"Kashick—we have a radio transmission."
"I see it." Kashick said. His scanners picked up the radio transmitter, and creating a visual image of the energy, displayed its exact location on his screen. Very low wattage, broadcast, not tight beam, and evidently not scrambled. What was it saying?
"Commander." One of the troopers spoke, "I'm getting some movement to the right—22 degrees, about 220 meters. Micronian." Kashick tensed. A radio and then movement? Troops? The zentraedi looked around the wrecked city—there were certainly enough places to hide soldiers and weapons…
"Freeze." He said, and every one of his soldiers settled into immobility, like titan statues. A moment later and his slaved readout confirmed that the movement was heading away from them, towards the radio transmission.
"Sir."
"I know—we'll wait until they're at the radio site, and then move in." He flipped to the command circuit.
"Those missiles…" His commander came back,
"Yes, Kashick, if you need them we have them—reaction, nuclear or fusion, take your choice."
"Thanks." He said, sarcastically—the commander was obviously hinting he was an old micronian….not that Kashick really minded. Those "old micronians" had managed to eliminate Dolza and the Grand Fleet, after all.
"Torath, Kron…" He spoke into his mike. "Take your squads around to the opposite side of the transmission—I don't want anyone getting away—if you meet major opposition, withdraw and well destroy the site with missiles—we can always find more micronians. "
"Understood, commander." The two said, and they faded off into the murk, leaving Kashick and his troops alone.
"Everyone else—do not fire unless fired upon—I'd prefer to get this over with. But if we meet major opposition, withdraw and let the missiles handle it. Understood?"
"Yes."
Mary and her little cluster of lost chicks stopped at the edge of the open space and stood in shock.
This is help? The clear space was covered with people, some standing in shock, some trying to help, some gathering supplies…. There were bodies, many of them in one area, not buried or even clothed. Mary shuddered as she saw one woman stripped of her clothing, which was put into a pile.
We don't even have enough clothes… Oh God…help. Mary thought. But if God was going to help, he would have done something before now, she reckoned.
"Help…please?" She asked, but most of the people around her seemed to be too stunned to do anything. "I have children from the first district primary school… are any parents here? Can anyone help me!" Her voice started scaling up involuntarily, tears running down her face, mixing with the salty rain that had drenched everyone, not cooling in the hot, humid air, but merely adding one more bit of misery.
"I'm here." A voice said, and Mary turned and saw a man, in what looked like the remnants of a doctor's outfit.
"Oh thank God, Doctor, some of the children are sick and I-" He raised a hand and cut off Mary's stream of words.
"My name is Dr. Chan, Mary." Looking at the children, Chan sighed, and lowered his voice. "And it is very likely that the children are suffering from exhaustion and hunger… we have some water, and less food, but children get the first priority." He paused, "but we have no medicine or medical equipment, so I'm afraid we can't help you there….did you see any sign of civil defense units or other relief?" Mutely, Mary shook her head in horror.
"I…understand." Chan said. He wondered if the girl realized that probably meant none of them would live out the week. Most of the food was gone, or contaminated, the water was contaminated, the rains were soaking people and even without that, the mounds of bodies would lead to typhus and a dozen other types of sicknesses without immense efforts to clear and bury them…which nobody could organize.
"Doctor…what do we…" Mary's voice trailed off. There was another sound. Metallic. Turning around she peered through the fog and rain, but couldn't see anything.
"Could it be…rescue?" Chan shook his head.
"It doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard…." And then were was a chorus of screams from the other side of the cleared area, as hundreds of civilians ran towards them…. And from the fog, with searchlights blazing, demons entered the square.
Demons clad in armor and bristling with unknown weapons, demons so tall that they made the humans look like ants. Mary had seen the images of the battles in the Ontario quadrant, but never a close up of what the aliens used on the ground. The children clustered about her screaming, as she whirled around, to see more of the monstrous war machines emerging from the direction they had come.
They were following us! Her mind gibbered. Some of them looked like pods mounted on a pair of ostrich like legs, while a few looked like gigantic knights, with large cannon affixed to one shoulder. One of the latter, with mysterious symbols on it, advanced on Mary and Chan. She whimpered backing up, trying to push the children behind her, for all the good it would do.
One of the men further in raised a hunting rifle he'd found and open fire, the bullet sparking harmless sparks off a war machine, which moved like lightning, aiming it's weapons at the crowded square….
"Do not fire! DO NOT FIRE!" Kashick bellowed into the comlink. "That thing didn't even scratch your paint!"
"But sir!"
"Morn, if you fire I promise I will find Khyron just so I can transfer you into his battalion!" That shut him up. Kashick looked down at his readouts and frowned. No other weapons, nothing that looked like a military vehicle, just a horde of micronians, running back and forth, shying away from the mecha. There were more sounds of panic as the re-entry pods descended, powerful searchlights marking out an area to land. Now to get them on board.
