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.

11. Doolittle

Chapter Ten

Doolittle

"I have high confidence in this operation."

"The objectives are clear and within reason, the plan is bold but not overzealous, and we are bringing to bear sufficient mission assets to execute the plan effectively. –I have fought longer odds before."

"Aboard SDF-1, during the first War, Gloval took much longer odds than this, and frequently. –But he was compelled to fight those odds."

"We- no, I am actively and knowingly rolling the dice on a long-odds gamble risking the lives of irreplaceable thousands who crew the ships of this task force, risking our new Flagship, and possibly risking determination of the course of the War itself for little more than a declaration of defiance."

"-Yet I agree with Breetai and am confident that this plan can achieve its objectives."

"The fear that I keep to myself is the outcome for the civilian population and our forces left on Earth. There is no way of knowing what the ramifications of this operation will be for them, but when I allow my imagination to take the helm on those dark thoughts- the horrors I see…"

Vice Admiral Lisa Hayes-Hunter

Civilian Relocation Center 18,

Bakersfield, California

Having experience with "civilian relocation centers" as many members of the population who had survived The Zentraedi Holocaust had, Roxanna felt a particular disdain for the term itself. By foregoing use of entirely appropriate terms like evacuee, or refugee there seemed to be an implication that the civilians being housed within the plastic-smelling, nylon walls and beneath the camouflage pattern rooves of RDF-Army tents, sleeping on garrison-issue cots under olive-drab blankets were somehow there independent of external, world events. There was also the mildly patronizing military precept that by embellishing a thing with unnecessary syllables that somehow one masked the nature and the truth of the thing.

No, Roxanna was content to be a refugee, or evacuee- or whatever the hell the proper term was over a relocated civilian.

Had she had a measure of control or had her will had even the slightest of influence on anything, she would have been behind the bar of her no-frills establishment catering to the rougher specimens of military culture assigned to RDF Edwards AFB, and enjoying the prime profit-making hours of the evening.

Instead, she had to find contentment in a conservatively self-rationed cigarette enjoyed after a dinner served in a compartmentalized tray, courtesy of the same RDF that had been so generous as to relocate her.

Roxanna was not bitter- far from it.

She simply had previous experience with this mode of quasi-nomadic living- more than some, less than others. She, like almost everyone old enough to be reading at a second grade level, had memories of other camps called "home" as a result of other wars. She knew herself to be counted amongst the "lucky" as she had had a camp to call home following the last war much as she had now.

Others had not been so fortunate, and many had been taken by starvation, exposure, and disease.

Many living now would be the nameless stock of future tales of war-brought hardship and suffering told to generations hence- hopefully.

There were camps similar to Civilian Relocation Center 18 all over the continent, and all around the world really. Right now, all were filled with civilians considering themselves amongst "the fortunate" because the shock of war itself had not thawed in them yet. The War it seemed had come most heavily to this hemisphere, but gravitating toward the continent to the south. No alien legions could be seen marching on hallowed Terran soil for hundreds of kilometers, and beside losses to units from Edwards, the most jarring indicators of conflict had been power-loss and a single alien mecha dispatched with considerable collateral civilian property damage by Roxanna's acquaintance, Winters, within the Edwards City limits nights before. –And even this was an event that was more received by the civilian population as a costly curiosity than a herald of war.

Civilians removed from the "hot zones" whose lives had just begun to resume a semblance of normalcy after The First Robotech War would not be shocked by the arrival of the second for long, and would not be content to live behind walls of nylon indefinitely. The sense of "good fortune" and gratitude had a brief lifespan in a population separated from the distractions of normal, everyday life.

-That friction with the Center's protectors would come later.

For now the civilians were thankful, but that honest sentiment never lasted.

There was a sizable minority in the Center's population that Roxanna had a kinship with and an understanding of that the other civilians did not. This population was neither distracted by their current "fortune", nor would they be in short order by thoughts of abandoned homes and businesses. The camp was heavily populated by the spouses and families of the same units from RDF Edwards who were in the thick of The War at this moment. –And unlike the other displaced around them, the news and video footage from thousands of kilometers away held more than a mere pedestrian interest.

Like Catherine Home, those who had lost loved ones already were held at the center of an invisible circle and attended to and consoled by those who shared the military lifestyle but by Providence had been spared that sacrifice.

The consolers though genuine in their care for the grieving were nonetheless serving themselves as well- filling their time and conscious thought with distractions from the inevitable terrors that were part of military family life. They received the same news as the pure civilians, but what those with no military affiliation saw as keeping them somehow connected to The War was for the families of the combatants a perpetually open door for the admission of demons.

Roxanna had never been critical of women who had chosen to take military husbands, nor for that matter men who had taken military wives. Like all decisions, it was a gamble- whether carefully calculated or just a toss of the dice, but it had been a gamble that she had avoided intentionally in the days when suitors had been more numerous.

Roxanna was comfortable with that decision and unapologetic for it, though with wisdom that was only acquired by living and with the benefit of hindsight she had become aware- acutely aware recently- that she had not dodged that bullet at all.

Military spouses feared the receipt of a single telegram borne compassionately by the chaplain. Because of the scores of regular faces seen over her bar who had somehow become family over the years, Roxanna found herself fearing them all.

A tug at the sleeve of her jacket coincided with Roxanna's cigarette burning down to the filter. Seeing that it was Rio seeking her attention and carrying that sad excuse for a life-worn alley cat was ample reason to not light another.

"What's happening now, sweetie?", asked the displaced bar owner as she dropped the cigarette butt to the ground where she could grind it into the dirt with the toe of her shoe to add to the collection of this improvised smoking spot.

Rio motioned urgently toward the mess tent where Roxanna and she had taken dinner as part of the last scheduled serving sometime before. Like the other six mess tents in the camp, they were open to general use when meal service was not in progress. For many relocated civilians this meant the opportunity to plant themselves before the single flat panel television to get some sense of the goings-on in the world as conveyed by the Robotech Defense Forces Network.

News and video footage aired by the military broadcasting system was by its nature more filtered and controlled. Images of catastrophe were always blunted by RDF personnel engaged in assistive activities, and now with the sole story being the war, images of destroyed mecha and combat casualties were always the enemy's losses. –And even these video centerpieces were punctuated by healthy doses the RDF doing good for civilians in one war-related form or another.

It was bullshit, Roxanna knew. It was bullshit hastily packaged and delivered to an extended military family and to a public who could see the fertilizer for fertilizer if they were capable of linking two consecutive, coherent thoughts together.

-But it was bullshit that the very same people needed to see. After all, the war effort was now only beginning and it was far too early to concede that anyone known by the viewing audience might die or that future victory was not as certain as the setting and rising of the sun.

Rio led Roxanna through the free-swinging plastic flap/door of the mess tent, drawing her with the arm not occupied by the boney feline and into the periphery of the conundrum she had expected to find.

Spouses- wives, and husbands who Roxanna knew not only by name but by the units they were martially affiliated with as well as a lesser number of girlfriends and boyfriends in a tight cluster, fixated on the same LCD, HD screen. Others, many others whom Roxanna did not know were also gathered and transfixed, but it was the military spouses who seemed the most tightly packed and were the ones who drew Roxanna's attention most intently.

There were no children of any of the families present as distant images of fierce battle filled a jittery and bouncy camera frame beneath the superimposed screen top banner that read: "GEMINI COALITION FORCES WITHDRAW SOUTH FROM DURANGO."

It was the absence of children, the natural instinct of parents to shield them from the inescapably distressing images that even a filtered news broadcast would show that led Roxanna back to the great mystery she had become witness to in entering the mess tent. Before her was the paradox of those ensnared by images of war and fearing their meaning. A group reluctantly greedy for any news they could receive, and at the same time insulating their children from it.

This was the hell that war was to the families and what it would be so long as the fighting continued.

Roxanna knew it was an equation of the human condition with no resolution- there was only working through the problem. As much as they could, the spouses would glut themselves on any information for as long as they could manage before withdrawing to deal with the consequences in their own personal ways.

Roxanna understood because she knew she would be doing the same.

And then came the necessary lie as Roxanna put her arm around Rio's shoulder in the face of images of distant violence.

"-It's gonna be fine, sweetie… They've got each other looking out for them and it's gonna be just fine-."

ASC Durango Base, Mexico

The unexpected blow to the kidney had been enough of a distraction to Winters to make it relatively easy for his attacker to separate him from his Valkyrie's extended crew ladder and toss him unceremoniously to the abrasive concrete of the tarmac.

It was no surprise to the squadron commander who his assailant was, just that he hadn't been given the courtesy afforded by civilized cultures of preparing for the aged schoolboy brawl that was coming.

"-Et tu Freddy?..", Winters managed as he found himself inexplicably dividing his efforts between getting to his feet and retrieving his helmet that had rolled free of his grip upon hitting the pavement.

Dalton's fist, still gloved in Nomex, connected solidly with Witners' head high on the cheekbone, filling his vision with stars and completely undamming his bladder control and emptying it into his suit's disconnected relief tube- a process that had started with the kidney blow moments earlier.

"Get up, Jack!..", Dalton growled as he seized Winters by his flight suit and began to haul him to his feet. With his left hand bearing this burden, his right cocked back in a fist again, "I can't enjoy this if you're just lying there!.."

Winters allowed his weight to remain dead in Dalton's grasp, snickering through the fading stars, "Reliving conversations with Linda?.."

-With that, it was going to get bad…

As Winters sensed the real beating was about to begin, he summoned all of his strength into an uppercut that he landed squarely in Dalton's groin, precisely where it would hurt the most.

Dalton lifted up onto his toes, grunting anticipation of the pain that would follow in a moment or two- but before it did he brought his weight down again behind his cocked fist whose flight was intercepted by Winters' face.

The squadron leader flopped heavily to the searing concrete that had been baking all day in the desert sun as the full, sickening agony he'd inflicted took hold of Dalton whose grip upon him had failed much as his knees were threatening to.

Winters found his helmet to be within his reach again, and grasping it by the strap, brought it up in a clumsy swing that met Dalton's bowed head with a solid thud.

A crowd representing three different squadrons, pilots and support crews alike formed instantaneously as the two pilots rolled back and forth in a tangle of punching and kicking more common to contenders a fifth their age than grown men. Sides were not taken openly by spectators, but sympathetic grunts and groans were free-flowing as blows intended to hurt without permanent damage were exchanged fiercely between combatants.

Colonel Ganyet Mumuni stood at six meters distance amongst others far more exhilarated by the fight, and at a total loss. The situation called for a primary school vice-principal, not a full bird, fighter wing commander. –And parallels might have ended with the shallow-rooted schoolboy savagery with which the two grappling pilots were now fighting, except somewhere in the unhinged hoard of eager spectators behind her- Mumuni heard odds and wagers called out by the opportunistic on the outcome.

In thirty seconds, the collective lot had gone from the officer elite to a rabble of cannibals…

"Whell- should we throw a bucket a' water on `em, or somtethin'?"

The suggestion from Knight Hawk Squadron's plane captain and senior mechanic, DeVeo, was the first words Mumuni recalled hearing advocating the ending of the fight.

"I'm considering shooting both of them.", the colonel replied, though only partially in jest, "What's it about anyway?"

Lyle shrugged his ignorance as Dalton used the back of Winters' head to repeatedly thump the sidewall of Marilyn's forward tire.

Lt Col "Dingo" Duggan, present with his flight from the 1017th Werewolves took a moment between ringside suggestions to the brawlers to offer acquired, paternal wisdom with an Aussie twist to his superior.

"-Aw, let `em go a spell and work it out, there's barely any blood. Give `em fifteen minutes and they'll be mates again."

Mumuni sighed heavily, "Tempting as that is-."

The senior pilot pushed her way through the gathered crowd that had surged past her for a better view of the fight and their betting interests, motioning to others from Knight Hawk Squadron to assist. Unafraid of the flailing arms and legs, she drew back her right foot and twice landed a boot on each subordinate, ending the fight instantly.

There was an unspoken mix of shame and relief from both Winters and Dalton as they got to their feet before the wing commander, standing at attention as best they could for lack of anything more appropriate to do.

"So sorry to interrupt your little lovers' spat, but we really need to get on with the prosecution of the war.", Mumuni said flatly, "Would you mind lending a hand?"

Aware for the first time the trickle of blood running down the side of his chin from the left corner of his mouth, Winters wiped it away and replied, "Ready as always, ma'am. –We were just sorting out some administrative issues."

"Good.", Mumuni said, the stern tone still in her voice, "Because we're all airborne again in twenty. –Just as quick as we can re-arm. We're escorting transports south- we'll get the details as soon as we're wheels-up. Can you manage to not kill one another in the meantime?"

Winters relaxed his posture lightly, allowing Dalton to do the same and relieve some of the dull ache radiating from mistreated gonads.

"Leonard's really giving up Durango, eh?", Winters asked through the salty taste of his own blood.

Past the point of irritation, Mumuni opted to simply gesture north and say, "There are about a half million dittos with itchy trigger fingers who haven't had the chance to fire a shot yet up that way-. If you feel you can take the war to them on your terms, let me know and I'll draft up the orders. –Bang-up job so far today… "

Winters was hesitant, "-We do live to follow the orders of our superiors though-."

"That would be a welcome change-.", Mumuni said, walking away before she had finished speaking, "-And I'd have someone collect up any personal items you don't want to lose. I wouldn't bank on coming back here again. –Oh, and there will be disciplinary action for this little tumble between you two."

When Mumuni was decidedly gone and out of earshot, Dalton snorted at Winters, "She is not happy with you, Jack-."

"Me? That sounded like an us thing from where I was standing."

"Yeah, but she really wants to put your ass into a sling. That was the vibe I got.", Dalton countered.

"How about you?", Winters asked rubbing first the throbbing cheek that was going to bruise, "Are we square?"

"Oh, not by a damn sight-.", Dalton chuckled, "You hit me in the balls…"

"Well, you made me piss myself."

An unprovoked jab from Dalton turned Winters' head away and staggered him slightly.

"-And that's for that comment about Linda. That was the Rubicon, asshole."

As Winters swayed through the wooziness of the latest blow that would go unanswered, he placated himself with the fact that he would have a matching set of bruises now.

"Yeah, I probably deserved that one-."

Duggan joined a mix of Winters' squadron and his own as they closed in to a safer proximity with the two officers who had been throwing punches less than a minute before. Money from impromptu betting changed hands in plain view of the two without apology.

"You Sheilas gonna claw each other's eyes out now, or just take up the slapping again?"

"We're taking break it seems.", Winters said.

"Somethin' `bout a war, Ah hear-.", Lyle suggested to Winters as he presented an open palm to Duggan and then flexed his fingers greedily.

Duggan slapped a thin stack of folded bills into the mechanic's hand, which the NCO quickly tucked into a pocket with other winnings.

"You all heard Switchblade-.", Winters grumbled as money continued to change hands around he and Dalton, "We're wheels-up again in twenty, which means Lyle that you'll have to put off spending your new found fortune for a little while. Christ!- How did you all have time to bet on this?... We were at it for like- two minutes…"

"-A new record for you I hear, Jack!.."

"Fuck you, Cisco!"

"-Sure, I've got two minutes!.."

Vincenz, who had found the inner rim of the crowd handed his element lead a handkerchief from the pocket into which he was now stuffing a roll of bills.

"You gotta move fast in this life, boss-. Opportunities ae where you find `em, y'know?"

Winters, now more fully aware of what was going on around him was beginning to sense the predominant direction that the betting had taken, "You bet on me, Vice- right?", Winters asked, applying pressure to his bleeding mouth.

"Well-."

"Vice?.."

Artoc

Sub-General Caldettas sat at his position at the briefing table dedicating considerable effort to not showing his moderate irritation with Jekketh as the overall commander of Krymina's ground forces delivered his report.

It was not that the report was an unfavorable one. Jekketh, to Caldettas's reluctant admission was adequate in the areas of military strategy and planning, and within defined boundaries was an effective commander. –And to his credit in this campaign, though it was substantially more complex in its objectives and operational constraints than any ever assigned to the 7th Grand Army of The Te'Dak Tohl by The Robotech Masters, Jekketh's performance had been consistent to his reputation.

There was nothing brilliant or innovative about the conduct of ongoing operations under Jekketh's command, but they were effective. –Collateral damage was rarely more than a passing consideration if thought of at all, and in the context of this campaign held only a slightly elevated consideration.

These were the loose constraints within which Jekketh operated well.

As Caldettas submitted to the ordeal of one of Sub-General Jekketh's self-aggrandizing briefings, he was reminded of what he knew to be one of his own shortcomings. Caldettas could not evade the truth that he could solitarily welcome a critical defeat, even a costly one, if it was Jekketh doing the failing. That operational briefing would be worth attendance of all the others only to see Jekketh's overwrought ego humbled.

That decadent treat would have to come another day, and well for the Te'Dak Tohl that it should. As Jekketh strutted back and forth between holographic displays of various geographic locations while delivering his report- appearing as probably was his intent to carry the weight of each battle upon his head- the sub-general missed no opportunity to make the successes all about him.

All that was required now to make Caldettas's revulsion complete was the slightest indication of satisfaction at Jekketh's accomplishments from Supreme General Krymina.

"-While micronian resistance remains spirited, indications of their collapse are abundant and are growing more acute.", Jekketh continued, reaching after considerable length what hinted at being a quantifiable element of his reporting.

Gesturing to a detailed, scale representation of the alien planet's largest continent and also to the one standing southwest, Jekketh swelled with saying, "Our actions in the sub-tropical, super-equatorial regions of Continents Three and Five are progressing ahead of our most ambitious simulations and projections. Factors of great geographic area, combined with a lower density of enemy forces per unit of area are a variable- however, skill of maneuver and aggression that I insisted be the emphasis of our pre-operational exercises is now yielding the desired benefit with only acceptable losses, and those chiefly in our improved norghil units created for that very purpose."

"What rate of loss is that?", Caldettas asked, fully aware of the answer having previewed Jekketh's briefing materials in addition to having been an almost constant inhabitant of Artoc's command deck since the initiation of the campaign against the micronians and privileged to the monitoring performed there and the after action reports received. –It was however a simple way to scuff some of the self-applied polish and shine Jekketh had been applying liberally to himself for some time now.

"Between thirty and forty percent on average in vanguard norghil units.", Jekketh reported with some of the luster gone from his words, "-But again, this was the function of these units and anticipated in planning. Our Te'Dak Tohl forces overall have averaged less than five percent casualties- the highest being in units that we expected to suffer a higher rate of attrition- shock troop units, Serhot Ran, Gnerl pilots and so forth-."

"These losses amongst our most proficient and effective warriors is unfortunate and regrettable-.", Jekketh said, speaking now directly to Krymina as though to buttress himself from the insinuations of carelessness from her executive officer, "-But they were losses consistent with the function of these units. Now that the enemy's shell is cracked, our improved norghil units are more than adequate to shoulder the burden of the fight and absorb the necessary losses. In this mode of prosecution, there is no scenario in which the micronians do not exhaust their forces before ours become ineffective."

"So your tactical determination is that we have more blood to spill than the enemy?", Caldettas clarified.

"Norghil blood.", affirmed Jekketh by way of distinction, "Not Te'Dak Tohl blood."

"-So long as there is that distinction...", Caldettas said, letting the point go. Supreme General Krymina, who sat clearly brooding in her chair at the head of the table was unaffected by the briefing's tangent. As this was clearly not the thread to pull to elicit the response he wanted, Caldettas saw no purpose in lingering on the point.

It would only mean subjecting himself to Jekketh's briefing longer than what was necessary.

"Norghil casualties and micronian resistance is most pronounced on Continent One- where Kevtok's reconnaissance mission made planetfall, and more so on Continent Two.", Jekketh continued with only a hint of reservation, "-And still the progress of operations is above the thresholds you set, Liege."

Krymina remained unblinking.

"Stiffer opposition was anticipated on these continents as Continent Two was discovered to be the seat of government for both major micronian factions. As a result of this and the significant presence of The Flower of Life in the equatorial and tropical regions of Continent One, it follows that there is a greater concentration of micronian combat and support forces."

Jekketh paused for a moment, partially to regain his footing for another push to glory, but also to gauge General Krymina's response which spoke neither of approval nor dissatisfaction.

"Bren's Corps has met constant resistance in its movement south, but Hesthira has broken out onto the enemy's left flank and a second axis of attack has been opened. Micronian airpower remains a nuisance and minor impediment to progress, however the micronian ground forces are unable to stand against the pressure being set on them. At this moment they are showing indications of retreat south to one or a combination of three possible positions ideal for renewing defense-."

"What of the search for Breetai?", Krymina asked bluntly.

To Caldettas's governed delight, Jekketh's briefing was arrested as abruptly and as delicately as had it run into an invisible rock face.

Krymina ground down the fragments of Jekketh's well-practiced presentation with less concern than the deck plates beneath her boot heels, saying, "I grow tired hearing of the realization of basic objectives assumed in planning. The micronians' inability to effectively counter or hold ground against our forces once landings were underway was never in doubt. The critical element, and one that my senior staff appears to be woefully apathetic in addressing is locating and crushing Breetai, his fleet, and the Robotech Factory he escaped with. Speak to me of these things, not of what I already know."

Jekketh deflated marvelously before Caldettas, whose inner revelry was subdued only by the fact that he would be reporting meager gains on the only topic in which Krymina was showing interest.

"Our initial search efforts have yielded no results up to this time, Supreme General. While frustrating, the search has not been in progress long enough to reasonably expect anything but reports of no contact. Many of our units are still in fold transit to their initial search positions that are at best calculated guesses as to where Breetai may have retreated with the micronian fleet."

"We are monitoring the deepest regions of space for fold activity through deployed Robotech Factories and The Network. We have spread ourselves thin deploying our own Fleet to search the nearest, most likely locations best suited to hide a fleet. –But the simple fact, Liege, is that time and patience will be required and much more frustration endured before we can hope for chance contact."

Krymina was unimpressed and immediate in her disdain, "Insufficient Caldettas-. Every moment that Breetai has beyond our reach is a moment he is using to prepare his counterattack. I will not permit this. If it means cutting our deployed fleet units in half again to double the search area, I will do it. I will bring the battle to that evasive norghil and destroy him in the den in which he has chosen to cower. I will add landing ships to the effort if I have to-."

"Am I stating my intent clearly enough, Caldettas?"

Caldettas, seeing the flush of Krymina's face to deeper blue as he felt his own complexion pale, found himself drifting in focus- thinking there might be some transference of color at work.

The speculation was short-lived in the assertion of the underlying thoughts that had caused the sub-general to blanch.

To satisfy Krymina's mandated timetable and vast search area, entire battle groups had been broken apart to squadron-size units before deploying to their initial, assigned areas. There, those squadrons would be forced to reduce themselves further. Search areas would be swept quickly by screens of ships at such great intervals that entire fleets could pass between sentries without detection.

The plan in its own ambition and aggressiveness was self-defeating.

Caldettas knew this.

Any norghil more than twenty minutes dry from the stasis tube could see this.

-But worst, Supreme General Krymina knew this and showed no indication of even the consideration of relenting.

"I would recommend adhering to the established search plan before we change it, Liege.", Caldettas advised, "Many units have not even reached their initial search areas- as I said. It is far too early to assess the effectiveness of the plan and therefore too early to adjust for any deficiencies."

Caldettas was fairly certain that Krymina would not elect to have him terminated where he sat for insubordination, but in her state nothing was outside of the realm of possibility.

The Fleet could not be scattered more widely through space than what the standing orders already demanded without skirting the shoals of recklessness. -And in the standing orders Caldettas recognized the material risk to The 7th Grand Army's operational focus even if Krymina was refusing to.

