Robotech II: The Sentinels

Rebirth

Chapter 2

I Know A Guy

"The secret…is not intelligence, though of course that helps. It is not hard work or experience, though they help, too. The secret…is having smart friends." –Ron Avitzur

"Excuse me," Jack said to the palace guard at the entrance.

"Good morning, Lieutenant Baker! How can I help you?" the guard asked.

Jack took a good look at the guard, it was hard to tell with the helmet completely covering her hair, but he was pretty sure he'd never met her before.
"I was wondering if I could talk to Bela. I'm afraid I don't have an appointment but it shouldn't take long," Jack said.

"Let me see what I can do," she said and walked over to the communications stations. One of the other guards walked over and whispered to her, they both glanced at Jack and giggled.

The guard walked back to Jack and motioned for him to follow her.

"The mistress is eating first-meal, but she said she'd be more than happy to meet you in her bed chamber," the guard said.

"Bed chamber?!" Jack said.

"An informal location for an informal meeting!" the guard said with a smile.

Jack supposed that to a race that didn't sexually reproduce the implications of a man and woman meeting in a bedchamber wouldn't be obvious.

Bela's bedchamber was as large as the conference room he'd attended Exedore's briefing in the previous day. The ceiling was painted with a blue mural of naked amazons fighting sea creatures. Everything in the room was blue, even the four-poster bed which could easily sleep four abreast.

Bela was eating on the balcony, she had many plates arrayed around her filled with poultry, red meat, dumplings, breads, fruit and vegetables, which she was washing down with ruby-colored liquor from a crystal goblet.

"Jack! Please, come and sit down. Can I get you anything?" Bela said.

"No thanks, I already had…" Jack realized that he hadn't even eaten half his breakfast.

He pointed to one of the glazed rolls that reminded him of donuts."One of those might be nice."

Bela picked it up and threw it at him, luckily his reflexes allowed him to catch it before it hit him in the face.

He took a bite into it and quickly wished he hadn't; the glaze tasted like window cleaner, and the filling was some sort of meat paste. He swallowed the bite but quickly put the roll aside.

"You know I was wondering, how come you never paint your face?" Bela said.

Jack stared at her blankly. "I'm sorry?"

"Some of your fellow soldiers do, like Karen. I think she told Gnea it was called makeup," Bela said.

"Oh! Ummm, well usually only women use makeup," Jack said.

"It would make your features look more prominent, increase your attractiveness. We use warpaint when we go into battle to make us look fearsome, it had never occurred to us to use it for social reasons as well," Bela said.

"I'll take that under advisement," Jack said.

"You've become something of a legend around the palace," Bela said, changing the subject. "Apparently you drank three steins of cneohtubodig, yet you still live and can even carry on a conversation!"

Jack's eyes widened. "You know about that?"

"It's been all over the city; our people admire those who can hold their liquor. It is indicative of great endurance," Bela said.

Why hadn't the people spreading the story mentioned Janice giving him the oxy-pills though? He really didn't deserve that kind of reverence… but on the other hand, that sort of reverence might just be what he needed for what he was about to ask.

"Listen, I needed to ask you about something which is very important to our mission here," Jack said.

"Of course! Anything I can do to help," Bela said.

"Gnea told me the history of your people last night. She mentioned that your children come from a place called the Wazoo," Jack said.

"That's Whasshi," Bela corrected.

"Right, of course. Now Gnea mentioned that the Whaashi was just to the north of this city," Jack said.

"In planetary terms that would be correct, but it's about 500 miles north of here," Bela said, she looked a little uncomfortable. "We don't really talk about the sacred place with outsiders."

Jack placed both of his palms flat on the table, looked Bela in the eye, and took a deep breath. "The Whaashi is under Invid control, isn't it?"

Bela immediately looked away. It was! Jack knew it!

"And the reason the other cities won't side with us is not because they respect the Invid as victors, but because they control the Whaashi. In effect, the Regees has your children. Am I correct?" Jack said.

Bela finally met his gaze. "Yes, everything you've said is correct."

"Why didn't you tell us about this? All we have to do is liberate the Whaashi and we liberate the planet!" Jack said.

"Because the Whaashi is a sacred place, and if it's damaged, there's no way to replace it. Only Hayden and his crew understood how the Whaashi worked; if it was destroyed, we could never place it," Bela said.

