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MACROSS DYNAMITE
One: What Planet Is This?
Varauta System, Third Planet, Protoculture Ruins
They'd set up a temporary lodging area for those who wanted to stay on-site at the dig, and there was an office across from the makeshift campsite. Especially considering the climate on this part of Varauta consisted of mostly windy, partly-cloudy days, Myung wasn't sure if those staying in the campsite were addicted to the adventure of the great outdoors or just workaholics to the point where they couldn't bear to leave their dig. Or maybe they were just insane. There were a lot of those kinds of people in the archaeological field.
The office wasn't much of an office to someone like her, who was used to the neat, modern conveniences of a research lab at the University, but for some reason the one-room office with its battered field equipment and makeshift cubicles was strangely refreshing, and it made her feel like a real pro. She was the first one there this morning, and as she opened the window to let some air into the musty room, she could smell the aroma of cooking sausages from the campsite. Breakfast time.
"Morning, Professor Dyson."
Her research assistant, Ildik Frianjik, was several years younger than she was, half Zentradi with a shock of bright blue hair, very intelligent, and a Ph.D. at the age of twenty-three. By all rights, he should have been the supervisor on this dig, and he told her that he'd been offered the job. But he had declined, saying that someone with his youth should probably watch and learn instead, so she'd offered him the job of research assistant, which meant long hours of trudging back and forth through the caves, taking notes and cataloguing every little fragment as fast as the diggers could uncover them. By the end of the first week, Ildik had joked that the work was a lot harder than he had expected, and he probably would have been wise to accept the supervisory position instead. Myung had thought of Supervisor Gordon, riding back and forth between caves in his car, stopping only briefly now and then to give instructions and who always went home no later than four o' clock in the afternoon, and silently agreed.
Ildik looked rested this morning, though – he was one of those who was camping out at the dig at the campsite, and she thought that the camaraderie there would do him good. He was young yet, and needed the company. In fact, most of the seventy members of the team were young, most of them students working towards their masters degrees or young archaeologists just out of school. The researchers were a little older, but not by much. Myung was among the oldest of the team, and though she didn't usually think of herself as an older woman, she sometimes felt as such around this crowd. And with the summer program that the University was offering, for undergraduates on and offplanet who wanted to experience the dig firsthand to spend a month there with the team, she'd feel even older.
No use worrying about that now, though. Growing older was just a part of life. "Good morning," she called over to where he was standing by the door, putting on his field boots. "Did you get anything else done yesterday after I went home?"
"Nelson and I organized some of the smaller recording disks that we'd found in cave 17A, but other than that, no. A few of the girls went into town last night and came back with some beers and barbeque, so we had that instead." His eyes were anxious. "Was I supposed to have done something more?"
She waved his anxiety away. "Good lord, no. You do enough as it is. You make me feel lazy sometimes!"
"Well, you're married, Professor. You've got other responsibilities too."
Myung laughed. "Very true." She slipped her own work boots on, clipped her voice data recorder on securely, and grabbed her notepad. "We ready to roll?"
"Ready when you are, ma'am."
The sturdy dig car was large by vehicle standards, but comparing it to the size of the caves in which the dig was located was like comparing a human to a Zentradi. Myung could hardly believe, when she'd seen the caves for the first time, that no one had ever located them before. True, they were located on a rather desolate part of the peninsula away from the main city, and the first patrols that had been in this area had dismissed them as a rather odd rock formation because of the forest that had grown up around them. It had only been about a month ago that a couple, hiking through the forest for a place to camp, had stumbled upon these caves.
The University had gone nuts over the find and rightly so – the only other widely known Protoculture find had been on a planet settled by the crew of the Macross 2 about nine years ago – and it was exactly what the Varautan government needed to put the planet on the map. It had been three AM when Myung had gotten the call, and she'd had to ask the babbling woman on the other end to calm down and speak slowly, because she hadn't understood much of what was initially said. Eventually, it came out that these caves weren't just caves, but evidently had been a Protoculture scientific testing center of some sort. Myung had been astonished at first, excited until the woman amended her statement by saying that most everything in them was in pieces, probably destroyed during the Protoculture civil war millions of years ago.