Duty and obedience were suddenly at odds, and Caldettas found himself squarely between the normally complementary pillars of The Warrior's Code.

Krymina fumed openly as her agitation and volatility fed and built upon itself for all to see at the slight either perceived or real from Breetai.

It was beyond these outer layers of fiery display, deep in her Warrior's Core where experience and calculation worked constantly that Caldettas knew Krymina dwelled. Her eyes registered these processes at work- but to what end they were working was not clear to the executive officer.

It was this uncertainty- the first time he had ever felt it in his service to Krymina- that gave Caldettas pause. He had planned and The 7th Grand Army of The Te'Dak Tohl had trained for the achievement of one objective, but another was emerging.

"If Breetai will not come out to face me freely, then I will force him into action.", Krymina resolved, her voice becoming removed and distant, "If we deprive him of serenity in his planning, he will make a mistake and I will be poised to exploit it."

"-Jekketh, I will be making an alteration to ground operations with a new general order…."

Artoc's infirmary functioned something like the repair slips of a Robotech Factory's spacedock, only instead of servicing the mobile mountains of metals, plastics, and technologies that were the warships of the Zentraedi Fleet- the infirmary serviced select members of the biological component of the same force.

Medical technicians were always the first line of treatment, even in administering care to the upper ranks- but these specialists were limited in their knowledge of the medical disciplines and at the techniques of applying them. Common illnesses through deep tissue wounds were the realm of the med-techs. Beyond that was providing the mercy and resource-sparing practice of release from service, or where a wound was recoverable yet beyond simple treatment and when the warrior's value warranted, the med-tech could pass the ailing to the far more advanced skill of a ship's automated medical facilities.

Routine, impersonal, and mathematically quantified in evaluation was the robot-administered treatment of the infirmary- and so in the treatment of severe cases the subjects of treatment were rendered proportionately inert and compliant before the treatment regiment.

"Glaring at him will not cause Moyrt's wounds to heal any faster, Hyra."

Hyra, genuinely surprised while deep in thought, failed to prevent herself from starting at Action Commander Kevtok's mild admonishment. How her superior had entered the observation cyst of the infirmary's critical condition compartment without her having taken notice was almost as jarring to the point lieutenant as the start she had received.

It was fatigue and weariness from battle no doubt, coupled with the stresses of Moyrt's evacuation from the battle area and uncertainties that had followed regarding his very survival from the wounds he had suffered.

Most aggravating to Hyra in the way that Moyrt often caused her aggravation was that the cause of her consternation was also the one most secure from the toils of the ongoing campaign.

Hyra made a point to remind herself regularly though that Moyrt, despite his serene appearance was far from enjoying sanctuary from the burden that still yoked the other Serhot Ran. His struggle, despite its peaceful appearance was every bit as much one of life and death as that which comrades would be in up to their eyes again, and soon.

Moyrt lay in a medical capsule, tubes feeding him intravenously in addition to a steady stream of antibiotics and steroids, as an interface band about his forehead and temples kept him breathing the oxygen-rich air while at the same time rendering him comatose.

How long Moyrt would remain in this condition, the senior healers and medical technicians would not say- though there were indications that additional surgical procedures would be required to restore Moyrt to a functional, combat-ready physical state. –Cognitively and neurologically, a "full recovery" was beyond what the healers were willing to speculate. They had alluded to the damage done being beyond mere tissue damage.

Healers were a strange and frustrating sort, Hyra had found in her dealings with them.

Theirs was the only discipline in Service that was neither required to predict performance of their duties, nor accountable for not maintaining a high baseline of success in performing them.

–But they did speak skillfully and extensively about the whim of Fate.

"Fate favors this one, Hyra- his company is good to keep.", Kevtok said sounding now less like a senior officer and more like a concerned comrade- concerned for both Moyrt and Hyra, "I was told he died twice in transit from the field to the operational support ship, and again during medical repair procedures. –And yet, he clings to life. Fate does favor this one for some reason."

"Warriors' talk has it that it had something to do with your favor and influence that he was revived three times.", Hyra said in relaxed fashion to her superior, "-And Fate had something to do with it as well."

"Warriors do talk.", Kevtok admitted without admitting anything more, "-I suspect the need for and value of Serhot Ran must have been known- and I have lost too many this day. Too many by far."

Hyra nodded toward the encapsulated Moyrt, "No need to concern yourself about that one, Lord-. As I've said before, he's too stupid to die."

"He does push the limits sometimes.", Kevtok agreed, knowing all too well.

"When do we go back in, Lord?", Hyra asked, allowing the conversation to stray from Moyrt.

"Uncertain.", Kevtok replied, "We have been listed as combat ineffective for the time being, because of our losses. –Other factors may be at work as well…. I've requested replacements, and am working to acquire them from other similarly reduced Serhot Ran units. It will mean acclimating Warriors from other units to ours, but the benefit will be that we will not have to dry the stasis fluid from them and season them for battle."

"Agreed.", Hyra said, offering an unsolicited opinion that she knew would not offend.

"-And then on to add more scars to our stories-."

"Lord?", Hyra asked- knowing by Kevtok's contemplative tone that suggested another party to the conversation who was not present that there was something beyond the non-sequitur string of words.

"Nothing-.", Kevtok said dismissing the words as easily as they had come, "I am recalling a conversation with another…."

"Walhalla": The GS-95 Robotech Factory

After-dinner coffee and tea service was more than the observance of a pleasant practice of hospitality in the formal salon of The Presidential Office within the Civilian Operations Wing of "Walhalla"- in these times it was a practical necessity.

President Valterven's keeping of his schedule meant a working supper at 2000hrs, leading almost immediately into his evening briefing by his ministers at 2100. War had done nothing to lessen the length of these briefings or the discussions and taskings that followed and often went late into the night, or as in the case of recent days- into the early morning.

Coffee and tea in abundance had become a tool to facilitate the operation and normalization of a reeling Government.

Caffeine for all of its abilities to stave off the physical weariness that was companion to long hours of stress still did little to recover the mortal powers of comprehension- at most providing only a temporary boost.

-And comprehension was the state all in the salon were working to attain at the moment.

"The logical contradictions of this information strains its credibility, Exedore-.", Valterven said without rebuke to the ancient alien whose report was still silently being considered by select members of the ministries present, "-Can we be certain that it is not somehow an anomaly that has been happened across coincidentally?"

Impervious to or simply unaware of the possible questioning of the validity of his summation of data, Exedore replied quite unflustered, "We are quite certain of the information, Mr. President. Reports, now numbering over thirty, from every region of Earth subject to the Te'Dak Tohl invasion are reporting the same result to basic genetic analysis of slain enemy combatants- unaware and independent of each other. Autopsies performed on Te'Dak Tohl casualties have uniformly identified a common deficiency. Unlike Zentraedi of the breed we are familiar with, the Te'Dak Tohl appear to be incapable of independently producing the proteins that compose the myelin sheathing of neural fibers-."

"Adrenoleukodystrophy?", interjected Minister of Health, Dr. Berta Geisbert, "You're saying that the enemy as a whole suffers from a protein synthesis disorder?"

Unaffected by the interruption, Exedore replied, "Not as a whole, Madam Minister-. The enemy force seems to be composed of both the standard breed of Zentraedi, as well as this peculiar genetic tangent we are discovering now."

President Valterven reasserted himself as the critical consumer of information, changing the course of the developing conversation slightly to his own interests.

"Exedore, that statement is contrary to what we know about the Zentraedi. You are an excellent example of the great effort demonstrated by The Robotech Masters to engineer genetic infirmities out of the population for the purpose of longevity. Sadly, the effort was made to ensure a flawless baseline of health in a slave population that served The Masters' ends, but the result all the same was the manufacture of creatures of perfect and enduring health- as it applies to genetic disorders at least."

"It is contrary to what we have known about my Zentraedi people up to this time.", Exedore corrected without condescension, "You are correct that The Robotech Masters designed the predominant breed of Zentraedi to be unhindered at the time of entry into their service of chronic ailments, leaving military action to be the great force of attrition. Moral implications aside, it is a logical attribute to the biological component of the system set up by The Robotech Masters to serve them."

"-And by extension of that argument, Exedore, you are saying that the genetic imperfection of the Te'Dak Tohl similarly was intended to serve The Masters?", Valterven extrapolated.

"Their intentional deficiency can be interpreted no other way. The cloning process is rigorous with its checks and screenings at all stages of clone development.", Exedore explained, "A flaw of this magnitude would not be missed. –And if not missed, it must be inferred that it has been intentionally permitted."

Valterven's Senior Military Advisor, Hewitt stepped in within his capacity, saying, "That would seem to bear out to some extent, Mr. President. Kit recovered from Te'Dak Tohl casualties and examined by RDF and ASC personnel revealed that the aliens were in possession of injectable supplements to counter their condition and the means to self-administer it. –Only, there seems to be a catch. Analysis of the treatment shows it to be flawed also. Over time in fact, constant use of the protein supplement shows that it would be as lethal as the condition it's supposed to be countering. That's what I can't get my head around, sir."

Exedore was quick to agree, "Mr. Hewitt is absolutely correct, Mr. President. There is an inconsistency in logic at work in what we are seeing that I'm afraid I'm at a loss to explain. To create a breed of Zentraedi designed to expire without deliberate intervention; and then to provide that intervention, but provide it in such a way that the treatment is fatal within years in a way not dissimilar from the disease itself-. It is puzzling."

Breetai, having been privileged to Exedore's report prior to its briefing to Valterven and who had been silent through its delivery now found after contemplation a reason to speak on the matter.

"Exedore, my loyal, old friend and companion- the precision of your keen, scientific mind sometimes still clouds your vision. Analysis of physical evidence alone will lead to no conclusions here, I'm afraid. Perhaps revisiting interpretation of the enemy's motivations and some of our own assumptions are in order."

Valterven's Minister of Defense, Forsberg, and one of Breetai's few direct superiors had been curious about the former warlord's prolonged silence until now.

"Clearly you've thought on the matter, Breetai. Care to share where you are on the subject?"

Breetai paused briefly, running once more through the progression of complex thoughts that had led him to speaking before he finally gave those thoughts voice.

"The Te'Dak Tohl in the Zentraedi cultural tradition were creatures of lore- phantoms and the shadowy personification of The Masters' control. They were the threat of severe punishment for disobedience or dereliction of duty. Their sudden manifestation, and the conditioned reaction to them that I and others displayed initially seems to lend credence to our understanding of their function for The Masters."

"Let us assume then that indeed, the Te'Dak Tohl actually did serve as overlords of sorts, or enforcers for The Masters… -Putting a consequence behind orders disobeyed or carried out ineffectively-."

CNO Admiral Coleridge added, "That fits with that signal they broadcast during their initial assault on Earth, transmitted across the bands that Zentraedi units would use for coded IS-coms. Of course it had no effect on our combat platforms, but when we ran it against legacy Zentraedi systems, it triggered debilitating loss of function that appear to have been intentionally imbedded in the systems. A force reducer of that kind would certainly give a small force great advantage over a vastly larger one- say overlords over the subjugated. -Iago is based on the same concept essentially, only slower in asserting itself. –It seems we're not the first to think of it."

"No-.", Breetai agreed, "The Robotech Masters have many shortcomings, but gaps in thoroughness where matters of control are concerned is not one of them."

"So, the Te'Dak Tohl were manufactured to control my breed in much the same way that we were made to assert control over whoever else The Masters wished to impose themselves. That leaves the tricky question of how do you control your overlords? -We seem to have our answer. You make them dependent upon you for their very survival."

President Valterven, though clearly weary as all around him were by the weight of their responsibilities seemed to rally in a discussion that was going the way of the academic and philosophical. It was a mental exercise that differed and was a relief from the burdens of decision-making, and a deserved momentary refuge.

"Then we have a viable explanation of the Te'Dak Tohl and their condition, but it does not account for why the treatment provided by The Robotech Masters should also kill their enforcers over time."

"Who said that the treatment killing the Te'Dak Tohl was provided to them by The Masters?", Breetai speculated but with an air of certainty that said he had mulled over repeatedly that which he was to say next, "Exedore can speak to this-. Even with our genetic refinement, Zentraedi Warriors of our breed still require basic prophylactic medical treatment and maintenance- especially when exposed to alien environments. This was provided through supplements added to our food and water supply quite unknown to us. The Masters, I suspect, would have addressed the need to constantly treat their enforcers for their designed genetic flaw in much the same way."

"That makes sense, and is both plausible and practical.", Minister of Health Geisbert affirmed, "An orally ingested supplement that metabolizes into the correct fatty acids is still the standard treatment for ALD- but that is not the delivery system that Exedore reported being found."

"Which challenges our assumption that the Te'Dak Tohl- these Te'Dak Tohl at least", Breetai clarified, "are operating on behalf of The Robotech Masters."

President Valterven countered, "Yes, but during the initial attack and in her challenge to you personally, Breetai, Krymina spoke of you having to answer for treason to The Masters. That implies that she is still in their service, does it not?"

"Perhaps.", Breetai allowed, "Or perhaps not. Krymina certainly may have spoken falsely, retaining the draping of a servant of The Robotech Masters to suggest that their weight stood behind her. Perhaps she is in the service of a faction of The Robotech Masters- the result of some great schism we are unaware of that is playing itself out and expanding into a second grab for Zor's technology in the interest of leverage. –There's no saying for certain."

"-What we can imply from the fact that their current treatment for their genetic condition deviates from what would be the simplest for The Masters to provide is that Krymina's Te'Dak Tohl may stand separate from the interests of The Robotech Masters, and that there seems to be another party in play. Zentraedi are intentionally denied by The Masters both the facilities and knowledge to identify and synthesize a medical treatment for themselves, so that expertise is coming from someone else. –Someone whose interests align with Krymina's, if not guiding them."

"-But that treatment is killing them slowly.", Valterven pointed out, "I doubt Krymina would be in league with an ally who was only slowing her demise."

"If she and her Te'Dak Tohl even know.", Breetai replied, "She aligns herself with this anonymous party, likely unaware that they do not intend for the Te'Dak Tohl to remain a long-term factor in their plans. I do not know what the math sums up to, but my intuition tells me that this war does not stem from the will of The Robotech Masters."

"Does it matter?", Minister of Defense Forsberg asked rhetorically, "No, it does not. It is wholly and materially irrelevant."

"Yes, it is.", Breetai agreed, "With the exception that Zentraedi forces still loyal to The Robotech Masters will not be at the call of Supreme General Krymina. –Perhaps, if the need were to arise, they would even be allies. That works to our advantage- possibly."

"As does time.", Forsberg stated with certainty, "Consider what Iago will do to their infrastructure and supply chain, to their mecha and vessels-. Consider what their genetic condition and this treatment that is actually the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing will do to them in only a matter of a few to five years. This alters our strategy significantly. For the first time in human- no, galactic- history, a war might be won by actively doing nothing."

"No."

President Valterven's single word was as clear in resolution as it was short.

"I do not have the training or life experience in the mechanics of war that you, our military leaders, possess. I have at best a journeyman's understanding of military strategy- true. However, while I do not know the specifics of how a war is prosecuted, I am well aware of when and why it must be prosecuted."

"War is not simply an exercise in tactics and the employment of technologies-. It is a statement, an imposition of will."

"Supreme General Krymina and her Te'Dak Tohl, whether she stands for someone else or only for herself is making a statement that her will should govern ours. In the face of this, it is not sufficient to preserve our culture and ourselves through passive means."

"We may use the advantages shrewdly that Iago, and this unexpected genetic weakness of our enemy offer us,, but we will fight for ourselves and for our culture. That will be our statement."

Medellin, Columbia

The lighting in the rear hallway of the domicile rose automatically to a level safe to walk by, but still muted for nighttime considerations as Darius emerged from his study to unexpected pounding at the door of the main entrance.

Passing the private salon that Philisto had chosen to enter some hours earlier for the practice of his nightly ritual of drinking wine to mild inebriation in seclusion. Darius was joined from the shadows by the second Tirolian who looked eager neither to join him on his investigation of the disturbance, nor remain alone in the darkness.

His voice as unsteady with drink and age as his gait, Philisto speculated with a hint of what may have been hope, "-They've gotten what they think they need from us and have come to kill us."

As Darius led the way into the main foyer of the home and brought the light up to full intensity with a motion of his hand, he elected to not say something as biting to his friend of many years as what was crossing his mind, but rather simply replied, "No-. Krymina has much need for us before she could think of doing away with us. –And those who come to kill you in the night don't knock, you wine-saturated, old fool…"

Darius deactivated the safety locks on the door that would have provided resistance to energy weapons fire from mecha and motioned for it to be opened.

A breath of warm, humid air carried into the foyer as the door slid aside without a sound revealing a pair of micronized Zentraedi Warriors standing on the other side.

"Sub-Commander Fral requires your presence, Citizen Darius.", said the ranking sub-lieutenant of the pair of norghil warriors.

Fral, assigned command of a Te'Dak Tohl detachment by direct order of Supreme General Krymina had nonetheless drawn his personal guard detail from the ranks of warriors who had endured marooning on this world with him.

While there was no indication of a threat from the warriors of the enforcer caste, Darius recognized Fral's wisdom of ensuring that those with personal loyalties to him were about him in abundance should the unexpected transpire.

Darius had no such loyal cadre, but hoped that for now his recent gestures to the scarred norghil officer would garner protection- should such a need arise.

"For what reason?", Darius asked, eliciting a disparaging expression from the sub-lieutenant.

"I was not informed, Citizen.", the warrior replied, "I was only told that you should be brought immediately."

Noting about the warriors caused Darius concern. Had they been dispatched, as Philisto had postulated, to dispatch the two Tirolians- they certainly could have already and with ease. Both carried blasters scaled like the body armor they were affixed to in holsters to the reduced size of the warriors. Both also carried the savage kruvok bladed weapon in traditional scabbard. All were touches requested for Fral by Darius to their Te'Dak Tohl masters to provide elements of legitimacy and dignity to the warrior caste Zentraedi serving them in micronized form. Either weapon could have reduced the two aged Tirolians to smoldering or butchered heaps of twitching flesh had the bearers been of that intent. –Yet Darius and Philisto lived still.

It did not seem likely that they were being led off to slaughter.

"We require a moment to change from our house clothes.", Darius explained as he motioned the warriors inside, "Please come in before the creatures of this vile region make my home their own-. I do despise insects…"

Point Lieutenant Quen'Hoht surveyed with a slowly mounting contempt the rabble of micronians that was assembled before him.

The Te'Dak Tohl officer recognized that the root of his disdain for the fragile, passive aliens was not wholly a matter of their nature or even of their doing. Certainly in the three days since his commander had given the order to sweep the region for micronians knowledgeable in the function and processes of the facility they had created for the growing and harvesting of The Invid Flower of Life there had been micronians who would not submit to capture. There had been the loss of two Regults, their pilots, and three dismounted Te'Dak Tohl Warriors to the inspired but ultimately amateur resistance of a handful of micronians armed with military grade weaponry, but for the most part the aliens were captured with minimal difficulty just as the norghil advisors to the Te'Dak Tohl units had predicted.

It was not this exercise in tedium that caused Quen'Hoht to smolder right below the surface, but rather that stories of other Te'Dak Tohl units being engaged in battles worthy of their skill were beginning to seep through the channels of Warriors' talk to reach the ears of those denied that glory. Embellished as warriors' stories always were, they were still layered kernels of actions and events that Quen'Hoht and his composite regiment were being deprived of participating in for what was nothing more than the governance and care of plants.

Quen'Hoht was Te'Dak Tohl however, and bound to Duty and obedience first and above all other considerations. This he reminded himself along with the fact that it was these plants that were at the center of the Te'Dak Tohl interest in this world. They were in fact the cause of generations of war with the Invid and other races, the cause of unknown billions of casualties, and intertwined in all of this was the very reason for the being of the Zentraedi race altogether.

In that context, immense responsibility had been placed in Quen'Hoht's hands. –Even if it did not carry with it the luster of battle-glory.

-But what could be said of a responsibility that was in the hands of Te'Dak Tohl subservient to a norghil, and above him a soft, fat, decedent Tirolian?

It did not balance in sum in Quen'Hoht's mind- but again, he was Te'Dak Tohl and Duty and obedience were his prime considerations. Without these principles, it was easy to see how all other elements central to being could fall apart.

Still, as the micronians stood in shameful formation- squares of one hundred- whose columns and rows lacked all but the most rudimentary semblance of order- there was something contemptable about them to Quen'Hoht.

This made their reason for assembly all that more appealing to the Te'Dak Tohl officer, though combat it was not.

Years before, when only a small girl, gaunt with the hunger and poverty that was a constant epidemic in Columbia to those who did not sell their souls to the narcotics industry or peripheral trades accompanying it, Dr. Marcia Moreno's abuela had told her that life was a winding path with many forks and though one could never be sure where the path led it demanded courage at every step.

Holding a PhD from Universidad Central de Venezuela in botany and a certificate of study in Xenobotany from the Academy of Robotech Sciences (a full PhD program of study in the field still being in development), Moreno was not certain whether this was the path that her grandmother had envisioned, but for a woman whose level of education had barely afforded her the ability to write her own name- her prophetic wisdom in the matter of requisite courage had been spot-on.

When her small but functionally comfortable apartment in Medellin had gone dark during the opening minutes of The Second Robotech War days earlier, Moreno had been every bit as terrified as every other soul on the planet, not benefitting in any way from her employment with the Ministry of Robotech Sciences in knowing either what to do or what to expect. It was courage, valor- as Moreno heard it in her head spoken in the near-toothless, raspy voice of her abuela- that had her in her beaten, old Jeep and on her way to "The Farm" as other elements of Medellin society were well into that peculiar, opportunistic endeavor of looting. A loaded and safetied pistol was both a small reassurance and a discomfort pressed between her right buttock and the Jeep's seatback. Her vehicle, upgraded courtesy of her employer to an "EMP hardened" state had been one of the few still running as was clear by the maze of abandoned personal and commercial vehicles that Moreno had navigated for a short distance to leave the city limits. Where the owners of the derelict vehicles had gone was uncertain, but through the focus of negotiating the vehicular obstacle course, Moreno had been forced to assure herself that if she had to that discharging her pistol at a human being would be fundamentally no different than target practice at the firing range.

Mierta, certainly, but mierta that she had repeated to herself over and over in hopes that it would take.

Moreno had not been forced to discharge her firearm, or even to take it into hand. Looting all around had not yet evolved into the escape-oriented practice of carjacking. The people she saw in leaving the city showing mostly the menace of a deer spooked by headlights while crossing a road, and like deer they fled in the same panic.

The Farm, which Moreno had hoped would be a frenzy of activity and meaningful direction had been at best disappointing upon her arrival. Other like-minded personnel, equal parts Ministry employees and contractual laborers from the local population were gathering outside of the administrative building shocked and in in hope of a plan of action from anyone in authority.

Dr. Rojas, normally a constant fixture at the facility of which he was in charge and easily identifiable by his flowing white hair and cascading beard was nowhere to be seen, nor did he appear at any time during that long night- or since.

The closest semblance of order and direction had come from Lieutenant Colonel Daniels, the RDF-Army chief of facilities security whose sure-handed and warm manner as always experienced by Moreno had been conspicuously absent that night. As he had given the simple order to "burn everything, burn it all" not five paces from Moreno, he carried himself as a futbol team coach burdened by the realization that he was with the team on the short end of a hopelessly unbalanced match.