"Attention!" he bellowed into the mike, after setting the link to the translation computers in the Quel-Quallie, "You are now prisoners of the Zentraedi! You will move into the reentry pods and make no attempt at resistance! Am I understood?"
Mary closed her eyes, waiting for death, then cautiously opened them. The aliens hadn't done anything. Then, one spoke with words of thunder.
"Vous êtes maintenant des prisonniers du Zentraedi ! Vous entrerez dans les cosses de ré-entrée et ne ferez aucune tentative de résistance ! Est-ce que je suis compris ?" She blinked. So did everyone else.
"They're…French?"
"No, but maybe they think we're French." Chan said. Unfortunately, it seemed that none of the survivors spoke French, so they looked up in confusion at the mecha that looked back at them. A few mecha shifted slightly, and Mary got the mad urge to giggle at the image of the gigantic war machines beginning to give the impression of guests at a party who had just committed a breach of manners and were uncomfortably waiting for someone to laugh..
Kaschick waited. Nothing happened. In fact….
"Command, I don't think they understand what I said. Was intelligence sure this was the right thing to say?"
"Ah…wait one…." His commander came back. "Kashick, I'm afraid that Intelligence may have been in error…try this language."
"This language?" Kaschick blinked, "How many do they have?"
"Over a hundred."
"Zor's blood…. How do they get anything done?"
"Don't know, Don't care….try this file."
"Yes sir." Kashick sighed.
"Sie sind jetzt Gefangene des Zentraedi! Sie ziehen in die Reentryhülsen um und bilden keinen Versuch am Widerstand! Werde ich verstanden?"
Several repetitions later, Kashick saw the micronians look up at him and shouted into the microphone.
"That's the right one!" in an underbreath he continued, "finally."
Mary shuddered looking at the vast landing craft that had descended, casually crushing rubble under their pads. Now the computer voices were commanding them to board those pods. The children clung to her, and nobody moved.
"What are you waiting for?" The giant mecha thundered. "Go into the reentry pod."
"Why?" A man shouted, "So you can kill us?" There was no reply for a moment, and then suddenly the large cannon on the back of the mecha unshipped itself and with a whir targeted the rubble of a building several miles away. A sun-bright lance of energy speared the building, reducing it to molten fragments of steel and glass.
"I don't have to get you on board to do that." Still the crowd didn't move. Chan moved up beside Mary and shouted.
"We have injured, and no food, water, or shelter. Will you garuntee us that?"
Inside his mecha, Kashick considered blasting the micronians, stomping them, or just running off with an incoherent scream. He could certainly plead combat fatigue. They had no guns, no mecha and here they were trying to set conditions? The only thing they had going for them was the terrible things Korva would do to him if he couldn't bring them back and they couldn't know about that… could they?
"Well?" The micronian asked. Then on Kashick's command frequency a voice broke in…a female voice from the base.
"Haven't you got those prisoners loaded yet? You've had almost twenty minutes and we would like to use those pods for other things…." Kashick ground his teeth and finally flicked on his external speakers.
"Yes!" Kashick bellowed, "You will be provided food, water and care so now get on the pods!" He had no idea how those hasty words would change…everything. The crowd slowly, unwillingly, moved into the pods, directed by pointed fingers, only moving because there was no other alternative—even to escape was to insure death, if deferred. But there were others who had listened, who remained hidden in some of the buildings. Kaschick's sensors picked a few of them up, but he had been ordered to "get micronians", not get "All" micronians. These would have to do.
"Morn."
"Sir?"
"Start getting any examples of micronian equipment—vehicles, anything like that for Korva.
"In this weath-can't it wait until-"
"Khyron, Transfer to, Morn."
"Yes sir."
The walls of the encampment were rising rapidly, Korva noted with approval. Large engineering units had been set up, taking in soil, rocks, and rubble and converting it into a variety of shaped ceramic materials, courtesy of the fusion furnaces in their gut—not just that, but in several areas, engineering teams were playing a spray of vaporized ceramic over blocks or slopes forming a surface the way a painter might paint a barracks. That was being done for the secondary walls, but the main walls were all getting the purpose formed ceramic blocks, linked together and sealed with molten ceramic. They would laugh at anything short of heavy weaponry—not that most advanced enemies would ever try to just come over the wall… although there had been those odd water breathers on Axa IV, but than, they hadn't had much practice at ground combat.
Korva's data pad bleeped, and he looked at it. An even dozen "most urgent" messages waited for him, mostly from the females. He looked at them, frowned, deleted nine of them, from those who had proven to be masters of asking such brilliant questions as "could he let them know when it would stop raining…" repeatedly. They weren't dumb, but mistrust of males and a lack of experience on a planetary surface hadn't made them easy to work with. The others he quickly answered, as however prickly they might be, Tzarna, and Zara were both intelligent and not given to wasting time.
"Korva, this is command." Shygon's voice came into his earmike.
"Yes Shygon?"
"Kashick is returning—he has several hundred micronians, as well as examples of technology—much of it damaged." Korva nodded.
"Only to be expected—no doubt their best equipment was widely dispersed."