"We could be careful, we could do a surgical strike–" Jack said.

"No, it's too dangerous. You heard what Colonel Wolfe suggested yesterday. I trust Admiral Hayes and all the rest as much as anyone; but this is not your world. The Sentinels need Praxis to be freed so they can liberate the other worlds. If destroying the Whaashi is the fastest way to do that, they will take it," Bela said.

Jack was about to contradict her, but then thought about Colonel Wolfe and what it had been like serving under him. There was something… wrong with Jonathan Wolfe. Jack had seen him manipulate people, and had been manipulated by him. The REF and the Zentraedi treated Wolfe as a war hero because of his actions during the uprisings, but then again Jack had heard about the firebombing of Caracas, a city where 500 Zentraedi giants held a population of millions hostage. Wolfe probably was the sort of person who would destroy the Whaashi if he knew about it.

"You can't tell your superiors about this, Jack," Bela said.

"But–" Jack started.

"I'm serious, Jack. If you were anyone else, I would kill you right here to keep the secret. But you are a person of character… and endurance. I know you'll keep your word," Bela said.

"All right," he said with a nod. "I mean, we're a rebel army after all, and it isn't like I haven't lied to my superiors before."

Jack was centered in the reticle as he walked past the palace guard. The grid zoomed in so that his head was perfectly centered. Click. Click. Click. Click.

Sue Graham looked over the top of her camera at the palace entrance. She was kneeling next to the basin of a large fountain across the street; the guards hadn't seen her or didn't care.

Sue followed him through her viewfinder, snapping pictures each second as he straddled his flashclapper and took off.

Sue rushed to her Jeep and within two minutes had caught up with the young Lieutenant. She followed him for ten miles through Praxian traffic, which had different laws and consisted of everything from armored transports to pack animals. Eventually Jack drove into the garage door which lead into the main base's motor pool.

Sue frowned; this was supposed to be Jack's day off. His schedule might have changed, which could also indicate a reassignment. She'd had to press her sources for more information.

Jack had become an obsession of hers ever since they'd landed on Praxis. It was now much harder to get access to the Hunters since they saw the kind of stories she wrote about them. The inimitable Jack Baker was almost as good though, he'd become something of a celebrity both in the fleet and back on Tirol. Everyone liked a rebel with a heart of gold, and Jack seemed to fit the bill.

The problem was that ever since they landed on Praxis he had behaved himself. The most interesting story she had in months was his drinking escapades, wherein he drank more than the Praxian queen was reportedly capable of keeping down. (She'd exaggerated, of course, saying that Jack had drunk five steinfuls instead of three. Who really cared about the facts, anyway?)

She didn't know how she'd spin this story though. What kind of maverick goes into work on his day off? Nothing he could be doing in there could possibly be interesting to her readers.

Sue sighed and waited for him to come out.

Jack had to dodge a body as he walked into the gymnasium. He turned to look at the man in REF warmup clothes who had just smashed into the padded wall.

"You okay pal?" he asked the dazed man.

"Yeah… Third time's the charm…" the recruit said.

Jack helped him to his feet and walked with him to where Gnea and her students were standing.

"Ah, Jack!" Gnea said. "Will you join me for a couple of tumbles?" Gnea said.

Jack snickered to himself, but quickly wiped the stupid grin off his face. "I was wondering if I could talk to you after you're done."

"Of course. All right, you two," she said, pointing to two of the REF recruits; one of them male, the other female "Come at me."

"Do we have to?" the female one said.

"Now!" Gnea shouted.

It wasn't as brutal as Jack had expected, though that was probably because the recruits seemed to be very experienced. The female grabbed Gnea in a bearhug from behind while the male recruit expertly dodged all of Gnea's lunges.

Jack wondered if they might actually take Gnea down; he thought that the female was trying to suplex Gena, but might not have had the strength.

Suddenly the tide shifted; Gnea dropped to all fours and did a flip which resulted in her butt-slamming the female recruit with a very audible crack of breaking bone.

The male recruit turned white as a sheet, turned and ran out of the gymnasium.

"I'm going to tell your C.O., you rank coward!" Gnea shouted after him.

Gnea got off the female recruit, who began howling in pain. Gnea motioned to one of the recruits. "Get a medic." She motioned to another. "Get me a towel. The rest of you can get out of here, we're done for the day."