He had not made eye contact with Moreno when normally he took pains to make conversation in a comfortably paternal way with her- and her last glimpse of him had been an hour or so before dawn organizing the departure of his command.

Agricultural equipment and vehicles, paper files, computer hard-drives, and even the well-maintained fields of The Flower of Life had been set ablaze during that night to varying degrees of success and beneath the ominous spectacle of savage battle in the heavens above.

Then, just before dawn, when all that could be readily and easily destroyed had been put to the torch, the organized effort ended and the caretakers of The Farm evaporated from what had been the center of their professional lives.

The thirty-six hours that had followed remained a blur to Moreno's memory- a disjointed sequence of fleeing from one place of supposed safety to another as any open space large enough to accept the touchdown of a Zentraedi Re-Entry Transport Pod did, and in doing so quickly choked the roads and flooded Medellin with giant alien invaders whose purpose at first had seemed only to be to slaughter civilians where they found them. As disturbing, though rationally Moreno could not explain to herself why, was the speed and ease at which a portion of the indoctrinated population of Zentraedi who had joined the slowly recovering human civilization had turned on the indigenous population.

Moreno had seen a half dozen instances of indoctrinated Zentraedi waving down a column of invading mecha in motion to identify a home or building where humans were sheltering in numbers. Uniformly, the result had been the same and fatal for the occupants of the buildings whose destruction had been only a matter of the expenditure of particle beam bolts whose available quantity was limitless.

What Moreno could not account for were the numerous instances in which socialized Zentraedi in the act of betraying their adopted human culture for return to their own had performed some service for the invading forces only to be slain with the same zeal shown for dispatching humans.

Whatever it was, there was something that the indoctrinated Zentraedi seemed to know about the invaders- a subtlety unperceivable to the human population. For every one socialized Zentraedi who tried to align themselves with the invaders, there were twenty who fled in as much panic or more before them as the terrified human civilians.

Moreno had seen it in the eyes of an indoctrinated Zentraedi who had found his way into the same building basement as she and Ramirez as surely as Ramirez had- before he had put the distracted alien down with a single blow to the back of the skull with a section of steel pipe. The alien's terror had been so jarring that Moreno had not even raised a great protest when Ramirez had finished the gristly task on the unconscious Zentraedi with the same pipe and the weak explanation that the alien was a risk not worth taking.

Yes, Juaquin Ramirez- the senior supervisor of laborers on The Farm whose experience in such areas was known to be from comparable agricultural enterprises of a less legitimate nature in the times before the Earth had known of Robotechnology or Zentraedi- had been a welcome companion from the time that they had fled The Farm. –A welcome companion until he and his steel pipe had become cause for Moreno to wipe the spattering of blue-green blood and particles of brain matter away from her face with the soiled sleeve of her khaki shirt.

After that time, he had been what she had readily accepted to be a necessity for survival as he had developed a keen sense over the course of a lifetime immersed in potential and actual violence to understand harmless people from threats, and safe situations from perilous ones.

Less than twelve hours before, when a Zentraedi patrol with micronized guards in human clothing had happened upon Moreno, Ramirez, and a dozen others hiding in the partially collapsed garage of an automotive service station Moreno was certain that Ramirez would elect to not be taken alive. Quite to the contrary, he had been amongst the first to surrender himself passively at the order of the micronized Zentraedi guides.

Perhaps he had seen too many buildings and their sheltering human occupants reduced to burning rubble to think that surrendering carried longer odds against survival than resisting further. Perhaps like Moreno, he had finally reached the point where he was physically and mentally spent and only hoping that if the end was to come that the pilots of the Battle Pods were good shots and serious in the task.

They had not perished, so for unknown reasons the decision to resign to capture had been the right one at that time.

Now, back at The Farm, it was at least clearer as to why the Zentraedi patrol had captured and not obliterated them. They had been returned to an interned company of over a thousand- a measurable number of whom Moreno and Ramirez recognized from the paid workforce of The Ministry of Robotech Sciences.

Some of those MRS employees were indoctrinated Zentraedi whose indoctrination events were proving had not taken as firm a hold as other Ministry employees would have liked.

Quickly, these had been effective in identifying for the invaders all who had any affiliation with The Farm, and familiarity with its running.

It was clear that they were employees of The Farm again, and with the multitude of "unskilled" workers interred with them to boot- it was obvious that they were to be of the unpaid variety.

The true meaning of slavery had still not gotten its teeth into Moreno's fatigue-dulled brain, but the question of why the workforce had been forced from the four warehouses that served as minimalistic approximations of dormitories had found firm purchase.

While the answer was not apparent, there was an aura that hung over the captives and captors alike that told Moreno that her strong sense of foreboding was well-justified.

"What do you think?", Moreno whispered while making an effort to keep her lips from moving as though even the closest of the Zentraedi guards towering over the company of workers some thirty meters away was watching for such indications of communication.

Ramirez, standing before her like the trunk of a great tree planted especially to provide her some measure of concealment replied, "Don't know, but it doesn't feel good to me."

"Seems a waste of time to gather us all up only to kill us- you know?"

Ramirez grunted, "We need to learn what makes sense to these bastards before we can start to figure on what doesn't."

Moreno let the conversation drop, partially because Ramirez had a valid point not worth contesting. Also, there had been more than a thousand potential slaves collected and brought to this place by patrols- the effort apparently concluding only hours before. Quick physical inspection had determined which of the captured had sustained wounds or injuries during the process of capture that would have prevented them from being a viable worker. After those souls had been separated and hastened away, a further reduction of the lesser specimens of robust health had brought the numbers down to what was currently assembled.

While Moreno knew that she was right in that it made no sense to gather a slave workforce only to slay it, she was also feeling what Ramirez had said plainly. There was no telling yet what was rational behavior to these aliens. Perhaps collecting a thousand people to press into slavery, and then mow them down like so much grass for reasons unfamiliar to humans was exactly what made sense to these invaders.

Moreno was more certain than ever- something unfortunate was building to a head.

Standing as one of an unarmed thousand before the detachment of full-sized Zentraedi Warriors, Zentraedi mecha, and a sizable body of "indoctrinated" Zentraedi turncoats still in a micronized state- the possible forms of the unfortunate were things beyond Moreno's control and ones that she preferred to keep out of mind. For this reason she was grateful for the distraction that she had first discovered upon being returned to The Farm following her capture with Ramirez.

Monitoring the "processing" and division of the captives into categories of specialized skill or general labor facilitated by the formerly indoctrinated micronized Zentraedi whose functional grasp of Spanish, English, and even Portuguese- there had been a new and distinct presence.

Moreno had gotten a glimpse of them as she had been ushered to the front of the processing line where a micronized Zentraedi still in laborer's coveralls whom she had no clear memory of but who apparently recognized her identified the botanist as critical staff to two aged men-. They were of human size but not human, and certainly not micronized Zentraedi either.

Their garb alone set them apart, being ornate layers of flowing robes that could have been mistaken for the popular human notion of typical Roman dress. Closer inspection, as Moreno was able to make from only a few paces' distance revealed however patterns and symbols in the fabric that distinguished their style from anything of ancient or contemporary Earth.

When they spoke to a select set of the micronized Zentraedi officers, it was unmistakably in the tongue of the aliens that Moreno had become acquainted with in her time spent with Zentraedi. In her brief exposure to the two, she had also heard a brief exchange between them that was similar to Zentraedi, but less jagged about the spoken edges. –A different dialect of the same root language.

In the span of fifteen seconds, Moreno had formed the opinion that she was amongst the first human beings to lay eyes upon Robotech Masters- though there was no comfort in the probability of her supposition. Based on what little she knew of the feudal relationship that was supposed to exist between the dominant aliens and their genetically engineered servants- the presence of both in such proximity and under present circumstances did not sum up logically.

-And here they were again, the two Robotech Masters in the company of the same micronized Zentraedi officers.

Moreno could not make sense of their purpose for being there for all her trying, but it was a preferable mental exercise to attempting to guess the purpose of the late night assembly that had been called without warning.

Darius reached the top of the small rise from which Sub-Commander Fral already surveyed the assembled interned labor force. The walk from his domicile concluding with the ascent up the slight incline left him winded as he had never been a creature of great physical exertion. The effect it had on Philisto was less pronounce by difference as he always appeared to be clinging tenuously to mortality in Darius's estimation anyway.

"Fral", Darius said perturbed on the exhale of a deeply drawn breath, "-Tell me that we are not here because you needed to show us that you finally taught them to stand in tidy formation."

Fral shook his head as though only distantly aware of the conversation being initiated and replied in a sober tone, "No, I have received orders to carry out- but before I did I wanted you to know so it was not me that you thought had gone mad."

Looking the part of one concerned with the welfare of others only as an extension of self-preservation, Philisto asked with widening and speculative eyes, "What order?"

Disgusted at effort expended in waste, Fral replied in a huff, "I'm to decimate the micronians we've captured. One in ten are to be-."

"I know what decimate means!", Darius snarled, his temper instantly aroused, "What fool gave that order so I can have a name to pin it to when I contest it with Krymina?!.."

"Supreme General Krymina gave the order.", Fral replied with barely a breath's pause between the question and response as he had anticipated it.

"What?", Darius stammered, embarrassed as he spoke by the fact that his own tone betrayed the utter shock he felt to the Zentraedi sub-commander, "For what reason?"

Clearly understanding Darius's puzzlement, Fral answered with as much a hint of sympathy as could be afforded to the moment without sounding contrary to the will and whim of his superior officer, "We were not told, Darius, nor is it our place to know-. It just came through as a general order to all operational commanders. We are to immediately decimate the ranks of the micronians within our reach and influence-. This order applies to me without question and to these micronians as a result-."

Quen'Hoht, standing nearby was taking notice of the dispute between the Tirolian and the warrior caste Zentraedi, though he tried to mask his interest in the exchange. This was not lost on Fral who had been keenly aware of the attention given by his unlikely subordinate to his conduct as a commanding officer. Fral had come to feel measured by the point lieutenant in the speed and effectiveness with which he performed his duties and carried out the orders received.

Fral had no illusions of there being anything benign about the practice.

"Don't develop some moral conscience now, Darius.", Fral admonished quietly but genuinely. The synthesized opiates that Darius had provided him with which to manage his acquired dependency were thinning in his blood as could be seen by the growing twitch and tremble in the Zentraedi's face and hands.

"You seemed perfectly willing to crush the whole micronian species into the dust so long as the boots doing the trampling were Zentraedi. All that's changed is that you get some blood on your own hands."

Darius's reply was equally vicious and cold, "I am swimming in blood already, Fral-make no mistake. So I have no qualms with the deaths of a hundred of these creatures- in the long term they're only ahead of the curve. The difference is that right now, we need these. –Krymina is breaking the very instruments we need to make this campaign worthwhile…."

Darius withdrew for a moment from the exchange- calculating. There was no point in arguing against the order with a Zentraedi- one would have as much success arguing with gravity. Darius focused on ensuring that the hundred lost would have the most minimal impact on his vision of the future.

"-Fral, you know we did lose over a hundred micronians in the work of gathering these- and that does not include the ones euthanized for injuries sustained in the process. We could consider those-."

"No.", Fral said dismissing the suggestion in development outright. Quen'Hoht was watching, and no doubt waiting to see how the general order was translated into action. "The general order is clear in intent, if not specific in detail."

"Then there's no persuading you into some discretionary latitude I take it, Fral?"

"You could persuade me with time and your incessant nagging, I am certain.", Fral said, feeling himself on the cusp of being drawn into one of the pointless academic arguments that he was finding Darius relished, "-But when Quen'Hoht uses the opportunity to report me and succeed me as commander of the Zentraedi detachment, ask yourself if you will get latitude from him on anything?.. Sacrifice the battle, my Tirolian friend, to ensure victory in the campaign."

Darius relented as though his collusion was a factor, "Then if it should need to be done it should be done quickly and discretely. The general order allow us to be discrete, yes?"

"It was not specific in details.", Fral affirmed indirectly, "-This time."

Fral's final two words gave substance to Darius's uneasiness- a disquieting suspicion of things to come.

Something bad was building to a head and nothing in Moreno's creativity was convincing her otherwise.

Since the labor force had been roused from their warehouse/barracks accommodations and ordered to assemble in century blocks like Roman legions of old- there had not been a mangled or misused word of either Spanish or English spoken by the micronized guards.

What had happened following the conversation between the ranking Zentraedi officer and the robe-clad "Masters" had been that micronized guards had begun moving through the columns of the interned and "randomly" removing an individual from each.

The effort was outwardly indiscriminant when not subjected to scrutiny at least.

Moreno, as the second selection process she had been subjected to approached through the columns to her left, was applying scrutiny to the commonalities of the selectees. Those hardened by and made leathery with labor in the elements showed themselves to be the majority of the chosen. Few sets of soft hands were added to the company pulled from the columns spurring a moment's hope in Moreno that some special labor detail had been called for and was being improvised.

Blank expressions matching those of the selectors were worn by the selectees as they were led to assemble in line before the ranks of those with whom they'd just shared company.

Like gear wheels in a machine working cooperatively, guards and the interned each participated in their roles to build the line of the chosen over whom an irrefutable aura of finality was growing.

There was no pleading or crying, from the selectee, whether it was a matter of pride, fortitude, denial, or some combination of these- and for this Moreno was grateful as a pair of micronized warriors were moving through her columns on a direct path toward her. She had always been sensitive to the mood of others and a hint of panic in those being taken might have been enough to push her over the edge on which she was already teetering.

A massive, pale green hand- the fingernails jagged and dirty underneath with lack of care- fell heavily on Ramirez's shoulder. A large man by human standards, Ramirez seemed slight and insubstantial to Moreno standing between the two micronized Zentraedi- but only in the physical aspects. He had not flinched or shown any indication of shying away from his selection.

Stepping out of line before Moreno, Ramirez's head turned slightly so he could speak to her back over his shoulder. His face was stoic and stern and his eyes ablaze with defiance that could find no other outlet.

"Remember what they've done to us-."

Without conscious intent, Moreno found herself moving up to close the gap in her column, grateful not to be among the nearly complete line of them.

The gratitude faded quickly and was replaced by a nauseating, loathing of self that the distinction should be drawn so quickly between those on the line and those fortunate to remain in the reduced columns of us.

Brasilia

"Echo Actual, Echo Three Alpha – Second Base…"

Lt Whilite dropped to a knee beside a Zentraedi transport container that was comparable in size to a truck trailer, but whose handles showed it was intended for toting- likely by a pair of the giant aliens who had made the international airport their base of operations. The fact that the container and others like it stacked neatly to varying levels in parallel to the airport's own maintenance and storage buildings were the enemy's provisions and supplies gave an edge of danger to the mystery Whilite already felt for them.

Whimsical as it was, there was a sort of novelty felt by the lieutenant for the crates that had probably been pre-packed in a Zentraedi approximation of a s supply depot some thousands of light-years away. They garnered the same curiosity as Whilite had felt for his maternal grandfather's collection of pre-Unification national currencies growing up. They were things from a distant place- common, but at the same time having interesting stories involving them to be told.

-A shame…

As Staff Sergeant Byerly and PFC Diaz fell in near him, covering with their rifles the other fire teams of 3rd Platoon further back in the movement, Whilite was reminded that fulfillment of his mission meant that the crates, their contents, and the any stories of interest about them would be rendered ruined and useless soon.

Sentries, as Echo Company's sniper team had observed and had predicted for this night's "creep", were scarce. Instead, the enemy had placed his faith in guard posts and patrols along the civilian avenues of transit-. Clearly the aliens were more concerned about the movement of mecha or vehicles against their position than some form of foot-mounted assault.

It was a lack of vision that was going to cost the Zentraedi dearly this night.

720 meters northwest, eyes were on 3rd Platoon as the fire team on point reached their objective.

Corporal Fuller scanned the bounding movement of the platoon through the riflescope of the M-163R rifle and its integrated image enhancement features. Fuller, as most snipers did, had manually balanced the blend of IR and light intensification that was displayed through the eyepiece. Accounting for the varying levels of ambient light and heat over the span of the entire area that he was charged to watch over could have been done automatically by the scope- but real or not, Fuller felt he was better at these systemic tweaks.

Sergeant Harris, the senior rifleman of the team and spotter was of great assistance- sharing in the constant effort to maintain situational awareness for Echo Company, seeing from afar where they could not. His tripod-mounted spotter's scope had all of the features of Fuller's riflescope, and some additional ones that it did not.

Between the two men, Echo Company had eyes on everything in their surroundings, with the added benefit of Fuller's rail-accelerated anti-material rifle acting for them to boot.

Harris had seen Captain Nguyen, imbedded with 1st Platoon, arrive at their objective under a minute before. Like clockwork, the company's units were falling into place almost to the second as Nguyen had laid out in his plan some hours earlier. Whilite's report, made at a whisper over the coded tactical frequency was one of the last pieces needing to be staged.

"Three Alpha, Actual- copy that.", Nguyen replied before issuing the "go" phrase that the operation hinged upon, "Batter Up. –Clock is running, we're ghosts in five mikes."

Nested on the rooftop concrete casement that housed the various HVAC equipment that had once kept the occupants of The Embassy of Who-Knows-Where comfortable, Corporal Fuller had excellent vantage with the powerful M-163R rifle system over the breadth of the operational objective area.

Fire teams that had worked to cover one another on the swift yet guarded advance through the open grounds of the enemy-appropriated international airport were now abandoning their larger unit affiliations to place the charges provided to them by Echo Company's resident sapper, Corporal Van Dorn.

From Fuller's nest, the placing of the charges could have been (if approached with a musing mindset) mistaken for the inverse of a children's Easter egg hunt, or something like it. Quickly, and with only the selectiveness that the elapsing operational clock allowed, the Rangers were concealing their saboteur's packages within the natural spaces between stacked, alien cargo containers of unknown supplies or affixing them to neatly arranged pieces of field equipment whose specific purposes was not readily clear from outward appearances.

It was only that Fuller knew the mass-sabotage to be going on and the areas in which it was being carried out that allowed him to pick out the Rangers for whom he was covering from much of their environment.

Per Captain Nguyen's orders for this operation, the company with the exception of only Fuller and Harris had donned their body armor in its full, Level 4 configuration. Similar in notion to how the Chameleon camouflage system allowed the wearer of the EBAS "Stalker" body armor to blend into the surrounding landscape features by customizing the outer skin of electro-chromatographic cells to show environmentally appropriate patterns and colors- so too did the armor suit regulate the temperature of the suit's exterior.

When functioning properly and within operational limitations, the armor suit and its occupant had an IR signature that varied from ambient temperature by a few mere degrees and rendered them nearly invisible to thermal detection. Under this mode of operation, Fuller's trained eye was normally able to pick out and track the other Rangers while on the move. Given the right conditions, even he had been known to lose members of the flock he watchdogged for in their surroundings- a disquieting feeling for the "all-seeing eye" of the company especially as it peered over a weapon expected to throw rounds downrange in the company's direction for their defense. How often Fuller had lost track of one of his own in the bush was something he opted to keep to himself as the thought would do nothing in the way of bringing the guarded the sense of security that sniper overwatch was intended to provide.

Tonight though, the conditions were such that tracking the Rangers was a relatively straightforward task- for a trained eye.

Fuller traversed his field of view smoothly east, sweeping his gaze through the enhanced optics of his riflescope over the Rangers and their surroundings until he reached the forward-most team from 3rd Platoon. An anonymous member of that fire team stood out conspicuously from the backdrop of the crouched Regult he was standing beside as he spun one of Van Dorn's explosive parcels in a quickening loop at the end of the rope to which it was attached before releasing it into a perfect arc over the edge of the mecha's open hatch frame and into the war machine's cockpit.

The sniper witnessed no ostentatious displays from the figure who had just sunk the explosive charge into the Battle Pod like a deadly three-pointer catching nothing but net. There was no reason that Fuller had expected to see any showboating with the exception of the sight having reminded him of something seen normally in a game of "The Final Four" – and that the average age of the Rangers he watched over put them at that point in life where showiness was commonplace.

-But young as they were, there was no question that Fuller's Rangers were consummate professional soldiers, and keenly aware of the seriousness of their task and the real danger they were wading through to perform it.

Bragging about a perfect hook shot from the top of the key would come later no doubt.

3rd Platoon's fire teams placed their charges conservatively as they continued to migrate east along the enemy's neatly arranged stockpiles, likely seeking to distribute the destruction they would render as broadly through the supplies as they could. A sound strategy, Fuller admitted, when one was unsure as to what exactly one would be destroying with each IED. –But the thought process had clearly not taken into account the fact that as the Rangers spread themselves out along the deposited supplies, they were increasing the area that their overwatch was obligated to survey.

It was not impossible for Fuller and Harris at this point, only challenging. –Though as the Rangers continued to migrate east, depositing their charges as they went, Fuller did feel the need to swing the muzzle of the anti-material rifle to the area some 350 meters farther where the first Zentraedi garrison encampments were bivouacking.

There was no issue yet- but increased proximity was equal on a creep-op to increased danger.

"Four minutes.", Captain Nguyen announced as 20% of the time allotted to plant the sapper's charges elapsed.

Corporal Fuller tracked his weapon west to the other extreme of Echo Company's expanding operational boundaries to find the same ongoing activities with different players.

Even on the ground, and "on objective" as the Rangers were, there were indications that they too were becoming conscious of spreading themselves thin beyond the point that could be justified by arguing the distribution of intended destruction. Their egress plan called for a collapse back to the western-most unit and to exfiltrate the OA along a path west scouted already by the sniper team. Exfiltrating by the same path used to enter the objective, and more to the point in the direction of home was not the first option any of the Rangers wanted to take. –But venturing away from the rallying point for egress presented its problems too- especially as time was a factor in slipping the scene of the surprise attack.

As expanding the breadth of the sabotage was incurring greater risk, the common, unspoken solution reached was to move deeper into the columns and rows of enemy stockpiles. A simple solution that increased unit effectiveness in meeting the mission's general objectives, but one that compounded the headache of overwatch.

Harris and Fuller had taken survey of the available positions that they could assume for overwatch and had applied as much thought as time had allowed in making their selection. –And indeed, the selection had been a good one providing the broadest view of the operational area possible without obstruction.

What not even the most ideal sniper's nest could provide was depth of view beyond a given range and around physical obstructions

A mere twenty-five meters elevation from ground covering Rangers out at a range of over 700, Fuller quickly lost visual contact if the Rangers pressed more than a few meters into the columns of mecha and material that they were there to destroy. –And the Rangers were vanishing rapidly from sight in hopes of planting their last charges before making their escape.

Making a full sweep from the first stacks of supply containers that marked the western edge of the operational area to the eastern most point where hints of movement around squatting Regults marked 3rd Platoon's ongoing activities, Fuller and his M-163R being rendered impotent to protect.

-This being his responsibility though, it was that much more hair-raising for Fuller as his keen eye glimpsed a hint of the unexpected and the possibility of danger.

"-Oh shit-.", Fuller muttered, instantly getting Harris's attention as he spotted two anthropomorphic forms glowing in "white hot" passing in the mecha-width gap between two dormant Regults.

"-Bogeys- fifty meters east of Three…", Fuller whispered to his spotter with no other details to report.

"Got `em.", Harris replied, having tracked in using his spotter's scope and Fuller's vague direction to zero in on the area of interest.

Fuller found the two, heat-radiating silhouettes emerging from the far side of the Regult that they were clearly attempting to use to cover their movements- and a moment's observation revealed two to actually be three.