"He also states that none of them appear to be…soldiers."
"none?"
"One fired on them with a small chemical weapon…but Kashick believes that confirms his opinion—even a poor soldier would have recognized the futility… also, the micronians are of different sizes…"
"Hmmm…. Intelligence fails again… I am…quite surprised." The two shared a chuckle.
"Very well, are their quarters ready?"
"Yes—and Tzarna is already making noises about how much damage they could do running around loose."
"What about Commander Sharin?"
"She expresses satisfaction in our preparations." Korva grinned. Shygon wasn't overly happy about Sharin's place of command, but he could find no reasonable grounds to object.
"Than I am satisfied as well. I'll be there momentarily."
Mary and the children were sitting in a gigantic infantry compartment, with the other humans. Around them, sitting in seats were the robots that had taken them, while a ladder led to a compartment above, where she could see some other creatures, that looked like gigantic blue skinned humans.
"Base control, we are approaching on landing pattern Delos Five-Aleph."
"Confirm, IFF reads friendly, cleared landing." The two re-entry pods landed, themselves dwarfed by the vast ships scattered around the base, touching down in top of the main top elevator hatch of the Tal Vergnitz. Inside, there were more mecha standing ready, with dozens of soldiers holding emptied tool boxes for prisoner transport. Tzarna had argued against letting them into the ship, but Sharin had believed an external transfer, between the chaos of the construction and the rain, might well make it easier for them to escape. They would be loaded into the transports, then carried to the external building, linked by a dry (and sensor covered) access way. This time, Kashick had his language settings right.
"Micronians! Move into the provided containers. Resistance will be harshly dealt with!"
"What about the food and water?" someone shouted. Kashick began to swell up, but then Sharin and Korva were walking up.
Mary looked around the lit chamber, vast beyond comprehension with more of the aliens, all colors and both sexes, walking around, working on machinery, looking at them, pointing guns at them…. And two, one gigantic, even for the alien, and the other a woman who if she was human sized would have been both shapely and petite.
"Food and care will be provided for you." The woman said, her voice being repeated their language by speakers.
"Are you going to kill us?" A woman asked, cowering in her husbands arms. For some reason, Mary could have sworn that the alien woman swallowed at the sight and turned a little pale, but her voice was still calm.
They're holding each other like that singing harridan did the male and- Sharin rallied. This time, they had no fleet of traitors to take advantage of the strange effect they had on zentraedi.
"No. I am going to ask you questions. If you attempt to escape, or damage the ships, then yes, I will kill you, but if not, there would be no purpose served to it."
"Are we slaves?" Another person asked. Sharin tapped her earpiece.
"That word you used, 'slaves' did not properly translate….are you asking will you be compensated?"
"Are we free?" Now Sharin was completely confused. To be free of rank meant to be rankless—less than nothing, a creature to be slain out of hand. Not even new decants were rankless. It had to be a glitch in the computer software.
"I am having a problem understanding your requests." She said, "But I swear that no harm shall come to you while you cooperate."
"Who won?" Someone else asked, and now several zentraedi were tensing. Sharin shook her head.
"Nobody. Your forces decimated the Grand Fleet, but have also been decimated. We have seen no signs of organization beyond our own base." She nodded to the soldiers, and they placed the containers down, and the micronians evidently believing that they'd pushed their luck enough for one day, obediently entered them.
"Was that wise?" Korva asked. "Showing our weakness?"
"If any of them have any knowledge of events at all, they must know of the blows landed against us—and their own eyes will have shown them that their own forces suffered as heavily." Sharin said. "Since the truth is so apparent, why lie…and it may lessen their desires to escape."
"Ah. Clever." Korva said, "Now I remember why I stayed in ground combat and engineering."
"Oh?"
"I enjoy physical problems—command staff politics make my head hurt." Sharin shook her head at that. Most zentraedi were expected to be aggressive and ambitious, the better to serve the masters, but ground combat commands were regarded as something of a dead end—occupation jobs where you put those zentraedi you couldn't trust on the important assignments.
Or perhaps where you put those zentraedi who just wanted to get the job done, she now thought.
"So, what are our plans for them?" Korva continued.
"The research staff will run tests on them." Sharin replied. Every flagship had a small research section—even after thousands of years, the Robotech Masters hadn't discovered everything, and more than one ship had been depopulated by something that looked "harmless enough". "And we'll question them—we need all resources Korva, and Micronians count as part of those resources… you'll be in charge of the micronian technology, of course." Korva grinned at the thought.
"I thank you—hopefully we'll be able to see if any of their technology can make our lives, better."
"Hopefully so, Korva." Sharin said. Her data pad squawked and she looked down at it. "How surprising, a dispute… over…. " She sighed, "quarters."
"At least they're over their shock enough to complain about quarters."
"I wonder if they will consider that good once I get done with them." Sharin said, eyes glittering. Korva laughed.
"Maybe not, commander, but I do…. Good hunting."
"And you as well, commander."
To be Continued.