation. There was an urgency to the statement that explained why he would break the general rule of using coms, even on a secure channel, for chatter in a time when combat was expected.

"-There goes the station…"

Kroft twisted in her seat to check high on her seven o'clock to where Archer 42's relative position still should have been. The A.R.M.D. II platform was too far astern to have any hope of being seen as anything more than a grey dot against the star field, but as Blotto had suggested in his statement- it was standing out in its final moments in a blaze of glorious death.

Fine lines of blue- Zentraedi particle beams- streaked soundlessly through the firmament and in intersecting with their target billowed into brilliant but fleeting blossoms of white and orange.

Archer 42 had been, for all intents and purposes, a dead hulk minutes after the last escape shuttle had detached and begun its emergency descent from orbit toward Earth- but the termination of fire from the station was clearly not a decisive enough victory for the Zentraedi with whom Archer 42 had done battle. They were showing the determination to smash the abandoned station into even less threatening bits of wreckage.

"Someone's really gotta discuss moderation with these guys-.", Fidget, also from B Flight, noted in her normal stab at humor that did actually draw a few laughs.

Kroft found herself grinning at least, but had to steel herself knowing that the Blue Banshees were far- both literally and figuratively- from being able to enjoy the luxury of humor.

That luxury, and whatever was to pass as safety now still lay just over thirty-thousand kilometers away at the nearest evacuation "fall-back" option- RDF Fairchild , Alaska. There were options of course to divert to another A.R.M.D. in the constellation, or to rendezvous with an REF vessel rather than make the dash for and treacherous descent to Earth- but United Earth frequencies across the communication spectrum were glutted with com-traffic that was devoid of anything resembling the coordination needed to redeploy forces from one orbital post to another.

There was no sign of the Fleet, nor was there any sign that the Fleet would be coming.

Gravity seemed to be working unevenly over LCDR Queffle.

His body felt to him to be as light as a feather, while his head seemed leaden.

The world around him too was in flux- as though drifting between dreaming and waking.

For a moment he would hear intense conversations all around him with great clarity and would comprehend all that was being said, and in the next moment the conversations would drift far away and their point would be lost.

The sickening knowledge that Archer 42 was gone stuck with Queffle though- a painful constant along with a strange burning sensation on the left side of his face.

Archer 42 was gone- and Queffle knew that there was something more to be done- something that he needed to do- but it would not come to him. Training would not let it go- but like attempting to climb a greased rope, no amount of effort gained him any significant advance to the desired end.

'Morris-.", Queffle said, not recognizing the strained voice as his own at first, "Chief?-."

A hand gripped Queffle's shoulder on his sightless side and a familiar voice lacking a name in the commander's head replied, "It's Chief Phelps, sir. Lieutenant Morris is on EV-4-. We lost Chief O'Toole aboard the station."

Queffle nodded as pieces of the episode came to him that had robbed him of the sight in his left eye, and more regrettably of O'Toole.

"Yeah- sorry. Things are a little fuzzy."

"You took a good knock to the brain-case there, sir- but you're going to be okay.", Phelps said, "Just to let you know- all four escape vehicles got free of the station. We're headed for the fall-back at Fairchild and should be there in just under three hours."

Queffle nodded again and things began to flow along the normal paths in his mind again- he had just needed a jump-start.

"Casualties-?"

Phelps hesitated, "Hard to say just yet sir. We're trying to keep off the radio as much as possible. We don't want to attract attention. At the time we buttoned up and shoved off though, we were still short twenty. Chief O'Toole and the others killed on the shuttle deck, plus two section chiefs reported casualties from their areas. A mess, sir- but it could have been a lot worse."

Something in Phelps' assessment of the situation caused it to strike home for Queffle that his command had gone inside of an hour from an armed space platform to four escape shuttles whose capacity was not even filled for the losses sustained. The commander realized that he knew everyone aboard Archer 42 by face and name if not in some depth, and that he would be telling the families of twenty of them at some point why their loved one had not returned from space-.

The interior cabin illumination went from harsh, florescent white to a lurid red with the accompanying sound of the cabin speakers coming on.

The pilot, his voice edgy with the first syllables, said in unorthodox form, "We're going to need everyone to strap in tight here and seal up their E.L.S.E.s. We have company at our outer detection range and I'm not sure if they're seeing us or not. We may have to make a run for it-."

"Aw shit-.", Phelps muttered, "Forget what I said about it could be worse-."

Queffle heard heavy gauge zippers being run up all around him as he and Chief Phelps pulled the emergency tabs to either side of their chair backs, freeing the two halves of what was essentially a three-layer Mylar bag from slits in their seat sides.

The "Emergency Life Support Enclosures" were feel good safety devices in the same vein as floatation seat cushions on an airliner, and about as useful in an actual emergency to Queffle's way of thinking. A fixture in the seats of lifeboats and escape shuttles, it was the response to the assumption that evacuees of a ship or space station would not have the time to don a full pressure suit before abandoning ship- and that if there was a need to abandon ship, there was also a possibility that the escape vehicle might sustain damage resulting in a loss of cabin pressure.

The result- a personal envelope of flimsy material that looked as though it was either intended to offer one more marginal safeguard to those whose misfortune had placed them on an escape vehicle- or a wrapper to better allow them to be heated and served.

Queffle freed the flaps of his E.L.S.E. down to the base of his seat's footplate and found the zipper there, exactly where it was supposed to be.

Pulling the zipper up, he attempted humor before he was sealed snugly into his own little world-

"At least we'll still be fresh when SAR finds us-."

If there had been any doubt in Kroft's mind about the identity or intentions of the bogeys that had appeared almost level on her squadron's seven o'clock moments before, there was little now.

Her Alpha's advanced, phased radar had quickly identified the "bogeys" by their RCS and return signals as "bandits"- and specifically, Zentraedi Fighter Pods.

One for one, or even in comparable numbers, the venerable Zentraedi fighter was outmatched in almost every performance characteristic by the second generation Veritech fighter. The Alpha had better range of sensors, integrated combat abilities, and longer reach of weapons- and these things had always given Kroft comfort in the event that she should ever do more than simulated battle with a Fighter Pod.

But now- that comfort had deserted Kroft.

The substantially larger, considerably heavier, less sophisticated Fighter Pods were now closing as part of what was clearly a classic fighter sweep with a twist of dogmatic Zentraedi military thinking:

Hit hard.

Hit fast.

Hit with the overwhelming weight of numbers.

At 140 kilometers astern, Kroft knew that the flight of 40 Fighter Pods- two squadrons by standard Zentraedi unit break-down- was still outside of their range to track and engage her squadron or the four escape shuttles from Archer 42 by their own sensors- which meant a mother ship was vectoring them in.

For another minute perhaps she held the advantage of being able to dictate the terms of the engagement, and then it would become a slugging match. Kroft had no doubts about trading body blows with two squadrons of Fighter Pods- that was manageable. It was the other squadrons of Fighter Pods, hungry for a fight that she could not see but knew had to be changing heading to intercept- it was these that Kroft knew she had to fear tipping the balance against her.

She still had a minute or more, but she could not control the engagement with her back to the enemy.

"Shuttle Flight, Banshee Leader-.", Raven said, feeling her throat tighten, "Recommend you firewall it and keep it to the stops. We'll try to give you the best lead possible and keep your tail clear, but watch your six."

"Roger that, Banshee Leader.", replied the escape shuttle flight leader whom Kroft had grown to know well enough to have a reason beyond professional obligation to fly cover for, "Good hunting, Raven."

Kroft watched as the engines of the shuttles flared up to a full throttle burn, propelling the blunt-nosed, fat-bodied craft with their exaggerated delta-wing design out ahead of their fighter escort with a greater rate of acceleration than they appeared capable of.

As fleet of proverbial foot as the shuttles were, they stood no chance of outrunning Fighter Pods without a blocking action by their escorts. If overtaken, their purely defensive combat systems would at best buy them an extension of life measured in seconds.

The salvation of the four shuttles and everyone who had escaped Archer 42 was now the responsibility of the Blue Banshees.

"B Flight-.", Kroft instructed, feeling her tactical training take control, "When we break, go high and right and give us some top cover.. We'll throw all we've got at them from outside of their maximum missile range and scatter them. With any luck, we can close the gap loose-deuce before they get their heads on straight again and cause some real carnage. Everyone remember to close from the outside, and to slash and run. They'll try to envelope you- so don't get into the pocket-."

Kroft realized she was spewing direction on things her pilots had trained for as rigorously as she. And like her, if for no other reason than to have something to focus on besides the tension, they just wanted to get into it.

"Well, let's see if these damn things do something more than look good on the showroom floor-. BREAK!"

The Earth with its darkened hemisphere presented fell away to port and out of Kroft's field of view as she led her flight into a banking climb toward the closing enemy formation. The sensation of gravity absent in most elements of space flight returned with compounded interest, slamming and continuing to press Kroft into her seat with G-forces many times that normally experienced by humans on their home world.

The stars tumbled and whirled like leaves caught in a wind eddy as Kroft banked and turned her Alpha onto its new course with only the increased hiss of air flow through her oxygen mask and the labored sound of her own breathing offsetting the silence under the equivalent weight of six times normal gravity.

Early into the turn, Kroft had established visual contact of sorts with the inbound bandits. Overlapping target indicator boxes projected onto the interior of her helmet visor gave visual reference to the flight of Gnerl Fighter Pods that otherwise would not even have been visible to the pilot at their present range. In this respect, the engagement was like every simulation Kroft had flown.

Only now there was a distinct difference- not in the conveyance of information from sensory system to pilot, or performance of the platform- but something purely seated in the pilot's perception.

In the target indicator boxes, Kroft now felt an aura of malevolent menace.

Behind each, there was a living, sentient being- probably with combat experience that far exceeded her own- who had every intent on killing her.

"A Flight-.", Kroft instructed, "-Two part sequence on Basilisk release. We'll shoot two apiece, scatter the bandits, and fire a second salvo to keep `em scattered. B Flight, you'll cover in the same way from top cover as we rush in. If we can whittle their numbers down and keep them from regrouping, we've got a shot of starting their day with a helluva bitch-slap. –I'm calling One and Two-."

Kroft toggled the selector switch on her control stick as she used the indicator marker in the center of her field of view on the first two Gnerls in the alien squadron as they presented themselves in sequence left to right.. Her attack radar, having been tracking all of the bandits, now easily locked and painted two specific targets with frequency-coded beams of energy that her missiles' seeker-heads were able to track.

Kroft was distantly aware of her flight counting off their selected targets until each missile in the flight's first salvo was accounted for.

She felt a disconnect from the moment that was made more unusual by the amount of time she had dedicated to preparing for performance of this very act.

The only comparison she could draw was the first time she had dove from the 10-meter board into the community pool as a girl. There had been a very real sense of what was about to happen, and what exactly she needed to do to make it happen well- but even as her legs flexed to leap, the fear was not her own. It had been like being an observer to her own life.

And here she was again.

"Shoot-."

Two MATM-7 "Basilisk" missiles left the outer rails of Kroft's Alpha like greyhounds slipping their track pens and were joined by pairs from each of the other fighters in A Flight to the collective utterance of the code phrase- "Fox Three"- indicating an "active missile" launch.

The "Medium-range All-purpose Tactical Missile" was a streamlined, refined and enhanced weapon based on a generic design fielded by the Zentraedi.

Pre-Robotech guided weapons developed on Earth had been designed with the luxury of specific function.

Surface-to-air, or air-to-air weapons had been designed to effectively kill targets with constants in their physical characteristics. Whether an aircraft was a lumbering bomber or an agile fighter, it was almost uniformly "thin-skinned' and susceptible to proximity-fuzed fragmentation warheads.

On the other end of the spectrum, ground targets being either structure or vehicle tended to benefit from tougher hides of denser materials or armor and required a direct strike to deliver a fatal blow.

The attribute lines of these two distinct types of targets had in some instances come close, but never had they met or crossed.

The threats prophesized by the analysis of information deciphered from the wreckage of Zor's Battle Fortress- later to be SDF-1- in Earth's infancy of Robotechnology promised that in future wars with enemies not yet encountered, the distinctions between "air" and "ground' vehicles was to be blurred if not erased.

Niche weapons designers whose areas of expertise had rarely crossed paths had been forced to come together to find compromise and balance for new weapons systems that could successfully hunt a target with the performance and agility of a fighter aircraft, while at the same time contend with the armor of something akin to a tank.

Sixteen copies of one such fruit of these labors now streaked through the void, devouring the range between their firing platforms and their intended targets.

Fired within the range of their semi-active seeker-heads, the Basilisks had transitioned from the guidance provided by the Alphas' attack radars to internal guidance the moment they had left the rails. They homed on reflections of their own radar energy that were returned from the enormous radar cross-section of the Gnerl Fighter Pods, while monitoring and taking note of each fighter's distinct IR signature that was used as a second element in the weapon's integrated tracking capability.

Beyond being able to "see" its target both by the reflection of its own radar energy and the heat energy emitted by each target- the Basilisk's one track electronic mind was cognizant of what it was hunting. The "Generation 2" smart weapons not only knew the evasive abilities of the target type, but also had knowledge of the weaknesses of the target to attack in the nanoseconds of terminal flight to produce the highest probability of a kill.

The Basilisk had been conceived in a rigorous, multi-disciplinary engineering design approach and tested exhaustively both on proving ranges and in actual combat.

Kroft had personally seen "proof" of the weapon's utility once before- though she had only been credited with damaging the bandit and not scoring a kill.

And while "proof" of the Basilisk's lethality was only seconds away, it was the waiting that was allowing irrational doubt to plague the Blue Banshees- Lt Amanda "Raven" Kroft included.

Norghil were the "expendables" after all.

Sub-Commander Gralton had, like all Te'Dak Tohl tactical grade officers, trained with the "improved" warriors of the lower caste that had been provided to them to supplement their numbers- and had reluctantly accepted that they had learned and performed admirably in exercise.

But they were still norghil- and in that, Gralton's choice for their use in battle was perfectly acceptable.

Intelligence briefings and predictions of enemy capabilities, gleaned from volumes of after action reports produced by Breetai in his first dealings with this alien species were proving to be accurate. The alien fighters possessed the ability to attack from well outside of the Gnerl's reach.

Only sensor data streamed from warships to Gralton's fighters had even given them warning that there had been a threat.

That threat, sixteen alien fighters in all had split into two elements of equal size and had released an opening fusillade of missiles before any of the Gnerls in Gralton's probe force had made contact with their own sensors and been in a position to reply.

This response, while disproportionate in Gralton's favor in the number of missiles loosed, also quickly proved to be a validation of intelligence predictions of enemy capabilities.

The missiles fired from Gralton's Gnerls were "malfunctioning" at an alarming rate.

Over half had gone hopelessly astray within seconds of being fired, and the balance had continued to go off-track with measurable regularity- promising that none would reach their targets.

Even a fool without the benefit of numerous intelligence briefings could have seen that the missile "malfunctions" were not malfunctions at all.

As Intelligence had warned (perhaps not strongly enough) the micronian aliens were advanced in their development of electronic countermeasure systems, whereas the weapons provided to Zentraedi- norghil and Te'Dak Tohl alike- by The Masters were predicated on use against enemies with little or no countermeasure abilities.

This was not a unique occurrence in Zentraedi history- at least for norghil. The Robotech Masters had met many species with technologies greater than those provided to the warrior caste and had determined their fate to be one of extermination. The norghil had readily carried out the sentence passed down by The Masters with the same strategy that served well against the Invid- to overwhelm the enemy with numbers.

Numerous times this doctrine of warfare had been employed, and numerous times it had prevailed with varying degrees of loss to the norghil.

Te'Dak Tohl were not norghil however.

Gralton knew this, and not in some elitist, "superior caste" sense either. Gralton knew that as the norghil caste was hobbled by limits in knowledge and technology, so had The Masters hobbled the Te'Dak Tohl with physical weaknesses, and with the lack of numbers that provided the norghil strength.

The Robotech Masters had enjoyed the illusion of these petty controls from the apex of their power, and all through their decline.

Supreme General Krymina had found a way to offset the physical weakness- The Withering- imposed by The Masters on the Te'Dak Tohl.

She could not increase the number of Te'Dak Tohl, but she had had the foresight to bring norghil in sufficient numbers to benefit from their "strength".

Sub-Commander Gralton was well aware of how best to use norghil in the specific tactical situation he mow found himself in- and was unapologetic in doing so.

From his squadron's position high in trail, Gralton watched the leading norghil squadron scatter first in a disassembly of their staggered line formation at the order of the squadron leader.

The initial "break" from group offensive tactics to individual defensive ones appeared as a disorderly assortment of radical maneuvers that could sometimes thwart the interception of a Zentraedi missile if executed correctly and at the exact moment of opportunity.

What resulted distinguished the enemy's missile technology from that provided to Zentraedi in an indisputable demonstration of superiority.

Alien missiles swept the disintegrated lines of the leading Gnerl squadron with a horrific precision in their devastation. Some Fighter Pods seemed to burn into nothing in brief but intense clouds of flame, while others appeared to dash themselves apart on the flash of missile detonations leaving larger, recognizable pieces of themselves to tumble endlessly into oblivion.

Sub-Commander Gralton watched the bulk of two squadrons dissolve in this way.

The loss of warriors, even norghil warriors, was regrettable- but this was what they were for.

They had also afforded Gralton a view that confirmed what he expected. The aliens could not easily be beaten at a distance. To offset his enemy's technological advantage, he was going to have to put his hands around the enemy's throat- which meant getting much closer. Getting much closer in turn meant having to wade through more alien missiles and their clear lethality.

Gralton would not sacrifice his Te'Dak Tohl pilots to such wastefulness.

Fortunately however, he had an abundance of norghil.

"Command, vector the on-station stand-by fighters to bracket this position-. Frontal advance is ineffective-.", Gralton requested from the ship whose fighter group he commanded.

There was no shame in the request.

The destroyer vanguard force which was bearing the greater burden in sweeping the alien defenses and satellite assets from the planet's orbit was ill-equipped to deal with the micronian fighters that had been anticipated to meet them.

The destroyers' fighter and mecha elements however were ideal for the finer strokes of opening the path to the alien world for the landing ships. Only with such an enormous battlespace to clear and a relatively small number of warriors and their machines to do it with- the need to deploy these units upon request from the even smaller, initial probing force of fighters had become evident..

It would take a measurable time for Gralton to receive the support he was requesting, but when they arrived, they would arrive in force.