The figures maintained a stooped posture with indications of rifles at the ready as they moved west just inside of the first row of Regults. Their spacing and clear efforts to conceal themselves in the shadows spoke to Fuller of formal military training and practice in small unit tactics – but there was no telling affiliation from any of these observations.

There was only the certainty that in under a minute, surprise contact was likely with 3rd Platoon if there was no intervention.

Whilite could speak for neither his subordinates, nor his fellow officers in Echo Company, but for his own part there was something about a "creep" operation that put his nerves on end more than any other type.

Certainly the strong-arm nature of urban warfare that had been the Rangers' day-to-day life in Brasilia only a week before had its unique and intense stresses- the rapid-fire, situational chaos that could never be offset by even the best of planning or exercise.

Ambushes- even when laid and executed perfectly always carried with them the underlying peril that was the same as the trapping and wounding of a wild animal- that in its fear and pain was ten-fold as dangerous in its lashing out.

Even the explosive energy of random, intense contact on patrol that was in its mildest form a tempest of panic and trained aggression held no comparison with the icy grip of suspense that "creep ops" held on Whilite's spine.

3rd Platoon- all of Echo Company actually were engaged in the plan that Captain Nguyen had laid out hours before now, and Whilite was feeling that old, electrical giddiness of unseen but omnipresent danger.

The sensation was no stranger to him, he having felt it even before he had been of military age and had earned his Ranger patch. It was in fact the same nervous energy that he had felt as a boy playing hide-and-go-seek before the world had known of Zentraedi or intergalactic war.

The parallels were there and shocking. Here now amongst the idle Battle Pods, he and his platoon moved around with their situational awareness shrunk to a radius of meters- knowing all the time that the threat of "it" was out there.- either stalking them or open to the possibility of the chance crossing of paths.

The business was more serious now of course, and the consequences of discovery by "it" more severe by orders of magnitude- but creep-ops and hide-and-go-seek were fundamentally the same.

-And damn it if that didn't include that both aroused in Whilite the distant and nagging urge to pee…

"Three Alpha, Dugout-. Halt and cover- bogeys east of your position, forty meters- moving at you head-on.", Sergeant Harris reported calmly but urgently over the common tactical frequency.

His platoon, spread around visual obstructions beyond the ability to effectively communicate by hand signal, Whilite ordered quietly via the same tactical frequency-.

"-Third Platoon, all sticks- cover and prepare for contact east. Give me a thirty meter, firing line spread, left flank on me. Watch the right, I don't want anyone slipping around on an end-run."

Whilite saw the other half of Byerly's 1st Squad vanish into and around the contours of the foot of the Regult crouching in the second row of neatly arranged mecha, opposite to the one serving as cover to the lieutenant.

PFC Diaz was prone beneath the ostrich-like, rearward bending leg of the same Battle Pod that Whilite and Byerly covered behind, his body flush with the mecha's left heel as the platoon's CO and senior NCO surveyed the reported direction of danger's approach from the ample protection of the mecha's knee joint. All three, undoubtedly like the rest of 3rd Platoon, searched the open spaces between rows of mecha for signs of the bogeys reported by Harris.

The wait was not long.

"-There-.", Byerly said initially, as though the single word would provide location of what she was seeing, "Next row, about forty meters up-."

"White hot" images as seen through his riflescope were not providing Corporal Fuller with any details he could use to identify the forms moving steadily toward 3rd Platoon, who had now spread themselves into a firing line ready to engage.

"Little Blue Guys, you think?", the sniper asked, tapping the side of theM-163R's trigger- a habit he'd developed that was not quite putting his finger on it, but getting the reassurance that it was there if needed.

"Too small for LBGs, I think.", Harris replied, "-But I'm going to need better eyes on before-. ..Oh shit- more of `em… Track east-."

Following the spotter's cue, Fuller swept further east to see indications of more movement by multiple bogeys trailing the first in an elongated and segmented column.

"-Aw shit.", Fuller repeated, mimicking the sentiment of his superior as potential targets slipped in and out of sight in the gaps between Regults.

"-Keep your eyes on their point.", Harris directed, "Hold your fire, unless-. Let me get the damn Tink in for a better view-."

Captain Nguyen's voice, sounding edgy for lack of any details as to what was developing at 3rd Platoon's position, said, "Three minutes. –Three Alpha, SitRep?"

"Eyes on bogeys, Actual.", Whilite reported, peering with the aid of integrated image enhancement at the humanoid forms glowing with heat through the quick sights of his rifle, "Stand by. –All sticks, hold fire-."

IR imaging cost Whilite the ability to make out fine details of the leading form that he could have easily put rounds through from where he and Byerly were positioned- but nothing about them said Zentraedi. They were too small in frame and stature, unless they happened to all be micronized females. –And if the enemy, why probe their own secure area as they appeared to be doing? Suspicion of an enemy presence could usually be expected to cause a Zentraedi force to opt for the sledgehammer response.

These bogeys were not acting like Zentraedi- Whilite was growing more and more certain.

A further moment's observation confirmed it. A fire team of there on point of the movement would cover long enough to allow a trailing fire team to pass them and assume the next position- "leapfrogging" through the operational area and providing their own ground-level cover.

A flutter of motion in "white hot" at almost the same point up the same row of Regults that Byerly, PFC Diaz, and he was covering in caused Whilite to realize that the bogeys were actually two columns travelling in parallel and covering one another along the way and not just one.

This was not SOP for Zentraedi Warriors moving within their own lines, even if they were on the hunt for a known enemy presence. This was something domestic.

"Eighteen, nineteen-.", Sergeant Harris counted aloud as he remote-piloted the RAV-6 "Tinkerbelle" past the line Echo Company's 3rd Platoon had formed spread out across the column depth of three rows of Battle Pods.

Three of the Frisbee-sized drones of carbon fiber that floated with only a whisper's noise on a current of air from its center-mounted, electric fan engine had already been en route to join Echo Company as the last of the Rangers reached the mission objective, but they were micro-aircraft designed for their stability and loiter characteristics- not for their speed in getting from point to point.

Once there however, and almost exactly on cue as to when Sgt. Harris was finding that he truly needed the micro-video surveillance package that each drone carried, the sniper team's spotter assumed control of the most proximal Tinkerbelle to 3rd Platoon. Using a control pad that any child ever exposed to a home game console would have found familiar and easy to use, the sergeant had quickly maneuvered the drone to see with its electronic eyes what his mortal ones could not from his position.

"I count twenty-one, Three Alpha-.", Harris reported- seeing what the Tinkerbelle saw via a pair of viewing goggles linked to the RAV-6's control paddle.

"-And they're ASC to boot…"

Whilite took his finger off of his M-35's trigger at the identification of the "bogeys", resting it instead on the outside of the guard from where the trigger was still quickly accessible.

Friction and even animosity being what it was between The Army of The Southern Cross and the Robotech Defense Forces, the unit plowing headlong toward 3rd Platoon was still human, and still friendlier than the owners of the sandbox that they and the Rangers were playing in. –But ASC infantry units- especially those who had been in the bush for extended periods- had the reputation of going "cowboy" at the drop of a hat, and Whilite's preference was still that any friendly fire casualties be the ASC's people and not his.

Still-.

"Third Platoon, everyone maintain weapons hold.", Whilite ordered as he safetied his rifle and grappled with the balance of necessity and stupidity for what he was about to do.

"-If they shoot me, Byerly- you'll give them a second chance and try to make nice…"

"What-?", Byerly replied, understanding her lieutenants intent only as he acted.

Whilite took his rifle by the forward barrel-jacket and extended it at an arm's length well out into the open, waving it up and down like the rigid approximation of a flag.

The advancing parallel columns of ASC troops froze with a sudden uniformity, all having seen the revealing display of 3rd Platoon's lieutenant.

"Rangers!", Whilite called by way of introduction, "I'm stepping out- don't shoot me, damnit!.."

With his rifle still at an arm's length, Whilite edged into the open with his left arm raised and palm of the hand out and open. There were no flashes of rifle fire, nor the searing pain of bullets or lasers slicing through flesh.

-But it occurred to Whilite at that moment also that he had not actually thought ahead to what would come next….

"Mountain Recon", came the reply from across the expanse between rows of Regults and somewhere in the leading cluster of ASC troops, "-Move up, and I'll meet you on your side!"

Whilite tapped Byerly on the helmet, "You too- let's go."

"Sure, El-Tee..", Byerly grumbled with obligatory circumstantial resentment, "-Why not get us both shot?.."

Whilite was holding his rifle again as its designers had intended as he led Byerly on the crouched sprint to meet his anonymous, presumed counterpart who was dashing across the open with another figure and a common air of urgency. The two halves of the chance encounter met at the rear and under the thruster assembly of a Regult.

Strangely it occurred to Whilite that in his time in Brasilia- in "The Zone", really- he could not recall the last time he had spoken free-form to a member of the ASC. –And here they were now looking every bit "last gen tech" in their BDUs, rig, and gear as Whilite were "cutting edge" in the technology that the RDF-Army had layered them in.

Both of the ASC emissaries to this impromptu meeting were of roughly the same age as Whilite and Byerly, perhaps a little older, looking worn by recent events but still capable. There was something appropriate to their solid, unshaven appearances that seemed to make them a better fit for the world as it now was and promised to be for a while. They looked like part of the ASC that by deeds Whilite had witnessed in Brasilia could be counted upon to bring the pain to the enemy.

Whilite swung his helmet visor up, opting for eye contact in this situation. As he unfastened the air filtration mask covering his nose and the lower half of his face the night air came to his nostrils cool and damp, and smelled of forming dew on the grass. It also smelled strongly in contrast of the body odor of those who had been in the field for days without washing facilities- the "three week reek" as Whilite had learned to call it by RDF-Army lingo.

-He was sure that he and Byerly were equally sweet-smelling….

"Lieutenant Whilite, 4th Rangers, Echo Company", Whilite introduced himself, "This is my platoon sergeant, Staff Sergeant Byerly-. Who the hell are you guys?"

Whilite's announcement of rank and the close enough proximity to see the bar stenciled on his helmet and body armor prompted a salute from the two ASC troops.

"Sorry, sir-.", apologized the apparent senior of the two, holding his saluting as he said, "Staff Sergeant Alvarez and Sergeant Carol… -24th Mountain Recon Regiment."

"Are you senior in the unit?", Whilite asked, returning the salute and dispensing with formalities.

"Yes.", said Alvarez immediately and adding a moment later with the clear relief of having someone to report to the explanation, "We lost our lieutenant and three others in a skirmish with malcontent dittos as the shit was going down. We were manning an OP north and- well, I figure you can fill in the blanks, sir."

"Yeah, common story in these parts.", Whilite said, cutting the pleasantries short, "We're on a creep and on the clock-."

"Two minutes.", Captain Nguyen announced, "Whilite, are you going to tell me what's going on, or should I come up and find out for myself?!.. Over."

Whilite called for a pause with the ASC NCSs by raising his left hand in a "hold" gesture to them, replying simultaneously to Nguyen, "Negative sir, I'm in parley right now with the ASC, will have the full story for you in two secs. Over."

Dropping the pause in conversation between himself and Alvarez, Whilite asked the next, logical question, "-What's your mission here?"

Long shadows were cast in strobe effect from the east as a half dozen or more explosions sounded their sharp reports in machinegun succession. The piercing concussion of the last had hardly passed through the meeting of Gemini Coalition allies when a great secondary explosion from the same originating area rose skyward in an all-illuminating fireball whose blast hit not like javelin points but like an invisible, speeding truck.

"Nevermind….", Whilite muttered as he steadied himself under the softening glow of the rising fireball as it rose to a height of 100 meters and began to dissipate.

Portable light towers erected by the Zentraedi all around the airport grounds came to life, bathing the area in harsh, white light. From the garrison bivouac at the farthest point east, through the mecha and Fighter Pod marshalling areas, to the depots and stockpiles into which the Rangers and ASC unit had intruded- shadows melted away like snow touching warm ground.

As the blanket of darkness was snatched away, the garrison alarm sounded in short, shrieking yelps that penetrated the teeth to the nerve root.

The first Zentraedi Warriors were emerging from their personal enclosures, all struggling to pull on their uniforms and body armor as Naib Subedar Singh's Gurkhas initiated their attack from east, and outside of the secured perimeter. –The fact that the plan that had been briefed had gone wildly off-script had apparently not eluded them.

An understandably modest salvo of mini-missiles was illuminated as descending, meteoric flecks in the light cast by the Zentraedi towers as the weapons arced in on points all around the garrison encampment. There was the subdued pop of bursting plasma-napalm warheads, followed swiftly by the shrieks of alien warriors in agony from burns caused by indirect exposure to the extreme heat.

The air above the Zentraedi garrison's encampment began rapidly to cloud with thickening grey smoke whose odor of sublimated synthetic materials and burning flesh pervaded and overwhelmed the pleasant scents of night.

"ABOART, ABORT, ABORT!", Captain Nguyen called over the tactical frequency, "All platoons fall back to first rallying positon on the double-quick!.."

"-Well, I don't know your plan, but we're goin' that way-.", Whilite said, cocking his head in a generally westward direction, "Try to keep up and we'll sort the fine points out later."

Alvarez was unreserved in his amenability, saying, as Whilite and Byerly ducked away on the ordered withdrawal "Sounds like a great plan."

Sub-Commander K'Rhel felt the cold chill of shock at having been awakened within a "secure area" by the sounds of attack reach its base and begin to rise into the heat of anger. Emerging from his personal sleeping enclosure proximal to the field depot's command post, the commanding officer was both in the process of donning his armor and trying to accurately assess the nature and degree of the attack his command was under.

Fires, presumably from some of the explosions that had awaken him moments earlier danced in and around the idle reserves of mecha that was an insignificantly short walk from where he had been sleeping. The Intelligence Division's report that had assured K'Rhel and his subordinates that this operating area was devoid of any "meaningful or substantial micronian resistance" was proving to be woefully inaccurate, and the failure was now costing confidence and warriors' lives.

Other fires, clearly plasma-napalm fueled by the intensity with which they burned blazed at seemingly random points through his warriors' encampment just east of the officers' encampment and close enough to already be thickening the air with the disgraceful odors and smoke that taunted battle going against his unit's favor.

Within the encampments, the bulk of the warriors immediately unhindered by the attack were getting their feet under them now and into their gear for combat as rage began to take hold of them beneath the random and dwindling fall of mini-missiles. The four-Regult picket posted to patrol and watch the eastern perimeter could be seen just at the very edge of the camp's lighting- their lack of response to the threat coming from outside of the perimeter area they had been assigned to guard was explained by they all being felled by the same attackers.

Micronians of the non-combatant castes- the Te'Dak Tohl officer had been warned through briefings could be expected to be able to improvise weaponry of varying grades and to use them to a modest level of effectiveness. Had K'Rhel awoken only to find staged, reserve Combat Pods burning he might have been inclined to dismiss the action as being by inspired and Fate-favored non-combatant micronians.

This spoke of something else.

From their sentry positions along the northern perimeter, the squad of Regults on watch drew K'Rhel's attention as they initiated the garrison reply to the surprise attack- lashing out with a broad and sweeping fusillade of particle beam fire into woodlands east of the perimeter and their slain counterparts. Trees splintered and were tossed ablaze on columns of displaced earth above the canopy of those left standing as the savage counter-fire affected revenge on the landscape.

There was motion far to K'Rhel's right, outside of the encampments as the southern perimeter guard elected to leave their assigned area to join in the counterattack. Thoroughly shredded and blazing woodland and hillsides received an increase to the lashing that the northern guard was still administering.

Warriors qualified to operate mecha were now reaching them and bringing them hastily into action. A single Light Artillery Regult strode briskly by K'Rhel along avenues through encampment squares of sleeping enclosures intended for dismounted personnel. The Combat Pod's dual, top-mounted launchers swiveled slightly in unison, training on some distant target, and then filled the air with the sharp-smelling exhaust of missiles' rocket motors.

A moment later, beyond the northern and southern Regult guards who were now converging on the area, the eastern perimeter exploded in a rippling blanket of detonating plasma-napalm warheads that consumed with their incredible heat anything not already afire.

Sub-Commander K'Rhel looked quickly away from the lightening response of ineffectiveness, unable to bear the stupidity of the evolving action.

"Lord!...", Point Lieutenant Jarrot called to gain his commander's attention as he rushed to meet him, donning the last of his armor as he did so and pleasing K'Rhel with the comfort that he had not been the only warrior caught unprepared by the attack.

In reality, what was beginning around K'Rhel within his own command was almost as dangerous as the attack that had wakened his warriors from slumber. Warriors were rushing to fight before their sub-lieutenants could organize them and direct their aggression effectively. Like a body in the moments after its head was shot away, K'Rhel's garrison was a stumbling mass of whirling limbs gaining nothing by its exertions and even making itself more vulnerable to attack through its lack of cohesive effort.

Chaos was in command at this moment, K'Rhel realized- not he.

"-Lord, the garrison will be mounted and deploying in minutes-.", Jarrot reported, almost boastfully.

"Deploying to where, Jarrot?!..", K'Rhel asked impatiently, "Do you see micronian mecha to engage?..."

Jarrot protested, "But Lord, enemy fire was seen coming from the east-."

K'Rhel pointed to the fallen Regult sentries of the eastern perimeter, sanarling, "They were killed as a distraction by the micronians to the east to draw our attention away from that!-"

Jarrot's gaze followed K'Rhel's arm as it flailed emphatically at the rising flames started by the explosions that had awaken all.

K'Rhel had not slipped an uneasy feeling that had started as he had tumbled out of his personal sleeping enclosure, and in stating his observation to Jarrot- he began to understand why. It was familiarity he was feeling in the situation- familiarity with a minor norghil uprising that he had been party to quelling some years before.

As norghil, the back of their insurrection had been broken swiftly with the neutralization of their warship and mecha systems by activation of their "failure mode". Many norghil had already escaped to the surface of a nearby planet where they were determined to fight their final battle, and while an orbital bombardment of the entire region could have swiftly and definitively ended that disturbance to order- the Te'Dak Tohl commander elected a ground-level solution.

Mostly, as was to be expected, it had been a slaughter of the norghil whose infantry weapons and limited supplies had proven insubstantial in carrying the treasonous effort. There had been instances however…

There had been incidents of inspired action by the norghil- small Te'Dak Tohl units taken by surprise in areas deemed safe, or ambushed to moderate effect.

-And if norghil on an alien world, armed with rifles and sustained only by field rations could have such an effect, then micronians on familiar ground with a modicum of training and the right equipment might just be capable of what was now transpiring-.

The world shook again as first a set of paired explosions and then a random succession ripped through the depot's stockpile area from the reserve mecha marshalling area through the organized lots of various provisions. Thunderous blasts set the ground and air trembling as bits of fractured shipping cases and their contents were thrown into the night sky, followed by the almost immediate appearance of flame whose volume and rate of growth gave evidence of an accelerant.

"-And that too!...", K'Rhel stammered, gesturing wildly at the continuation of the display of enemy planning and organization, "-Any warrior capable of carrying a weapon or piloting a Regult at the ready now and under the charge of their sub-lieutenants! I want units out to a distance of six atohls by the turn of the next hour, and want them conducting sweeps back toward base. Pursuit is useless, they have planned their escape-. We need to snare them with our sweeping action if we're to catch them at all."

Jarrot, understanding the plan suddenly thrust upon him for execution replied dutifully with fist clanged over his heart in salute, "Yes, Lord- it will be done."

K'Rhel pointed next to the Gnerls situated near the end of the runway whose crews were moving toward them swiftly.

"-Those Fighter Pods are to be armed for ground-support actions and will receive their direction from-."

K'Rhel's order was left incomplete as his upper right cheek exploded in a speckling mist of blue-green blood and tissue whose force dislodged the eye above from its socket.

Jarrot froze with the collapse of K'Rhel's body and at the suddenness of his superior's inexplicable departure from life, as did the handful of warriors who had gathered either to report or to gain insight of their commander's plans.

A sub-lieutenant in their midst dropped next beneath a spray of blood and brain matter that carried through the hole in his head opened by the section of skull that had been blown outward.

"-And that's why we wear our helmets in a combat zone, boys….", Sergeant Harris scolded with ghoulish mirth from a distance too great to possibly be heard by the admonished.

The spotter watched the group of Zentraedi recoil from a second comrade's fall before scattering in terror before death whose form was not clear to them.

A .50 caliber anti-material, armor-piercing explosive round had a way of making a lasting first impression on those who had never seen one delivered by a professional. –And when the round was used with remarkable effectiveness on a target for which it had not been principally intended- such as the head of an enemy giant…

-The effect was even more profound.

"Good shot.", Harris said to Fuller who was already scanning the area through the M-163R's scope for a target of opportunity.

"Good call on their honcho-.", Corporal Fuller replied, more focused on finding his next, unsuspecting mark at 2,200 meters distance over conversation.

"Officers are easy to spot, no matter what their species.", Harris admitted, diminishing the suggestion of great acquired skill, "-Just look for the guy doing the most talking."

SDF-3

The percussive pulse of the ship's general alarm had subsided but was replaced in the Combat Direction Center by the low but enveloping murmur of duty-related conversations between crew and supervisors all around the compartment. Stations and screens that had been dark and unoccupied during the period of fold transit were now manned and alive, giving the Flagship's nerve center a flash and energy at all points.

"Captain, all decks, all divisions report secure to Condition One, sir.", reported Chief of the Watch, Master Chief Petty Officer Vogel from her station at the central tactical display with the CO and the Flag, Vice Admiral Hayes-Hunter.

"Very good, Chief.", Captain Hollenkamp replied, "Fold-Ops, time remaining on profile execution?"

"Two minutes, twenty-three seconds, Captain.", came the reply, "Execution on the mark with profile, five-by-five. We'll thread the needle for you, Skipper."

"Very good, Fold-Ops. Adjust fold profile designs for second position jump or fallback as soon as Sensors has a fix for you.", Hollenkamp acknowledged before turning to the final two divisions on which activities would hinge- and soon, "Sensors, we'll need that position fix and a full spherical sweep- passive- as soon as we're clear of hyperspace. Call bogeys as you spot `em."

"Aye, sir."

"Fire Control- TAO, lock into sensor feeds on primary and secondary fire control systems. Release master safety and make all batteries, tubes, and launchers ready in all respects. Establish CCDS links with task force units and set to stand-by. There will be no friendlies out there when we arrive, so you have permission to fire upon request with exception of the main battery."

"Aye, sir- understood.", LCDR Connor affirmed, "Spinning up all weapons systems, and we have good Collaborative Combat Direction System links with all task force units."

Hollenkamp looked to his superior, Vice Admiral Hayes-Hunter and said encouragingly, "Admiral, SDF-3 is ready as we can make her, ma'am. As far out from Sol as we're de-folding though, chance of a proximal contact is easily less than a million to one."

Hayes-Hunter's demeanor since the sounding of general quarters had changed from her normal, generally-approachable persona to the more contained, earnest, and action-oriented officer that Hollenkamp knew her to become during combat operations. It was not an attempt to put off her subordinates, Hollenkamp knew- and he had never faulted her for this customary change. This was who she was and how she dealt with the innumerable thought processes and enormous weight of responsibility that came with her command.

"-That seems to be the theme of this war, Julian.", Hayes-Hunter replied as she looked over all that the ship's sensors could show her at this point- the formation and station-keeping of the task force under her command within SDF-3's "fold bubble".

"-Remind me in a few years when I'm working on my memoirs to fund my retirement that that'd be a good name for the book – Remembering the One Chance in a Million War, by Lisa Hayes-Hunter…"

"I'd buy a copy-.", Hollenkamp said brightly, "Assuming I haven't beat you to the punch and written my own first."