Still, it was huge while the frenzy lasted. The news was all over the city newspaper by the next morning, and then over the Galaxy Network by the evening. She wasn't surprised when Isamu had come home that night mentioning something about how odd it was that they'd gotten a call from UN Spacy Headquarters on Earth from General Someone-or-other who Myung had never heard of and who seemed to be important, who was asking about the find. The media had jumped on the story at first, but as with most archaeological finds, digs took time, and the media was impatient and soon wandered off for other, fresher, news. She was rather glad of that, actually. She hated working with the media breathing down her neck. She'd had enough of that with her old Sharon Apple days.
There were no ruins in the very mouth of the cave. The ancient testing center seemed to have been built with defense in mind, and the decaying ruins of the main doors were located several smaller caves back, in what the team had labeled "Cave A1" on all official documents but was usually simply known as "Entrance Cave." Past the doors, the caves them split into a labyrinth of passages, each mapped and named, each containing a treasure trove of Protoculture data tapes and artifacts. The first few days, they'd tried to play the data tapes, but they wouldn't fit into any of the playback machines, and most of them seemed to be too scratched to be able to play, anyway.
Gordon had wanted to ship the tapes back to the school and deal with them later, but Myung had convinced him otherwise, and one of the top electronics corporations on Varauta was now working overtime to deliver a playback machine that would be able to hopefully access the data in the tapes.
The team was beginning to trickle in as Myung and Ildik stopped the car in Cave C1. The stack of tapes they'd been cataloguing was just as they'd been left last night in the far right corner of the cave, and Myung activated her voice recorder, making sure it was set to record her voice over the noise of the rock drills that they were using on the other end of the cave.
"Sample from Cave C1," she said, thumbing through a set of data disks that looked like they'd been through a thousand Space War Ones. "Class Three data disks, number five. These are by far the most battered disks we've found so far in any of the C caves."
"I wonder what that means?" Ildik mused from behind her where he was seated on a rock, scribbling on a notepad.
"That depends what the motives of those who destroyed this place wanted," Myung said, debating whether to turn her recorder off, but decided to leave it on just in case her musings produced anything important. "If they were looking to destroy something in particular, it might mean that the data in this section of the caves was valuable. Or it might just mean that the enemy that was here did an especially thorough job."
"Or maybe they were looking for something," Ildik said. "And then destroyed the rest to leave no trace of evidence."
Myung looked at him. "What do you mean?"
"I know we're only a week and a half into the dig, and I should never assume," Ildik said, "But I do find it extremely odd that this section of the caves has half destroyed records and documents, while the researches in the B section of the caves found no data disks whatsoever."
"I haven't had a chance to talk to the people from B yet," she said, narrowing her eyes, and remembered to switch off the recorder before continuing. "We're not scheduled to conference till the end of this week. You're sure that's what they said?"
"We were just throwing ideas around the fire last night and that's what they told me."
"Hmm." She turned off her voice data recorder. "That's extremely interesting." Turning over the battered disk in her hand, she stared at it, as if its cracked case could offer some answers. "Keep taking notes. If that's the case, we'll find out soon enough, when the bigwigs feel like letting us know their opinions."
"Shouldn't we be offering some of our own?"
"If they let us," Myung told him. "We shouldn't push our luck until we know just what they want out of this thing. Sometimes they'll listen, and sometimes all they want is a little fame and money. And that's when we should shut up and keep our opinions to ourselves."
"I suppose." He sounded doubtful.
"Don't be pessimistic yet. We've only just started." She smiled at him, at his long face and the pointed ears that seemed out of place on an otherwise very human countenance. "And we'd better get moving. I want to finish this cave before lunch."
Zola
The attack came out of nowhere, and he flung himself to the side as the bullets hit the dock, hoping he didn't scratch his guitar in the process. It was always funny to most people who had ever known him that he seemed to value his guitar more highly than he valued his own life, but Basara didn't think it was funny at all. That was just the way things were supposed to be.