Gralton's Gnerl squealed at him in a shrill, synthesized tone- a tone rarely heard by Te'Dak Tohl warriors. The fighter's threat warning system was telling him that his craft was being illuminated by radar energy- the kind of illumination whose reflection guided missiles.

Normally- as had been Gralton's experience against countless norghil- the prey was debilitated by use of the failure-mode device imbedded into all norghil vessels, fighters, and mecha. Rarely was a shot even fired in the direction of Gralton or his pilots.

Even in the rare encounter with Invid, of which Gralton had had two, missiles were a rare threat as only a small percentage of Invid mecha were armed with guided weapons, and even fewer survived long enough to enter the range to use them.

Uncommon as this experience was, the sub-commander nonetheless was trained to react.

Gralton pulled the twin yokes of his Gnerl violently back at him and depressed the thumb-switch throttle to the stops and was rewarded by a crushing blow that flattened him into his seat.

Radical changes in a target's velocity could in some instances throw a Gnerl's missile's homing system off, allowing the quarry to escape. The warning tone telling Gralton of impending danger would not subside no matter how he worked the yokes and rudders.

Apparently, the alien missiles lacked some of the shortcomings in refinement of their Zentraedi counterparts. Still, Gralton knew that his fate was not yet decided- there was still the last hope of a snap-roll away from the missile that if well-timed could force it to overshot him.

It was an admittedly slim chance, but a chance.

Reinforcements were inbound though, and knowing his lieutenants as Gralton did- inbound at full speed.

He only had to survive that long to benefit from their arrival.

The sub-commander's threat warning system maintained its vigilance in sounding the alert of danger to the pilot even as he continued to throw radical changes in his ship's flight path. The missile was clinging to him relentlessly though, like an Invid Scout setting its pincers.

Gralton's gaze swept the stars looking for the threat he was being warned of and caught a glimpse of an object- a blur of movement really- high above him and coming straight down as though it meant to land in his lap.

Not panicked, not paralyzed by danger in any way- Sub-Commander Gralton worked yokes, pedals and throttle with expert familiarity to roll and yaw his fighter with skill to the verge of spinning out of control to evade the object that was now visually confirmed to be an alien missile homing in on him.

The weapon's track translated aft in the final nanoseconds of its approach as though it would pass and miss through the vertical plane. Gralton was feeling the first sensations of relief when a great, invisible fist struck him heavily from above and behind.

Existence did not end as he had often thought it might with an all-consuming billow of flame, but rather continued with the violent G-force blows of his Gnerl spinning out of control.

Gralton found his instrument panel and displays to be dark now- his ship having been robbed of power- so without benefit of artificial means of orientation he tried to find a star or catch a glimpse of the alien planet he could use as a fixed point of reference to null his tumble.

Missiles detonated at points far and near as the world continued to spin around Gralton- the farthest still being too near to have been anywhere but in the ranks of his own fighters. The yokes of Gralton's Gnerl had also shown themselves to be unresponsive- dead in assisting the pilot in any way in bringing some control back to his fighter's flight.

All of these ill fortunes were feeling like distant problems to Gralton as he began to lose coherent thought to the excessive G-forces that were draining the blood from his head. Unconsciousness would take him soon, Gralton knew, and death not long after that. It was not the worst death a Warrior could have, he knew with his last, hazy powers of reason- it was just so inglorious.

Fleeting consciousness grasped at the other option- the pistol holstered to his thigh.

"-I guess that means the missiles work-.", Ramrod noted with grim satisfaction.

The Basilisks had worked- superbly even. The first volley had caused an absolute panic in the Zentraedi Fighter Pods they had not savaged. The second salvo had caused an appalling rout. Every weapon fired had found a target, whether its assigned target or an alternate it had defaulted to as it had been in several cases where a Fighter Pod had been double-targeted and destroyed by the first Basilisk before the second could close.

Still, despite this minor failing in combat collaboration, The Blue Banshees had scored hits on every missile fired while not having suffered a single loss of their own.

"Yeah, and unless someone packed spares that they're willing to share, that's it until we're within spitting distance.", Dredger, an element lead from A-Flight pointed out.

Dredger had a gift for finding the cloud to every silver lining.

Lieutenant Kroft was aware that she should have been keeping her pilots focused- off the air unless they were calling out bandits and other threats.

Raven was also aware that Dredger was right- and that her pilots, like she, knew he was right.

Alpha Veritechs did not carry the ordinance to secure battlespace dominance without the long-range missile and gun support of base ships, or at least the more substantially armed Betas which despite their brutish appearance were formidable combat platforms.

No, the Alphas of Blue Banshee Squadron had shot their intermediate-range wad in two glorious spurts- but the afterglow was quickly waning.

Their substantial arsenal of MM-3A "Asp" missiles that provided them the ability to deal with a target-rich, close-quartered environment would be useless to them until the enemy was within eight kilometers. Seconds after that, guns could be brought into play, and at best the Blue Banshees would find themselves outnumbered in a brawl.

In simulations, on paper, and in projections that covered every conceivable scenario, the thinking behind the concept had proven true.

Only now, these were not Invid, Archer 42 was gone with whatever long and medium-range missile support it could have provided- and Raven and her pilots were going to have to endure another thirty nerve-racking seconds or so of knowing that The Zentraedi who survived seeing their first line wiped out totally would be able to shoot back without response from the Blue Banshees.

However-.

"They're lightn' us up!."

Crawdad, from B-Flight called out the warring all had expected to hear and that all heard from their fighters' own warning systems before he had completed the exclamation. An unnerving, buzz of a tone told each pilot that their aircraft was being painted with electronic energy that was almost certainly indicative of an aggressor's attack radar.

The Alpha had been designed to fight in a battlespace likely to be rich with Invid- but not devoid of Zentraedi or other yet unknown threats whose weapons were more conventional.

Things happened quickly, and without the fighters' combat computers requiring the infinitely slower human pilots to initiate action. Radars, enabled to do so because they were not operating within the realm and range of civilian tracking systems that could inadvertently be mistaken for a threat and neutralized, automatically activated the ECM portion of their functionality and replied directly to each hostile radar source with a beam of energy that was calculated to be at least disruptive to the aggressor's radar function, and under the best circumstances would overload and burn out the enemy's receiver rendering it electronically blind.

Kroft found her own fighter to be engaging this ECM function to its full potential- 20 bandits actively tracking her, and had every reason to suspect that her squadron's other ships were mounting the same radar-versus-radar defense.

"Have a helping of what the fuck?- on us, you tube-grown bastards!", Ramrod shouted with defiant glee.

Kroft wanted to join in the sentiment and the taunting it was evoking from her pilots, but she was seeing on her radar what countless hours in simulation and a rotation through the "Blue Storm" training school had told her she could expect to see.

"Shut-up and look sharp- we've got a pocket forming-!"

The "pocket" or- if the offensive formation was achieved successfully, the "Slaughter Sphere"- was a combat tactic known to be common to the Zentraedi, born of experience with fighting the smaller and more maneuverable Invid mecha. Zentraedi Fighter Pod pilots would envelope Invid formations many times their own size from all three dimensions- which without fail (according to Zentraedi veterans turned instructors at Blue Storm) would cause the largely instinct-driven Invid to fragment and attack in all directions- sacrificing their weight of numbers.

The Gnerls would then commit to slashing attacks, using their greater speed and individual firepower to further break apart the Invid formation. As the purest form of the Slaughter Sphere had it, the slower but more numerous space-going Regult units would then sweep and clash with the fragmented Invid.

It was a brutal and sloppy tactic by human standards- but effective.

And whether you were an Invid, or a highly trained Alpha Veritech pilot, finding yourself inside of a Slaughter Sphere was likely to be one of the last of a short number of mistakes you would ever make.

It was evident that the leading Zentraedi elements were forming the dreaded pocket Kroft had been trained to recognize with their depleted numbers, but it was noticeably- almost hopelessly- sparse and porous. They had been reduced beneath the minimum number of Gnerls to effectively form a sphere or even a true pocket.

But Kroft knew that the enemy still had the advantage of numbers and was not going to allow them the advantage of position.

"A-Flight, come right fory-five and go to full burners- B-Flight, climb and keep at least a thousand meters top on them- BREAK!"

Afterburners was a loosely appropriate term.

The Veritech Design Bureau early in Earth's Robotechnology infancy had discovered (exactly how not being a matter of official record) that the biologically and chemically inert fluid in which Flower of Life seeds were preserved, known as Protoculture Suspense Medium, would generate a "Reflex Reaction" when introduced into the exhaust stream of a Veritech's plasma-reaction engine stage.

The official determination was that bio-ethereal transference was somehow taking place between the Flower seeds and the suspense medium, and that bio-ethereal translation was occurring in the generation of the thrust through the engine plasma stage.

Independently, neither phenomenon had a tangible performance effect.

Merging the two correctly however created the surge of kinetic energy that had been harnessed in the "afterburner" stages of Gen 1 and 2 Veritech engines.

Enhanced thrust was the term the flight manual chose to describe the effects of afterburners on Alpha performance- accompanied by relevant and technically correct line graphs showing the progressive increase in thrush-to-weight ratio per percentage of afterburner employed.

A sharp wit at some point had come up with the sophomoric but appropriate analogy of understanding the benefits of having a colonoscopy versus actually having one.

Kroft was having one now.

The bone-crushing, joint-straining weight of G-forces flattened the pilot into her seat as Alpha Veritech and pilot executed a turn that flew in the face of most of Newton's Laws.

The starfield before Kroft whipped left in a blur as she pulled the nose of her fighter through the turn she had ordered. The Alpha's impressive rate of turn and the necessity to apply afterburners in short bursts or risk damage to the engines made the maneuver jarring- but brief.

"Chop burners!", Kroft ordered, seeing at a glance that her squadron was no longer in the sweeping path of the Gnerl "pocket".

The G-forces slipped off quickly and the pilot could feel the blood begin to return to her upper body and head.

"All flights, break by pairs and attack!"

Kroft's A-Flight broke all around her, peeling away and separating into four, two-ship elements of leader and wingman. A quick but unnecessary glance over her five o-clock zone found her wingman, Lt Staff, still in place and covering her tail.

The time for squadron-level tactics was over now, and the moment for the skill and aggressiveness of the individual pilots was at hand.

Kroft had done all she could to place her pilots into the best possible position to enter the close-quarters phase of the fight- A-Flight off to the left of the Zentraedi formation that had not yet abandoned the "pocket" configuration, and B-Flight above it.

Now The Blue Banshees would have to do for themselves- Kroft included.

No guts, no glory.

Kroft snap-rolled left with stick and rudder in toward the enemy and was kissed with the welcome violence of the maneuver.

"You gonna keep up with me, Ramrod?", Kroft asked as the G's eased off with the slackening of the turn that Kroft calculated would bring her into trail of a cluster of Gnerls she had selected as her initial targets.

"You just clear the path and I'll watch our asses!", Ramrod replied, his voice also under the strain of Newtonian physics.

Up to this moment, Kroft could have compared the engagement to any number of combat simulations she had flown. The enemy was symbology either on her cockpit's central MFD, on her HUD, or projected onto the interior of her helmet visor- and moves and countermoves were little more than a complex game of chess played in real time.

As her turn continued and the deflection angle and range on her targets lessened, artificial indicator boxes suddenly contained recognizable shapes, and then those shapes began to take on detail.

For the first time Kroft was seeing the Gnerls that wanted to kill her- and behind the opaque canopies that she could now make out were pilots that she was expected to kill.

So be it.

Clearly the earlier exchange of missiles and the asymmetrical losses on the Zentraedi end of the exchange had damaged their command structure within the surviving elements. Someone had assumed command in the carnage and chaos and had kept with the initial "game plan" to employ the Slaughter Sphere tactic.

Bad call.

Whether they had been rattled or reluctant to accept the obvious, someone in the Zentraedi flight had allowed themselves to slip into a tactically disadvantageous position.

Pilots were pilots- or so Kroft reckoned- and someone recognized this.- though a few critical moments too late.

The Gnerl formation scattered. In pairs or as single strays they went in every direction like shards from a shattered crystal glass.

The alien unit abandoned cohesion just as Kroft entered range to fire.

Technology had made the act of taking life simpler than most children's games.

Firing apertures snapped open to release MM-3A Asp missiles with each depression of the firing trigger, limited in rapidity only by the speed with which Kroft could identify targets through the movement of her head and the "death dot" on her helmet visor's interior.

The call of, "Fox Three" indicating the launch of an "active" guided missile by an Alpha filled the squadron frequency, the words overlapping one another.

Asps filled the darkness of space all around Kroft, visible only by the steady glow of their low-vapor emitting engines as they crossed paths with one another in rapid sprints to their targets.

Officially classified as a "dogfighting" missile in the realm of air-to-air combat, the multi-purpose Asp benefited from the dual redundancy of active pulse-radar and passive infra-red homing. While neither system was infallible, combined they were highly effective in intercepting targets over the short range afforded to them by the limited capacity of their rapid-burn, solid-fuel engines.

Kroft had lost visual track of the missiles that she had fired, a pair fired in quick succession at each of four targets. She in fact had also lost track of her targets in the general, disorganized scramble, but her Alpha was not so easily distracted- monitoring the progress of each weapon until there was a merge or miss.

Each successful connection resulted in a brief and distinct hum, or "flatline" tone as pilots had come to call them. Sensor logs could be analyzed later to validate claims of a "kill", or provide evidence of one when the pilot's attention was elsewhere by necessity.

Fighter combat happened quickly in the air, and happened even quicker in space.

Kroft got impressions of the violence she had loosed- flatline tones coinciding with flashes indicative of Asps finding their marks.

The instant before they would have left her field of view, Raven saw a Gnerl she had fired upon loose its high engine and rudder- probably killing the fighter and its pilot effectively if not for the purposes of the Alpha pilot's tally later.

A second Gnerl, maybe only accompanying the first in the same direction of evasion took both Asps broadside just below the canopy, port side. There was little doubt that it would be credited as a "kill" as it fractured with a brief and somewhat unimpressive flash from the tumbling wreckage of which a single pulse-jet engine emerged, still active, and corkscrewed away into the void.

And then whatever remained fell aft of Raven's ship and was lost from both sight and mind..

"Good kills, Raven- all three!", Ramrod yelled with the volume set by surges of adrenaline. In trail, Kroft's wingman had a split-second's longer vantage of the results of the action, and had actually witnessed more than Kroft herself- three of four visually confirmed.

Thoughts of building a combat record were short and fleeting as a familiar voice other than her wingman, Ramrod's, got Kroft's attention.

"Raven, three breaking low and left on your ten! I've got no joy!-."

Kroft scanned the stars just ahead of her port wing at the prompting by the voice and caught a blur of motion through her horizontal plane of flight.

Raven was prepared to repeat the call of "no joy" on the bandits- the battlespace was still rich with opportunities that would not require a radical maneuver to engage- until she saw the pair of Alphas low at her eleven o'clock.

"Knuckles" on lead with "Blotto" as wingman were working into position on a pair of fleeing Gnerls, and by Blotto's posture it was unclear whether the wingman had seen the three Gnerls enter his rear hemisphere. They had already passed below his ability to see and the Zentraedi seemed to sense the opportunity for a potentially easy kill by the way they leveled quickly out of their dive and began to bring their noses around for an intercept.

Kroft rolled her fighter and pulled the nose into a dive, calling, "Blotto, clear your six!"

As she dove on a steep angle of attack, Kroft realized her position had not been optimal to slip unseen through the Gnerls' blind spots into kill position. If the Zentraedi pilots were experienced, they would have their heads on swivels and would see the Alpha engaging. Kroft understood that she might not get a kill, but that she might get the Gnerls to disengage and scatter.

Pursuit and re-engagement would then be an option.

The Gnerl element had an alternate scenario in mind.

One of the Zentraedi had clearly seen Kroft diving on them and their reaction was typically Zentraedi in mindset if not insane in a practical, self-preserving sense.

The Alpha pilot saw the puffs of thrust from the Gnerls' maneuvering jets and recognized the implication immediately.

Blunt noses with their maws bristling with particle beam cannon lifted and turned in near unison toward Kroft and her wingman- the darkness of space exploding in vivid blue as the "cone" of engagement encompassed the Alphas. The Gnerls seemed to stand and pivot on their tails, the line of their bullet-shaped bodies no longer pointed in the direction of their movement- "skidding' as it were through the frictionless environment.

Kroft threw the stick hard left and stomped the left rudder pedal, firewalling the throttles as she closed the firing trigger a single time. Energy bolts passed on all sides in blinding brilliance went to starboard and subsided in the split second in which Kroft was being crushed right by the sudden direction change she had put her fighter into. She fought to keep eyes on the Gnerl flight but lost them as they managed the incredible task of pitching a positive 90º and rocketing out of the engagement on a blast of thrust from their pulse jets.

Kroft chopped her throttle as the G-forces were beginning to ease and bracing for the pain she knew to be coming. She flipped the Alpha Veritech's mode selector switch high on the throttle grip back a notch.

The Alpha's thruster/leg modules snapped down and away from the length of the airframe at the "knee joint" as the arms rotated out into deployment as the transformable fighter reconfigured into the half-plane, half-mecha, "Guardian" form. A burst of thrust from the maneuvering jets tumbled the chicken-like craft in a reverse summersault that brought the nose back in the direction of the expertly piloted Gnerls- and with the nose, also the MM-60 launcher system.

Launcher panels snapped open in the dorsal and leg units, and eight Asps took flight in quick succession.

Kroft watched the missiles fly through the considerable distraction of brief exposure to 8-Gs. Her oxygen mask rammed air down her throat in an attempt to refill her flattened lungs but met with the added resistance of a long groan trying to escape.

The missiles were tracking, but had been fired at their maximum range at rapidly retreating targets.

Kroft knew she would need to get closer for a kill, or disengage in hopes that the Zentraedi pilots would elect to do the same.

The pilot thumbed her mode selector back full-forward, felt the bump of the arms and legs of the Guardian realigning into Fighter configuration, and jammed the throttles to the stops.

If the summersault in Guardian mode had been a discomfort of G-forces, the complete change in velocity that sounded the GLOC warning was an agony that Kroft suspected was only known by the hot iron between a blacksmith's anvil and maul. Kroft felt a scream trapped in her throat that could not escape, but her sympathetic Alpha seemed to convey the feeling for both of them as the frame creaked and groaned in the battle between inertia and the fighter's engines.

The Gnerls had put considerable distance between themselves and Kroft.

They were reversing in whatever the aliens had named their version of the "Split-S" by the time her Alpha had begun to build forward velocity again. Recovering from the daze of brief exposure to 12 Gs, Kroft realized suddenly that she had no idea where her wingman, Ramrod, was- and that she was staring down a pair of Gnerls.