Hayes-Hunter smirked grimly, "Treachery and conspiracy in the ranks-. That's another chapter in itself I think. –Just keep giving me material…"

"Conn, Fold-Ops. De-fold in thirty seconds."

Hayes-Hunter reached beneath the lip of the tactical display table and retrieved the telephone handset provided for her duty station in the CDC. Placing it to the side of her head, she said to MCPO Vogel, "1MC and patch me into the task force…"

"-You're on, Admiral.", Vogel said as the ship's speakers gave an announcement tone.

In her steady, commanding tone, Hayes-Hunter spoke.

"Doolittle Task Force, this is the Admiral. Action this day. Sure will be the command and swift the execution, and we will bring the war to the enemy ad drop it right into Supreme General Krymina's lap. Do your jobs, trust your commanders and shipmates, and let's get on with the mission at hand. Out."

Without any additional ceremony, Hayes-Hunter returned the phone to the cradle and her attention to the tactical display- and like all other around her, waited.

"Final countdown to de-fold.", the Fold Operations Officer announced, "Real space in ten, nine, eight, seven-."

U.E.S.S. Gordon P. Samuels

"-Nothing to add to that, Skipper?", LCDR Petersen asked smartly of CDR Devereaux from across the CIC's main tactical display.

"Some eloquence shouldn't be upstaged.", Devereaux replied before resuming her "game face".

A focused tension pervaded the CIC as all eyes were locked onto the displays of their duty stations and all minds spinning through the details of their responsibilities.

All the while, the ship's speakers carried the final countdown from SDF-3's Fold Operations.

"-Six, five, four, three, two, one. De-fold."

"-And the curtain goes up….", Senior Tracker, Petty Officer First Class Thatcher said as the task force-s re-entry into "real space" was confirmed by the return of hash to his waterfall display.

"Let's hope for an empty house.", added PO1Orson Cobb from the Senior Tracker seat for his team of four.

Like the other two senior trackers, Reyes and Chun – Cobb and Thatcher's responsibilities were roughly two parts supervisory and administrative, and one part technical. Under the senior tracker's direction, the team of four junior trackers interpreted the cascading curtains of grainy light representing the energy passing through space, covering the span of the EM spectrum and as interpreted by the Stratford Class Frigate's advanced sensor systems. Working with numerous analytical tools and vast libraries of recorded energy patterns of sources both hostile and benign- it was the trackers' job to sift possible threats to the ship out of the ambient clutter and was the senior trackers' task to affirm their teams' interpretations and pass usable information to the Senior Sensor Officer and to the CIC for dissemination and use.

The sensor tracker's MOS was one whose execution was as much intuition as rigorous training, and could be every bit as tedious as it was vitally important to the safety and combat effectiveness of the vessel. It was also a skill set related to one of the few advantages that the REF held over its venerable, space-going adversaries – and it was the center of the attention of every member of Task Force Doolittle at this particular moment.

This time, as the streams of light on-screen in the waterfall display's broadband mode showed, there was only the constant flow of energy from Sol, the lesser static crackle of the Oort Cloud, and the immediately recognizable pixilated signatures of the other ships in the task force.

"Quad Red, no contacts.", Thatcher reported over his intercom headset to the SSO as his trackers completed their first sweep and continued with routine, repetitive sweeps of the same quadrant of space around the ship from 270̊ to 000̊ relative.

"Quad Green, no contacts.", Cobb echoed, giving the call of clear space from 001̊ through 090̊.

So Reyes and Chun repeated as well for quadrants "blue" and "yellow" that each accounted for the last two arcs of 90-degrees around the horizontal axis of the ship.

It had never been confirmed officially to Cobb that there was a relation between the layout of the quadrant "colors" around the ship and a certain electronic tabletop game he remembered playing as a small boy with his grandfather- but he had reason to suspect there was.

"Simon says the sphere is clear.", announced the SSO from her post in the CIC just outside of the working area of sensor functions, the "sensor shack".

"The sphere is clear, aye.", CDR Devereaux affirmed, sounding neither relieved nor disappointed that an opportunity to do battle had not presented itself, saying rather to LCDR Petersen, "XO, engage master fire control safeties and keep us in assigned station on the Bristol. –No work for us just yet."

"Aye, ma'am.", Petersen replied, "Fire Control, safety your panels, return all guns and launchers from battery, and keep the weapons grid warm on stand-by. Helm, maintain this relative position on Bristol."

Watching the CIC's main holographic tactical display that was showing in real time as the Doolittle Task Force divided into "Doolittle One", the Flagship and heavy hitters, and "Doolittle Two" of which Gordon P. Samuels was a member, it was easy to misjudge the higher significance of the icons representing ships parting ways in a great expanse of open space. As Devereaux's adopted mantra professed, the dividing task force was now in harm's way- and would be in much closer quarters with it soon.

U.E.S.S. Bristol

Commodore Vu Tran was soundly of the belief that all combatants were subject and entitled to "nerves" in conduct of their business.

How could they not be?

Seeking conflict and killing, despite Man's history rich in savagery, were not naturally achieved pursuits and in actuality required much conditioning and training to be mastered. Fortunately there was no training regiment that made stomaching the act of killing any easier- nor should there have been. It was left to the individual in the final analysis to process and deal with the darker side of survival as best as he or she could.

This being said, Tran was certain that the strain of nerves from which he was suffering were particular to he and a comparatively small number of officers, NCOs, and enlisted in the larger Doolittle Task Force.

Commodore Tran's nerves stemmed from the testing of a concept in actual combat.

The Bristol Class Corvette Carrier, of which Tran's flagship was the first constructed, was innovative in its marrying of utility and economy. It reflected the reality that the human race had gone from novice space-farers to having to be able to contend with races whose experience in galactic-scale space warfare preceded Earth's familiarity with steam power. It also addressed the tragic truth that Earth's first lessons into the greater meaning of conflict had cost the planet a substantial portion of its population and industrial capabilities- of which the recovery would at best still be decades in achieving.

Capital ships in the "traditional" sense (as it applied to space warfare) were the embodiment and corporal realization of a civilization's most advanced technologies. Power generation, propulsion, sensor technologies, weaponry, and the information technologies that allowed all to function found union in these dreadnaughts of the stars.

The resulting product, as evident in SDF-3, was impressive and truly an accomplishment worthy of pride. However, the cost in resources to build such ships (even with the principle burden for design, manufacture, and assembly falling on the "acquired" GS-95 Robotech Factory) was staggering, and the required training and skill sets to operate them no less draining on a small pool of available personnel.

The Garfish Class corvette had provided a solution to Earth's limited resource dilemma for interplanetary offense and defense. Though it lacked the "long legs" of interstellar and intergalactic travel afforded to capital ships by hyperspace fold drive systems, its powerful sub-light engines gave it speed and agility in conventional spaceflight that its larger sisters could not match.

Joining conventional and lower-order Robotech weaponry with the platform and the sensor and control systems to make them all mesh produced a relatively inexpensive class of ships that had performed heroically in the recent defense of Earth from the Te'Dak Tohl and had only faltered as an inevitable result being massively overwhelmed by enemy forces.

The Bristol Class CVCS was just the next logical step- providing a "mothership" with the reach of hyperspace fold drive to take the Garfish Corvette outside of the confines of a star system and to allow a dozen of them at a time to apply their attributes in the regions of deep space that they could never have reached alone.

The corvette carrier was more than just a limousine for the smaller fighting ships, of course. It provided C2, EW, InfoLink networking support as well as a myriad of other functions besides being a mobile port and base of operations to the corvettes. The concept had been well groomed and refined through all stages of design and manufacture, and had proven itself in space trials and exercises.

-But exercise time had ended.

Commodore Tran could not be begrudged his nerves as Vice Admiral Hayes-Hunter had considered his proposal of the corvette carriers in Operation Doolittle carefully- and in agreeing had wagered much on Tran's promises.

Before the day was out, Bristol and her sisters Monroeville, Cacak Ya yak, and Docksta would have to deliver on that promise or fail disastrously.

Commodore Tran had no intent of failing as the equally combat-untested SDF-3 fell astern in the company of the rest of "Doolittle One": the four arsenal ships that looked to Tran like overfed physician's tongue depressors with a minimal superstructure and conning tower riding low and far aft on the hull, and the "domesticated adversary" that was the refitted Thuverl Salan Class Zentraedi destroyer, Rampage.

Tran tried not to hang his opinions on appearances- the Bristol and her sister ships at roughly half the size of the oddly organic yet menacing SDF-3 were boxy and awkward-looking by necessity and hardly the ideal image of a warship. –And in a Zen moment of contemplation, Tran suspected that perhaps this was how it should be- that weapons should not be things of beauty.

"Range to Doolittle One opening to two thousand kilometers, Commodore.", Captain Holt, the Bristol's commanding officer reported.

"Signal all units and begin the jump clock.", Tran ordered knowing that a safe distance had been reached for the ships under his command to fold away from Hayes-Hunter's flagship.

"Aye sir, thirty second clock to fold has started."

The next position leap would bring Doolittle Two as close to the enormous mass of Sol as space-folding would safely allow- and then one additional jump to position the task force element for its attack.

Action this day…

Brasilia

The explosion of ordinance and combustibles to the northeast muffled by distance and the embrace of the temperate woodland was not the spectacular billows of flame chasing at the hero's heels and throwing him to the ground in his narrow escape from a fiery end that Whilite had seen in Hollywood films and had fixated upon in his childhood. Rather the distant, clustered reports sounded more like a barefoot walk over a carpet of bubble-wrap packing and the subtle but gratifying thrills it brought.

It was not a dazzling pyrotechnics display, but was all the same evidence that the mission's core objectives had been achieved.

Now- it was just the matter of surviving the mission….

The air high above the thick canopy of trees was split with the distinctive, gravelly roar of Gnerl Fighter Pods and their pulse-jet engines.

This, Whilite knew, was the sound and fury of the aftermath of a successful hit and run operation. The enemy garrison was throwing everything they had into a counterattack on an enemy whom they had neither seen nor whose composition they understood. The Gnerls were a statement of defiance, searching the night sky and landscape for phantom foes in hopes of taking the edge off of the shame of being sucker-punched.

The Fighter Pods were not the asymmetric opponent that caused Lt Whilite concern though.

The woods were alive with the nerve-grating splintering of trees around the movement of Regult Combat Pods and the crunch of detritus and dead wod beneath the heavy fall of their mechanical, ostrich-like step-.

Whether the Zentraedi garrison's commander had benefitted from experience, or had been inspired by the moment- the enemy had wasted minimal time in deploying mecha out in all directions radiating from their burning base camp. The movement casting the net had been a rapid one and devoid of any notion of searching for the perpetrators of the attack- but as Staff Sergeant Byerly had feared in confidence with her superior, the point of the outward movement was not the genuine search.

That was taking place now.

The net cast was wide, and there were abundant gaps to slip through still- but there was an aggressive intensity to the sweep of Regults' spotlights that threw long shadows in their search as the mecha wove erratically and collapsed again toward the center.

While the Regults were a legitimate threat to the four platoons of Echo Company and the attached ASC platoon now travelling in loose, parallel columns west- all knew that the mecha was in play to flush the raiders out by provoking panic or rash action.

It was the Zentraedi infantry in company-plus strength that Harris and Fuller had seen deploying in pursuit and had reported before abandoning their sniper's nest that was causing the jitters understandably. Regults could bring sensory equipment to the search and heavier firepower to bear, but the infantry had the benefit of numbers. –Advanced, multi-spectrum optics were a wonderful technology, but sometimes what was needed was warriors combing an area shoulder-to-shoulder. –And with the enemy they were seeking, the stomp of a boot was every bit as effective as a rapid-fire particle beam cannon.

Whilite had no intention of either being reduced to a patch of scorched earth with a puddle of sizzling goo at its center, or to be scraped out of a giant boot sole's tread with a stick like the world's largest "doggy landmine". –And it was a squad of Regults nearby that stood both literally and figuratively between him and his short-term goal.

A dry creek bed that had long since grown over along its meandering path northeast to southwest had become the logical position of concealment for 3rd Platoon at detecting the Regult force on the return sweep.

Whilite's Rangers pressed themselves into the western bank of the former creek, mindful to keep below the erosion-worn edge and below the line of sight of enemy mecha that could be heard trampling the woodland floor only a short distance away. Had it only been the Rangers of his platoon in the creek bed, Whilite's nerves would not have been as on edge by half. The unexpected contact with and attachment of Staff Sergeant Alvarez's Mountain Recon platoon had changed the equation though.

Whilite had no fear of panic or lack of discipline in Alvarez's men giving away their position in the creek bed. –No, The Army of The Southern Cross lacked some of the technological sophistication and refinement of the RDF-Army, but the mental and physical ruggedness as well as the bravery of the men and women wearing the ASC uniform was never questioned by anyone who had actually seen them in action or had come after them into a combat area.

Fresh off of a skedaddle of two kilometers on the double-quick though, their technological disadvantages were now 3rd Platoon's as well.

Where Whilite's troops' body heat was nulled by their body armor's thermal masking systems, the Mountain Recon troops were glowing with IR brilliance for searching Zentraedi eyes with the aid of thermal optics to see. Understanding this, Alvarez's unit had employed what countermeasures they could- blanketing themselves with dead and fallen leaves- but this was at best a modest safeguard against casual observation.

For Alvarez and his unit to slip the shrinking net, either the Regults' attention would need to be drawn away or the most astounding luck would need to befall them and 3rd Platoon by extension.

-And as Whilite remembered Sergeant Major MacDonald saying to Echo Company's sergeants and enlisted on many occasions- luck was not a tactic, and hope was four-letter word reserved for chaplains….

Neither Staff Sergeant Byerly nor any of the other Rangers lower on the chain were banking on either luck or hope though. Beside him, Whilite could hear Byerly cycle out the grenade chambered in her M-35's launcher, muzzle-load an M-77 anti-mecha rocket, and return the forestock-pump to the forward position- locking in and readying the rocket.

The M-177was an adequate "feel good" solution to a grunt's dilemma: how was an infantryman to contend with enemy infantry who physically stood on average 14.5 meters tall and weighed half again as much as a mature, African Elephant bull? -Or, for that matter with mecha built to enhance the combat effectiveness of the same?

The M-77 and M-78 rockets had been presented as the "good enough" solution.

With its propellant charge-encasing, expanding fin stabilizer shaft loaded and locked down the barrel of the M-35's grenade launcher and its long, slender conical shaped warhead extending some 20cm beyond the rifle's muzzle, bayonet-like – an M-77 at the ready was an almost comical sight to be seen.

To members of the Regult family within 500m of the infantryman armed with the M-77, and whose thin frontal armor could be penetrated by the shaped-charge warhead- the unsophisticated weapon was less humorous.

When striking a sensitive area of a Regult, the M-77 made short work of the electronics that were the brain and nerve fibers of any mecha's control systems. And if the delicate circuitry of a Regult was missed altogether, the penetrating shaped-charge and the spall it threw from the mecha's own interior surface was sufficient to injure and stun to varying degrees the pilot, if not in less common occurrences- kill.

Less effective against Glaug Officer's Pods and power armor with their thicker protective armor, the M-77's sibling the M-78 was also available to the infantryman, and could damage control systems and throw spall about a mecha's interior as easily by use of a "squash-head" charge. Not intended to penetrate and true to its name, the M-78 was based off of a British anti-tank round dating back to The Second World War that detonated its explosive charge on the exterior face of an enemy's armor. Like the desk toy with the suspended ball bearings where drawing back and releasing a single ball bearing on one side caused with its strike to the line a single ball bearing at the other end of the line to swing away a comparable distance, the energy of the explosion was then transmitted through the enemy's armor. On the interior face of the armor, the result was of the same principle as the ball bearings only far more violent.

The Rangers, having prepared for the possibility of contact with enemy mecha had brought both- but far too few to sustain anything more than the shortest of fights. With that in mind, Staff Sergeant Byerly was obliged to issue orders on the understood as 3rd Platoon readied themselves.

"-Hold fire until El-Tee gives the word!..."

As Whilite detached the camera unit from his helmet and affixed it to the end of a telescoping carbon-fiber rod designed for that very purpose he wished quietly that knowing the right if and when of giving that order was as easy as following it. It was the burden that came with the prestige and lavish paycheck associated with command-.

Raising the rod and camera like a periscope over the edge of the eroded bank, Whilite and Byerly took in its view on the high resolution LCD screen of the C2 Interface Device "CID" strapped to the lieutenant's left forearm. Sergeant Harris and Corporal Fuller had insisted on bringing the RAV-6 Tinkerbelles that had helped in fixing on and identifying Alvarez's unit for this very purpose, but the sniper team was themselves on the move out somewhere on the land and could not assist in safely probing the enemy.

With their spotlights blazing into the darkness of the woods, there was no need for the camera's night vision feature as Whilite and Byerly assessed what they say.

"One at ten o'clock-.", Byerly noted as Whilite paned the camera with a simple twist of the rod handle between his fingers, "-And two, three, four- about a seventy-five meters away at two o'clock… Are they bored or something? -It looks like they're gabbing at the damn water cooler."

Whilite understood Byerly's meaning as he saw how three Regults actually were standing in a cluster facing one another as though engaged in a casual chat. Of course what was going on between the pilots was anyone's guess, but the staff sergeant's description was warranted.

"..Shit..", Whilite muttered, "If it weren't for our boy at ten o'clock, we could probably just duck south another fifty meters and scoot on through."

"-Too easy for professionals of our caliber.", Byerly replied bleakly, "Gonna have to earn that combat pay… Though, maybe we use part of that thought of yours, El-Tee-."

"Which one?'

"Scoot south a bit, and hit that loner hard- bring his buddies running."

Whilite nodded with understanding, "Yeah, knock `em out on the charge if we have to, or just let `em plow on south hunting for us-. In either case, that opens the door wide for you to move, Alvarez."

To Whilite's right, Staff Sergeant Alvarez had been watching the min-tablet sized LCD screen intently and listening to the conversation of his Ranger counterparts- waiting for his unit's part in their escape.

"Sure..", Alvarez agreed, "-But I'll be honest, Lieutenant- it doesn't feel right, you sticking your necks out so we can make a dash for safety. It don't seem right no matter how you figure it."

Whilite shrugged, "Well, you're not packing heat for this fight- but if you'd rather stay and do the shooting and we can slip off to the west, I could probably be persuaded."

Alvarez hesitated at the thought and then replied, "Maybe better your way this time. We'll bring the beer home and say we owe you one to pay back later?"

"Done.", Whilite agreed switching his CID back to the map COP he had already used to identify the next rallying point for his Rangers. Tapping the screen indicatively, he showed Alvarez.

"It's a storm culvert about three hundred meters due west with a concrete pipe outlet big enough for a couple of squads to cover in if you're not big on comfort. When the fireworks start, take the chance to move when it comes and we meet up again there."

"Roger that.", Alvarez agreed, "We'll be there."

Whilite turned to Byerly, saying, "Get us on our feet, Sergeant-. I want to get us home before curfew."

"Roger that, El-Tee…."

One of the confounding characteristics of the Cyclone that Naib Subedar Singh had never quite grown accustomed to as he had trained and operated with the riding system/power armor until it was as much a part of him as his own hands was the way in which the powerful wheel hub drive motors never emitted more than a pronounced hum- even at high RPMs.

-And there were times that Singh wished that they did.

Such was the case now as a trio of Regults crashed through the mid-age temperate growth some thirty to forty meters behind Singh's rear wheel with much the same catastrophic noise and menace as a rock slide clearing a path down a steep mountainside.

At frequent intervals, the woodland would light up and explode from particle beam fire near and at points around Singh and two Gurkha riflemen, Baker and Singh (no relationship to the senior officer, simply a coincidence in the commonness of the name amongst Sikhs) who still raced with him in loose formation through the enveloping obstacle course of trees. The Regults, who had been five when they had accepted the surviving 70th Rifles' invitation to take up pursuit were clearly still sore at the sting of the losses inflicted by the notably smaller Cyclones and their micronian riders and would not be deterred from firing by the inherent inaccuracy of aim caused by crashing through the terrain.

He had lost no one this night, Naib Subedar Singh reminded himself as he felt the heat of a short burst of particle beam bolts stitch and pit the soft woodland ground ahead and right, and was pelted in a shower of smoldering, rich earth and detritus- but it was enough of a jolt to the nerves to keep the adrenal gland valves full-open and to remind him that the gamble he'd made early in the chase at detaching Hughes and Ramsey was a wager with high stakes. The Regult trio maintained their pursuit of him and Riflemen Baker and Singh though, so chances were fair to good that they would not be expecting to find them ahead- assuming that indeed Hughes and Ramsey had managed to edge far enough ahead to position themselves.

In 700 meters where by Nature's selection or by Man's, the woodland ended, Singh would have his answer for sure regarding the gamble on Hughes and Ramsey. –But also, there was no shame at moments like this in hedging one's bets.

Terrain mapping permitted by the Cyclone's rapid pulse microwave radar was projected as overlay onto the interior of Singh's helmet visor, joining with image intensification that were the sole reasons allowing the driver to navigate woodlands in pitch dark at 170Kmph, and showed also that the density of trees was about to thin significantly. –Now was the time to hedge.

"Sharma, Hughes- break from me left and right and make your way into the open-.", Naib Subedar Singh ordered as a long, sloping dip ending in low but abrupt rise caused the officer to leave the ground for a harrowing moment and endure the clatter of low tree branches snapping against the metal of his CVR riding armor and his Cyclone mount itself before the tires found firm purchase on the ground again.

"-If they slip Singh and Baker, hit from the flanks. –And watch the skies for fighters!"

Singh, in the lead, did not see the men in his company break away left and right, but sensed it as one sensed the change from sharing a danger with others to shouldering it alone. -And alone in peril was exactly what Singh felt as the trees whipping by around him and the ground with which his Cyclone barely seemed to maintain contact exploded at bursts of particle beam bolts. The open ground now only several hundred meters on meant a greater freedom of movement for Singh to evade his pursuers, but it also meant shedding any semblance of cover and entering the environment that the Regults were intended to operate in.

"We have you, sir!", called the Gurkha Rifleman who shared Naib Subedar Singh's name, "-Bring them between us and we'll clear your six!"

Two icons indicating Rifleman Singh's and Baker's relative positions flashed a moment within the abundance of navigation and tactical displays projected into the inside of Naib Subedar Singh's helmet visor as his subordinates activated their transponders and then went dark With Gnerls prowling the sky, and the possibility of other enemy threats rushing into the area the transponders were only a minor risk, but one that did not need to be taken.

Singh had what he needed though- the line drawn by his two men beyond which all might be fine. –They were two Gurkhas, after all- more than enough…

The parcel of woodland east of the enemy-occupied airport was at an abrupt end just ahead, parting like heavy draperies before Singh just beyond the crest of a rise whose use the Naib Subedar had already decided.

"Jai Mahakali, Ayo Gorkhali!"

Nearly center to the 50 meter span between Riflemen Singh and Baker, the meeting of trees burst outward in an eruption of splintered branches and leaves with the high-speed, airborne passage of a VR-052 Cyclone- its rider raised from the seat and anchored to the motorcycle-form's footrests with his upper body balanced over and supported by the handlebars. The electric drive motors robbed the scene of the drama of a internal combustion engine's roar as older generation bikes would have provided, but as the Cyclone came to the ground and remained upright under the masterful control of Naib Subedar Singh, there was still the promise of abundant and violent drama.

If the high-speed passage of a single Cyclone had been an eruption from the woodland, the passage of three Regults at near full-charge was an explosion.