As she was toweling off she walked over to Jack. "I'm going to take a shower, you want to join me?"

Every cell in Jack's body vibrated in excitement, but quickly died down. He had to keep cultural differences in mind. "Nah, I've already showered this morning."

"Very well," Gnea said.

Two medics in white coats rushed between them.

"By the way in most human societies males and females usually don't bathe together," Jack said.

"How very strange," Gnea said. "You humans have many… what did Karen call them…. Hang-ups!"

"I suppose we do," Jack said.

Gnea slapped Jack on the ass and walked into the locker room.

Jack watched the medics bandaging the female recruit and getting her onto a gurney. She stared at Jack in a painkiller-induced haze. Jack waved stupidly.

Three minutes later Gnea came out of the locker room, all clean and in her revealing Praxian street clothes instead of her REF uniform.

Praxian showers frightened Jack. They consisted of rubbing your entire body with a cleaning gel (there was a different gel for your hair) and you were then blasted with a 30 second stream of water; basically like being sprayed with a firehouse. Jack was warned to keep his mouth shut lest some of his teeth be knocked out. REF engineers have fixed all the showers in the barracks so they worked like Earth showers, but some of the soldiers (Karen included) preferred the efficiency of the Praxian shower.

"Is there somewhere private we can talk?" Jack asked.

Gnea motioned with her chin to the far side of the gymnasium, where six members of the Wolfe's Pack were playing basketball. "There's something you don't want them to hear?"

"Yes, actually," Jack said.

"All right then, this way," Gnea said.

She led him down a hallway and into a double-doored room. The room wasn't air-conditioned like the rest of the complex, and it was filled with folded up floor mats and other gym equipment.

Jack pulled a folder from his attache case and laid it on the ersatz table that a pile of gym mats created. He opened it up and spread out the surveillance photos that were inside. He silently motioned for Gnea to look at them. She was confused at first, but then there was a sharp intake of breath that she tried to hide.

"Recognize it?" Jack said.

The photos were of a forested area about 500 miles to the north. This specific section showed several mountain paths and what looked like a stone temple with Invid Enforcers standing guard at the four compass points.

"Why are you showing me this? Bela is the one you should be talking to," Gnea said.

"I did talk to her, and she said that I wasn't to tell any of my superiors about this; and I haven't," Jack said.

"I'm afraid I'm confused; why are you showing me this?" Gnea said.

"Because I can free the Whaashi and keep it safe, but I need your help," Jack said.

"Any mecha attack would risk destroying the temple!" Gnea said.

"Then we won't use mecha," Jack said. "There are ways to take an installation without damaging it. On my world it's a problem which has been studied for thousands of years, and we've gotten pretty good at it."

Gnea snorted. "There are people on my world who think the same; they are exiled as cowards. Stealth and infiltration are not honorable."

"I've discovered that the word 'honor' is used to justify anything that goes against reason," Jack said.

Gnea gave him a dirty look.

"So what, you get down into the dirt and get a little dirty, isn't a little dishonor a small price to pay for freeing your world?" Jack said.

"Even if you could free the Whaashi by your underhanded methods, the Regees would never let you hold it. She'd rather destroy it, and there's no way we could stop that from happening," Gnea said. "Why are you smirking like that?"

"I know just the man for that job," Jack said.

In a relatively quiet corner of the otherwise busy hangar, Rem sat in the shadow of a colossus that was his bioroid. The blue giant had come with him from Tirol and had served him well in the Karbarra campaign. Deep in the control center of the Invid's operations he had fought hand-to-hand with an elite Enforcer that had ripped his beloved machine limb from limb in its death throes.

There hadn't been enough spare parts to replace it, but Colonel Wolfe had assembled a replacement Hovertank from spare parts, allowing him to resume his place in the Wolfe Pack. General Hunter had originally wanted his prowess in Eagle Squadron, the red-headed stepchild of the Aerospace Corps, but his simulator scores with both Alphas and Betas were so poor that he was allowed to stay with the Wolfe Pack.

Rem was a natural with learning new machines, but nothing he'd piloted had matched the finesse of a Bioroid. When he was suspended in the control orb he became the Bioroid; the visual and audio information was sent directly to his brain, without having to go through his eyes and ears; his movements went directly to the Bioroid's hands and limbs without having to go through his own. As such he saw and heard better and had better reflexes than in real life. After that his own body was a disappointment.