The third was nowhere immediately to be seen.

"Ramrod, where the hell are you?!", Kroft yelled through clenched teeth.

Raven was anticipating a repeat of the high-G experiences she was still aching from- if she survived the merge with the reduced Gnerl element. She suspected and hoped that Ramrod had broken off to engage the third, missing Gnerl which had almost certainly split away to rejoin the engagement from another angle.

"I'm low on your seven, clearing your tail!"

At the scattering of the three ship Gnerl element, Ramrod had kept his well-trained eye on the activities of the Fighter Pod flying the "cover" position- and had found himself justified in doing so. While Raven was focusing on the "primary" and "secondary" ships, their guard had skirted out and around on her left with the intention of performing the function of a wingman.

Whether the Gnerl pilot had lost sight of Ramrod in the painfully elongated moments of high-velocity maneuvering, or whether he was gambling that he could blindside Raven and make his escape was unclear to Staff, but he was slipping into position to shoot without contest.

"Am I clear?!", Kroft demanded- sounding on the verge of the decision she had to make of whether to continue her engagement or break and retreat.

"Two seconds!", Staff calculated as he entered a left barrel roll that put him in a low position just off to the port of the target's centerline.

Switching his weapons selector to the laser cannons position, Ramrod was given the aiming reticule inside of his helmet which he centered on the Gnerl's tail before he closed the trigger.

A storm of rapid-cycle laser bolts zipped in a near continuous stream and saturated the Gnerl's tail- extinguishing and shredding the low starboard pulse jet with the first impacts.

The Gnerl snap-rolled right, pulled his nose into the maneuver, and vanished leaving only a stream of thin smoke and tattered pieces of a disintegrating tail in his wake.

Ramrod's instinct was to pursue and finish the kill, but he'd knocked the bandit free of Kroft's tail- and with sufficient damage incurred to put him out of the fight. There were also two remaining bandits- undamaged and equally keen as he and Raven to fight- and they were bearing down on the Alphas with their business ends presented.

No, despite great temptation Staff knew his obligation was a supporting role.

"You're clear!"

"Fox Three- two!", Kroft called, double-shooting on the lead Gnerl that was just outside of Asp range, but on the direct merge and with the apparent intent of burning out his own engines in the process.

The missiles cleared the dorsal launchers and cast a soft, amber light into Kroft's cockpit as they rushed away.

She had already moved the aiming reticule left to the trailing Gnerl- allowed the targeting system to acquire, and released.

"Fox Three- two!"

Kroft barrel-rolled out to starboard as the expected fusillade of particle beam fire ripped the void through what had been her flight path a split-second before.

The fire from the lead Gnerl- the only one of the pair in position to fire- lasted for only that first brief burst before the pilot ceased the attack to try to evade the Asps tracking him.

Both weapons struck head-on, shattering the first three to four meters of the fighter and sending the rest tumbling out of control and with no signs of attempted recovery.

To Kroft's chagrin, before she lost sight of the toppling Gnerl, the second pair of Asps struck it- leaving no doubt about the first bandit being "killed" but leaving the second unthreatened.

As "dogfighting" missiles, the Asp was provided with reliable sensors and homing logic- but it did not possess the software and CPU processing power that ranked other missiles in the Defense Forces' inventory as "smart" or "genius".

Either by the second bandit's intent and skill, or completely by chance the second pair of Asps had found the wrong target.

"-Where'd his wingman go?!", Kroft demanded as she continued to scan the stars around her for the second Gnerl that had vanished from sight through the pass.

"Five passing into six low!", Ramrod replied, having had the advantage of distance from the high-speed merge, "-Looks like he's bugging out-!"

Kroft leveled her fighter and searched out over the trailing edge of her starboard wing to confirm Ramrod's report.

The Gnerl was there, roughly where Kroft expected him to be, and he was rapidly egressing the engagement. –But it was the appearance of multiple target indicator boxes in her HVD that captured Kroft's attention.

A quick glance at her radar display confirmed the rapid approach of bandits- lots of bandits- flying in successive waves and with sufficient numbers to form and execute an effective "slaughter sphere".

"-No-.", Kroft corrected as she heard calls from her pilots and saw the signs on her own radar that the Gnerls in this engagement zone were breaking contact, "-He's joining up with friends-. Shit!.."

"Damn, and I was having such a good day..", Ramrod muttered, joining up with Kroft, "-And you've got port wing damage-."

Kroft glanced back at her port wing and found the very tip- perhaps thirty centimeters- gnawed away by particle beam fire. She had had no control or performance difficulties through her last maneuvers, and the damage was clearly outboard of the port wing control thrusters, so Kroft's concern was minimal- at least in comparison to more pressing threats.

"Blue Banshees, break-off engagement and rejoin Archer shuttle flight!", Kroft ordered, every second hesitated being another second closer the approaching net would be.

"All elements, report damage and losses-."

Blue Banshee Squadron began to form-up by flight around Kroft as she turned her nose toward the darkened hemisphere of Earth.

"We lost Blotto and Knuckles-.", Crawdad, the B-Flight leader reported, "-Greaseball and I saw it-. They ran headlong into a ditto element that came outta fuckin' nowhere. It was over before we could even call warning- no ejections."

Kroft's gut twisted and seized with shock that quickly turned to anger.

She and Ramrod had cleared them and had damn near gotten wasted in the process.

Kroft realized almost as quickly as she had felt the anger that she was feeling it toward the wrong parties- Blotto and Knuckles.

Hadn't they checked to make sure they were cleanly disengaged from the fight?

No one walked head-on into a flight of Gnerls without seeing them- not even rookies- and neither Blotto or Knuckles were, had been, rookies…

Fog of war.

The thought had popped into Kroft's head from nowhere- a defensive reflex that she had not even known she had.

Fog of war.

"I'm down an engine-.", Wallop, from Kroft's A Flight said, sounding dismissive of his own condition after hearing of Blotto and Knuckles.

Kroft remembered bumping elbows with the stocky, fair-haired Blotto while suiting up hastily in the locker room aboard Archer 42. Normally, either of them would have asked for pardon for the insignificant offense – but at the moment it had seemed completely unimportant.

For reasons that stood up to no logic, it seemed greatly important now.

Had Blotto and Knuckles been clear on the path they had disengaged on?

Kroft couldn't remember.

She couldn't remember checking either.

Too much happening too fast-.

Fog of war.

Kroft also knew that neither she nor the other Banshees could dwell on it now.

"We're not out of the woods yet- so keep your minds in the game. Wallop, are you gonna be able to bring your ship to ground, or are you going to need an option to divert to?"

The response came from Wallop's element lead, Gruffy- whose voice was anything but-, "That's a negative, Raven- the thruster is in place but its all shot to hell, and the stabilizer's eighty percent gone. No way it's gonna hold together through atmospheric interface- and if it did, Wallop would have to bail."

Kroft checked her central MFD's radar display, increasing the scale. Following the loss of Archer 42, which would have normally provided an InfoLink feed, her Alpha had picked up on an alternate and had tied in.

She looked for "blue force", or friendly symbology-. A ship, or an A.R.M.D. II platform that could land a damaged Alpha- or at least signs of other friendly fighters in the area that the Blue Banshees might join up with.

There were none outside of the four-shuttle flight from Archer 42 within a six hundred kilometer sweep- and those, another flight of Alphas were retreating with equal haste with their own flight of shuttles toward Earth.

The problem with being the leading edge of manned defense was that in a "retreat" scenario, one became the rear guard as well.

Unfortunately, there was also something to be guarded against.

In expanding her display to find refuge for Wallop through InfoLink, Kroft had also gotten some sense of the reinforcements that the Gnerls had left the fight to join. What had been ominous enough as several squadrons' strength was now showing to be a sweep in force with scores of Gnerl squadrons in the lead. As could be expected as part of a Zentraedi offensive operation the first Battle Pod elements were appearing in trail of the Gnerls, following to mop up whatever scraps of defense the fighter sweep left for them.

Kroft knew their base ships could not be far behind- but did not expand the scale on her display any further to confirm this.

She didn't need to see that- she didn't want to see that.

She didn't want to see either that the leading Gnerl squadrons were making a slow but steady gain on the Blue Banshees. Despite their substantially larger size and greater mass, the Gnerl had immensely powerful engines that gave it a thrust-to-weight ratio that was slightly superior even to the Alpha Veritech.

Sometimes battle was decided by skill and spirit- and other times it was decided by "the numbers".

The Blue Banshees had scored a victory by the former, but the Zentraedi were looking to even up by the latter.

"We'll find something-.", Kroft said, trying to sound assuring and failing in all but the words.

Battle sometimes also had the potential to be influenced by miracles-.

Sometimes.

Artoc

Darius stood in quiet study- true scientific observation- not of the well-coordinated frenzy of activities on the command deck below, but of Supreme General Krymina.

In the minutes since the main force had de-folded between the orbital paths of the alien world now under assault and the fourth planet of the star system, her mood had changed noticeably from disciplined stoicism to indignant discontent.

She stood just within the transparent anterior of the command bubble surveying the multiple viewscreens that were relaying with their various displays the successful execution of plans that had been drafted, revised, and refined for seasons- but wore the scowl of one horribly wronged.

Philisto alternated nervous glances between the displays over the command deck- which he visibly did not understand- and then mostly between Darius and Krymina. As intently as Darius was in study of the Zentraedi commanding officer, so Philisto was in study of him. It was not the same passive but keenly interested form of observation though, but heavy with the sensible energy of an individual trying to project a single thought into the mind of another.

Darius could feel Philisto warning him against any kind of provocation at this moment, intentional or inadvertent.

Fortunately, Darius calculated correctly, Krymina was elsewhere. At a glance to those making only a cursory examination, she appeared too absorbed in the play of what was decidedly becoming a one-way battle.

Darius had identified the nature of the supreme general and what drove her though, and knew that in the streams of data flowing before her that she was looking for something specific.

"Supreme General, I'm pleased to report the collapse of orbital defenses over the planet's dark hemisphere.", Caldettas announced from the command deck below, "Vanguard units have reported heavier initial losses than expected, but well within operational limits. Defensive action now appears to be ground-based and dwindling. Advanced units are moving in to secure planetary orbit in preparation for landing operations-."

"Where is Breetai?", Krymina asked as though Caldettas's report had missed the points of the main objective, "I am here-. Why does he not come out for battle?"

There was a pause of uncertainty from Caldettas.

Darius had heard this before in briefings or meetings of staff officers when Krymina had posed a question so off the main topic that it had caught the executive officer hopelessly unprepared.

"There is no way to be sure of Breetai's location, Supreme General, however-."

One of the command center's main displays flashed into polar view of the target world- provided by scout ships standing off outside of the suspected range of the alien defenses.

Orbital defenses over the northern hemisphere of the world were shown clearly, the decimated elements drifting slowly across the terminator from night into day, and the combat-effective moving from light toward dark.

Darius could see the movement of advanced assault units advancing toward the planet's high orbit. As it had been explained to him, once they had exploited the void in the planet's spherical shell of defense, they would expand it at the low orbital level. The defenses, it had been explained to him, were designed to defend from exterior threats and act in coordination. It was suspected that they could not easily defend against the threat of fighter and mecha units attacking individual space stations in the constellation.

Darius had made the analogy of peeling the rind off of a fruit- a comparison lost to the Zentraedi he quickly found, as they had only a conceptual knowledge of fruit- never having eaten any, much less gone through the process of peeling one having a rind.

Despite blank stares from all that had been at the table, Darius was confident that the analogy had been an appropriate one and had assured them as much.

"Best speculation, Supreme General, is that Breetai is either aboard the occupied Robotech Factory, or aboard a command ship from which he can direct operations.", Caldettas said, referring initially to the massive automated facility that was now passing almost precisely on the opposite side of the alien world from Krymina's forces.

"Up to this moment, there have been no indications of fleet deployment from the Factory, Supreme General. This leads me to suspect that Breetai either intends to use his Robotech Factory as a fortress from which to mount a defense- keeping what ships he has in reserve for follow-on action, or-."

"Or he intends to run.", Krymina said coldly- a sharp edge of bitterness to her words, "-He will not run from this. I will burn this world to ashes if he tries-."

Caldettas was hesitant, knowing Krymina to be volatile at moments and sensing that this was one of them.

"Supreme General, I am duty-bound to advise that if Breetai's intention is to mount his defense from the Robotech Factory, that we must move a large portion of our major assets up now while the alien world still provides a lee for our approach. All simulations show the best outcome in this scenario is with minimal approach exposure. If Breetai has use of the facility's weapons systems, the advantage is his at long-range engagement. We must commit now, before the Factory crosses the terminator into night. At our present range, it will take almost all of the available time to close the distance to our optimal range of engagement."

"Order the Fleet to advance.", Krymina said without hesitation, "-Maximum speed. Leave behind any units that cannot keep pace. –And open all communications frequencies for transmission- uncoded."

RDF Headquarters Intelligence Annex,

Yellowstone City

Commander Anne Weitzel had known from the first moment, from the first utterance of the word attack that the situation was bad.

She had not expected that the situation was this bad.

A word- a code phrase- as chilling as the word attack and more telling had spread quickly through RDF Headquarters.

"Exodus."

The single word had separated every person in Headquarters into the smaller division of those who were priority to evacuate, and the vastly larger group whose responsibilities were to evacuate the priority evacuees, or man their posts until the situation became untenable and then "relocate" to an "alternate site".

While there were documented plans and justifications for evacuating some, it was well understood that in execution the staff of headquarters was to be divided into those whom care was being taken to save and those who would have to fend for themselves. It was equally telling as it was not spoken of that there was no true guidance for what the responsibilities of an "alternate site" were- other than the broad mandate to "maintain standard operations as best as can be sustained with available personnel and resources".

Weitzel, along with some of her critical staff within the IFD had the uncomfortable privilege of being designated as "Tier 2".

They would be evacuated as critical personnel- in turn.

"Tier 1" Personnel, including the Government's three branches, senior ministry staff, and the military chiefs of staff and their support structure had been mobile in under ten minutes as was obvious by the air activity over the capital. The planners of Exodus had probably thought that the overwhelming show of force would provide the civilian population with comfort in the assurance that their Government would remain functioning in their best interest. Weitzel had seen a good number civilians rushing through the halls, but none look comforted in the least.

Perhaps it was because they were of the unfortunate sort that understood the meaning of Contingency Plan "Exodus".

There was no way to tell what the civilian population at large thought of the swarm of fighters crossing the skies over Yellowstone City, or of the shuttles that were dipping in for touch landings and dust-offs like perturbed dragonflies at pre-determined, suitable landing zones.

There was no telling what the civilian population would think when they found that this activity had been strictly for the extraction of a chosen few.

As a Tier 2 designate, Weitzel found herself feeling like one of the slower rats to be leaving a sinking ship.

Tier 2 meant that her evacuation was deemed important and planned for, but would follow the extraction of the "essential" souls from a world in peril.

This also meant that Weitzel and the other Tier 2 personnel had more time to think about what was going on around them and what might happen to those left behind.

Weitzel did her best to use that time to "prepare" for her possible duties after her transfer to the suddenly ironically-named "Walhalla"- the GS-95 Robotech Factory. This preparation was in essence the breaking of every rule and regulation associated with work in a secure facility.

The commander removed computer drives and any loose files that she could lay hands upon and stuffed them into a gym bag whose carrying capacity quickly became woefully inadequate. Procedures for any number of evacuation scenarios, including Exodus, actually forbade exactly what Weitzel was in the process of doing.

They could shoot her later if they liked, Weitzel reasoned to forgive herself.

It occupied her mind as she, and familiar co-workers whom she also considered friends- those she would be leaving to chance shortly- helped her fill what little space remained in her "GOOD", or Get Out Of Dodge bag with what the gym bag would not accommodate and what could be crammed in with survival necessities and changes of socks and underwear.

Weitzel thanked every colleague for their contributions to their collective work that would escape with her- but she found that in doing so, she was unable to make eye contact.

"-From the past twenty-four months, so-."

"What?", Weitzel asked, realizing that she had not registered a word said by Lt Giles, a recent transfer from the same REF Intelligence office Weitzel herself had begun in sometime before.

Dutifully, Giles repeated herself, and this time Weitzel focused on what was being said. She also picked up on the hint of a tremble in the young woman's voice.

"I pulled all contact reports and ship's logs of vessels making contact with Zentraedi vessels from Fleet records, going back twenty-four months, ma'am. Maybe as we start to figure out who they are exactly- it's possible that something from the recent past may be of importance. It can't hurt to have anyway-."

Weitzel knew as Giles did that records of every kind critical to Government or military function were uploaded constantly to Walhalla in preparation for a possibility such as was becoming reality at this moment. It was not about ensuring the safety of information for Giles though, Weitzel sensed- it was about preserving the notion that something she had done might make a difference.

Weitzel took the solid memory drive from her subordinate for that reason more than any tangible need- recognizing that she was stuffing her gym bag with security violations for the same reason.

"Julian, why aren't you getting Rebecca to the shelter-?"

Weitzel could not understand how Giles was worried about sensor logs and after-action reports while the five-year old girl whose picture occupied two frames and every open space of fabric wall in Giles' cubicle was out of sight. She was an adorable merging of her fair-skinned black mother and native-Peruvian father- and the center of both their worlds despite the long hours worked at headquarters.

"Miguel got tonight off because he has a family-. To be there tomorrow morning, you know- for Christmas-..", Giles explained, spelling out the planning that was no longer relevant that had allowed her husband to be away from the firehouse on Christmas Eve, "-He'll have to work New Year's though, and that's always a rough shift-."

Realizing that she was not the only one struggling with abject terror, Weitzel put a hand on the lieutenant's face- quieting what was becoming a ramble and gave the lieutenant the permission she needed to walk away.

"Julian- go- now."

Giles nodded.

"Good luck, Commander-."

Weitzel nodded, "-And to you too-."

Three loud slaps of flesh on a flat surface ended the moment abruptly, and Giles retreated through the office door past Brigadier General Shiloah. Shiloah's palm was still planted firmly on the door having beaten it with more strength than Weitzel had imagined he had in his thin body.

Shiloah half turned to call after the lieutenant who had disappeared into the office hallway, "Go down to the shelter, now! NOW!"

Weitzel found herself gawking at Shiloah who even at times of irritation she had never heard speak above a conversational volume.

He looked to her next, his eyes calm but commanding, "We're headed there too. Our shuttle will be here in fourteen minutes, but our bases and cities are starting to take fire-. We need to be in the shelter until then- in case."