Rifleman Singh remained on one knee, his Cyclone's bi-functional components reassembled and affixed to his CVR exoskeletal body armor to form the vehicle's Battloid power armor configuration. Cover and concealment for the Cyclone Battloid that rivaled larger male Zentraedi in micronized form in terms of height and bulk was problematic in most types of terrain, but Rifleman Singh had learned to make use of what was available- and also to never underestimate the advantages afforded by an enraged enemy.

Live timber broken crudely at points near their trunk bases were scattered out into the open field east of the woodlands like a fistful of straw cast into the wind- driven by charging mass of the three Regults that followed in long, running strides.

Rifleman Singh, his vision enhanced by the image intensification optics of his Battloid saw the whole landscape bleach out in a milky green aura as the low-light burn of two mini-missiles fired by his counterpart, Rifleman Baker, was amplified in their launch. As Singh targeted the Regult closest to him in the wedge formation of mecha, Baker's missiles struck the left flanking Battle Pod just above its left knee- severing the limb with the blast of two armor piercing warheads.

The stricken Regult finished the stride of its intact leg with hardly a wobble from the damage sustained to the other, but in reaching the moment when the other foot should be making contact with ground but was not there to do so….

The one-legged Regult holding the small formation's left flank went to ground on the nub of its severed leg at full-charge speed and went into an uncontrolled coupling of a roll and a summersault.

Rifleman Singh fired a pair of his own mini-missiles at his target just as Baker's target made its first tumble. Singh's target was probably not even aware that his comrade had been felled when both mini-missiles fired by the Gurkha struck the right flanking Regult in the leg junction box just behind the right hip. Flame and debris flashed out of the nozzle of the Regult's dormant booster whose applications in atmosphere and gravity were limited as a the Regult emitted a loud sound of clattering and grinding metal. The Battle Pod's legs, normally powerful and limber, froze with sudden arthritic rigidity and the mecha went in similar inglorious stumbling to ground as its counterpart.

Naib Subedar Singh eased off the throttle on hic Cyclone and attempted to swallow again his heart that seemed to pound at the back of his tonsils. The explosions to his rear spoke strongly of indications that Riflemen Baker and Singh were engaged and certainly had the attention of the Regults who had smashed a path through the woods that the officer had navigated so deftly without a collision.

As the speed bled off with the resistance of high grass and brush, the Cyclone no longer left contact with the ground with each fall and rise in the terrain and afforded Singh the ability to turn.. Leaning into the left turn, Singh was confident enough in feeling the purchase of his tires in the ungraded field to steal glances west back along his own path to assess the fight that demanded rejoining.

His junior, fellow Singh was locked in a David and Goliath firefight- endemic to this War- with the sole, standing Regult whose progression toward the woods it had just exited in pursuit of the Naib Subedar showed its pilot's realization that he had entered a kill zone prepared hastily but effectively by the Gurkhas. A fine, rapid pulse of particle beam fire from the rifleman's PR-45 energy rifle pelted the Regult's frontal body in the tight grouping mastered only with extensive and intense training. Sparks and sublimated armor veiled the mecha's features, but did not prevent a reply in kind from the dual antenna-like energy weapons mounted frontally and atop the Battle Pod. Soil and rock was displaced from the ground intermingled with the flash of burning vegetation as the Zentraedi Warrior saturated the area from which Rifleman Singh had initiated his attack.

Jab and move had been the training mantra impressed upon Cyclone riders in training for such an eventuality, as substantial as a Battloid's protection was compared to conventional body armor- it did not promise survival against a well-aimed burst of Regult particle beam bolts. –And Rifleman Singh had been a devout student.

A blast of thrust rocketed the rifleman's Battloid skyward, escaping the Regult's line of fire long enough for a mini-missile fired from Baker's position still at the woodland's tree line to slam into the mecha's thinner side armor and send it staggering to ground.

Naib Subedar Singh sensed himself the Alpha wolf for a moment as the Zentraedi Warrior in the sole, standing Regult began to realize the true, mortal danger he was in. As the substantially larger Regult joined in its deadly dance with the comparatively diminutive Cyclone Battloid operated by Rifleman Singh, it may not have been aware of Rifleman Hughes who had now arrived and entered the field at its northern fringe with the woodlands. More likely, the Zentraedi was aware of Sharma who had similarly arrived on the field to the south and had just transformed his cycle into its Battloid form to join the fight. –And there was no doubt that the alien had not forgotten the senior Singh, whose pursuit had put him into such unanticipated peril.

The other wolves of the pack were poising themselves to bring down the last of the ambulatory prey as Rifleman Baker, near to the Regult he had brought down, was employing his PR-45 in a relentless attack on the mecha's dazed pilot who was pulling himself free through the hatch in an elbow crawl. Unnerving wails of pain escaped the giant and mingled with the other sounds of battle as Baker chose the placement of the energy bursts from his rifle with trained precision and lethal intent. Tight patterns of particle beam bolts pierced Zentraedi body armor where it was the thinnest and tore through the less resistant flesh, bone, and organs within. Like a matador expertly dispatching a bull, Baker quickly inflicted increasingly serious wounds until the act concluded with a final, gurgling cry from the warrior, face-down in the field who then went silent with several last, convulsive twitches.

Naib Subedar Singh's Cyclone reassembled around his riding armor into Battloid form, artificially augmenting his running speed as he charged in to join the attack on the last, staggering Regult that was suffering from attacks on all sides. Mini-missiles, or energy fire could have decided the uneven contest quickest- but in observance of Gurkha tradition called for a different resolution.

From the vambrace of each of Singh's Battloid's forearms the broadsword-like, double edged, meter long blades of the power armor's Close-Quarters Assault/Defense System (CADS-1) sprang to the ready like a street hood's switchblade. Composed of a uniquely blended, super steel alloy the CADS-1 blades possessed the strength to savagely assault light to medium mecha armor systems under the force and stresses generated by the Cyclone Battloid's superhuman strength. It was the live molecular edge of the weapons though, laser honed to a razor's sharpness, that truly made viable bladed weapons on a battlefield otherwise dominated by Robotechnology.

Rifleman Sharma reached the last upright Battle Pod first. Having transitioned from cycle to Battloid form at some point in the brief moments between when Singh had seen him on the southern end of the field to now, Sharma entered the corner of his commander's vision at the onset of a running leap that at its worst would have shamed the best Olympic distance jumper. As the Regult's unblinking red sensor eye seemed to fix on Naib Subedar Singh as the most immediate threat, Sharma passed just behind its right knee and slashing with a back-handed, left arm stroke at the mecha's bird-like tarsus.

With a metallic ringing of incised terilium alloy, the Regult struggled to compensate with its good leg for the one that had had the mechanical equivalent of having its hamstring cut.

Feeling as though he was going beneath the tank of a teetering water tower to remove its last, good supporting strut- Naib Subedar Singh reached a full run in his Battloid's enhanced ability before making a leaping pass at the faltering Battle Pod's left leg similar to what Rifleman Sharma had done to the right.

Singh's slashing, left CADS blade passed its cutting edge deep through the anterior of the Regult's left tarsus, lower on the leg however than what Sharma had done to the right. Still, the blade severed vital driving and articulating servomechanisms, power channels, and structural support elements casing instantaneous failure of the limb.

Singh could feel the Regult crumpling above him as its normally robust legs failed as the momentum of the Gurkha's power-leap carried him through the low-arc of flight he had launched into on the attack. The ground shook beneath the shock-absorbing feet and legs of Singh's Battloid as it made contact with the ground a moment ahead of the stricken Regult.

As Rifleman Sharma recovered and returned from his own leaping pass at the Regult, Naib Subedar Singh felt it trip deep in the primal regions of his brain- the initiation of what he had heard refer to as "the mad minute"; the moment in a fight when the combatants on both sides knew that the life of one or the other was now measurable in seconds.

The Zentraedi Warrior piloting the Regult must have felt too whatever his kind called "the mad minute", as from its awkwardly collapsed posture atop now-useless legs, he fired a broad, sweeping arc of laser bolts at nothing but horizon and distant treeline- a display more of defiance than of significance.

The hatch at the rear of the Regult's domed upper body was thrust open with great violence and the strangely organic length of muzzle and barrel jacket of a standard Zentraedi infantry rifle thrust skyward into the night, followed by the arm holding it at the grip. The arm in turn gave way to a head in the standard-issue stahlhelm-like Zentraedi helmet and a set of shoulders whose dimensions whose proportions suggested a creature larger than what should have fit into the space of a Regult's cockpit.

"Cho'ya na'heytrashnak cho'haht!"

Naib Subedar Singh, fluent in four languages indigenous to or used widely in India, and functional in three others from the continent of Asia was like his subordinate riflemen at a loss as to the exact translation of the alien's war cry- but exact translation was a moot point.

Singh recognized a challenge to combat, and in some way like certain native tribes of the American Plains whose stories had been of interest to him in his youth- an alien parallel of the "death song", preparing the spirit for a mortal end.

Whether the Zentraedi Warrior was challenging, threatening, or praying was irrelevant now. As long as he drew breath, Singh's Gurkhas had reason to fear-.

Two armor-piercing mini-missiles from the shoulder launchers of Rifleman Sharma's Battloid struck the Zentraedi Warrior high in his body armor's chest plate as he had freed himself to the waist from his stricken Regult. The explosion of terilium and carbon fiber mingled with a sharp, involuntary cry of pain and distress that deepened into a tenor bellow of indignation as the force of the explosions sent the warrior off his balance in a topple to the ground.

The giant's arms began wheel wildly for balance or purchase, the grip of the rifle coming free of his grasp in the process. Warrior and rifle went to ground in an undignified heap of flailing limbs that might have ended up on top of Naib Subedar Singh had he been a moment's slower in his instinctive response to move. The curled, claw-like fingers of the warrior's right hand missed the officer- barely- but the stock of the rifle it had held did not as the weapon returned to earth toppling end-over-end like a baton not caught on the decent by the one who had tossed it.

Singh felt all the air his lungs had held leave him as the rifle butt connected squarely with his Battloid's chest and sent him flying like a golf ball struck by a driver. The following second or two of flight were serene with the body's natural shock reaction, and his lungs even were able to regain some breath before the crush of contact with the ground drove it from him again.

Singh, resilient naturally and through the rigors of combat training was trying to right himself even as his Battloid dug furloughs into the unmanaged field as it slid to rest. There was a dull ache from all points of his body as he got his feet beneath himself again and shook free the dirt and uprooted wild grasses he had accumulated- the soreness he anticipated tomorrow being a small price to pay for a blow that would have killed him if not for the armored exoskeleton of his Cyclone Battloid.

-Now was not the time to count one's fortunes though.

The Zentraedi Warrior who had indirectly attacked Singh was also showing signs of rallying- slowly rolling to his left side in the process of righting himself despite the holes in his armor's chest plate and the wounds beneath that still gave off thin wisps of smoke into the night air.

His CADS-1 blades still extended from his slashing attack on the now-wounded Zentraedi Warrior's Regult, Singh broke into a full run at the alien's back as it continued to turn over- diving at several meters distance at several meters distance at the most vulnerable area presented.

Singh's right blade entered the alien armor where the gorget collar joined with the base of the helmet, penetrating the alien's skull as well. The warrior gave an involuntary grunt as a twist of Singh's blade severed his spinal cord from the brain stem. The giant's body gave the illusion of peaceful relaxation as his muscles were robbed of neural direction. The heart in its involuntary nature continued though, evident as Singh withdrew his blade and reinserted it through the side of the warrior's neck. There was a fountain of blood as arteries were severed and Singh's blade exited with a forward slash through the muscles, tissues, and throat.

Singh's use of adapted knife-fighting techniques seemed gruesome and primitively brutal given the advanced weaponry the Cyclone was equipped with- and the resulting splatter of alien blood that coated Singh and Sharma who had been caught in the spray while closing to assist in dispatching the alien seemed to testify to this. –But the killing methods were efficient, and the brutality was partially the point.

This was not intentional cruelty or depravity for the sake of depravity however. The 70th Gurkha Rifles had in their time with the 1st Royal Gurkha Regiment in Brasilia left scores of headless, malcontent Zentraedi bodies- courtesy of skill in the use of their traditional kukri knives. The psychological effect on the enemy had far outweighed any practical measurement of reduction in their forces within the contested city- having fostered within two weeks' time of the 1RGR's arrival a fear in the alien combatants to venture outside of their strongholds after nightfall lest they too be found the next day with heads removed like the growing number of their comrades.

It was this fear and its advantages that Singh sought to establish anew with a force to whom the Gurkhas were unknown- and the cost was a measure of savagery.

"-You know what to do.", Naib Subedar Singh said to Sharma, indirectly issuing his order.

Riflemen Singh, Hughes, and Baker had verified the killing of the other two Zentraedi and were at the task that their Naib Subedar had ordered Sharma to as he began to complete the task of decapitation with careful and powerful strokes of one of his CADS-1 blades.

Naib Subedar Singh was only partially aware of the butchering going on within a meter and a half of where he stood. He had changed the frequency on his comms to the tactical channel established for the operation in an effort to establish the Rangers' position and status.

-The distant pop of explosions and report of automatic weapons fire along with the radio traffic he was hearing was not what he had hoped.

Whilite landed heavily in the soft, composting carpet of the woodland catching a face-full of Byerly's left boot sole for his haste in going to ground. Driven by the urgency of the moment, an arrangement of co-occupancy of the same space was found as they wedged themselves into the underside curve of a long fallen tree whose trunk their bodies paralleled.

The heavy crunch of the stalking Regult's step fell close and in proximity that the lieutenant could distinguish the cracking and splintering of individual fallen twigs beneath the weight carried by mechanical feet.

Shadows fell long and distinct along the periphery of a field of light thrown by the Regult's sole remaining spotlight. These shadows danced as perfect partners with the movement of the beam in the Regult's search effort. Thickening smoke was illuminated dramatically in clouds and curtains that drifted through the beam, twirling in other places on an invisible axis as it was caught in eddies on breaths of wind.

The smoke's origin was not exclusively the greenwood set alight nearby by energy weapon fire, nor of the larger fires growing in and around the skirmish further north. Some of the smoke was attributable to the wound inflicted by PFC Diaz to the Regult now hunting him and the two senior members of 3rd Platoon.

In their bounding withdrawal from the area, Diaz had fired an M-77 anti-mecha rocket at the Regult to foster the distraction required for 2nd Squad to displace and move. Fired at the Regult's frontal region, at or around the vulnerable sensor eye in hopes of blinding – or less likely killing – the mecha, the rocket had gone high and left. The hit achieved in haste had severed the power channels to the Regult's left particle beam cannon and had with its detonation also smashed the port spotlight.

While 2nd Squad had been afforded the ability to move without a shot fired against them, it had also clearly aroused a measure of vengeance in the Regult's pilot. The methodical sweep of light indicated search with purpose.

Whilite's heart entered his throat as a nearby whir of articulation motors was followed by a solid bumping and metallic scarping of Regult toes against the opposite side of the tree trunk from the one under which the three Rangers covered. Glancing up, Whilite could see mecha's rounded body from beneath, pivoting slightly at the hips as it searched for prey that was literally almost under foot. The beam of the starboard spotlight moved in unison with the mecha's functioning particle beam cannon, whose tip Whilite could see in motion around the girth of the Regult.

"-Take out the leg junction box, you think?", Whilite suggested in a whisper to Byerly as indications of motion further up the length of the log suggested Diaz was loading a second anti-mecha rocket.

While the most ruggedly constructed component of any of the Regult's parts, the leg junction box was also the most affected by sustained damage from direct attack- and in this case the junction box of this Regult could have been hit easily by a hand-tossed stone.

"..Sure, El-Tee..", Byerly replied, the tone of her voice negating even the suggestion of agreement that her words offered, "-With it standing over us? Let it move on a few steps and then we'll give it a rocket up the bung-."

Whilite instantly liked Byerly's idea better given the well-contemplated and worded nature of her argument.

"Or, we could do that too."

The log rocked in a sudden motion toward the Rangers that for an instant had Whilite thinking that it would roll over onto them. Instead, the foot that had given the log a solid nudge rose over it- over Whilite directly, raining carried soil and leaves down on him as it extended on the end of the Regult's leg another few meters before coming down solidly to earth again. The other leg and foot followed in what seemed a step executed with exaggerated care- a giant's parody of creeping.

The Regult's movements normalized as it put several paces between itself and the three observers whom it still presumably sought as prey.

Staff Sergeant Byerly was quickest to rise from a prone, covering position- tugging Diaz up as she went. Whilite joined his subordinates on the side of the log that had moments earlier had been the Regult's, but that was now their best cover.

"Your call, El-Tee-.", Byerly said as the Regult began to push its way through trees to the sound of cracking and snapping limbs, "Let `im go, or take the cheap shot?"

PFC Diaz already had an answer from the lieutenant in mind and was awaiting confirmation with his left forearm supporting his M-35 resting for steadiness on the log they had collectively just crossed for a second time.

Whilite felt the real temptation to simply let the Regult march away in false pursuit and return battered to his garrison. 3rd Platoon and the reduced ASC Mountain Recon plaoon they had come across was slipping contact with the enemy as well, promising a clean break.

But still-.

"You know how I hate loose ends, Sergeant-. Let's at least make him walk home for his offense."

Byerly was next to Diaz in a flash with her rifle also poised and ready also, the M-77 rocket muzzle-loaded into the grenade launcher awaiting her good aim through the weapon's quick sights. There wasn't a sound, let alone a word of protest from Whilite's senior NCO as he joined the firing line to her right- but he'd developed the ability to tune into her wavelength enough to feel a vibe of hesitation- maybe even disapproval.

But Byerly did not voice it, nor would have Whilite entertained it. The mission objective had been at one level to harass the enemy by attacking their stores- but the deeper implication was psychological warfare in its oldest sense- demoralize the enemy.

A Zentraedi Warrior driving his battle-ravaged Regult back to camp could spin circumstances and events to be seen as a hero to his comrades. One who left camp with a Regult and returned on foot later was the epicenter of humiliation for the whole unit.

That was worth flirting with peril one last time.

"-I've got the first shot.", Byerly said, any reservation she had moderated by her breating that she mastered for the sake of a steady shot, "I've got better aim than you, El-Tee- sorry- and am twice as good as you, Diaz, with my eyes closed."

"Thanks, Sarge…", Diaz muttered.

Byerly let the opportunity- what she would have normally considered her obligation- to have the last word slip in the face of more pressing business. A margin of forty meters had opened between the Regult who was still futilely on the hunt for the Ranger fire team and the Rangers themselves, and continued to open by several meters with each step.

If anything, the gait of a Regult Combat Pod was precise in its repetition, allowing Byerly to anticipate the motion of her target- the mecha's leg junction box that was slightly smaller than a sub-compact car. As she was able to fix the aiming dot of her rifle's quick sights on a point in space that the swaying box returned to consistently, it became only a matter of figuring the time it would take the rocket to travel to target-.

Byerly flipped off the grenade launcher's firing safety and her finger found the trgger.

The Regult paused suddenly- seeming to the Rangers to have sensed it was on the verge of being attacked, and causing the breathing of the fire team to catch uniformly.

The Regult did not suddenly turn on them to fire though, as each mind was darkly prophesizing- but rather exploded into forward motion in a crashing charge through the standing trees.

To the north, an equally abrupt cease in the report of particle beam cannons that changed similarly to the pronounced snapping of live tree trunks before mechanical bodies said that the flight of Byerly's target was not an isolated event.

Zentraedi were not known to retreat from an enemy- especially one operating without benefit of mecha- but these were retreating from something.

Whilite's blood cooled to think that these warriors were so quick to break contact for whatever was to come next.

As Naib Subedar Singh's voice broke urgently over the tactical command frequency, sounding dire without panic, Whilite knew his instincts to be correct.

"All Echo Company- EGRESS IMMEDIATELY WEST! Fighter Pods are inbound your position in ground attack formation! CLEAR OUT!..."

Whilite was on his feet faster than he could ever recall moving with the weapon he'd been a moment's decision away from using safetied for the retreat on the double-quick.

Somehow Staff Sergeant Byerly had beaten him to the ready and was leading the charge west as the direction from Singh had called for. Whilite found himself in a dash over the soft contours of woodland floor with Diaz holding pace to his right, bursting through sparse brush and avoiding snags as numerous but different from those that seemed to conspire against Whilite.

Over the pounding of his own heart and the roar of his breath, the lieutenant became of another sound far behind but distinct and menacing in the consistency with which it rose and its growing proximity.

It was the throaty, choppy thunder of Gnerl pulse-jets at low altitude.

With the artificial illumination of the camp darkened and flames continuing to build and spread in the stockpile area not directly in line-of-sight, Point Lieutenant Jarrot was able to track the flight of Gnerls sortied minutes earlier. Having just passed overhead the fighters could be picked out against the dark sky by the distinctive tri-dot burn of their engine configuration as they dropped altitude and swept toward the expanse of woodland in which skirmishing force of Regults and dismounted warriors had engaged the fleeing force of micronian raiders.

Shamefully his force had been largely ineffective against the micronians who showed no evidence of mecha support or even motorized mobility, but whose warrior's skills and weapons had cost Jarrot a number of his skirmishers.

They had cost Jarrot a commander as well, thrusting him into that position of responsibility.

Galling as the attack and loss of Sub-Commander K'Rhel had been, Jarrot had not missed the lessons that the action had taught- lessons that K'Rhel had shown indications of being familiar with before his demise.

First, the attack had been skillfully planned and executed with martial expertise. –These had not been micronians of their civilian caste.

Secondly, the damage done to the depot's supply stockpiles and to the mecha dispatched after the raiders said that they were equipped for combat. There was no improvisation to the weapons or their use.

Thirdly, the micronians had now tasted success and could be counted on to return at a time of their choosing for a chance at more.

There was Warrior's work to be done on both sides of this campaign- even here, removed from the main regions of combat- and Jarrot's mind was already at work on how to accomplish it.

Small dots of light left the larger clusters that distinguished individual Gnerls low on the smoky horizon. These, barely visible were only seen for a moment before dropping below the treeline and then transforming into rising billows of flame with the burst-flicker of plasma-napalm warheads briefly at their center.

The woodland quickly vanished into flame which grew with incredible speed as the radiant heat of plasma-napalm strikes immediately lit areas not touched directly by the insidious weapon.

"That is the end of them, I should think.", Lieutenant Gidro said to Jarrot with a confidence that was easily explained by the spectacle before them. Even as he spoke, a light, artificial wind caused by the convectional uplift of the plasma-napalm driven flames could be felt building- drawn to the firestorm.

"Some perhaps.", Jarrot allowed, "-But not all. I doubt all seriously."

"Then do we continue to deploy?", Gidro asked, not contesting the probability that even the airstrike just witnessed could be counted on to finish the matter.

"No-.", Jarrot replied, "We need every available Warrior to relocate the undamaged supplies we are charged with before the flames take the lot. –And because what enemy has survived is now scattered out there. It would be like clutching at sand."

"Then what's our plan to retaliate?"

"Let them return to their lair like Invid to the hive. It cannot be far, and they will be easier to deal with when trapped."

"Or, like Invid, more dangerous.", Gidro observed shrewdly.

"Probably both.", Jarrot conceded, "But recall the garrison to the perimeter. We deal with this mess first."

Earth / Mars Interplanetary Space, .2 AUs from Earth

A great, artificial island floated in the sea of dark, cold emptiness drifting with the current whims of distant gravitational forces.