Out of all places for an attack, he wouldn't have thought a fishing dock would have been likely. He cursed under his breath as the gunshots continued, briefly considering covering his head to try and protect himself, then decided against it. If a shot hit him, his hands wouldn't provide much adequate shielding anyway, and if he was hit in the hand, that would be the end of his guitar playing days.
The gunfire crackled again and there were shouts. Over the noise of the firefight, he could hear a loudspeaker in the background playing what seemed to be a radio drama about someone called Zomeo. To think of it, that same drama had been on at the spaceport last night when he'd landed. Not to mention the fact that most everything here seemed to begin with Z. The planet's name was Zola, but he thought that was going overboard a little.
Definitely the strangest planet he'd ever been to.
He had spent the night in a little hollow overlooking the bay just a few miles from the spaceport. Urban areas seemed to be sparse here, and it had been a little unsettling to someone like him who had lived in City 7 for so long. The sight of so much vegetation had taken him aback at first. But he decided he liked it. It was good to be back on a planet's surface once more, to feel the dirt under his fingers and to know that he was singing to a landscape that would sing back to him in its own language.
I hope you find a million things. A million and one things, even.
If Mylene could see him now, she'd give him a lecture to make his ears fall off, but he wouldn't have minded. He missed her already. She was probably happy at school, entering her second term and dazzling all of her teachers. He had no doubt about that.
A bullet pinged near him and he grimaced, wondering what on earth people were doing with guns at night on a deserted dock. Then decided that it didn't matter, that it was time to see what he could do about it. Grabbing his guitar, he jumped up, knocking over some startled birds, and waved his free hand.
"Oi! Hey, you, stop shooting and listen to my song!"
It wasn't quite the same on the acoustic guitar, but it was good enough, and he launched into the beginning of New Frontier, hoping they'd at least be startled enough to decide he was nuts and maybe give up their fight.
Furimuku na itsudatte
Jonetsu no mukausaki ni
Soko wa kitto aru
"Hey weird guy, get out of here! This is the police!"
He spun around, still playing, and found himself face to face with a woman, a woman with a shock of bright red hair and long pointed ears.
She was pointing a gun at him.
He'd had guns pointed at him before. He didn't even look at the weapon, just stared her in the eyes and kept singing.
Kudake chiru hoshitachi yo
Atarashii hikari to nare
Yami o keraseyo!
"What are you doing?!" she demanded hotly. "Hey! HEY!" Waving the gun. "Don't you know this is a battle? Get out of here!"
She sounded like Gamlin used to, Basara realized with a sort of nostalgic amusement. Her angry eyes held a kind of strength that he hadn't seen in anyone's eyes in a long time, and he decided that she was someone who could help him, if he could get her to understand his song too.
It's a new frontier!
Sou sa oretachi koko ni iru to
Kane o uchinarase
"I'm telling you!" she cried, still pointing the gun at him, but he could see she was confused. "If you don't get out of here-"
There was no warning, just the crack of a shotgun and a stabbing pain in his shoulder. The guitar fell from his numbed hands and clattered to the deck, and he felt himself falling, not able to stop. He thought he must hit the ground sometime soon, but he just kept falling, and he realized that he'd rolled off the dock in the process and was now heading straight for the rocks below, where the tide was beginning to come in.
Dammit, he thought, before he hit the ground with a thud that knocked the wind out of him and would probably have hurt if not for the fierce throbbing in his back and shoulder that made all other pains seem inconsequential. The water lapped over his right hand and arm and he tried to move it but found that it caused too much pain to do so. So he gave up.
He heard the coughing of another boat engine and someone female talking frantically and quickly on the radio, someone who he assumed was the woman who had pointed the gun at him. It wasn't she who had fired at him though. The shot had come from behind. He couldn't hear what she was saying. His heartbeat was too loud in his ears. He felt hot.
I hope you find it, whatever it is. And I'll still be waiting.
"Mylene," he whispered, and he saw light swimming in front of his eyes and wondered if he was dying.