"I'm almost set-.", Weitzel said, nodding her understanding of the situation as she realized she was in the process of trying to pack her stapler and coffee cup into her overflowing GOOD bag.

The office lights flickered out and then came back to life as emergency power fluttered and a distinguishable tremor ran through the structure.

Shiloah's hand was around Weitzel's wrist as solidly and as firmly as a shackle before the lights had fully come back and he tugged at her with the same strength that her father had once used when she was a tomboy of a girl and he had found her prodding a copperhead near the backyard stream with a stick.

"You're done now!", Shiloah said, not releasing her from his grip but forming a chain of sorts that linked him to her, and Weitzel to her GOOD bag by the other hand.

The hallway in the IFD which had been bustling less than thirty minutes before was now as empty as one would have expected it to be on Christmas Eve- only now for other reasons.

"Which cities?", Weitzel asked as Shiloah towed her behind him in the direction of the stairwell that would take them even deeper into the underground levels of the Annex and to the emergency shelter found there.

"Hard to say-.", Shiloah explained, "Civilian broadcasting is off the air, and I've had my staff getting everyone out or to the shelter- so I haven't been in the situation room-. Toronto, I know for sure, and both Wright-Patterson and Minoc we know have been hit- possibly Nellis and Maxwell."

Weitzel was listening and doing her best to process what she was hearing. Maybe as she learned more, some sort of pattern to the attack would emerge- but from what Shiloah had told her, targets seemed to be all over the map.

Oddly though, they were specific targets and not a saturation bombardment as with the Zentraedi Holocaust that nearly wiped life from the face of the Earth.

This struck Weitzel soundly, and even in her distracted state she realized that maybe this was the pattern

Weitzel's mind, zipping from one thought to the next, recognized that as heavy as her GOOD bag felt to her- that she was missing something.

Something important.

Weitzel tore herself free of Shiloah's grasp and darted the mere five running paces back to her office, the general's profanity (also a rarity) following her all the way. She was in her office, had snatched the gym bag of security violations off her desk and was returning up the hall without having broken stride.

Almost as a shield to the anger she saw in Shiloah's face, she raised the bag in an explanatory fashion as she neared him.

"We might-."

The world heaved beneath Weitzel's feet, and she was certain for a split second that she had died. Only there was a roaring noise and a rush of air before she was hit from all sides by an extreme weight and force that seemed to have ambushed her under the cover of smothering darkness.

Two craters, one in mid-town Yellowstone City and the other near the city limits had appeared where city blocks of buildings had stood. Molten glass boiled in calderas formed by particle beam blasts, and the first clouds of dust and smoke were beginning to ride a column skyward to form sooty mushrooms.

In radial patterns around the rising clouds, buildings slouched away from the points of impact and under the mass of super-heated air, fires began spring up as glittering dots on a darkened cityscape.

UES Hyperion, The Caribbean Sea

Lieutenant Commander Mochitsura "Takeo" Kusunoki watched the choreography of flight deck combat operations play out around him with timing and precision that would have made a Moscow Ballet production of Swan Lake look clumsy by comparison.

This was a far more serious production though.

Aircraft handlers and weapons crews met and merged their charges with perfect timing as elevators brought Valkyries up from the hangar deck directly below.

Engines started and pilots moved tons of war bird and munitions by the skill of flight deck directors who guided the aircraft by light baton through paths in the crowded deck whose margins were measured in mere centimeters.

Hyperion's deck shuddered noticeably as the steam-driven piston on #3 Catapult hurled a bulky A-9C variant of the service staple Adventurer II 50 meters along the run of its track building the speed required to generate the lift for the attack aircraft to slip the bonds of earth.

As the concrete thrust deflector (composed as such to prevent warping or melting) settled back into flush alignment with the deck, Takeo could see the last of the carrier's attack aircraft lumbering into the sky under the weight of their loads. Once at designated altitude, they would top off their fuel tanks from their first cousins, the CA-9E refuelers that had been the first to leave the carrier's deck in order of battle. They would then rally and assemble into their squadrons and be vectored toward the fight by Hyperian's Combat Direction Center.

The Valkyries of the carrier's air wing, the "cutting edge" of the sword, were actually last to leave the deck. Free of the need to refuel at intervals that were not measured in months or years, and with vastly superior speed to the larger, heavier Adventurer IIs, the fighters could easily catch up to, overtake, and take lead position to the attack component of the mission package.

There was no shame cast on the Adventurer IIs or their crews for their comparative sluggishness- they were not thoroughbreds, but rather the draft horses or pack mules if one was to apply a war horse analogy. What they did that a Valkyrie could not was to nearly double their own dry weight with ordinance and deliver it on target at range.

The work of the Valkyries was more glamorous at an uneducated glance, but upon closer examination it was clear that the sleek fighters were there to defend their lumbering relatives into combat, and to mop up what might remain after they had done their work.

Kusunoki eased his fighter forward under the direction of the aircraft director, the seaman's slightest motion with his light batons translating into movements of the fighter toward the catapult shuttle that had returned to starting position on its track.

As Oka's forward gear hitch was mated to the catapult shuttle, the pilot glanced off to starboard to see Atlas's silhouette on the light-enhanced, green sea and against the lighter green sky. At intervals of several seconds, she like Hyperion was using all four of her primary catapults to get her wing aloft. Somewhere to port, Phoebe was doing the same, and within another five minutes the carriers of the battle group would be devoid of aircraft.

A catapult officer raised an erasable board with the Valkyrie's take-off weight scripted clearly for Kusunoki's concurrence. This weight was used to set the pressure in the steam catapult to achieve the necessary velocity for a successful "shot". Too much pressure and the catapult would tear the Valkyrie's forward landing gear out from under the airframe. Too little would result in a "cold cat", and more than likely a long swim in the Caribbean Sea.

The weight of a Valkyrie with any given ordinance package was a known value though, and a figure etched into the memory of pilots and catapult officers alike. Kusunoki nodded his approval without hesitation.

The catapult officer gave the pilot the "power-up" signal, prompting Kusunoki press his throttles forward to the stops. Oka shook and strained against the catapult from her own power as her thrust washed into the raised deflector behind her.

To starboard, beyond Atlas and screened by the bulk of her hull, the sky lit in a lighter green that was a tempered enhancement by Kusunoki's night vision system. The pale green haze seemed to rise from the sea like a dense fog, outlining Atlas in sharp contrast of light and dark. Radiant clusters of stars rose above the carrier leaving glittering trails in their wake.

Missiles.

And not just missiles, but by their angle of ascent. Kusunoki realized instantly that they were Ballista missiles from the battle group's cruisers and destroyers- launched to engage enemy space cruisers that had to be approaching medium to low orbit.

Kusunoki felt the first pang of fear, realizing how desperately exposed a sea-going aircraft carrier was on open water when seen from outer space.

The catapult officer dropped in a practiced, half-kneel, half-split to the deck as he signaled for a launch.

Takeo was slammed into the modest cushioning of his seat as the catapult fired and Oka ate up the run of the track.

G-forces eased and the Valkyrie felt responsive to its controls as it built airspeed and gained altitude.

"Takeo is up.", Kusunoki said, feeling the comforting bump of his fighter's undercarriage retracting.

"Petrel One, Sunny. Climb to angels five and orbit to rally.", came the direction from flight control. The young voice was making an audible effort to maintain a calm tone, but the level of chatter around him in Hyperion's flight control area spoke of the abnormally urgent and tense nature of operations.

"Copy that, ascending to angels five.", Kusunoki replied, "Petrels, report in to rally."

"Knoxville is up!"

"Nips, up!"

"Flako is up!"

"Mongrel is up!"

Kusunoki continued to hear his pilots sounding off as he turned his fighter into the gentle, banking turn to port at the assigned rallying altitude- but he was only partially registering the roll call.

The night was moonless, but even so the cloudless sky allowed the starshine to bathe the sea below. To the naked human eye, the sea appeared dark- but as Kusunoki saw it- through night optics- the carrier battle group below seemed to be slicing through a faceted surface of glittering emerald and jade.

It would have been a meditative moment, had Kusunoki ever been one to subscribe to the meditative school of thought.

"..I am a beautiful cherry blossom…"

The sparkling jewel sea below brightened and then almost in the same moment darkened to near black. Kusunoki's first impression was that his night optics had failed at the most inopportune time one could have chosen- only…

Only they hadn't failed- they were working perfectly.

And his field of view hadn't gone completely to black in that nanosecond that seemed to stretch under the heightened awareness of adrenaline and fear. Pillars of light danced for a moment in the black, connecting the heavens and the sea.

Kusunoki knew instantly what the pillars of light were, and that his night optics had dimmed the image he was seeing to preserve his eyesight against the intense light of energy weapons fire.

"-Brace!-."

The single word and warning was all that Kusunoki could manage before the shockwave rolled over- no, not over, but through him.

Oka bounced violently- worse than the hardest carrier landing that Kusunoki had ever experienced. Violent to the point that Kusunoki was certain he could feel the airframe flex beneath him and that the weapons-laden wings would snap off at the junction box- the pressure wave of a great explosion rolled over him, followed by a slightly less jarring series of aftershocks.

Before he was consciously aware of it, Kusunoki had used his HUD's artificial horizon to level his pitch and roll. It registered also with him that his altitude had leapt nearly two thousand feet.

But Oka, he, and a sky full of blast-tossed aircraft had held together and were still aloft.

"-Holy shit- they got the boat!", someone- a familiar voice that Kusunoki could not fix to a face in that moment of fading shock said.

The squadron leader searched the sea that had been vividly textured in starlight only a moment before to find that what he could see of it was as flat and smooth as pane glass.

A cloud had settled on- or after a moment's observation seemed to be rising from the sea like an artic fog. Only this was steam from the great and sudden heating of seawater.

Out of the swirling, amorphous cloud, a form of substance and recognizable shape seemed to rise up like the deck of a drawbridge rising on its hinge. The Hyperion's bow rose and swayed up through the cloud of steam that was beginning to shrink and collapse into its self. The leading edge of the flight deck and the way it sloped down through the curve of the ship's prow to the bulbous bow gave the vessel's familiar shape a new form in Kusunoki's eyes. It looked to the pilot like an accusatory finger jutting from a clenched fist pointed to the heavens as the forward half of the great ship settled into the sea where it had been severed amidships.

The stern made a brief appearance through the cloud of steam, its rudders the size of houses fixed at the center position as the massive screws spun at high revolutions- still trying to drive the carrier.

The bank of steam-fog swallowed both ends of Hyperion as it continued to collapse on itself until it to seemed to dissipate onto and be absorbed back into the sea that had already regained its texture of swells and waves.

And the boat was gone.

Looking across the sea, at every point his eyes could reach- Kusunoki could see no signs of the carrier battle group that had been in active sortie only moments before.

There was no sign it had ever been there- not a trace.

Knoxville broke the silence within the Story Petrels.

Her voice was understandably shaky, but not panicked.

"Takeo- what now?"

Kusunoki's response was immediate, and shockingly blunt- even to him.

There were few options to have to decide between.

"We find the war-."

14 Km North of Brasilia

"CONTACT LEFT!"

Leaves were still cascading down from the trees of the scattered groves from the force of the blast that had rippled the air and rolled the earth beneath Lt Whilite and his platoon in their dug-in observation positions. Whilite had not seen the particle beam weapon strike to the south, but had seen the brief illumination and shadows it had cast, and had felt the brief sting of its radiance on the exposed skin of the back of his neck.

The resonating thunderclap had followed seconds later, sending birds into flight, animals scampering from their dens. The tremble had not left the air when the first reports of automatic weapons fire split the following silence and tracers began to zip through the air.

The first incoming shots were speculative- probing.

Malcontent guards, their warrior senses honed and telling them that they were being and had been observed for some time stitched with fire ground and foliage where they themselves might have hidden to watch the Zentraedi encampments.

Most of the phantom targets were poorly chosen, and threatened nothing but leaves and brush. Some guesses were better. Eventually, a burst passed too close to someone to be taken for panic fire, and a reply came.

It took seconds for the night to transform from a quiet tension to a rapidly escalating brawl.

Between the perimeter guards of the malcontent camp and the Ranger and ASC observation positions, a firefight could have easily stabilized and resolved.

As the rest of the malcontent camp quickly roused and took up arms-.

"Byerly!", Whilite called to his ranking sergeant over the clatter of rifle fire from the holes around him. The radio headset carried his words the twenty meters to the hole that the staff sergeant occupied, but Whilite's own ears were dulled from the rising noise around him and he needed to be heard.

"Collapse all squads back to fallback position! NOW!"

The call to withdraw was not cowardice, nor was it Whilite's.

Captain Nguyen had sent the order over PICS as the first shots were being fired. Echo Company had shadowed the malcontents north on orders to observe and as a result were armed and equipped to move fast and light. They were capable of staging a formidable fight if required, but not for any great duration- and certainly not against a force of Zentraedi as large as the one now organizing against them.

It was better to disengage and withdraw. Once contact was broken and evasion made, Echo Company could begin to shadow the malcontents again.

But first they would have to break contact and withdraw.

"Ranger- on your right!"

The words were scarcely completed when SSgt Byerly landed in Whilite's already fully-occupied foxhole in the same crouch she'd run to the position in. With her helmet visor down to make use of the night optics system, and with the chin strap and radio mike in place there was little showing of her cherub-like features to identify her- but Whilite found he could identify most of his command by their unique movements and mannerisms. It was one of those inexplicable abilities that only came from time in the field under duress.

"Top, we need to be moving now!", Whilite shouted down into Byerly's ear, "We're probably a minute from a soaking steel rain!"

Whilite was certain that between the rifle shots of the two Rangers who had been in the hole with him when the fight had started, and over the shrill whine of shocked eardrums, that he could hear artillery shells screeching in to the pre-sighted coordinates that would have them bursting over the center of the malcontent encampment.

"Not likely, El-Tee.", Byerly replied, holding her head close enough to Whilite's ear to thump helmets, "We can't raise Homestead on any of the tac-bands. I wouldn't count on shit from Brasilia."

Whilite hadn't even checked the traffic on the tactical frequencies that linked Echo Company and the JOC, "Homestead", in Brasilia. Those communications were Captain Nguyen's responsibility.

The energy weapon strikes to the south suddenly clicked for the lieutenant. On a basic level it had registered instantly that Brasilia had been hit, directly or indirectly. Now though, all of the implications began to bubble to the surface in Whilite's brain.

The artillery cover that Echo Company had planned on keeping the enemy pinned- in case withdrawal was necessary-.

Gone.

Helicopter extraction from any of a half dozen pre-determined evacuation LZs-.

Gone.

Even the prospect of re-arming and resupply-.

Whilite shook the thought for more immediate and pressing concerns- like surviving long enough to have to worry about long-term survival.

The call of "contact left" and the subsequent exchanges of fire between Ranger positions and malcontents said that the porous line of observation positions was already being penetrated by malcontents- either knowingly or inadvertently.

Withdrawing from a position in the midst of one's enemies was far messier than pulling out ahead of them.

"-Doc Lancing's getting two of ours ready to move, sir, then we'll-.", Byerly continued before Whilite cut her short.

"Who's hit?"

"No one- Cochran and Preston were lookin' at Brasilia when the dittos lit it up, sir-. They're blind, temporarily- Doc thinks-."

Whilite nodded his understanding-. Two blind men were a liability, but not a crippling one- it could be managed.

"Let's move then-. Displace Third Squad and have `em run point to fallback position. Blow the Claymores and withdraw by fire teams in a loose column on the double-quick. –I'm going to need our SAW teams to give us some distance and time to maneuver-."

Byerly bounced her head affirmatively, "Got it- I'll see to it. Just make sure you don't shoot us when we come tumblin' in."

Captain Nguyen snapped shut the cover of the PICS interface strapped to his left forearm. It was of minimal use to him now in commanding Echo Company.

All feeds from and connections to Homestead were down. Down being the term Nguyen forced himself to use, as dead had more ominous overtones.

InfoLink was still up and operational, but as disquieting as the absence of Homestead on the network had been, Nguyen had found that the chatter and traffic on the higher command bands and data-sharing spaces had been far more grave and disturbing.

The "attack" was not localized to Brasilia- or to the continent even.

Units all over the world, even off-world were clearly grappling with similar and in many cases more severe predicaments than the one Nguyen was trying to get his head around now.

This meant, undoubtedly and to one degree or another- the Panama Canal. It was a major project for the Corps of Engineers, and had substantial defense forces in place-. But it was also a clear and tantalizing target for any large scale-.

Nguyen forced the thought from his mind.

Khoa would be fine.

Echo Company was his responsibility.

But clearly- Echo Company was on its own for now.

There were greater concerns for the RDF than the bringing in safely of a single company.

-And for that matter- bringing in safely where?..

A succession of pops, deeper but otherwise not unlike a chain of firecrackers going off rose over the ascending exchange of automatic weapons fire some thirty-plus meters from the foxhole that had been set up as the company CP.

Claymore II anti-personnel mines.

This was the stunning blow needed to make a break from the malcontents.

Around him, the command post had "closed shop" as it were in seconds, shutting down and slinging C3 equipment within seconds of Nguyen's orders to withdraw.

Sergeant Major MacDonald was crouched nearby awaiting the "go" word to attach the CP staff to 1st Platoon and make the controlled dash to the fallback position, 500 meters south.

And it was time to go before the distasteful thought of running became the more distasteful reality of being overrun.

"Let's go, Mac.", Nguyen said simply, adjusting his helmet slightly and drawing his rifle to his chest for the movement to the rear.

The dull and hollow reports of grenade launchers and the following explosions told Nguyen that his units at the forward edge, now about to become the rear of his movement, were breaking up the malcontent forces that were forming up to pursue- another temporary "stalling" effort.

MacDonald pointed urgently to his right trouser and armor covered cheek, saying, "Keep it in sight-. No shooting unless you have to. We'll choose the place to fight later."

Half the CP staff followed the sergeant major from the hole at brief intervals. Nguyen was out next with the rest of his staff behind.

The night was remarkably clear except for the smudge of smoke rising over Brasilia to the south that blotted out the stars as it rose and drifted. At other points in the heavens and reaching down to the horizon, streaks of light- orbital gunfire- made regular appearances without sign of reply.

Staff Sergeant Byerly had somehow found an "alternate" position identified by the platoon's recon and quartering force earlier that day. When she had been shown it and had walked away in daylight, she had found it difficult to fix on with a rearward glance. The prospect of finding it at night, under fire had seemed questionable. But at that time, hours ago- ages ago- the need for the position had been remote to slight at best.