Unlike islands as they naturally occurred, this one was segmented into measured columns, rows, and lines of Quiltra Quelena landing ships whose collective numbers stretched thousands of kilometers at precise intervals between each heavily laden giant.

Mindful of their flock, the sheep dogs of the fleet's supply element kept a vigilant display of picketing – hurried enough in the circuits they ran to mask the tedium and boredom of the assignment drawn by these destroyer crews in comparison to others whose recent assignments, while unexpected, had at least the promise of greater glory.

The common sense of injustice felt amongst the destroyer crews, of which there was a measurable amount, was contained by discipline and the promise of a war still in its opening days and with its episodes of battle not yet completed. There was a forced deference for the force of heavy units and their destroyer escorts idling nearby with even less demonstrated purpose than those destroyers screening the transport ships and defending them from the solar wind.

The frustration of these crews had surpassed frustration as battle group after battle group had been dispatched with the greatest haste afforded by spacefold in search of Breetai and the honors that would come with locating him for Supreme General Krymina. Abandonment must have been the prevailing feeling as three out of every four battle groups had sortied under such orders, leaving those remaining behind to wait in tactically advantageous positions in a solar system whose only combat was being conducted on the confines of a single planet.

In this expansive void between two planets of an unremarkable system and at a moment whose arrival was of no greater significance in its anticipation to the languishing Te'Dak Tohl force present there than any of the recent moments leading up to it – interlopers appeared with a single flash of de-fold photonic displacement.

Minds dulled tactically by adherence to and focus on an unwanted routine spun without traction, giving the invaders to their own home space critical moments to seize the initiative in what followed.

Dwarfed in numbers by orders of magnitude by the Zentraedi force at a low level of stand-by, the six REF intruders were quick to approximate the warship's version of "shooting from the hip".

SDF-3 whose outward appearance had not been seen by Zentraedi in combat since Zor's break from The Robotech Masters emitted a rapid, double-pulse of her active sensor arrays to firm the mapping of target positions with their reflected returns. The pulses left the vast majority of targets anonymous in classification to the scanning flagship, but provided sufficient position, range, and velocity data to establish gross firing solutions.

The task force leader shot first for reasons accountable only to principle and tradition, followed in mere fractions of a second by the refitted Zentraedi destroyer, Rampage, who in firing on Te'Dak Tohl fleet units was serving to deliver a message of her own.

Both vessels were haloed in specks of light as Pegasus Mk-4C ASMs left bow, dorsal and ventral VLS, and lateral launch tubes alike on their brief, primary rocket stages. Free of their hosting platforms and programmed with rudimentary guidance to non-specific targets, the weapons in coincidental clusters engaged their sub-light engines to begin their runs at the enemy.

Refined variants of the venerable particle beam cannons sported by every Zentraedi warship opened fire in salvo fashion by battery from both SDF-3 and Rampage as the last Pegasus missiles streaked away. Focused bolts of focused energy particles traveling not quite at the speed of light, but far faster than the engine-driven ASMs overtook the weapons on their way to the target area.

The Te'Dak Tohl heavies awoke with a start of panic that rippled through the greater number of destroyer subordinates supporting them as the first salvo of particle beams passed ahead and low. The second passed beneath the center mass of leading warships, but the third-.

The third salvo, twelve particle beam bolts strong came in higher and passed through the trailing end of the first Te'Dak Tohl battle group striking a scout ship with four beams that penetrated deep with immediately debilitating effect, and struck with five a destroyer – shattering her port engine in its protective nacelle.

The leading Queado-Magdomilla class command ship in the train of twelve reduced battle groups caused itself a scattering of its undamaged destroyer and Salan scout class escorts as she taxed her Reflex power plant with the double and heavy efforts of powering up her engines and making an uncoordinated display of returned fire from her forward and port flank batteries and they ran out from their barbet enclosures. The proboscis-like bow of the command ship dipped low within a ship's length of the destroyer that had been holding station dead ahead of her in equal parts credit to the quick action of the destroyer's command crew to climb away as was due to her own to dive.

The Te'Dak Tohl formation of warships, handsome and tidy in its precision was in the process of breaking up when following particle beam salvos from the RDF elements struck home randomly in their midst, and the first Pegasus missiles began to arrive on terminal self-guidance to targets they had acquired.

SDF-3

"Fire on the mountain!..", exclaimed MCPO Vogel, interpreting pulsating spheres of red within the three-dimensional holographic image of the Combat Direction Center's main tactical display, "High order secondary detonations, Admiral. –We're drawing blood!"

A great whoop rose from all stations around the CDC as SDF-3's passive sensors logged evidence of salvos fired seconds earlier finding targets and initiating secondary explosions within the enemy vessels struck. The collective, celebratory holler fell quickly back into the jumble of voices overlapping one another in the hurried yet controlled conduct of their varied duties.

No one who had earned a place at a station in SDF-3's CDC needed to be reminded that first blood drawn in an engagement was not nearly as important as last blood, and that initially catching an enemy force the size of the one being faced off-guard was by no means a guarantee of victory. If anything, "Doolittle One" had moments before the enemy's shock wore off and the real peril began for this element of the task force.

"Get my damn ECMs up, Chief!", Hayes-Hunter snapped from her station at the tactical display. The sharpness of her words came with the intensity and energy of the moment and carried no malice. If Vogel felt any rebuke at all in the Flag's words, she did not show it.

"All ECMs on-line, jammers and phantom-casting, Admiral!.."

As the ship's sensors filtered out the electro-magnetic noise of its own ECM systems, they continued to receive and interpret far fainter signals from surrounding space. Processed data provided by banks of automation and a "sensor shack" full of highly skilled trackers was translated to the images projected in the tactical display.

With SDF-3 at the center the position of friendly and hostile "master" contacts were displayed with a track overlay giving the direction being taken by each context by showing the path each had already traveled in the form of lines. Scores of different icons, each with its own significance and their own associated data floating freely beside in the laser-light model of the exterior world was easily overwhelming to the untrained eye and unfocussed mind.

Admiral Hayes-Hunter had neither though, and she divided her attention for the moment on the false sensor images being created by her flagship's "phantom casting" system, and by the tracks of Pegasus missiles fired in a broad spread at the enemy warship group by SDF-3 and Rampage.

Each Pegasus Mk-4C fired initially had been sent hunting at nearly half the speed of light with minimal information on their targets- it had been all that could be gathered by the launch platforms in the seconds following de-fold. Undaunted, the missiles had followed the path set for them until on-board computers activated their own powerful seeker heads projecting broad search cones out to a range of 40,000 kilometers. With no prioritizing target criteria provided to the initial spread of missiles fired, the weapons locked on to the first vessels entering their search cones with only the one stipulating directive preventing multiple weapons' overlap in target acquisition maintained by the missiles via a reduced InfoLink connection.

Hayes-Hunter watched as target icons flashed at their joining with the swifter Pegasus icons and tracks. Hits on enemy warships were easily identifiable by the energy signatures returned to SDF-3's passive sensors, as were any secondaries that might follow. Interpretation of how serious was the damage done was a far more complex process of interpretation by computers and sensor crews.

This was a "hit and run" battle though, Hayes-Hunter knew- and what was most important initially was to hit as hard and as fast as could be managed.

Initial results were showing that Doolittle One was doing both.

The enemy, Hayes-Hunter also knew, was already keenly intent on hitting back and in fact were already swinging. Particle beam bolts fired in salvo and in rapid-discharge fashion filled the cosmos around the six ships of Doolittle One. Most bolts were far off of target in either axis or both, the vessels that had fired them having fallen victim to surges of EM energy that clouded their sensor vision and reduced their ability to aim their weapons, and also to sensor images that they did see clearly.

While the ECM "jammers" of the six REF vessels nulled the sensor vision of enemy vessels with a steady bombardment of electrostatic noise, the far more sophisticated "phantom casting" system used selective EM frequencies to create an illusion as seen by an enemy's sensor team of a vessel and its inherent energy emissions.

Even to the comparatively unsophisticated sensor and signal analysis systems available to Zentraedi crews, careful study would eventually reveal which of twenty to thirty sensor contacts was real and which was a mirage. But in the survival-oriented frenzy of combat, the required time was seldom if ever expected to be available for such scrutiny. The tempo of battle was this shell game's ally.

Zentraedi were unsophisticated as a whole in their technologies, but Vice Admiral Hayes-Hunter knew that they were anything but stupid and frequently forced to improvise and inno0vate by the rudimentary tools that The Masters had provided for them.

-A case in point was pattern that was starting to form in the tracks of incoming enemy particle beam salvos. Energy bolts probed open areas of space occupied only by projected phantoms. Zentraedi fire control officers and gun crews might not have known that they were shooting at illusions, but they could certainly distinguish between a particle beam bolt that had found solid mass and one that had simply been lost to the great nothingness of space.

Captain Hollenkamp was intent in his study of the enemy's collective firing patterns and was actively engaged with the crew on the captain's bridge to navigate as best as possible around the danger, but both he and Hayes-Hunter knew that with the volume of fire in play that an errant hit was possible if not likely.

"The paint on this bucket is still fresh, Julian", Hayes-Hunter said to the ship's CO, "-Let's try to keep her pretty for a while, okay?"

Understanding the Flag's implied meaning in the statement, Hollenkamp directed his next words to the systems operations division in the CDC.

"Engage barrier system and maximize power to the fire-ward facing grids!"

"Barrier engaging, aye sir!"

"Conn, Sensor.", came the call from the ranking sensorman, "We're detecting a broad rise in BEE levels in the area of the transports. Looks like they're stoking their reactors- probably for a fold-jump."

Hollenkamp replied into the intercom to the senior sensorman presiding over the sensor shack, "Sensor, Conn- aye. Copy that."

A shudder ran through the deck of SDF-3 as the barrier sphere of cold-plasma energy surrounding the massive vessel received and absorbed a glancing blow from a particle beam bolt. Obligatory reports from the Sys Ops station reported what Hayes-Hunter and Hollenkamp expected to hear- a minor strike only with negligible effect on overall barrier integrity and no damage to the ship's primary hull.

-But the enemy had landed a blow now allowing them to refine their firing solutions.

And there was a lot of the enemy out there intent on doing just that.

"We're a tougher but bigger target now, Admiral.", Hollenkamp advised, "Suggest we hurry up and get to what we came here for."

To Hayes-Hunter, Hollenkamp sounded uncharacteristically edgy- but understandably so.

The tactical display was showing that the scattering of battle groups beyond the transport formations whose numbers were too great to be covered effectively by the number of guns Hunter-Hayes had brought with her were beginning to coalesce once again into effective combat formations- and those formations were beginning to move in the direction of Doolittle One.

The hunters and their hounds were coming, and SDF-3 – all the vessels of the task force element now, actually running with their barrier systems engaged were glowing targets for them. The energy shields generated a distinguishable EM signature that sensor phantoms did not; a distinction that the Zentraedi sensor crews would quickly pick up on.

104 seconds into the engagement with SDF-3 and Rampage throwing everything short of their heavy, "main" gun batteries into the fight the enemy combat units were already showing counter-offensive intent, and the softer supply element was indicating that they were on the verge of retreat.

Hayes-Hunter had wanted to endure longer and accomplish more – but it did not require an officer with her experience to sense that the tide was about to turn in the enemy's favor.

"Agreed.", Hayes-Hunter replied to Hollenkamp, "Begin and modify on the go your fold computations to the primary fallback coordinates."

Hollenkamp snapped his fingers in the direction of the Navigation station who had been listening intently for such an order as was expected by the battle plan to be coming around this time anyway.

"Fire Control", Hayes-Hunter said directly to the correct group, "Verify CCDS link with our arsenal ships. Direct Pegasus missile fire from one on the heavies- priority targets are your command ships and destroyers who break into attack sprints. –Sensors, watch for and advise on heavy gun firing sequence activity. If they're following combat area procedures, at least one escort per battle group is running fully charged on their Ma'Kral cannon."

"Conn, Sensor- aye. We're watching."

"Fire Control, dedicate the other arsenal ships to reducing those transports. Weapons free. Shovel out the hurt- I wanna go home empty.", Hayes concluded, "Make it happen so we can get the hell out of here!"

"Conn, Fire Control – aye! CCDS link is maintaining bi-directional traffic integrity. Shoot, Shoot, Shoot!"

An interval of 12,000 kilometers had opened between SDF-3 and Rampage in lead of the Doolittle One element and the four arsenal ships of the Thurman Class in trail. Forming a staggered battle line,, the minimal gun armaments of the Arthur, San Juaquin, Gleason, and Karr remained silent- their batteries more suited to defend from an unavoidable fight than to instigate one. Their near-featureless hulls, remarkable most for revealing nothing worth of remark hardly gave the vessels the traditional appearance of "warship" – but the appearance was deceiving.

San Juaquin, second in line of battle, had been like her sisters receiving a flood of fire control data through the InfoLink network established by SDF-3. The Collaborative Combat Direction System once enabled aboard both SDF-3 and San Juaquin increased the Flagship's available firepower by adding that of the arsenal ship to her own remotely.

Panels, each roughly two meters square, along the dorsal hull of San Juaquin opened to expose the muzzle apertures of vertical launch tubes- each containing a Pegasus Mk-4C ASM. Six VLS "plots", each five rows of 20 tubes were bared with their missiles fully programed and ready for flight by the time the "shoot" order had been given. Mirror plots along the ventral hull were similarly readied to release their equally lethal contents as more conventional lateral-launch tubes along the vessel's flanks stood by for their orders to come through as well.

San Juaquin was almost instantaneously enveloped in a haze exhaust from the launch motors of 1,200 Pegasus missiles as they left the ship in a single volley whose departure shook the vessel through her frames and main structural members. From the aura of thin, grey smoke surrounding the arsenal ship tendrils of the same vapor sprouted outward at all directions like the chutes of a growing plant captured in time-lapse photography. –Only these growths were not so benign….

Queado-Magdomilla Class Command Ship,

Gohr'Dhet

Action General Mercta'le had run through more emotions and instinctive reactions over the course of minutes than he would have pardoned a novice Warrior wet from the tube for.

Abject boredom had long since set in and had hold on he and his command despite efforts to fill the time with exercises and drill. This had been his state only minutes before.

Then had followed shock, and deep-penetrating terror as the unexpected had taken place and an enemy task force had folded into the edge of weapons' range in a seeming answer to calls to Fate for relief from the dullness of standing without end at the ready.

The panic of comprehending the threat and it being realized moments later as the enemy's attack began was still sharp and deeply penetrating when a sense of elation came that the attackers- incredible as it seemed- included the very object of Supreme General Krymina's quest.

Zor's Battle Fortress was within reach- Mercta'le's reach.

He had only to seize it.

Now, as damage reports continued to flood in to the command center from areas of the ship where three powerful micronian missiles had struck, came the different breed of panic and one that was so unique to the circumstances that it was Mercta'le's, and his alone.

"Lord, the battle group is normalizing stations in attack formation.", Mecta'le's executive officer, Trat reported, the evidence visible for the action general on the tactical display projected out above the command deck, "We are on intercept course and will be within optimal firing range in under two minutes-."

"Fire on Zor's vessel is to be restricted to come from this vessel and our principle escorts only. All other units are commense fire on the other vessels of the micronian task force now.", Mecta'le ordered, "Is this clear, Trat?.."

The action commander was hesitant, "Very clear, Lord-. However, at this range and with the effectiveness being demonstrated by the enemy's countermeasures effective counter-fire requires broad patterns. It may be difficult to avoid coincidental hits on Zor's vessel with the enemy holding so tight a formation."

"Then you or the commander whose vessel severely damages Zor's Battle Fortress may explain to Supreme General Krymina why she has gone through such effort and has no prize to show for it."

Trat's medium-green complexion blanched two shades as he understood the concern he had seen in his superior's face.

"Your instructions will be conveyed clearly, Lord."

Mecta'le returned his study to the portion of the tactical display containing Zor's ship and what was appearing to be a traitorous Thuverl Salan destroyer- probably a relic from Breetai's campaign against the micronians. Multiple contacts occupied a relatively small area of that space, and Mecta'le was not the fool that the enemy hoped for in believing that all of the contacts were true. Moving behind a concurrent veil of EM energy projected from the true contacts, the false signals did move and have all of the measurable qualities of a vessel- convincing enough to deceive computers coldly arrogant with confidence in their own infallibility.

Mecta'le, perhaps driven by a genuine instinct of self-preservation did not accept all that the tactical display showed him as truth, and in watching the tracks of energy salvos fired that passed through apparitions- he understood the flaw in the deception.

"Weapons Control- sweep the area with rapid fire from all guns bearing. Ignore all signals except impact detonation signatures. Build your firing solutions upon those… And instruct all units to do the same! The micronians are clever, but so am I…"

Trat was at his station within the command bubble passing on an order he felt shame for not conceiving of personally. While striking a veiled and elusive target at long gun ranges based on a firing solution whose foundation was shaky at best was slight, it would only take a single stroke of luck to narrow the firing pattern – and the battle group had into the thousands of guns with which to tally such a stroke. And once Fate's whim began to shift, those same guns were sure to be employed as intended in short order.

-But….

The call of warning had come from the sensor control division and had been audible to Mecta'le as clearly as it had been to Trat. Though because of its threat, Trat felt the need to repeat it.

He could not find voice quickly enough though, and by Mecta'le's posture that slumped ever so slightly it was clear that he saw what was being warned of in the tactical display himself.

From the shifting pattern of images concealing the precise position of the micronian vessels in trail to those that had initiated and pressed the attack, a smaller spanning of smaller contacts steady and true emerged. They had been the same type of contact that had first surprised the units of the 7th Grand Army in its taking of the planetary space around the micronian home world days earlier, and the same kind that had startled the battle groups at rest again only minutes before now.

They were the cunning, unrelenting micronian anti-warship missiles- and Trat and Mecta'le were seeing the track of hundreds of them on a unavoidable intercept course.

An order could have been given- but the missiles were nearly upon them already and even the most urgent and efficient of commands would have reached the ears of the crew on the command deck at just the moment that the first missiles reached the leading screen of the battle group-.

At sub-light speed, the storm of Pegasus missiles moving as a dense cluster rather than the more traditionally conservative pattern of measured waves rolled over the leading destroyers and scout-class vessels of the battle group. Distinct, visible forms of warships whose appearance had terrified countless enemies of The Robotech Masters for generations were obscured and lost in the flash and bloom of both Protex and nuclear warheads.

Destroyers breasting the onslaught were staggered and emerged from detonation blossoms visibly laboring under damage sustained – if they emerged at all. Of the squadron in lead, unrecognizable wreckage tumbled in relative station of formation to the vessels they had been moments before.

Of a force of twenty-four scouts that had held the flanks of this first squadron, little remained to indicate that they had even been there at all.

Gohr'Dhet bore the brunt of the wave of missiles along the dorsal region of her forward port quarter and along the gracefully slimming line of her flank. Armored primary and secondary hulls were defeated by nearly equal number of penetrating warhead strikes as those that they defended against. Great visible wounds opened to space, evacuating breaths of flame and debris on the force of detonating warheads evacuating atmosphere that carried with it the unrecognizable mortal remains of warriors and crew not incinerated outright in explosions. Deeper wounds, no less grievous but seemingly guarded and concealed by the warship in its own pride penetrated farther into the honeycomb of compartments within the ravaged hull.

More massive and substantial than the destroyers that had acted in futility to defend her, the command ship was not in danger of succumbing immediately to any damage received though. Her shame was not to be immediately followed by a fall.

Mecta'le lifted himself from the deck at the command bubble's right bulkhead. He had been certain moments before that the very deck plates beneath his feet would rattle into liquefaction as the hammer-like blows to his vessel threw him down.

Trat was as quick to recover to his feet but was a horrible sight in that his general, shaken appearance might have been an indication to him of what Mecta'le now looked like.

The appearance would have been warranted however as revealed by the state of the command deck. Crew and technicians rushed from station to station with fire suppression canisters, extinguishing flames that added to the general flicker of battered instruments and work stations that still were trying to come back on line. Power to the deck as seen in the illumination panels along the ceiling came in sudden surges only to ebb to low levels. Cables that had run in secure trunking hung in places, spitting and sputtering sparks from frayed nubs where they had been severed.

All about a whistling of depressurization could be heard, showing how deeply into the vessel the penetrating trauma had ventured- all below the wail of alarms and the piercing cries of those wounded or burned in the secondary effects of the attack.

"-Do we still have helm and weapons control, Trat?!", Mecta'le demanded, "Are we still firing?!"

The tactical and almost all of the other holographic displays that normally provided such information were gone. Bursts of light would flash where they normally hung showing malfunction in the projection systems, or possibly the systems feeding into the projectors- but for the moment the battle group commander's vision was reduced to the dimensions of his own, smashed command deck.

"-We are, Lord!..", Trat replied after an interminable moment of scrambling for the information through is own workstation, "All forward, as well as dorsal and left flank weapons grids are down… And the Ma'Kral cannon is severely damaged… We are firing from other batteries however-."

Mecta'le did not need his the tactical display to remind him of either the enemy's general position or his- he had been stunned, not knocked senseless.

"-The orientation is wrong!.. Roll the ship left and invert it!.. All batteries engage as they come to bear! And dispatch all remaining destroyers onto a hook attack of the enemy's rear and flank! Divide their attention!"

"Yes, Lord!", Trat replied dutifully but with no idea of how he was to convey the orders, or if there were any surviving destroyer units in Mecta'le's command out there to receive them….

SDF-3

The CDC quaked steadily now as Zentraedi particle beam bolts found SDF-3's defensive barrier with regularity. The pronounced tremor added an undertone of metallic clatter to the din of overlapping voices in commission of their duties as deck plates and the equipment anchored to mounts all about the compartment shook within the tolerances allotted to them.

Hayes-Hunter felt in the fleeting moments where her attention was not fully occupied by conduct of the battle a gratitude and admiration for her subordinates around her. Most were veterans of battle already- most in the CDC having served in one form or another on either SDF-1 or the briefer operational life of SDF-2. These were men and women who knew the risks and dangers of space combat and who had unflinchingly volunteered for Operation Doolittle.

All, like Hays, knew that there was far more potential for things to go wrong in the operation than there was to go right. Still they volunteered, and for reasons that Hayes-Hunter understood without having discussed them with any of the officers or enlisted around her. This battle was as much about reciprocity- payback feeling to be the more appropriate term- for battles of the past lost or not concluded to satisfaction. It was not just about Earth's peril now- it was settling a score for friends and comrades gone but not forgotten by those in the CDC. This was in some part about avenging the fallen on an enemy that had no direct guilt in their fall.

-But purpose in the fight did not cancel out fear.

The constant tremble of the deck gave way to three progressively more violent jolts, stronger than ones that had startled the crew a matter of a few eternal seconds earlier. The ship bucked as particle beam salvos diminished by the ship's cold-plasma protective field penetrated its weakened shell and found SDF-3's hull.

In that instant, each mind in CDC was brought back to another time and another trauma unique to each. There were grunts and yelps of surprise that were not to be judged or shamed as flashes of the worst fears elicited primal reactions.

"Damage report, Master Chief!?..", Captain Hollenkamp asked some titan, heavyweight boxer landed two additional jabs on his command that it was using as a punching bag.

"Hits, port side between frames one-seventy-three and two-twelve, decks eight through fourteen… No secondary or pressure hull breeches, Captain, but we have ruptured seals and minor venting from Airlock 197-12, sir.", MCPO Vogel reported, drawing her information from a status display before her and reports from damage control leads passed to her through an intercom headset, "DCT is also reporting power loss and minor pressure venting in Dorsal VLS Room 4-. –Tubes may be fractured down through the pressure hull."