The last thing he knew was a cool hand on his forehead, pushing back his hair, and soft words half-murmured into his ear between the lapping of the waves onto the sand.
Unexplored Territories, Quadrant 9, Macross 7 Fleet, Einstein 7
The archaeology department was deserted at 7 in the evening except for a lone table at the corner of the student library, where one student was still studying, her long pink hair bound up into a tight bun at the back of her head, her nose deep in the textbook she was trying to decipher.
"Mylene? You're still here?"
She shook herself, blinking bleary eyes, and looked over to the bookcase by the library door where her roommate was standing. Chiye Jeong was half Korean and half Chinese, tall, slender, and very demanding. "I have been looking all over for you. Guvava is about to die of boredom, I think, and you're supposed to go see a movie with us tonight over in the City. What are you doing studying, anyway? We don't have finals for three weeks yet."
"It's never too early to study," she said, yawning and stretching. "You all go without me, Chiye. I need to get this work done."
"I don't think so," the red-haired girl said, tugging Mylene to her feet and throwing her books into the bag which lay open on the table with pens and notepads spilling out of it. "You're coming whether you like it or not. You study way too much."
"I really need to do well on this test, or I won't be picked for the Varauta team! And you know how much I really want to be on the team."
Chiye's face softened a bit. "Yeah I do. Mylene, you're the top student in the department. I really doubt you won't be picked."
"That doesn't mean I don't have to work hard like everyone else," she said, but she found herself picking up her bag and heaving a sigh. "All right. No more studying. I'll come."
"That's the spirit." Chiye grabbed her arm. "Seriously, stop stressing. Besides, it's you. Just seeing your name on the applicant list is enough to guarantee you a position."
Mylene shook her head. "I hate it when that happens. Just because I'm me doesn't mean I should be given priority. Mylene Jenius the member of Fire Bomber and Mylene Jenius the university student are two very different people. At least, they should be."
"You've been on Varauta before, though, haven't you? They could use you."
"That was the fourth planet. Not the third planet." She sighed. "I really don't want to talk about it."
Chiye looked down. "Sorry. I forgot."
Mylene just shook her head and grinned, and they continued down the corridor and out the front doors of the building in silence. Since she had discovered her surprising liking for archaeology last term, she had been considering going on a summer dig for a while, and when the news of the Varauta project came out a month ago, she'd known at once that was the one she wanted. She'd called the department head, who said yes, it just happened that the team was looking for a summer group of undergraduate interns, and yes, they had two spots available, and would she like to put her name on the list?
Her father didn't like the idea at first. He had no objection to her going back to Varauta, and had even suggested to her several times that she attend the school there, but the combination of Varauta and Protoculture seemed to strike a raw nerve with him. She hadn't admitted that it struck a raw nerve with her too, but that was one of the main reasons she wanted to go. The memories of what had happened on the fourth planet still haunted her, and it would be a good time to rid herself of the ghosts.
True, she had been barely fifteen at the time, and everything had turned out all right in the end, but Varauta had been the first time she had truly realized what death meant and how permanent it was. She'd almost lost so many people there….her father, Gamlin, Basara and Ray and Veffidas. For some reason they were still all here, and she should have been satisfied with that, but she wasn't.
I feel like I left something unfinished there, Papa, she'd said. And I need to go find out what it is.
To her surprise, her father had nodded and simply told her to do what she needed to do. She hadn't told her mother yet. Though Milia was the one who had let her go on Operation Stargazer in the first place, so she didn't think her mother would have any objection. Milia was all about adventure.
They arrived at the station just as the shuttle to City 7 made its final boarding call. It was all girls tonight – the men were all off doing their own thing, and Mylene didn't really even mind. The group of friends she'd made at the school were discrete and rarely ever pried into her private affairs, and the rest of her fellow students kept their polite distance. She'd expected to be bombarded with questions about Gamlin and Basara and Fire Bomber, but surprisingly, there were few of those, and as she kept her answers carefully neutral, the questioners had quickly gotten bored and left her alone.