But now she had found it- and more importantly, a second rifleman, Gordon, and 3rd Squad's SAW team. Glass, the assistant gunner whose modest frame and weight seemed perpetually doubled in the field with the bulk of the ammunition drums and spare gun barrels he carried for the squad automatic weapon was still remarkably fleet of foot despite his load. This was both fortunate and necessary to keep up with Franco who was not significantly taller than the MG-3 that he seemed to heft with as little difficulty as if it were an assault rifle.

Byerly scanned the frontal area of her position through night vision looking for the landmarks that defined her primary direction of fire for the SAW. Within the PDF, the MG-3 she was positioned with would create an interlocking field of fire with the team from 4th Platoon that was preparing similarly in a slight break in a low hill forty meters east that the staff sergeant was able to mark by a low, lop-sided bush. To stray too far right of the PDF….

"Your arc of fire is going to be between ten and one-.", Byerly instructed Franco between gulps of breath that came naturally with a racing heart and a 50/50 blood-to-adrenaline mix ratio. She heard Franco setting the stance of his weapon's bi-pod in the darkness as Glass laid out two, 50-round ammunition drums that could be easily fed to the gun's ravenous appetite once firing commenced. Byerly all the while worked by touch to fold out the leg spikes of her last Claymore II mine that she anchored facing the enemy just below the crest of the rise on which she and the other three Rangers were positioned.

"-Don't drift right of two or we'll be shooting on 4th Platoon-. Got it?"

"-Got it, Sarge- y'know we've done this before..."

Byerly nudged the gunner's shoulder with the stock of her rifle, musing, "Yeah, really? Keep up the good work, don't get yourself shot on the move when we displace, and maybe I'll let you do it again-."

"Any chance of a raise with that?", Glass asked feeling his way around the SAW for anything that could possibly snag or encumber Franco's movements.

"Keep dreaming, Ranger."

"Contact left.", Private Gordon whispered , his cheek nestled in against the familiar stock of his rifle. By day, the small quick-sight screen would have been up, adjusting the "death dot" to account for range and wind. By night, with his helmet's visor down, it was cumbersome to use and unnecessary as the sight was integrated into the helmet's optics. Conceivably Glass could have shot from the hip with as much accuracy as in a rifleman's prone position- but training still emphasized proper form despite the benefits of technology.

The "target", one of a pair- clearly the point element of a probe- was a Zentraedi male of admirable stature in whose grip an ever-formidable AK-47 looked like a child's toy.

"I'm on the lead-.", Gordon said, flipping the safety catch of his weapon off and verifying that the fire selector was in the single-shot position.

"I've got his friend.", Byerly replied at barely a whisper as she trained her rifle, keeping the laser dot fixed on a second malcontent warrior's center body mass.

"Wait for it, Gordon-."

Byerly's order to wait was understood by the junior Ranger without need of explanation. When they were uncertain of an enemy lying in wait, or of traps set in their path it was customary for Zentraedi to have a warrior precede a probing element. The fate of that warrior was understood to be irrelevant when weighted against the warriors who would be saved when the "volunteer" triggered an ambush or booby-trap intended for the probing force.

Perhaps against dumb mines, or trigger-happy, green, militia it was a tactic that paid off in warriors saved, but Byerly and any Ranger who had muddied their boots in "The Zone" knew to be patient.

The wait was never long.

"Ditto squad moving across our ten.", Franco observed, his breathing becoming very controlled like a sniper's before a precision shot rather than a SAW gunner readying to deliver a hail of fire. The practice was taught to both and served each equally in the execution of their duties.

Byerly quietly cursed those most annoying of Zentraedi qualities as she was seeing it now- discipline in combat and situational awareness.

Yes, the malcontents had sent the pair of spoilers forward in hope of provoking a premature attack- but as the pair of warriors advanced across the small, open field the following probe force was not accepting the invitation to join them. They were expecting an attack from the Ranger rear guard and might be suspecting that this was where that attack was to come, Byerly surmised.

Smart- but frustrating to the staff sergeant who was faced with the possibility that the Zentraedi probe might sidestep her ambush.

Wait, wait, wait- wait.

Byerly was calculating the answer would come in a number of seconds. The lead pair of malcontents was crossing through her PDF at the twelve o'clock position and beginning to pass right of center. The same limitations on letting fire stray too far to the right that she had imposed on Franco and Glass applied to she and Gordon as well. She didn't want a stray of her rounds finding 4th Platoon anymore than she wanted one of theirs finding her.

The Zentraedi probe was still holding, just inside the tree line and in perfect observing position to watch the field. They would not be lured into a trap.

Maybe they could be drawn into a fight.

Well- rear guarding actions had never won a war to Byerly's knowledge anyway….

"Drop `em.", Byerly said, using the last of the breath in the statement to coincide with the gentle squeeze of her trigger finger.

The M-35 gave a firm kick into Byerly's shoulder and the chest of the warrior she'd been tracking exploded in a pulpy spray as the well-placed SCAP round found its mark. A second round fired from 4th Platoon's position struck the same warrior as Byerly's round spun him. The second SCAP sent an arm tumbling free of the rest of the mutilated warrior's mass before it crumpled into a heap beneath the growth of field grasses.

Byerly had been aware of Gordon's warrior going down as well- but her attention had been elsewhere-. To the Zentraedi squad halted in the light cover of the woods.

The night whose calm had returned briefly exploded again with a reply from the grove to Byerly's left.

A plume of flame erupted from the MG-3's muzzle with each second-long burst fired by the gunner, illuminating the position and the area all around. The MG-3 had the capability to have its rate of fire adjusted by combining varying standard bolts and recoil springs- and at some point Franco had clearly merged the components needed to yield a high rate of fire.

Shell casings flew and rained searing brass around Franco and Glass as the machinegun devoured ammunition in gulps whose reports were so rapid that individual shots merged into short, continuous roars.

The psychological effect of the crew-operated "dragon" was not lost on the malcontents who had started to push from the grove of trees into the open under the cover from their own fire.

Franco's first burst stitched a group of three across the center mass and threw them to the ground as though they had been caught in perfect tackles by invisible linemen.

Their comrades, not eager to meet the same end and having been given the split second needed to develop a healthy fear of the MG-3 dove into the high grass.

"Franco- eleven-.", Glass yelled into the gunner's dulled ear, acting as much as a spotter now as he monitored the gun's consumption of ammunition and readied a second drum to replace the first when it went dry.

Franco redirected the muzzle of the weapon, scanning for the target alluded to.

A head and shoulders was rising over a dense stand of grass, a weapon clearly shouldered. Crazy-brave, or just crazy- the warrior fired a retaliatory burst that from the muzzle flash, Franco was sure would split the sights on his weapon before striking him squarely between the eyes.

Rifle rounds thudded the hillside near enough to the gun position to kick up dirt onto the Rangers- and far closer than Franco had thought possible from a snap-shot.

The MG-3 blazed again and shredded the stand of grass and the warrior within it.

Across the clearing, 4th Platoon's MG-3 lit the darkness with three successive bursts. The fusillade was directed into the stand of trees to Byerly's left and through a shower of splintered wood, bark, and leaves the staff sergeant caught a glimpse of a leg going high into the air, like an impossible Rockettes' kick as rounds threw the owner to the earth.

The sight was clear because the target had been close- bordering on uncomfortably close- and the same glance showed that other dark masses- other Zentraedi warriors- sinking and rising, ducking and weaving through the trees- closing.

"Echo Four, Echo Three-.", Byerly said into her radio mke, hoping her counterpart in the other gun position could hear more clearly than she in the pause between machinegun bursts, "Recommend falling back to next position- over."

"Copy and concur, Three- over."

"After my next burst. Cover our movement with grenades and displace. Over."

"Copy-. After your next burst. Over."

Byerly found that her gun crew was already anticipating the move.

Glass had already policed the ammunition drum he had laid out to reload the gun, and was now holding his rifle at the ready to help cover the withdrawal to the next position.

Byerly smacked the side of Franco's helmet to get his attention, and barked, "Put their heads down!"

Franco's acknowledgment was an arcing spray of bullets that crossed over multiple points in the field, clipping tufts of grass to an even level. No specific target, but a warning to all of what reward could await the brave.

The last casing had not struck the ground when Byerly nudged Gordon for their part in the withdrawal from the gun position.

"Put yours thirty meters out!"

Staff sergeant and private rose to a knee each, shouldering their rifles and with a hollow pop from each M-35's launcher, sent a grenade downrange. The report of grenade launchers from 4th Platoon's gun position mirrored those from Byerly and Gordon, and within a moment the air split with a rapid succession of four blasts. Flashes in the stand of trees and in the open field popped like photo strobes- dirt and clumps of long grass joined at the roots were hurled up in fine clouds of dust where grenades had gone off.

"Displace!", Byerly yelled, rising to a crouch on both feet and covering the field with her rifle, "Second position!"

Heads and shoulders were already beginning to bob up in the field like body surfers broaching in sea swells as Byerly's SAW crew moved with haste in the direction that Echo Company had withdrawn to minutes earlier. The Staff Sergeant took one of the heads at forty meters with a quick double-pull of the trigger.

4th Platoon's gun joined in the suppressing fire and Zentraedi warriors flattened themselves into the earth to earth to escape the spray.

"Go!", Byerly said, nudging Gordon too withdrew.

The staff sergeant felt Gordon slip by her and would have joined him after a moment's pause to cover, but was fixed by the number of malcontents she could see just beyond the kill box, in the trees and beyond. There was a cohesion to their rise and advance that surpassed any collective, precision military maneuver- it was the joining of individuals into a single organism or force.

Byerly froze for a moment, recognizing that what fixed and held her was panic.

It was not a fear of death- this was omnipresent in The Control Zone and a sensation that Byerly knew well. This jolting terror was what she suspected one would feel to see an avalanche or tsunami crashing toward you. It was the panic of facing a force that one had no power to avert or contest.

Staff Sergeant Byerly was irrationally certain for an infinite nanosecond that she was looking at the leading edge of a great tide rolling toward Brasilia- and Echo Company, 4th Rangers was in its path.

Byerly had regained her composure quickly and had retreated toward the pre-established secondary firing position after Private Gordon at a full run before any of the advancing Zentraedi had seen her. Her legs were carrying her faster than she remembered them ever having carried her before and Byerly was hopeful that it was in the right direction as the secondary position's exact location was suddenly fuzzy to her now.

It was enough to be ahead of the tide- and also she was calculating with what cognitive powers she had left to her.

..Ten Mississippi…

..Eleven Mississippi…

..Twelve Mississippi...

Oh, fuck it….

Byerly raised the remote detonator above her head with the dramatic flair of an Olympic torch bearer bringing the flame into the final stretch.

Byerly flipped the safety off and gave the trigger grip three quick squeezes.

The staff sergeant was rewarded by the unmistakable blast of the Claymore II antipersonnel mine she had left behind at the first firing position. If her timing had been right, the leading Zentraedi of the swarm would have been almost on top of the mine. Even if her timing had been off, the directional mine would still have fired in their midst.

A nasty little surprise from 3rd Platoon.

-A Christmas present to those on the "naughty" list.

Destroyer 2913

Were the aliens simply accepting defeat?

Commander Iyos was skeptical, and rightfully so based on the dazzling if not short-lived resistance the 7th Grand Army's vanguard force had encountered with the first waves of their assault.

The well-conceived constellation of space stations encircling the alien world at all latitudes had put the first Te'Dak Tohl units back on their heels before decimating them with waves of impressively lethal anti-warship missiles. It had only been after the exhausting of these weapons that following squadrons of Te'Dak Tohl scouts and destroyers had been able to gain forward momentum again- cracking this protective shell of space stations as it were.

Even now as the fight for high orbit continued and fighter and mecha units were infiltrating the mid-regions of the planet's orbital space, there were signs that the micronian aliens were determined to provide a spirited resistance. Every space station that had been on the illuminated side of the world at the time of attack's beginning put up an admirable defiant effort before being pulverized by numerically superior Te'Dak Tohl warships and their gun batteries.

Ground-based defense positions, gun and missile, had fatally surprised a handful of Zentraedi commanders- but with little significant effect on the preparing of orbital space for the main landing force as a whole. And these ground installations had been quickly pinpointed and neutralized.

What surprised Commander Iyos- what disappointed her in some ways was the lack of a significant alien fleet presence in the defense of their homeworld. Less than a dozen alien ships, including two presumably commandeered Thuverl Salan Class destroyers had been detected by the Te'Dak Tohl vanguard after de-folding. These though had wisely not lingered to fight, but rather had skirted the planet for cover as quickly as their drive systems could propel them.

Iyos recognized that campaigns or even battles were not fought for the benefit of a warrior's personal glory- not at her level of the command structure anyway. Though those moments did have a tendency to sometimes present themselves, and it was for that reason that Iyos had allowed herself to quietly desire an abundance of warships to engage in clearing the way for the 7th Grand Army's fleet.

But there had been nothing remotely close to even the most minimal intelligence estimates of what the aliens should have been able to deploy in the way of warships.

This had led Iyos to the question that she could not dismiss-.

Were the aliens simply accepting defeat?

Regardless of whether the aliens were accepting the hopelessness of their situation, there was the one other critical element that great pains had been made to plan for in developing the plans for attack and landing. It had been the one element that Supreme General Krymina had shown the greatest concern over, and perhaps the only element that caused her apprehension.

Breetai.

Where was the traitor of legendary stature?

Where was arguably the greatest asset the aliens had available to them with perhaps the exception of Zor's Battle Fortress itself?

Where was Breetai?

So certain had Supreme General Krymina been of massive fleet action that every specialized action group, every task force- no matter how specific and critical their role to the planetary landing operations- had an equally specific rapid re-deployment role should Supreme General Breetai appear.

He had not though.

No massive armada had risen like a cloud of destruction over the horizon to square off against the Te'Dak Tohl.

No strategically disbursed succession of alien battle groups had folded into the battlespace like Invid staging an ambush at grappling range.

Not a single, respectable, ship of the line had appeared to fire its guns in anger.

Commander Iyos was well aware that Breetai was neither a coward nor a fool, and that any action he took or chose not to take was for a well founded reason.

She also knew that on the far side of the alien world Breetai had a Robotech Factory and all of its formidable weapons at his disposal- and that it was rapidly approaching the planet's terminator.

When it crossed into night, the balance of power in the battlespace would shift instantly and it would be the Te'Dak Tohl vanguard facing the fate it had and still was doling out to the alien space stations of the defense constellation.

Commander Iyos felt the time when she would want to be anywhere else in the universe rapidly approaching.

Supreme General Krymina was no more of a fool than Breetai, and arguably more aggressive.

Commander Iyos could see the movement of the 7th Grand Army's fleet at maximum speed toward Earth.

While it was too early to tell exactly what tactic Krymina would apply, she was already deploying her units into multiple battle lines- perhaps to engage Breetai's Robotech Factory from one principle direction at many angles, or maybe to encircle the planet and strike from many directions. In either case, it was clear that Supreme General Krymina had come to this system to fight and she was prepared to press the issue.

She would have her fleet action against Breetai.

The only question that there was no way of answering except for entering into battle was, what was Breetai planning?

The GS-95 Robotech Factory

"MCS on deck!", the Chief of the Watch called out over the CDC as General Breetai and his entourage of staff and support officers entered the cavernous compartment to the rumble of their own footsteps on deck plating.

The surviving data feeds from every United Earth military and most civilian Ministry asset flowed into this compartment for the purpose of being able to analyze and assess any situation- even one as dire as the one that was rapidly developing. Holographic viewscreens that would not have fit into the spaces afforded by even the largest cinema house hung weightless in the air around "The Hub" at the center of the compartment. What they showed was a localized devastation of strategic military and population centers on Earth, while another three-dimensional display showed the approach of a massive Zentraedi fleet toward Earth.

Wars could be directed from this room, and it was highly likely that this would indeed happen.

Admiral Alestair McManus did not shoulder the burden of fighting a war for The United Earth alone, but as commanding officer of the GS-95 Robotech Factory, its operations and resources- it was a burden that he was shouldering more of than many with the order having been given to execute Contingency Plan Exodus.

Tier 1 Personnel were all now either aboard or within minutes of being aboard. Once all "T-1s" were positively accounted for, the minimal requirement to allow the GS-95 to withdraw to a secondary location was met.

Optimally, time would be allowed to bring aboard Tier 2 and 3 personnel, who were also in varying stages of transit from Earth's surface to "Walhalla"- but redundant personnel for the roles they played were a fixture aboard the GS-95 already and "T-2s" and "3s" could be left behind if circumstances dictated. That call was McManus's to make, and he would- but circumstances did not dictate the abandonment of people in the face of a Zentraedi onslaught.

Not at the moment- not yet.

Normal formalities were ignored without hesitation by both Breetai and McManus as the Military Chief of Staff joined the facility commander at The Hub.

A smaller-scale version of the medium-range tactical display hung directly over the center holographic table of the command post. Earth stood near to one interior side of the cube of laser light, while Mars stood at the opposite side. Great masses of light, composed of individual dots- each indicating a single Zentraedi warship- were moving in a coordinated fashion and at high speed from the space beyond Mars toward Earth. Even so, the distance to be traveled was so great that it would be nearly a half-hour before the first elements of the Zentraedi armada was within striking distance of Earth.

"Things could be worse, I'm certain General-.", McManus said bleakly, "-But I'm at a loss to say how exactly."

A chronometer was counting down the minutes and seconds until the Zentraedi reached maximum engagement range and while completely appropriate and functional in its presence- it did seem to drive McManus's point home.

"The answer to that is simple, Admiral- it could be worse if the Zentraedi were to raze our world to the ground."

President Valterven had made his entry to the CDC and approach to The Hub with even less ceremony than Breetai had only moments earlier. This did not equate to a willingness to stand by the side and not engage though. Valterven had ordered Exodus, but was fully within his prerogative to cancel that order at any time, or to direct Breetai and the military apparatus as he saw appropriate.

"-The critical issue is, how we prevent that from happening?"

Valterven's attention shifted from establishing a guiding principle to gathering what information had been gleaned and become available since his last briefing by the MCS.

"General Breetai, what is the situation presently?"

Breetai faced the President and was concise in his response.

"The situation has not changed, Mr. President, with the exception of the gravity becoming clearer. We are looking at a Zentraedi force that is larger than we had initially speculated-. Larger than I would have believed possible, and certainly larger than what intelligence estimates have deemed possible."

"This is significant because it suggests to me a level of organization and support not indicative of a rogue, surviving commander of Dolza's Fleet."