Hollenkamp pointed ardently forward in the general direction of the inert VLS room, "I want those tubes back in the fight pronto, Master Chief! -Systems Control, what's the condition of our barrier?"

"Forward barrier hemisphere integrity is at sixty-nine percent, Captain. Direct hits are beginning to penetrate-."

"-Yes, we noticed..", Hollenkamp replied, his sarcasm unintentional but understandable.

Hayes-Hunter was sympathetic to the flagship's captain. Hollenkamp's orders from her were to stand and fight an enemy that even after being savaged by the massive Pegasus missile strike from San Juaquin outnumbered him far too heavily tow want to reflect upon.

Still, the main objectives of Task Force: Doolittle One were nearly accomplished.

Arsenal ships Arthur, Gleason, and Karr were engaged now and were systematically executing the phased-launch missile strikes orchestrated by SDF-3's tactical actions staff through CCDS upon the dissolving formations Zentraedi transport ships.

The CDC's main tactical display was showing Vice Admiral Hayes-Hunter the rapidly escalating panic of the Zentraedi transport commanders. Not designed to be either agile or quickly fleet of foot, the Quiltra Quelena Class landing ships did not enjoy those characteristics now in their flight, nor did they even display the cohesion of a herd of spooked cattle as their retreat from very real danger continued its choppy course.

Under broad waves of Pegasus missiles fired for maximum effect on plentiful targets of tactically equal value, the transports in the lee of the formation fared best. Able to easily break from the formations whose intent of providing them individually safety in numbers, these fortunate vessels and crews were able to distance themselves from the building mass-carnage, most opening the required regulation range to execute fold jumps away.

Windward of the calculated pulverization of the supply force, transports were largely having a different experience. Pegasus missiles raked the tiers of box formations along their exterior, distributing damage across as many vessels as possible. The ASMs, programmable to strike at specific areas of known vessel types drove their warheads into the spaces occupied by propulsion as well as the larger cargo holds. Transports having powered up and initiated the maneuvering of escape found themselves rapidly adrift carried by their own inertia. Many of these vessels having been struck repeatedly in their storage spaces also, found their uncontrolled movements worsened by massive venting from the gaping holes punched through their hulls and the subsequent internal secondary explosions and instability caused by displaced and shifting cargo loads.

Undamaged transports attempting to flee for open space sufficient to execute spacefold found disabled sister-ships in their paths spilling their war-store entrails in great debris clouds, or they themselves found themselves in the uncontrolled paths of the crippled. Fate and skill benefitted many, allowing for near misses while other vessels collided in catastrophic meetings that were ominously silent to the exterior world.

As subsequent waves of Pegasus missiles now enveloping from all sides penetrated more deeply into the transport formations- transport commanders began to abandon the disciplines of convoy mentality. Aware that they had no sanctuary at the heart of a formation of hundreds of other transports, some commanders elected to execute folds from the convoy stations they kept.

First a few, and then by the scores they began to jump- buffeting those nearest to them in realspace with the localized but jarring effects of subspace displacement and endangering the safe hyperspace transit of one another by affecting the regional gravitational forces in ways that their navigational computers had not and could not have anticipated.

Admiral Hayes-Hunter watched the Zentraedi transport force continue to dissolve in near real time- the delay of seconds attributable only to the range between the events being represented within the CDC's tactical display and the sensors capturing them for report. Debris and battle-flotsam as well as the subspace anomalies caused by the increasing number of fold-jumps in the general area of the enemy was making scaled recreation less distinct and less accurate- an inevitable side-effect of large scale space warfare.

-But as the ebbing Pegasus missile attack continued on increasingly fleeing targets, a crystal clear image of the enemy'[s condition was not required.

They were smashed, Hayes-Hunter knew- morally if not utterly- and as a result the War was no longer going to simply be about the seizure and control of Earth, or the pursuit of a thing that no longer existed in the form that the enemy sought it, or anything tangible.

The War, Hayes-Hunter knew, was now to get ugly as only a grudge match could.

-And it was starting already.

As barrier-penetrating salvos struck hull with greater frequency and strength, the task force commander knew beyond argument that she and the handful of vessels under her immediate charge were teetering on the verge. The enemy's shock was now worn off and the honed minds of experienced combatants were now clicking in unison to the playbook that had served the Zentraedi for generations.

They were the brutish, bulldozer tactics born of disposable multitudes with which to execute them – and for all of Doolittle One's technological advantages, the Zentraedi battle doctrine insurmountable once in motion.

-And like a tsunami of objective-driven war machines, they were in motion…

"Conn, Sensors-. Multiple Master contacts in reduced battle squadron elements are enveloping and closing on-."

A particularly violent jolt shook the CDC from a square hit to the main hull somewhere just forward of SDF-3's superstructure.

Hayes-Hunter, having not lost visual track on the warship escorts to the transport vessels in the tactical display cut the senior sensorman short.

"We see them!", the Flag snapped under the weight of the moment.

Conveyed through the tactical display, the battle groups had broken down to combined squadron sized elements, dispersing as to not present any one target for concentrated gunfire or for the "heavy" battery the enemy was certainly aware that Rampage possessed, and likely the one they certainly suspected SDF-3 of possessing.

Instead their closing on multiple, broad lines demanded a division of the two REF vessels' firepower while allowing the Zentraedi commanders to combine and concentrate theirs.

Hayes-Hunter, charged with conduct of the greater fight was nonetheless fully aware of SDF-3's degrading condition through Captain Hollenkamp's exchanges with his staff. The pressure hull had now been penetrated in over a dozen places, three of them penetrating several decks and compartments into the ship's interior. Damage control teams were fighting multiple fires that were not yet under control, and the ship's sick bay was receiving litter bearers carrying the first wounded in the butcher's bill tally.

"Julian", Hayes-Hunter said, feeling the calm of promised safety some over her as only orders as the one she was about to give provided, "Spin up the fold system and sync the jump clock with Rampage and the arsenal ships-. We're done here."

The final wave of Pegasus Mk-4C missiles was outbound from the now-emptied arsenal ships and seconds away from intercepting the dwindling number of transport ships that were leaping away from the battlespace as quickly as their navigational computers could calculate spacefold designs for execution. The tactical display glittered with the flicker of their departures like the gaudiest exaggeration of a department store's Christmas window display – but was not quite the distraction enough to allow new arrivals to slip attention.

The cluster of new contacts, immediately indefinite in both number and precise range and bearing as indicated by the pulsating nature of their icons in the tactical display nonetheless had not been missed by SDF-3's sensor division and were immediately under analysis.

"Conn, Sensor-. New contacts Sierra-Papa… -Cancel that, shit!- Designate Master 1202!- Definite Nupetiet-Vernitzs Class-. It's their goddamn Flagship, Admiral, and about two dozen plus destroyers!.."

Abandoned reporting protocols notwithstanding, Hayes-Hunter was in possession now of the critical elements that the senior sensorman was attempting to convey. The extreme danger that Doolittle One had been swimming in moments before was now multiplied by orders of magnitude.

"Comms", Hayes-Hunter ordered, recognizing that the improbable moment she had doubted but that Breetai had predicted with a degree of certainty that had forced her to reconsider had arrived, "Execute PSYWAR-OP Breetai and broadcast it loud and clear. CCDS Director, concentrate fire on that flagship… –And Julien, get us the hell out of here!…."

The Zentraedi battle group elements with whom Doolittle One had initiated the fight and that had been closing on the counterattack in shrewdly dispersed, combined squadrons when the alien flagship and its escorts had arrived now found themselves in the "no man's land" of empty space between ardent adversaries. A broad opening fusillade of salvos from their flagship and its escorts while not directed at two of the attacking squadrons did pass sufficiently close to inspire immediate course adjustments.

"CDC, Sensor- Multiple high energy transients bearing there-three-nine mark seven-one. Spikes in the ultra-high EM and BEE bands Admiral-. Multiple Ma'Kral cannons initiating firing sequence!"

"Helm- Quartermaster's and helmsman's discretion- keep their fire control baffled!", Hollenkamp ordered to the crew of the captain's bridge who monitored the CDC via intercom, "Countermeasures,, deploy decoys in mass- turn us into a fleet!..."

Thirty seconds.

This incredibly brief span of time dominated Hayes-Hunter's thinking as the CDC bucked and shook about her with another enemy salvo that had found SDF-3's hull through her weakening barrier field.

Thirty seconds was the time required for a Zentraedi warship's Ma'Kral main battery to power up to the final charge required to fire. The commitment to fire also slaved the ship's helm in the final critical seconds before discharge as the immensely powerful particle beam weapon was in essence the largest bore-sighted gun ever mounted to a platform.

If Hayes-Hunter's intent had been to stand her ground and fight, the window of precious seconds available to her when the enemy would be locked on a steady course and speed- making it as close to an "easy target" as space warfare afforded- was almost at hand.

Her intent was not however to pursue a fool's exercise in hubris. Her flagship's barrier integrity had now dropped below the 50% level, meaning that at most the blows from the enemy's increasingly accurate fire was only softened and not absorbed. Her battery captains did not even have the luxury of being able to dedicate themselves to a single target but were rather forced by the enemy's numbers to divide their attention between multiple ones. Even SDF-3's twin, main Reflex batteries were impotent in the context of the battle that had evolved for the same tactical disadvantages that her numerically superior opponents were willing to accept.

It was time to go, and SDF-3 could accomplish that within the thirty second clock the enemy had set for her by default.

"CDC, Sensors-.", the senior sensorman said intrusively, but with concern that warranted curiosity from Hayes-Hunter, "High-order secondary detonations detected from Rampage's bearing- definitely originating from her-."

Hayes-Hunter had not forgotten the refitted Zentraedi destroyer's presence as part of Doolittle One, but in the concluding offensive effort, her awareness was heavily elsewhere until this moment.

The tactical display showed clearly Rampage's track through an enveloping barrage of fire much as SDF-3 and the arsenal ships were also enduring. Different from any of the other five vessels in the mission element though, Rampage was no longer throwing radical "zig-zag" course changes to blunt the enemy's firing solutions on her- she was now traveling in a straight line.

"She's adrift.", Hollenkamp noted, voicing what was obvious to all around the tactical display.

"-And her barrier is down, Admiral-.", MCPO Vogel added as the tracks of enemy salvos lost their chaotic spread in all directions and began to zero in on the crippled REF warship.

"-Admiral?..", Hollenkamp said, more suggesting a course of action than a request for direction.

"What's the count if we close to bring Rampage within our fold sphere?", Hayes-Hunter replied.

"Twenty-five seconds", Hollenkamp said, "Plus five on the outside of their time to shoot."

Hayes-Hunter clenched her teeth, knowing the foolishness of the course she was electing to follow, "-Do it… -And deploy the comms-relay booy!"

Artoc

The moment that the report had reached Artoc that a micronian surprise counterattack had been initiated out beyond the secured space immediately around the alien homeworld held by The 7th Grand Army of the Te'Dak Tohl on the heavily guarded but still softer target of one of the supply groups, the atmosphere on the command deck had changed. It had gone instantaneously from a common sense of uneasy victory caveated by the fact that the alien fleet had escaped largely intact, to rage in the realization that the first return blow from the micronians had been thrown and landed far sooner than was expected in the "worst case" scenario.

As common with all aspects of a Zentraedi command, the change in The 7th Grand Army of the Te'Dak Tohl had its headwaters in Supreme General Krymina- and it was her progressively darkening mood change that had Sub-General Caldettas most concerned.

It had not been a snap-decision, but one certainly made without benefits of all of the facts in which Krymina had ordered Artoc's jump to the area of attack with its dedicated escort squadrons. While not charging into the fight blind, it did present many unknown tactical variables that could have had dire consequences for a ship even as powerful as Artoc and even with the finest of the destroyer squadrons supporting.

–And it still could.

Most troubling to Caldettas had been bearing witness to the shift in Krymina.

After all, it had been she who had quietly bided her time in secret to even the confidence of her executive officer, waiting patiently for the moment when the declining Robotech Masters had appeared most ready for a final fall.

It had been Krymina who had most immediately recognized the opportunity afforded by the power void to accomplish for The Te'Dak Tohl more than independence in snatching this world and Zor's accumulated knowledge incarnate in his wayward vessel- and it had been she who had assembled the force to realize it all.

But Caldettas knew Krymina as well as and better than any officer in her service would reasonably claim to, and he knew her demeanor when in calculation.

And this was not the Krymina he was sharing the flagship's command bubble with now.

At the moment of the counterattack's report, she had become someone else as alien to Caldettas as the micronians they had rushed to engage.

And witness to a Zentraedi force mauled in mere minutes, and with the audio transmission received- unmistakably Breetai's voice and words both- there had been a welling up of primal attributes from that deep place where most kept their Warrior's Core.

It governed Krymina at this moment, governing by extension them all- and there would be no reasoning with it.

"Liege, he was clearly baiting you and may yet have a snare laid for us that he wishes you to trip.", Caldettas warned dutifully though not without the unexpected and uncommon fear of violent reprisal that manifested in the raising of a fine sheen of sweat that the executive officer hoped would pass as circumstantial to greater events.

"-The message was audio only and vague in its details at best. My impression is that Breetai is not-…"

"-Not even aboard Zor's ship.", a voice emanating from Supreme General Krymina, but not Krymina's as Caldettas had ever known it interrupted- completing the executive officer's thought perfectly.

Krymina studied the tactical display floating before her, out above the now frenzied stations of the command deck. Caldettas could see the analytical and tactical mental processes working smoothly, but it was something other than simple victory driving them now.

"That micronian destroyer- it's disabled.", Krymina observed without report from her staff, "Zor's ship is altering course to assist-. Disable the Battle Fortress as well-. We'll extract the information we need about Breetai from their crews once we have them."

Caldettas whose attention had followed Krymina's words to the tactical display witnessed the altering of Zor's ship's course in the company of the insubstantial phantoms screening it as though it had taken direction from the supreme general and had not been merely mirroring her prediction. Zor's ship was going to the aid of the disabled norghil destroyer and drawing an increasing volume of fire in doing so. The phantoms continued to take fire in mass as well, warning that gun crews were still in the mode of firing indiscriminately in the vicinity of an irreplaceable element of Supreme General Krymina's long-term objectives.

"Mind your fire!", Caldettas barked with uncharacteristic animation as he sensed the weapons directors were unaware of the peril they were placing themselves in, "That ship is to be disabled! There will be severe consequences to anyone doing more!"

SDF-3

Vice Admiral Hayes-Hunter felt relief for the crews of the Arthur, Gleason, Karr, and San Juaquin as in rapid succession they vanished into fold individually. All had sustained damage- Karr more than a remarkably frail looking vessel as the arsenal ship was seemed capable of sustaining- but they were clear now and in seconds would arrive at the rendezvous point to await Rampage and SDF-3.

Hayes-Hunter's relief for their crews was muted somewhat by the increasing odds against the assumption that Rampage and SDF-3 would be joining the arsenal ships.

SDF-3's barrier was pulverized and now only minimally effective against the constant enfilade of Zentraedi particle beams- analogous to the value of a mosquito screen made of fishing nets.

Among other compartments opened by penetrating energy bolts, Hangar #1-Port had been compromised with complete, explosive decompression and untold amounts of internal damage.

As this operation had not involved a component requiring a fighter presence, the fighter wing including all of its support staff had been left behind aboard Walhalla. Easily a hundred lives, if not more, had been spared by the absence of that portion of the crew at the time of the hangar's decompression.

Significantly less important than lives, but still a moral blow if the damage had caused its loss- Rick's semi-retired Skull One had been secured in one of the hangar's "bull pens" – aboard primarily as a good-luck charm, insisted upon by Rick with the notion that the Valkyrie too had history back to the beginning with Zentraedi aggressors.

Hayes-Hunter had no mental slack with which to concern herself on the loss of a single Veritech, but the prospect of facing Rick and reporting Skull One's loss- essentially the loss of the last part of Folker remaining…. This thought she did not relish.

"Fold-Ops, keep me cheerful!", Hollenkamp demanded as a blow somewhere aft but near caused a flutter in the ship's lighting.

"Fold profile is in progressive update, Captain! -Can't promise to thread the needle, but give the word and we'll put you in the neighborhood of the rendezvous point!.."

"Good enough for me.", Hollenkamp said as the ship took a hit that seemed to cause her to skid slightly to starboard despite the inertial dampening systems being in play.

"-Good enough for me too.", Hayes-Hunter added without solicitation.

"Plot- time to Rampage, on this track?", Hollenkamp asked as the space between the two representative icons in the tactical display continued to shrink rapidly.

"Ten seconds, this course and speed sir!"

Hollenkamp issued his orders to the CDC and bridge in general, calling it like a college football coach forced to improvise a play.

"-SysOps, FoldOps- we're going to need to drop the barrier to jump the ship. Drop the screens on my hack, plus two seconds and execute fold. Don't sing it out to me, just make it happen! -Got that?.."

"Aye sir", was repeated in reply from the two stations identified by the CO.

Alternating his attention between the tactical display and the ship's chronometer, Hollenkamp was startled to see both that the moment of execution was less than five seconds away, and that the discharging of Ma'Kral cannons had begun.

Oddly, the beam tracks in the tactical display were showing that the enemy's aim was off-. Off to the degree of being intentionally off. While the enemy's less powerful gun batteries were still administering a beating on SDF-3 – Hollenkamp entertained the thought that the object was not her immediate destruction.

There was something more disquieting about that thought.

"-In five…", the CO counted down in sync with the ship's chronometer, "Four… Three… Two… One… Hack!.."

Artoc

The flashing orb within the tactical display continued to pulse through several refresh cycles of the holographic image before vanishing- taking with it the icons that had represented toe seditious norghil destroyer and Zor's Battle Fortress. The streaking tracks of heavy gunfire subsided at nearly the same moment, the object of their fury now decidedly out of reach.

Caldettas remained silent, there was no need to announce what had happened to Krymina when she had been two paces away from him and studying the same tactical display when it had happened. He did however make his best effort to appear ready to execute any order given him. At this moment, it was all that could be done.

Curiously, there was no outraged explosion from Krymina as she was left to behold a tactical display filled with nothing but damaged, disabled, and destroyed ships of her own fleet. It was as though dirt had been kicked over a bivouac fire, extinguishing the flames instantly.

"Signal all units to heightened alert around the micronian homeworld. Breetai may not have commanded this attack, but he conceived it. This is not finished yet."

Krymina was crossing the command bubble threshold out before Caldettas could manage to complete, "As you order, Liege."

The flames were out, but as with a smothered fire- the heat remained just beneath the surface.

RDF-AF Base Salamanca, Spain

Somehow in the way that those who had need to know found out, it had come to Pamela Dunn's attention that the maintenance door to the post laundry room servicing a number of the Bachelor Officers Quarters did not lock properly and with the right persuasion could be forced without damage to door or lock. The same knowledge floating through the ether came attached to the wisdom that should one feel the need to find refuge in said laundry room after duty hours, the chances of being discovered and put on report by the post's MPs was significantly reduced if an offering of cigarettes, alcohol vouchers, or cash was left outside the door.

And sure enough, it all appeared to be true.

A bed of shrink-wrapped bed linens with a couple of standard issue, summer-weight synthetic fiber blankets made for an appropriate "love nest" under the situationally appropriate mood lighting provided by the dull, red glow of a nearby emergency exit sign. The couple had not been particularly interested in romantic ambiance as they had on simple seclusion- so there were no complaints to be had.

"-You have very fine chest hair-.", Pamela noted in that distant and content tone of post-coital conversation.

Andy watched her fingers trace near to his right nipple that he hoped she would not gain a sudden, playful interest in as the sensitivity of his nerve endings were still dialed-up to 11.

"Five hours of PT a day-. I finally grow out of my ten-year old's pectorals- and you get hung up on the fact that I'm harless?.."

"You're not hairless-.", Pamela laughed, giving Andy's head a gentle shove to break his accusatory gaze, "-It just hasn't grown in yet. –Makes me feel like I've plucked you away from mummy-. Soooo naughty-. I think I like that."

Andy realized that an opportunity for an impromptu "rematch" was probably being missed, but Pamela's maternal references conjured an unexpectedly vivid mental image of his mother in one of her notoriously floral house dresses – and any possibility of further romantic activity this late night went right out the window.

"You know your nipples are crooked, don't you?"

There was a loud smack of a bare palm on taut flesh and Andy felt the sting of playful retribution spread across his chest/

"Are not!..", Pamela protested, putting her head back onto his shoulder.

"Are too-.", Andy replied, not surrendering an inch of ground, "They come up off your boobs all cock-eyed and such-. I'm never sure who they're looking at. It's kind of rude, really- all things considered. "

"-Well", Pamela replied, propping herself up onto an elbow, "We can make it so you don't have to experience that social awkwardness again…"

"No-.", Andy said, more of a panicked edge to his voice than he expected, "-It's hot somehow. Don't change on my account."

"Good save."

"Thanks. –But they are crooked."

Another loud smack in the low, dingy-red light.

"You ever wonder why?..", Andy asked after a few moments of silence.

"Are you still on about my wall-eyed boobs?"

"No.", Andy replied, having thought he had successfully backed away from that abyssal precipice, "I mean the aliens-. The Zentraedi and The Robotech Masters-. Have you ever wondered what's in it for them?"

"Oh God- you're one of those.", Pamela groaned.

"One of what?"

"Those philosophical after sex types.", Pamela said in woeful speculation, "-Give the pipes a good clearing and they become Socrates or something… Can't you just grunt and tell a girl what a nice bum she's got like everyone else?"

"-I was just sharing a thought…"

Pamela settled in as though for a drawn out exchange, "Fine-. Go on then, Descartes…"

"Well, I don't want to now if you're going to be that way about it-."

"Postulation performance anxiety? -I hear Kant got that real bad…"

"You are a vicious bitch- with a nice bum.", Andy snapped, "You know that, don't you?"

"That's what a girl likes to here. Wear. –Were you going to share a deep thought, or something there, Plato?.."

"Maybe not deep, but-.", Andy said cautiously resuming the thought that somehow had still stayed with him, "What do you think the point is for them?"

"The Zentraedi or The Masters?"

"-At least you're in the conversation now-. Either, both, whatever-."

"Universal domination- I thought that was pretty clear."

"Yeah-.", Andy said, cautious in that he expected a quickly rendered comparison to another dead philosopher, "-But why? I mean, what then? Let's say you conquered the whole universe-. What would you do with it then? My da's got a company with about a thousand employees more or less, and the headaches of running that nearly kills him. Imagine running the universe. What do you do with the whole universe anyway? That seems like an awful lot of work."

"What would I do?", Pamela replied sounding less dedicated to the mental exercise than Andy.

"Yeah, what would you do?", Andy asked knowing that a meaningful exchange was probably not in his near future.

"Shoes."

"What?"

Sober and serious, Pamela locked eyes with him and repeated, "Shoes."

"You'd buy shoes?"

"No-.", Pamela corrected, "-I'd force the leaders of all of the worlds to bring me their most fashionable women's shoes to choose from as yearly tribute. We'd then celebrate with a feast lit by bonfires where all of the other women's shoes would be burned- except for maybe clogs…"

"-Either you've thought about this way too much, or you're some new sub-category of sociopath…"

"A little of both.", Pamela admitted, "-But you've never had to be at a party and discover someone else was wearing the same shoes as you. I should think that would fix the problem, and that's just grounds for universal conquest."

"You are twisted.", Andy said, adding, "-But with a nice bum."

"That's what they all tell me."

Andy hesitated, and then asked, "Who's all?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?..."

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