There had been a few boys trying to ask her out, but she had politely declined. Chiye told her later that she was developing a reputation for being unapproachable by members of the male sex, and she had laughed it off then. Later, she'd lain in bed and wondered why exactly she was being such a loner.
They don't think you're stuck-up, exactly, Chiye explained. You're just…kind of off in your own little world, and they don't know how to take that. Most people don't. Lucky you have me around or you'd never get out of the library.
It wasn't her fault she liked studying. Besides, it was a way to take her mind off other things.
The shuttle's doors closed and it creaked out of the docking port onto the Milky Road, and she leaned against the window, watching the brilliant lights of the science ship fade in the distance. There was a Minmay song on the speaker system, and she tried to tune it out by thinking about her family back in the city. She had only been back to City 7 once or twice since the term had started, and really no time to visit either her parents or the rest of the band. With Basara gone, she didn't feel as guilty, but she knew her mother missed her.
She still hadn't told anyone about Basara. Ray knew, but that was Ray, who figured everything out eventually. She missed Ray and Veffidas, and her bass, and she missed playing. But she missed Basara most of all.
He'd never told her he loved her before he had left. He had implied it, but that wasn't the same thing, and now he was gone – had been gone for almost a year, and she let her eyes drift past the bulk of the Einstein, past the glitter of lights in the distance that was City 7, and into the blackness beyond where he was, somewhere, lighting up the galaxy with his song. At least, she hoped he was. She couldn't imagine him doing anything else.
Toki ga nagareru
Ai ga nagareru
Watashi no mae o
Kanashii kao shite
"Mylene, lighten up!" Chiye's face appeared in front of hers, and she jumped. "Mou…it's supposed to be a night out, not another night for you to stare off into space. You do that enough!"
"Do I?" she said weakly. "I hadn't noticed."
"Come on." Her roommate tugged at her hand. "Smile, Mylene. Come on, just give me a little smile. What happened to the happy girl I knew at orientation?"
Mylene rolled her eyes. "She got killed by an anthropology text book and eaten by her chemistry textbook, then was vomited up by physics and flushed down the toilet."
Chiye groaned. "Oh please, spare me. You could make straight As without even trying, and you know it."
Mylene didn't answer that, glancing at the clock and realizing that half an hour had almost passed and they were almost to the city. It was a Friday night. Maybe she would go visit her mother after the movie, spend the night or something if it wasn't too late. She didn't have much homework and she could do it on Sunday when she got back.
Chiye tugged at her again. "You're so quiet. Stop thinking about school for once and come say hi to the other girls. It'll do you good."
She let Chiye pull at her hand, keeping her eyes on the view outside the window as long as she could. If she was still living in the City, maybe she'd already be at her mother's place. Or maybe she'd be sitting with Ray, trying to compose a song for their next live. But she hadn't written songs in a while, not since school, and she didn't even know if she knew how anymore. After Basara left, the music seemed to have faded, and she wasn't quite sure how to get it back – not that it mattered, because wasn't this the point? To go away, to get away from the band for a while…to sort things out?
"Mylennnneeeee."
"All right, stop whining. I'm getting up."
Would Basara be angry, if he knew? If he knew she wasn't keeping the faith? If he knew she wasn't holding the torch high, waiting for him to come back? What would he say to her application for the Varauta dig? Would he condone it or would he have scoffed, saying that it was a stupid idea, that she'd left that place years ago and there was no point digging up old ghosts?
Sometimes she would open the door to her dorm room and expect him to be just inside, sitting in her computer chair or on her bed, doing that little chuckle in the back of his throat and smiling at her. But he wasn't, of course. He was long gone.
Watashi wa kitto
Okisarareru wa
Ikusa no tame ni
Hokori no tame ni
It didn't matter what he would have said, she decided, dragging herself off the seat and following Chiye's retreating back out of the cabin. It only mattered what she thought, because she was here now and he wasn't.
And maybe it was meant to be that way.
Maybe he wasn't coming back.
Toki wa nagareru
Ai wa nagareru
Kuchihateru…watashi wa