Valterven nodded his understanding of what was being said, but was quick to question a point that was not in agreement with facts that he thought he knew.

"What other force would there have been beside Dolza's, General? My understanding was that all Zentraedi forces, whether male or female, fell under his command as appointed by The Robotech Masters."

"That is true to the very best of my knowledge.", Breetai affirmed, "And Dolza never gave me reason to think that this was not the case-. However, The Robotech Masters are not an entity known for their transparency, nor for their complete disclosure of the truth."

"Then you are saying that The Robotech Masters may have created and concealed a Zentraedi force outside of Dolza's command?", Valterven asked, his tone laced with both skepticism and accusation.

"I am saying that while not probable, it is possible.", Breetai conceded, "But I stand by my statement that the situation has not changed fundamentally. We were not in a position to fight this battle coming to us when we thought the Zentraedi force was smaller, and we definitely are not in a position to contest a force of the size that we are now realizing."

"As for the immediate safety of the civilian population-.", Breetai motioned toward the viewscreen displaying a world map with overlays depicting major cities, industrial areas, and military installations.

"-The planetary damage has been extremely limited given the size of the force now in high and middle orbit. These Zentraedi appear interested in leaving Earth intact- for the time being at least."

"For the time being?", Valterven stammered, "That's hardly reassuring given-."

A communications officer, greatly outranked by even the lowest ranking officer currently standing around The Hub interrupted with enough conviction to secure the attention of the top civilian and military leadership.

The young man addressed his commanding officer as appropriate, initially saying over Valterven, "Admiral McManus- we're receiving a transmission in the clear from the Zentraedi force. –It's hailing and addressing General Breetai specifically."

Though he did not have to, McManus consulted Breetai with a glance and upon receiving the MCS's consent replied to the communications officer, "Put it on with a translation running in sync."

"Aye sir, coming up on Screen Four now-.", the lieutenant commander said snapping his fingers in the direction of his staff who complied with the understood order.

One of the large viewscreens floating over the CDC flickered as the alien transmission was received, recoded for human technology, and was run through a real-time translation program before being projected.

The screen went from a static-speckled black to a uniform grey with the exception of an altered Zentraedi chevron at the image's center. Human eyes familiar with the traditional Zentraedi chevron that appeared gold on field of green recognized immediately that something with this symbol was changed. What had been gold was now blue, and an eye now emblazoned the chevron's center with a malevolent glare.

It was not the symbol itself that was remarkable to the humans in the CDC, but rather the reaction of their Zentraedi comrades who to the individual, including General Breetai, gave a singular gasp at the mere sight of the emblem.

Breetai's response was not lost on Valterven who now had known Breetai in a professional and to a lesser extent a social capacity for years. In that time he'd seen slight deviations from Breetai's stoic norm in almost every emotional direction- but what Valterven was reading now in the General's expression was something he had not seen before.

Fear.

No- not fear, but rather a moment of abject terror that Breetai was able to master and bring under control as the symbol on its field of grey dissolved.

"What is it, Breetai?", Valterven asked, sensing that somehow the General and the other Zentraedi on deck had suddenly come into a critical piece of knowledge that eluded their human counterparts entirely.

"What was that?"

Breetai's voice was edgy as he said, "Something not possible-."

The screen resolved to an image of a female Zentraedi officer of flawless, pale blue complexion, with coal-black that formed a groomed but unrestrained mane about her sharp features- whose piercing eyes penetrated all they crossed with their gaze. The feed being a transmission and not a bi-directional channel meant that the yet-nameless sender was not seeing the audience to whom she spoke, but the perception of all was that she was seeing into the very core of each.

The thin lips began to move rapidly forming words that were carried in the Zentraedi dialect at a reduced volume while a computer-generated approximation of ver voice delivered her words to the CDC in grammar and syntax sanitized English.

"I am Supreme General Krymina of the 7th Grand Army of the Te'Dak Tohl, and I am addressing Supreme General Breetai directly. The alien world will be allowed to submit to occupation without undue harm if the following conditions are met immediately."

"You will provide my command the geographical coordinates of the wreckage of Zor's Battle Fortress using the standard Zentraedi cartographical reference system."

"You will then present yourself for battle to answer for treason against The Robotech Masters and The Zentraedi Empire."

"The indigenous alien population will lay down all arms and surrender all elements of Robotechnology to my command."

"These terms are not negotiable. You have twelve standard minutes to reply with your agreement to comply with these terms on tactical frequency one."

"Failure to acknowledge this transmission or to comply with any of the terms I have identified will result in a full-scale orbital bombardment of the alien world."

"This transmission ends."

The screen resolved to the altered Zentraedi chevron again, eliciting a less pronounced start from the Zentraedi in the CDC who were clearly had braced for it this time. The screen then darkened.

"Those are hardly terms-.", President Valterven said to Breetai whose expression told those who knew him well enough to read his expressions that he was deep in thought, "-And I also do not trust this- Krymina- to honor her end of the proposal. We need other options in-. How long is twelve standard minutes?"

"Roughly thirty-five Terran minutes-.", Breetai replied, still looking removed, "The amount of time she requires to move her fleet into a position to act on her threat."

Valterven consulted the three-dimensional tactical display over the central holographic table with a glance before saying with calm urgency, "Then I need your recommendation, Breetai- quickly."

Breetai's expression changed ever so slightly, but to the officers of his staff, those who had worked under him, and also to the President- the shift was significant in what it indicated. A plan was constituting in his mind, and one that the general felt had enough merit to continue to develop.

"She said that the population would be allowed to submit to occupation-.", Breetai said, paraphrasing his now corporal opponent's words of a minute earlier, "They intend to stay for some time, meaning that something they want is on Earth itself."

"She also demanded Zor's Battle Fortress- SDF-1.", Valterven said, engaging in what he took to be Breetai's line of thinking, "She can have it- it's a useless, empty hulk. Nothing of any value remains aboard."

Breetai shook his head, "No-. She wants the Earth intact for The Invid Flower of Life-. This planet is the only one other than Opterra where we know it can survive and flourish. To make the Flower of any use however, she knows that she needs the processing equipment developed by Zor that he stowed aboard his Battle Fortress before launching it into hyperspace. That was my original charge from Dolza and The Robotech Masters- to recover this technology by recovering the ship."

"She needs both the refining technology and the planet for any substantial gains."

"We have already replicated that technology and process.", Valterven countered while at the same time following the MCS' thinking.

Breetai nodded, "Yes, but she does not know that."

"Then our play is to keep what she believes she needs out of her hands? That's our leverage?", Valterven clarified.

"It is not great leverage, but it may be substantial enough to hold her in check- where Earth's immediate survival is concerned at least."

Valterven showed understandable concern, "Those are long odds to gamble on, Breetai."

"Very long odds.", Breetai admitted without hesitation, "But they are the odds we have to play. I think we can sweeten the pot- as card-players say- and improve our hand, so to speak."

Valterven looked at the chronometer integrated into the tactical display, "We have twenty-eight minutes to validate that hypothesis, General."

General Breetai looked directly to the communications suite whose lead had had announced Supreme General Krymina's hail.

"Get Vice Admiral Hayes-Hunter on the line for me- now."

SDF-3

"Were my orders not clear?"

Vice Admiral Hayes-Hunter realized that her normal composure had left her and that the shock of the order given to her directly by General Breetai was clearly showing through.

To her defense- it was an unconventional order.

"No, General-.", Hayes-Hunter replied, drawing her reservations back inside and tucking them away securely where they could not corrupt her command with her own misgivings, "Your orders were perfectly clear. We will depart immediately. We are beginning fold-jump calculations as we speak."

Breetai, his presence commanding even over a com-link, nodded to her assuringly, "This is Earth's best chance right now, Lisa. Save that fighting instinct- the time will come."

"Understood, sir.", Hayes-Hunter replied.

Breetai's mouth turned up, ever-so-slightly at the corners- the closest to a smile he ever got while on duty.

Musefully, he added as a parting thought- "One ship against an armada-. You've done this before, haven't you?.."

Hayes-Hunter managed a single, joyless laugh of recognized irony, "Don't remind me."

"Godspeed then, Admiral.", Breetai said before the coded channel closed.

Hayes-Hunter found all eyes in SDF-3's Combat Direction Center to be turned to her knowing that she would execute the orders she had been given, but waiting for her to give them.

The vice admiral reached up to the intercom box over the central display console and buzzed the bridge.

"Hollenkamp.", came the response from the captain at his post.

"Status, Julian?", Hayes-Hunter asked.

"All systems are green, Admiral. External moorings clearing now. We're ready to depart."

"Clear internal moorings and put us to sea, Julian. All weapons and defensive systems to stand-by- and spin up the fold system."

"Aye, ma'am."

Hayes-Hunter glanced across the table to her husband who was for now, for all intents and purposes, just a high-ranking spectator of events. He had steeled his expression, much as she had- but in the same way that she knew he could see it in her, she saw the uncertainty behind Rick Hunter's eyes.

Borrowing Breetai's "inside joke" of gallows humor, Lisa Hayes-Hunter said flatly to the only one in the CDC who could truly and completely understand, "Seems just like old times, eh?..."

Edwards Air Force Base

A line of vehicles, some military and some civilian, twenty-three deep in convoy had made the normal 30-minute drive from The High Desert Pilot's Social Club to the approach of RDF Edwards' main gate in just under ten.

While a Lakota helicopter had arrived at the bar to recover Major General Butler to base only minutes after the entire Antelope Valley including Edwards City had gone dark, the most critical personnel given the situation- the pilots- had been left to find their own way to post.

With lights out everywhere, the sprint of vehicles filled to capacity had been that much more treacherous.

By chance in the position his borrowed military land rover had been parked. Lt Col Fred Dalton had found himself leading the charge back to Edwards- much depending on his skill at driving at high-speed along darkened roads and streets to deliver the bulk of Edwards' fighter component of the composite wing back to base.

Winters sat in the passenger seat- actually strapped in by exception to his standard practice- with his .44 safetied, but resting across his lap. What real measure of utility or protection it served, he himself was unsure of- but it felt good to have within easy reach.

The squadron commander scanned the civilian and military radio bands with the rover's radio and found all of the former to be dead air beside a hiss of static. The coded and uncoded military bands on the other hand were alive- cluttered even with traffic from the base and other nearby posts.

At least there was evidence that things would be in some degree of preparedness when they arrived.

"Vice" Vincenz sat strapped into the bench seat in the crew cab directly behind Winters and had somehow managed to light a cigarette whose smoke was sucked out the cracked rear window into the rover's slipstream. Piglet and Pinball occupied together the single seat at the center, and "Preacher" Wayne was fervently but serenely praying directly behind Dalton.

"Be sure to put a good word in for us, will you Preacher?", Winters said, discovering to his own surprise that he was only half-joking.

Wayne did not reply though Winters was certain that he had heard him.

That was fine- it just meant that Preacher was already hard at work.

"You sober enough to fly, Jack?", Dalton asked, the question, wholly irrelevant at that moment, seeming to come out of left field.

Winters shook his head as the reduced glow of Edwards' main gate continued to grow nearer on the horizon.

"Freddy, I've never been so sober in my life."

"Me either.", Dalton concurred, "Damn if the dittos don't know how to pick the best times…"

"They're going to be fine, you know.", Winters assured Dalton, referring to his family and all of the civilians- including Rio- who had been at the bar when the attack had begun.

Roxanna had begun calmly shepherding all into the substantial cinderblock cellar that she had cajoled the Corps of Engineers to build for her just off the club's back porch. It had been completely unsanctioned, completely off the books, but with complete knowledge of the base commander- and costing Roxanna only the price of materials and a surprisingly admirable barbecue spread after.

The price and skirting of regulations seemed to be paying off this night.

"Yeah, I know.", Dalton said, not sounding as convinced as he probably had hoped to.

The main gate was approaching now. Dalton knew this by having driven to post in blackout conditions in the dark before, but never at such a high speed and with a tail of vehicles in his wake. Nerves and adrenaline made him want to keep the accelerator floored- made him want to pull into the HAS where his fighter would be waiting for him if he could.

Better judgment made Dalton ease off the gas and slow to more cautious approach as the wash of the rover's off-road lights began to illuminate the darkened gatehouse.

The angular and intentionally imposing form of the concrete gatehouse materialized in the rising light thrown by the rover's lamps. All was dark, but intentionally so as the base sustained itself with an independent, EMP-hardened power grid that was independent of the ever-fickle civilian infrastructure.

The base and the gatehouse were darkened to deprive any enemy of a clear target, or of a point of reference to identify targets in the black, Mojave Desert night.

-And darkened did not equate to deserted in any way.

Steel, pneumatic piston-braced barriers capable of stopping anything short of a main battle tank had been raised clear across the breadth of the road leading to the gatehouse.

Beyond the barriers, an armored fighting vehicle stood imposing watch with its top-mounted, chain-gun turret pointing out threateningly at any who might approach on the main road.

All around the gatehouse in the now-compromised darkness there was activity on a smaller and less menacing scale as well. Squat, angled steel barriers had been erected and joined in varying configurations to create covered positions for base security troops. By the light of the rover's off-road lamps, young men and women could be seen filling the sandbags to be stacked around the barriers with the ready supply of the Mojave.

Some paused to look scornfully into the light that was depriving them of the sense of security that the darkness had garnered. Others looked much like desert hares or coyotes caught off-guard on nighttime desert roads in the sudden glare of oncoming traffic- eyes glittering like polished jewels of reflected light.

Troops in Cyclone power armor rushed the leading rover, brutish energy weapons leveled and at the ready.

Dalton instinctively stomped the brake, throwing all in the crew cab forward as the rover came to a rapid stop and barely averted a massive pile-up in the train of vehicles behind it.

"Identification, NOW!", barked the soldier at the driver's door, unseen behind the closed visor of his battloid's helmet.

Dalton slowly reached into his jacket pocket, praying that habit had not failed him and that his military identification was still there. The muzzle of the energy rifle kept level with his head the whole time.

The pilot found the laminated card and lanyard and brought it out for the sentry to examine as guards were moving down the convoy with the same task of verifying identities.

The guard dropped the business end of his weapon immediately, saying as he made a motion to the gatehouse, "I'm sorry, Colonel- the base is on Delta security posture. There have been attacks on other posts."

Dalton was prepared to forgive a man who was doing his duty, but Winters was not quite as ready.

"Attacks?- Say it isn't so!", the squadron commander fumed.

The steel barrier blocking the road ahead of the land rover began to lower at the command of an unseen controller. To Dalton, it seemed an excruciatingly long process. Winters took it as an opportunity to bleed off tension with the abuse of a subordinate.

"Here's an educated guess… You'll know the enemy when you see him because he's TWENTY METERS TALL AND BLUE!"

As much to get away from Winters as to get the pilots to their own duty at the airfield, the guard who had challenged Dalton waved him urgently through.

The squadron XO opened the way for the procession of vehicles, accelerating powerfully enough to throw back in their seats the passengers whom he had thrown forward moments earlier in braking.

"You could have just shot the kid, Jack.", Dalton laughed, finding some delayed humor in the confrontation that they had just pulled away from, "He was just doing his job for Christ's sake."

"Don't blaspheme.", came Preacher's especially valid warning from the back seat.

"-Sorry.", Dalton apologized quickly, partially to Wayne and partially to The Almighty.

"The thought had crossed my mind.", Winters admitted as he felt around the floorboard of the cab for his pistol that had left his lap when Dalton had applied the brakes, "Circumstance precluded the option though."

The drive into Edwards' interior was faster than normal despite the number of vehicles and personnel rushing about to various points in organized chaos.

As the main avenue forked and Dalton was taking the route toward the tarmac at the edge of the Rogers Lakebed, he slowed at the unusual sight that he had become accustomed to over the past several days and had nearly forgotten.

The tent city that had sprung up on the common greens around the post hospital and an adjacent marshalling ground was chocked with civilians milling about with no clear purpose- and worse, no direction to guide them.

"Oh shit- the civilians.", Dalton muttered.

The civilians who had been choppered in from organized collection points in The Outlands for medical examination, evaluation, and treatment- and for a brief period of "good will" building, shouldered by Edwards were now standing on the very edge of a bull's eye, if not on the bull's eye center itself.

Winters saw the civilians as well, but knew that Dalton with excusable vulnerability to the scene was seeing families.

"Nothing you can do for them outside of the cockpit, Freddy.", Winters said, balancing sympathy and urgency, "The MPs and medical staff will get them into basements, I'm sure-."

Dalton nodded, making the turn toward the airfield and leaving the jarring predicament of the civilians behind.

"Yeah."

Senior Master Sergeant Lyle DeVeo watched with a mother's guard as the lift cart that had raised the last of Marilyn's ordinance into place for attachment was towed carefully away by an all-purpose flight line tractor.

In the howl and rising heat of the idling engines of the four Valkyries housed within the HAS, weapons handlers completed their task by pulling the safety pins from missiles and carefully removing rubber protective covers from sensitive seeker heads.

Then, as quickly as they had worked, the ordinance teams vanished out through the open HAS doors from the subdued overhead lighting intended to promote low observability of the hardened aircraft shelters into the pitch of night.

No sooner than the ordinance team had departed the pilots of the prepared Valkyries entered from the adjoining corridor that linked the HAS to the locker and pre-flight building.

Senior Airmen Ghurdyt, Aptur, and Kakim- Lyle's personal project for improving xeno-human relations through training and productive employment each ushered Vice, Skinny, and Blitz to their respective fighters to assist in strapping in while Lyle closed to join Winters for a hurried pre-flight inspection.

"Nice outfit-.", Winters commented dryly at a holler's volume into Lyle's ear to be heard over the whine of the VF-1S's twin PFR/PR-2001-B engines.

The squadron leader referred to the Level-4 MOPP suite that the plane captain, like his subordinates, wore as a mandatory part of the high-level defensive posture the base had shifted to.

"Yeah-.", Lyle yelled back as Winters tugged at one of the MAPM-7 Basilisk missiles on the tri-rail mount mated to the port wing's outer weapon station, "Ah'm still tryin' ta decide on pearls or a silver chain `fore Ah step out on the town."

"Go silver-.", Winters suggested, moving to the center station where an Asp missile launcher and two harder-hitting Fury, short-range all purpose missiles had been loaded to a second tri-rail mount, "It doesn't bring out the sallow in your complexion."

"Ya know all tha right thangs t'say to a girl!", Lyle said as Winters reached inner-most wing station and paused ever-so-briefly.

Two AMSLM-4 "Falcon" Reflex missiles were married to an L-rail contributing to the considerable droop of the Valkyrie's port wing with their substantial weight. Winters of course had trained and qualified in the use of the long range, all-purpose "genius" weapons- and had even fired two in separate, "live fire" training exercises- but had never flown into actual combat loaded with them.

Their sophisticated lethality and extreme reach- not to mention their noteworthy price tag per unit- had never been required for the policing of The Outlands.

Things had changed.

"It must be real-.", Winters admitted, giving the weapon mounted to the outside rail a tug before doing the same to the Falcon on the underslung rail, "-They're loading us for bear."

Winters was preparing to duck under the port engine to kick the GU-11 gun pod when something on the outside-mounted Falcon caught his eye- a detail that he had not picked up on a moment before but was glaring in how it stood out.

A winking "smiley face" had been drawn on the housing of the missile in thick-lined grease pencil, with the words scrawled below-

"WELCOME TO EARTH!"

Winters shook his head, realizing that he wasn't the only one feeling punchy at the moment.

Lyle followed Winters along the length of the gun pod mated to the underside of the Valkyrie, saying, "Tha shooter's loaded with HEAP and uranium-core rounds. Don't waste `em shootin' at beer cans!"

Winters doubled forward again for the cockpit, verifying that countermeasure packs were loaded securely into all of the dispensers just forward of the vectored thrust nozzles and tail.

Winters was into the cockpit quickly and securing his harnesses as Lyle attached air lines and Neuropilot cables to his flight suit.

The pilot felt the pins and needles of fear that he expected- but not as acutely as he thought he would have. The fear was there, beneath the surface- but more than anything he was feeling a strange invigoration that was not just the steady flow of adrenaline in his veins.

In the worst possible situation that all had hoped would never come- it was a validation of being.

"Lyle", Winters said, pulling the plane captain's ear close to his mouth so as to be sure of being heard clearly, "As soon as we push, you get your chaps into the shelter and keep your heads down! Do you hear me?!"

Lyle bobbed his head vigorously, "Yeah, don'tchya worry none!- We'll be here when'ya geyt back! You just watch yer ass out there, cowboy!"

Winters nodded the plane captain away as he secured his oxygen mask and made certain that the air was flowing. A check of stick and pedals found that the flaps and rudders were responding correctly through their full range of motion.

Lyle removed the safety pin from the pilot's ejection seat and flew down the aluminum ladder and pulled it clear of the Valkyrie's path, stooping down to jerk the tire chocks free by the lines tied to them.

Winters closed his canopy and eased the throttles forward at the beckon of an aircraft director's light batons.

"Coms-check, coms-check. Knight Hawk One is on, Joshua how do you read?"

"Joshua reads you five-by-five Knight Hawk One."

"Be a chap then and put me in the queue."

"Roger that, Knight Hawk One- stand by for runway assignment for scramble take-off with unrestricted ascent to angels six-five."

Low Earth Orbit

Point Lieutenant Daehlarha throttled-back his Gnerl Fighter Pod as he put what he deemed to be a "safe" distance between himself and his base ship behind him. Safe being an imprecise word, it was actually just the range at which Daehlarha felt the Salan Class scout ship could dissolve in nuclear flame the way so many vessels of the vanguard force had while being survivable to he and his command of four squadrons.

Daehlarha, Te'Dak Tohl caste, feigned no affection or nostalgia for the scout vessel he left behind. He had some sympathies for the Te'Dak Tohl officers and sub-officers selected to command and lead the predominantly norghil crew- but after weeks aboard following embarkation for deployment and time spent in fold in transit to the operational area- Daehlarha's affiliation with and connection to the horrid, cramped little ship was severed.

As ecstatic as Point Lieutenant Daehlarha was in leaving the scout vessel behind, he was certain that others making the same escape were doubly so. His pilots and an equal number of Serhot-Ran shock troops had displaced crew from their barracking areas during the journey, forcing the norghil to spend their off-duty hours sleeping on mattresses in corridors and the limited decks of machinery spaces and relegating them to a select number of the ship's already sparse nutrient dispensaries and facilities. This discomfort was mild though in comparison to the two companies of Te'Dak Tohl Light Mechanized Infantry regulars who had endured similar conditions to the norghil on the ship's lower decks. Some had even improvised accommodations, berthing around their own mecha on the Transport Pods that were now shuttling them toward battle.

As Daehlarha's fighter group formed-up around him, he reflected on the indignities and discomforts required by Duty in the past weeks in perspective.

He and his pilots had endured less than desirable living conditions on a ship that despite sanitization still had wreaked of norghil- but they had survived to sortie into the execution phase of the mission that they had trained so exhaustively to prepare for.

Many Te'Dak Tohl warriors whose familiar names they would learn later had not, the point lieutenant knew.

Fate had seen he and his pilots this far and had granted them a measure of control in determining their own paths.

Daehlarha also was well aware that the severing of the bond between the Salan scout now lost to the blind spot on his fighter's tail was a severing both ways. The ship's commander, a point lieutenant like Daehlarha had fulfilled his obligation to the Gnerl pilots, the Serhot-Ran, and the light mechanized infantry by delivering them to within a deployable range of the correct geographic region of the alien world.

There was no going back for Point Lieutenant Daehlarha, his pilots, or any of the Te'Dak Tohl warriors so relieved to be parting ways with the scout-class vessel. The planet had been softened and prepared for them as much as could be achieved without causing damage to the delicate environment that was needed to support Supreme General Krymina's long-term goals of a sustainable supply of The Flower of Life.

It was now up to Daehlarha to clear the path to an objective on the darkened hemisphere below for the landing of Point Lieutenant Yaris's Serhot-Ran and supporting mechanized infantry.

They would take the objective and hold it until the main landing force arrived to exploit the spearhead, or they would die in the process. This was the understood role and peril of being a path-finder force.

For his part, Point Lieutenant Daehlarha was confident and resolute that he would see the alien sun rise over a taken objective and join the next battle of the campaign in the company of an overwhelming Te'Dak Tohl force.

First though, his immediate mission.

"Squadrons One and Two on point, Three left and Four right to flanking positions." Daehlarha ordered, "Call out enemy fighters as you make contact, but do not engage stragglers. Conserve your weapons for legitimate challengers-. We'll get Yaris's force to ground and then perform a radial sweep."

Element leaders acknowledged the familiar order from Daehlarha. It was the same order he had given at this stage of every rehearsal of the mission.

Daehlarha checked the positioning of his squadrons as they formed a protective lead and bracket for the six Re-Entry Transports that had formed up in two columns in trail.

The Salan Scout was already gone and the path-finder force was now completely on its own.

"Change vector to three-two-seven mark two-five.", Daehlarha ordered to begin the approach to the alien world as had been practiced, "Atmospheric interface in three minutes."

The bandits were not losing interest as Lt Amanda Kroft had hoped they might.

Fighter pilots were fighter pilots universally it appeared, and these Zentraedi pilots had sensed in the retreating survivors of Archer 42 an easy kill.

To her discomfort, Kroft was inclined to agree with them as she began to feel like a fish in distress with the sharks closing in driven by cautious appetite. They were undoubtedly aware of the fate of their comrades who had made up the units of the fighter sweep.

This was giving them pause.

Pause and caution would give way to predatory instinct though- fighter pilots being fighter pilots- and when it did the Gnerls would quickly discover that The Blue Banshees were no longer capable of landing the initial, stunning blow that had put their fallen comrades off their game.

What Kroft could not determine was what menu selection the "sharks" had a taste for now.

"Raven, they're going to be lighting us up in a minute here-.", Wallop reminded Kroft needlessly. His voice had the trace indications of one trying to sound indifferent to mortal danger that could only be heard by those who had feigned bravery before. He'd lost an engine and sustained structural damage to his Alpha in the initial engagement and since then his functioning engine had shown overheating problems if throttled above 80%.

"-You really have to get those shuttles hauling ass or they're gonna get greased. You need to leave me, and you know it."

Kroft consulted the omnidirectional radar display on her cockpit's central MFD and found that the leading squadron of Fighter Pods had closed the range to just over 150 kilometers, and as Wallop had pointed out would be able to start illuminating The Blue Banshees and the Archer 42 shuttle element soon.

But Wallop's wounded Veritech was not the millstone about the neck that would free all for a dash to safety if cut free. The shuttles ferrying the survivors of the late-A.R.M.D. II space platform were "balls to the wall" already and had been in their run from high orbit.

The Gnerls hunting them were just hands-down faster, and with no cover to screen their movements the Fighter Pods merely had to demonstrate the will and patience to run them down.

Kroft recognized the situation at hand lent itself to a truth she had learned years before in poker.

When your hand was shit- a bluff was the best play.

"Wallop, shut up or I'll splash you myself.", Kroft snapped, deciding firmly in favor of the ludicrous.

"Ramrod, I want you to take Wallop under your wing and Pepe's element as support and get the shuttles to atmosphere."

"Where are you going?", Lt Staff asked, not quite ready to relinquish his obligations as Kroft's wingman just yet- even if she was going to do what he suspected she was going to do- which was practically suicide.

"I'm taking the rest and we're going to cut hard left and back to threaten their high flank.", Kroft said, justifying Staff's suspicion, "They'll have to turn and face us, or get hit from above on the side."

"You don't have the ordinance to pick that kind of fight and walk away from it, Raven.", Staff warned, "You'll be inside of their gun range before you can fire a shot."

"But they don't know that.", Kroft said, "And this isn't a debate topic. You've got your orders, Ramrod-. We'll see you at Fairchild."

There was a hesitation from the XO, but finally, "See you at Fairchild.- Good hunting."

Kroft tried to shake the nagging feeling that she was about to do something foolish so she could focus on attempting to pull off something foolish.

"Banshees, peel off high and left by pairs- loose intervals. Greaseball, you're on me… Break!"

"The Lieutenant is really going for it-."

LCDR Queffle had been following the activities and status of his late command's fighter squadron through their communications, and had understood how desperate and ill-advised Kroft's decision had been to turn on the closing force of Fighter Pods.

"-Do you think they can get the dittos to break off?", Phelps asked, suggesting he knew the answer but looking for his superior to tell him he was wrong.

This was the question that Queffle did not want to ponder too deeply himself.

"She doesn't have any options. What are the numbers?"

Phelps was hesitant, but replied, "Four minutes until atmospheric interface. About two before the dittos can start lighting us up."

The Personal Escape Enclosure that Queffle was sealed in suddenly felt much more like a body bag and less like the life-preserving equipment intended to prevent the need for one.

"Two minutes, or about two minutes?!", the commander snapped.

"A hundred and four seconds now, sir.", Phelps replied, tied into the shuttle's limited sensor system with a PCIS from within his own escape enclosure.

That left a little over two minutes- about- for the Gnerls to do their worst to the four refugee shuttles from Archer 42.

The shuttles which were glorified ferries and lifeboats did have an array of defensive systems intended to protect them from enemy missiles- but their chances of survival were still heavily reliant upon substantial fighter cover.

Without the Alphas' protection, and should the Gnerls get within gun range-.

Queffle decided that the next 120 seconds would tell.

Kroft and her Blue Banshees would defend the shuttle flight fiercely, and the commander found some comfort in that.

Mostly though, he had no other option but to wait and see.

"Shit!-.", Greaseball snarled through clenched teeth, "Their left flank guard is coming up to play! They ain't buyin' it!"

They weren't buying it.

Kroft had known the gamble was all she had, but had felt as strongly in her gut that a force of Fighter Pods (that she was now estimating at six squadrons' strength) was not going to feel significantly threatened by ten Alpha Veritechs who'd already shot their wad.

Bluffing time was over- now it was time to be the flea on the hound's ass.

Bite hard enough, he might take a moment from the hunt to itch- and a minute could make a world of difference for Archer 42's shuttles.

"Plow through the guard and hit the body!", Kroft ordered.

The general direction was all she could get out before the guarding left flank of Gnerls met them nose-to-nose with a full squadron's strength.

The two opposing forces passed through one another at an insane rate of closure- the Gnerls fanning out as they rose away from the force they guarded to loosely grouped two-ship Alpha elements. Like a clumsy jousting pass, laser and particle beam fire was traded but with no hits to either side and only frayed nerves on both to show for the melee.

Kroft prayed for another four seconds of good fortune to get within range to use the remaining Asp missiles in her MM-60 launcher system. Only a moment before she had passed a Gnerl on the ascent close enough to reach out and smack its starboard wing at the point of merge- and the shock of so near of a miss was beginning to creep in.

The Zentraedi left flank had clearly thought that in a game of chicken against larger fighters in greater numbers that the Alphas would flinch. Kroft had hoped that while smaller, the Alphas and their pilots were more familiar with "chicken" and the Zentraedi would have done the flinching.

Changes of underwear were probably in order on both sides.

There was some sign as Kroft dove in on the main force pursuing the Archer shuttle flight that the Zentraedi might be coming to believe in the crazy-bravery of humans. Having passed through their defending flank, the aliens were seeing the "mad humans" dropping on them with no signs of flinching in a similar, suicidal charge.

The sight made an impression clearly as well-maintained Gnerl formations fragmented as pilots were warned by their ships that radar energy was bathing and identifying them as targets.

Kroft saw in a disintegrating squadron, one Gnerl bank too sharply and slam into the side of what might have been his own wingman- shattering both craft like porcelain vases thrown to the floor. Before the debris had fully scattered, what had been a flight of Gnerls had transformed into an angry swarm all weaving and dodging one another in all directions.

Chaos was Kroft's friend for the moment.

As the pilot closed her firing trigger and felt her missile launchers empty in a quick-fire succession, a stream of particle beam bolts passed over her canopy to port from high astern and slightly starboard.

It was enough of a distraction to trigger the switch in Kroft from the offensive to the defensive as she threw the stick right and jammed the right rudder pedal to the firewall.

Greaseball saw the first of Raven's missiles begin to rake through the dissipating tangle of Gnerls before the pass of particle beams caused him to check high right on his tail. A moment before it had been clear- but now, a pair- no, three of the bullet-shaped Zentraedi fighters had tied on. They only could have come from the flank guard that the Banshees had merge-passed with on the attack- but it seemed impossible that they could have come about or reversed themselves into attacking position so quickly.

Yet, they were there, and the threesome was not alone. Greaseball's brief glimpse showed rapid energy blasts and missile launches from other Fighter Pods through his rear hemisphere.

It was these three though that Greaseball was about to warn Raven of when he saw the flash of the element leader's particle beam tri-cannon.

He felt a moment of searing heat.

And then nothing at all.

"Greaseball!-.", Kroft heard escape her lips- not quite a warning and not quite an evoked promise of vengeance.

She saw the passing of energy bolts through her wingman's center mass a split second before the Alpha dissolved in the explosion of one of its engine's fusion stage. The explosion was vivid and brief- and without question, unsurvivable.

The horror twirled away out of Kroft's strained line of sight aft as she kept her Alpha in a tight corkscrew dive to throw off the aim of the Gnerl element who had just scored a kill at Greaseball's expense.

Energy bolts zipped by to starboard and Kroft reversed her maneuver throwing left stick and rudder to be rewarded by a G-force roundhouse kick that slammed her about in her seat.

Alternating quick glances fore and aft, Kroft found that the three Gnerls incredibly had not been shaken from her tail but were barrel-rolling right to get an outside track and deflection shot on her. She had clearly not drawn three rookies from the deck.

Well, what now genius?

The taunt Kroft had used to motivate herself in simulator training all through fighter school came back to her automatically, along with the spur it had always provided.

Kroft found a separate cluster of Gnerls passing starboard to port ahead, apparently more interested in getting out of the way of the fight than joining it immediately. Closer than she would have ever advised even the most skilled pilot, Kroft pulled her Alpha's nose in their direction getting crushed into her seat in the process and passed below the lowest element to feel the wash of their pulse-jet thrusters as they passed overhead.

Another glance aft found only her rudders behind her, but Kroft was on her own for now and knew that if she was not vigilant in her checking that she have a common experience to discuss with Greaseball face-to-face in the very-near future.

Ahead though and to port, a pair of Fighter Pods was banking right, possibly not seeing her or thinking that she was defensive and would not pick up on them.

They were sliding into what Kroft could easily turn into a low deflection shot- and she did have two functioning laser cannons and a fully loaded gun pod.

"Shit!- They're engaging! AIMs in the air!"

Lt Neile's call was not one that surprised the pilot of Shuttle One, Lt Gross.

The threat warning systems had come alive moments earlier, telling the flight crew of pilot, co-pilot, and flight engineer that enemy radar was starting to focus on them with predatory interest.

If there was "good news" it was that The Blue Banshees had given the larger force of Fighter Pods a scare with pure audacity, and that the number of predators hunting the flight of four shuttles had shrunk to eight with four Blue Banshees still detailed exclusively to their guard.

The "bad news" was that eight Fighter Pods was still more than enough to make quick work of four unarmed shuttles.

"Automatic ECMs are active.", Tran, the flight engineer reported as the shuttle's defense mechanisms reckognized the inbound air intercept missiles of a multitude threatening the shuttle, analyzed the situation, and responded.

The shuttles did not possess proactive ECM systems like the aggression-indoctrinated Veritechs and could not burn out an opponent's sensor systems. Their ECM suite did however have the power and sophistication to baffle and overwhelm the relatively simple electronic minds of missiles.

"Four AIMs tracking true at sixty kliks at one-eight-zero relative.", Tran called as the radar jammers flooded the shuttle's wake with waves of noise across the EM bands the missiles emitted in active homing.

"Wake up the Magpies in case.", Gross ordered as Earth filled the windscreen before him.

"Four Magpies hot in the nest.", Tran called back after flipping several switches high on the defensive systems panel at his station.

The D-2 "Magpie" was essentially a re-engineered AMSM-2 "Fury" missile whose redesigned use was averting death for its base platform instead of delivering death for it. Space that would have been occupied in a Fury missile by a seeker and warhead package housed in the Magpie transmitters and a control CPU that worked at nothing but providing an irresistible target to active and passive guided weapons.

Their only drawback- or at least the only complaint voiced commonly about the Magpies- was the decoy's limited endurance which necessitated launching only when the threat was uncomfortably close to the base platform.

"Can we maneuver at all?", Neile asked the pilot to his left as he watched the four missiles tracking the shuttle swiftly cross the fifty kilometer range marker on the shuttle's center console MFD.

"Not enough to be of much use.", Gross replied, knowing that Neile knew this himself.

Entering the atmosphere despite craft construction of higher strength and greater heat-resistant materials was still a mathematical exercise of exact speeds and angles. Too shallow an angle of entry, or at too high a speed and the shuttle would skip the thinnest layer of the Earth's gaseous envelope like a flat stone across the face of a pond. Too steep an angle and the craft could burn up from the diesel effect of air compression, or fold under the stress of the same air's inability to move out of the way.

Fortunately, Gnerls and their missiles were governed by the same physical laws and limitations. Atmospheric interface was a period of great vulnerability for any craft, but it was also the least ideal scenario for attack.

Gross hoped this would work in their favor.

"Thirty kilometers and-.", Tran said, beginning his regularly spaced reports on the progress of the missiles in stalking them. He paused though as his screen began to show him signs of an improved shot at survival.

"One AIM is going astray-. Yeah, definitely going off track-. –And- what the fuck?!- One of the Banshees is splitting from formation!"

Lt Neile watched as a single pulsating blip in the cluster tracking the shuttle veered to starboard off course and out of the realm of being a threat.

More curious was the sight of an Alpha's icon looping back- reversing its course toward the Gnerls as the rest of the escort element held station with the shuttles.

A vibration began to roll through the frame of the shuttle- barely noticeable at first but it built steadily into noticeable buffeting as the airframe collided with sparse air molecules.

The tremors of the shuttle continued to build in intensity and were accompanied by a steady increase in G-forces the crew was experiencing. A curtain of plasma rolled up past the cockpit windscreen in licks, illuminating the small compartment.

The crew might have noticed the vivid colors and their beauty if they had not been so intent on operating their craft through these treacherous minutes compounded in danger by the introduction of missiles into the mix.

"A second AIM is going astray!", Tran called just before hull ionization robbed the crew of their sensors.

"Damnit!- Ionization black-out! We're blind!"

Staff had caught a glimpse of Wallop's Alpha pitching up and banking sharply right, but had lost eyes on his surrogate wingman before he had realized what was happening. Now, he only had the Alpha's omnidirectional radar to tell him the position of the other pilot and his wounded fighter.

He also allegedly had authority as the element lead.

"Wallop, get your crazy ass back in formation, NOW! THAT'S AN ORDER!"

"Negative on that, Ramrod-.", came Wallop's immediate reply., "I was getting off the train at atmospheric interface anyway, and I've got a better chance one-on-eight with these guys than I've got re-entering anyway-."

Staff found Wallop high on his tail, almost dead astern and falling away rapidly as the first bumps of atmospheric interface began to rattle his Alpha. He had not come up with a solid plan to get Wallop and his damaged Alpha to a "safe" recovery point where the pilot of the lame fighter could ditch for pick-up by SAR- but Staff had not abandoned the idea.

Wallop had changed things now, and Staff could only react.

"Pepe, keep your element with the shuttle flight!", Staff ordered, firewalling the throttles and pulling into a banking climb before the order had completely escaped his lips.

The Alpha climbed easily away from the edge of atmosphere and with several seconds of exposure for Staff to high Gs, came around into distant trail of Wallop's fighter.

Staff recognized Wallop's "plan" at a glance. Nose-to-nose with the Gnerls, Wallop was using his ECM to jam out the Fighter Pods' radars. He couldn't do a thing about the AIMs in the air, but he could keep them from firing a second volley at the Archer shuttles.

Even as Staff was recognizing Wallop's crazy-brave but legitimate improvised plan of action, there were indications that it was working. One by one, the attack radars of the Gnerls stopped searching for targets- either having been destroyed by Wallop's radar or going through an automatic system reset to regain function.

Whichever- they were no longer tracking.

Now it was a matter of getting Wallop out.

Head-to-head, the Gnerl flight and the lone Alpha wolf had devoured the range between them with a high closure rate. Disengaging before the merge was not an option to a pilot with the least amount of tactical savvy on either side.

The worst of it for Staff that he was woefully out of range to do anything but watch.

"I want a medal for this!", Wallop exclaimed, much like a small child demanding candy from a parent on the check-out aisle at a grocery store.

Staff could barely make out the terms of the high-speed merge at his range.

There was a rippling flash of missile launches from Wallop's Alpha coinciding with the pulse of particle beam cannon fire from the Gnerl flight and then an indistinguishable series of larger explosions.

Staff's radar display showed the flanks of the Gnerl line peel off and disengage in the direction of higher orbit- four strong in total.

Nothing- neither Gnerl nor Alpha- emerged from the center of the meeting.

Refusing to let the moment in, Staff snap-rolled his Alpha left to begin his approach on Earth's atmosphere again.

There were still four shuttles that had to be shepherded safely to ground.

Missiles possessed no sense of self-preservation – their very purpose of being was the polar opposite.

Zentraedi missiles, as with the half dozen that had defied the electronic counter-measure efforts of the Archer 42 shuttle flight did not have complex homing logic either- but they had simple redundancy programming.

A half dozen had entered the atmosphere of the alien world still tracking the targets they had locked onto. Within moments, the same hull ionization that had blinded the escape shuttles also blinded the missiles leaving them only with the memory of their targets last course, speed, and range.

Atmospheric interface also began to diesel the air before the six missiles, rapidly building heat and exploiting another generic flaw in Zentraedi missile design- a general frailty to excessive heat.

One by one, the missiles overheated in rapid succession.

Two went wild as their guidance CPUs overheated and failed.

Two detonated prematurely when their warhead charges crossed the heat line into critical instability.

One simply disintegrated when an otherwise insignificant flaw in its skin gave way to heat and allowed air friction to rip the missile apart.

One, miraculously remained- flying the last intercept course it had calculated and counting down.

Lt Gross gripped the controls of the shuttle as though he would hold the ship together with his grasp.

The shuttle had been engaging in a standard deceleration program to bleed off energy and speed on its decent through the atmosphere, and had been executing a left S-turn when the ship's general rattle had been punctuated by a distinct and violent jolt from high starboard.

The flight control computers had compensated immediately, keeping the shuttle under control and in the decent program- but the ship's motion had changed. The powerful "rattling" the flight crew was accustomed to was now more severe and pronounced.

Shuttle One's flight crew checked quickly systems and ship's diagnostics reports that came back to them quicker than any living being could hope to ingest the information. Mostly, the reports were satisfactory.

Mostly.

"We've got control surface damage!", Tran announced from his seat, "Rudder and starboard stablizers!"

Gross saw that there was at least a minute left on the automated descent program before he could go manual again with any hope of bringing his ship safely to ground. Until that time, it was up to the computer and the ruggedness of the shuttle- and of course an element of luck.

"She'll hold together.", Gross said, attempting to convince himself as much as his co-pilot and flight engineer, "But we might not make Fairchild. The second we come out of blackout, light off the distress beacon and begin mayday calls on the emergency frequency-."

Artoc

Darius had never considered himself a student of the psychological disciplines, nor even a skilled observer of behavior- but it did not take an expert in either to see Supreme General Krymina's discontent as she made no effort to conceal it.

Philisto's attention was directed outward from the suddenly confining space of the flagship's command bubble to the multiple holographic displays opened over the ship's command deck. Sub-General Caldettas stood quietly beside his superior, observing the same as Philisto though for different reasons.

Caldettas's occupation required this attention to what the screens ere telling him.

Philisto who had no more training and experience in the military arts than Darius was a coward, and purposefully avoiding the possibility of eye contact with the Te'Dak Tohl commander and the redirection of her agitation toward him.

Darius mused that perhaps he was a better student of psychology and behavior than he gave himself credit for.

Humility was after all one of the flaws he recognized in himself.

Still, Darius could not place the source of Supreme General Krymina's displeasure.

The alien-controlled Robotech Factory had crossed into the faltering planet's shadow and had actually begun a slow, deliberate move away from the world. From what Darius recalled from many a tedious and unproductive tactical briefings and discussions on the possibility of Breetai using the Factory as a platform for resistance- it seemed to Darius that if this had been the legendary general's intent, he would have begun by now.

Darius was not reading in Caldettas excessive concern- which seemed to support Darius's own assessment- and Caldettas did have the trained mind and experience to identify a threat.

Still, Supreme General Krymina wore the expression of one foreseeing the worst and without the ability to alter that outcome.

Darius, ever the scientist, drew his frustration from not being able to understand why.

"Two minutes to lead elements' maximum weapons range.", advised a now-familiar voice to Darius from the deck below.

Artoc, being well behind the forward edge of the rapidly advancing bulk of the 7th Grand Army's fleet would have no direct part in the initial exchange if the shooting were to start- but as every vessel of the fleet was an extension of Krymina herself to some extent, she had shown no indication of wanting to change her vessel's placement and expose it to danger.

Darius recognized also that Krymina was gifted in the ability to surprise.

She could change her mind.

"He won't surrender.", Krymina said finally, without prompting, and with bitter indignation, "It isn't in Breetai's nature to surrender. He will test my resolve."

A change in Caldettas snared Darius's attention, stealing it from Krymina for a moment. The army's executive officer's expression now showed concern.

It was not the concern of a soul facing potential mortal danger, but the concern of a dedicated professional seeing the possibility of his greatest work coming undone before him.

"Supreme General, I am obligated to respectfully remind you that while the alien planet is of little use to us without the technologies in Zor's Battle Fortress- the Battle Fortress is of no utility without this world. We require both to secure our freedom from The Robotech Masters."

Krymina's burned intensely with masterfully governed anger, a hint of which still crept out in her voice.

"I am well aware of that, Sub-General."

"Command, Sensor Control.", came the same voice recognized by Darius, "A second contact has been detected moving away from the Robotech Factory- a ship."

"A single ship?", Krymina asked, careful to balance optimism against what her mind and training insisted she expect.

"Yes. A single ship, not of Zentraedi or catalogued alien design-."

Krymina braced herself, "On screen, maximum magnification and computer augmentation."

The center holographic viewscreen changed instantly, drawing the image it displayed from an anonymous vessel far forward in the fleet's charge.

The picture was blurred with pixilation, losing many fine details of the vessel's hull to distortion- but it was clear enough.

"That's the Battle Fortress.", Philisto said both factually and with the hope that violence might be averted inside the command bubble.

Darius briefly glanced over his shoulder to gaze on the maroon, organically reminiscent design of the trophy Krymina sought before looking back at the Supreme General.

"Kevtok's acquired intelligence stated that Zor's ship had been destroyed by that maniac, Khyron.", Caldettas said dismissively, not allowing his eyes to see what his mind could not account for.

"I see compelling evidence that Action Commander Kevtok's intelligence is somewhat flawed.", Krymina replied, "Communications, open a channel-."

"Pardon me, Supreme General", the communication officer interrupted, "-But we- you are being hailed by Breetai."

Darius registered, but only for a moment, genuine shock on Krymina's face that morphed darkly and quickly to contempt.

"Put him on."

The strange diamond-centered, red circle ensign of the aliens appeared briefly on a second screen over Artoc's command deck before being replaced by a mid-chest to head image of Breetai.

His uniform was alien- not that of a Zentraedi, but the distinctive half-helmet covering the disfigured right side of his face, and the face not concealed behind metal and an electronic eye was his.

From a flashing icon in the lower left frame of the screen, Krymina recognized that the feed was both live and bi-directional.

Their locked eyes connected them, she and Breetai.

"Surrender Zor's Battle Fortress to me, Breetai, and I will allow the alien world to survive.", Krymina said flatly, repeating the demand of her previous transmission.

Breetai, as she had expected- had hoped was unfazed and equally steadfast in his position.

"I will allow you this world- but not the means to make it worth your effort, Krymina. That, I keep for myself until I choose the time of our next meeting."

Krymina said coldly, "I will find you before then, norghil- that is what we do. And when I've found you, I will demonstrate the other thing we Te'Dak Tohl do."

Breetai's expression did not fluctuate in the least.

"The universe is a very large place to hide, Krymina- and prepare. You won't heed me, but I recommend you do the same."

The screen unceremoniously went dark, but Krymina's attention was already elsewhere.

The central viewscreen with the image of The Battle Fortress flashed in a brilliant blue light and was then empty with the exception of the background of the alien world.

The Robotech Factory was gone, as was Zor's ship- lost to fold and hyperspace.

Expecting some great display, Darius was heartily disappointed when Supreme General Krymina simply turned away on her heel and moved toward the door at the rear of the command bubble.

As she went, she passed the simple instruction to Caldettas-.

"Proceed with landing operations. Set Jekketh loose on this world, and then convene a meeting of my planning staff. We have a rogue norghil to locate."

The Bering Sea

Lieutenant Commander Queffle had not expected to live long after a proximal missile detonation had thrown he and the other survivors of Archer 42 aboard the escape shuttle around in their seat restraints. He had expected a great roar as the shuttle flew apart around him, and then oblivion.

The shuttle had not come apart, but had struggled through its descent and despite a perceivable "limp" to its flight- it had continued to fly.

Even the distressing announcement by the pilot, Gross- that the shuttle was off course, failing, and would have to ditch in the sea was not as harrowing as Queffle would have expected it to be. Perhaps this was just perspective provided by the day as it had gone so far.

Nothing could have prepared Queffle for the brutality of the landing itself though.

The shuttle seemed to throw itself and everyone aboard to earth like a child in a tantrum.

Shoulders were bruised by the harnesses that held them and spines were compressed to the point of cracking as the frame of the shuttle wailed and groaned with the termination of flight and its meeting the sea. A great rush of water was heard all around as the sounds of straining metal subsided. The sounds, when heard from within the darkness of a personal escape enclosure were that much more terrifying.

Queffle tore the zipper of his cocoon open and released his seat harnesses. A sharp pain corkscrewed up his spine as he stood, but it was the unanticipated pitch and roll to the deck under his feet that sent him down to discover another unpleasant variable to the situation. Freezing salt water soaked the commander, eliciting a yelp of surprise from him but at the same time clearing his head instantly.

Joints and seals in the shuttle had clearly ruptured and if water was already in the cabin, there was every reason to believe that the spacecraft would not be buoyant for long.

By the dim, red light of the emergency illumination system, Queffle could see others from his crew freeing themselves and helping one another from their seats. Just a quick survey of the shuttle's company showed a lot of sprains and some broken bones perhaps, but every occupied seat was giving up its living occupant.

Queffle was helped to his feet by Chief Phelps who even in the crimson wash of the emergency lights looked pale to the commander's remaining "good" eye.

"You okay, Phelps?"

"Sure, once my balls leave my throat, sir.", Phelps muttered, steadying himself on his feet against a deck that was taking a distinctive angle down at the shuttle's tail.

"We've gotta abandon ship-.", Queffle said, the sickening irony of having to give that order twice in a day not lost on him, "She's headed to the bottom."

Phelps felt the last of the water on the deck roll off his feet and ankles as it went to the low point aft, and asked, "The bottom of where?"

"The sea, Chief-.", Queffle said making his way toward the starboard cabin hatch that seemed to be on the high side of the shuttle's developing list, "-And it doesn't matter which because we can drown in one the same as any other if we don't get out."

"Right-.", Phelps agreed, recognizing the pointlessness of his question, "We should get the wounded into rafts first- the way the deck's tilting here, we might not be able to get them out if we wait too long-."

Queffle nodded his agreement, but recognized suddenly that he was missing personnel.

Pointing to the first two sturdy crewmen his eyes came across, the CO ordered, "You and you- cockpit- the flight crew may be injured."

"Aye sir!", said both as they made their way pas the CO to where the short stair to the cockpit passed through the forward bulkhead.

The angle on the deck was becoming more severe.

"Listen up!", Queffle yelled as to be heard clearly over the murmur of crew checking their shipmates, "We have to get off now. Five rafts, so I need a lead in charge of each. Rudenko, Connelly, James, and you Skarpnack- grab a second-in-command and move forward. Chief Phelps and I will take the fifth raft. Anyone injured or wounded, head of the line. We'll spread the wounded out between the rafts."

Queffle slapped the hatch with the palm of his hand, "Now we have to move fast-. When we pop the door, this bucket won't float for long-."

Almost as though to prove his point, the shuttle gave a groan and with a piercing metallic bang!- the sea began to spray in from a midship frame.

Queffle pulled the emergency handle on the shuttle's hatch and the eardrums of all were shocked as explosive bolts blew the door clear of the frame. A second handle pulled fired five tethered bundles free of the ship.

The commander saw the rafts uncoil in flight as they began to inflate and by the time they had settled into the heaving sea, they were taking form complete with the rise of their canopy enclosures. This was a relief of questionable validity to Queffle who in standing exposed to the elements for only a few seconds now was already feeling the numbing sting of arctic air and spray.

The possibility of dying from exposure had not occurred to him up to this point, but it was high on the list of racing thoughts now.

Fortunately, there was the task of escaping drowning to occupy the commander's mind first before he had to worry about freezing to death.

Phelps enlisted three large seamen to move others forward and to the hatch as one at a time the rafts were filled.

Despite the angle on the shuttles deck that was now well on its way to 40-degrees, and the disturbing sight of the rear of the cabin being awash to near the top of the bulkhead- there was no panic. The day's events had clearly steeled others beside Queffle.

It wasn't until the fifth raft was being filled that the two seamen who Queffle had sent forward to the cockpit returned alone.

Seeing their commander's question on his face, one of the seamen reported apologetically, "Sorry, Skipper- they're dead-."

"Dead?"

"Yes sir- all three. Broken necks, two of `em from the crash I guess and the engineer was all beat up and blood comin' from his ears- his harness broke."

Queffle motioned for the two men to leave the hatch next, before him.

It was inexplicably bitter he found, this last pill. Of anyone on the shuttle, it had been the three men in the cockpit who had done the most to save the lives of those who now were bobbing in the sea in five orange rafts- for that they had deserved to live at least.

War was not about deserving though.

It just was.

The shuttle groaned again and the deck began to tip steeply under Queffle's feet.

She was starting her plunge.

Queffle unclasped the tether from its anchor point to the hull and flopped headlong into the raft. Water sloshed about him and the cold bit into him almost instantly- but he would not drown today. At least he would not drown.

Hands helped him off the pliable, flexing floor of the raft in the rolling swells. Another set of hands wrapped him in a thin, mylar thermal blanket that was part of the raft's emergency stores.

As Queffle found stability on his knees, he caught a glimpse of the shuttle's nose standing upright out of the sea, turning slowly as it slipped below.

The last connection to Archer 42 vanished with only a slight gulp in the rolling swells.

Overhead, as beautiful as the song of angels came the sound of Alpha Veritech engines moving by in a slow, low pass. Likely, one of The Blue Banshees had followed them down and was fixing their position in the sea.

Through the raft's clear plastic windows, Queffle could see the flash of distress strobes that accompanied a powerful, radio distress beacon.

Hopefully SAR would be along soon.

120