Whenever he felt that sense of loss he would come here and sit before the giant broken Bioroid and grieve. It was during one of these moping sessions that Jack and Gnea found him.

"Why are you sitting here staring at a pile of junk?" Gnea said.

"Why don't you leave me alone?" Rem replied, not looking at them.

"Manners, Gnea," Jack said.

"Oh, ummmm, it's a very nice pile of junk," Gnea tried.

"It seems I'm not going to get any peace," Rem said, jumping to his feet. "What do you want?"

"Okay, you remember that giant force field that the Invid put over Tiresia so we couldn't get into it?" Jack asked. On Rem's look he continued: "All right, stupid question. Now I know the generator is in one of Lang's labs back on Tirol, but I heard that the STC found several of them on Karbarra."

"That's right, we found three of them. One of them was protecting the bunker where the Invid Brain was located, we had to use explosives to tunnel under," Rem said.

"It's very important that we get our hands on one of them," Jack said.

"That's impossible, even if you had a requisition request from Admiral Hayes herself, we disassembled all of them for study," Rem said.

"Ah, but I know a clever guy like you would be able to rebuild one of them easily," Jack said.

"I admit I could, but why would I want to?" Rem said.

"Because I've come up with a plan to free the Whaashi, and we need to be able to protect it once we've driven the Invid out," Jack said.

Rem started; he opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it, he looked pensive for several moments, obviously thinking things through.

"I'll need to get the parts list from the CAD drawings we created for it, then requisition all the parts," Rem said. "I'll need approval from General Hunter, of course. I'm assuming that's who's ordering this."

"Let's say that he doesn't know anything about this. Can't you just take them from the warehouse when no one is looking?" Jack asked.

Rem shook his head. "I don't know where all the parts are, we need the SRM to find and retrieve all of them. Those machines also do daily tallies of the inventory, so they know if a piece was missing. Why don't you want General Hunter to know about this?" Rem said.

Jack explained himself; but when he began to defend his decision, Rem cut him off.

"You don't need to convince me. I do know a way that I can get the requisition without anybody else knowing about it," Rem said.

"How are you going to do that?" Jack said.

"I know just the person," Rem said.

Jack and his slowly growing splinter cell met up with Janice in the canteen. Her purple hair was pulled into a ponytail. For some reason she was still wearing the headset from her job in the communications center.

"Why are you still wearing that? If you're trying to bug this meeting you could have been a little more subtle," Jack said.

"All the girls in the comm center do it, it's a habit they picked up in their days in the RDF. We wear this every time we're in uniform to show that we're always connected," Janice said, then shrugged. "I think it's more a fashion thing than anything else."

"I really don't see that catching on," Jack said.

"Why are you afraid of me bugging this conversation?" Janice asked.

"Because we're going to ask you to do some very illegal things," Jack said.

"We're a rebel army, everything we do is illegal to someone," Janice replied.

"Touche," Jack said.

"What's going on?" Janice asked.

Jack took a deep breath, and for the third time that day recited the thumbnail sketch of the idea he had for liberating Praxis.

"And what do you need from me?" Janice said.

Wow, Jack thought, right to the point.

"There's a lot of stuff that's going to pop up in the system that we need you to hide. Inventory, acquisitions, flight plans, recon data…" Jack said. "I know it sounds like a bit much, but–"

"No problem," Janice said. "I got you."

"With Janice onboard I think it's about time we, as your people say, discuss chicken," Gnea said.

"What?" Jack said blankly.

"Talk turkey," Janice automatically translated.

"Yes, talk the turkey," Gnea said. "You say you have a plan for freeing the Whaashi, but you haven't gone into detail."

"That's because I just have the idea, I don't have the skill to implement it," Jack said.

Jack, Rem and Janice all groaned.

"Hey, don't worry, I know someone who does!" Jack said.

"Are you out of your god damn mind?" Karen said.

"No," Jack replied defensively.

"Really? Let me just reiterate what you told me. You managed to discover an important strategic fact, which somehow managed to elude all of our military intelligence officers–"

"Well, you know what Grucho Marx said about military intelligence," Jack started.

Karen ignored him. "This knowledge is paradigm changing: it not only explains our inability to make progress in our campaign, but suggests an obvious solution to changing that.

"But instead of taking this knowledge to our superiors, you start to assemble a ragtag gang of misfits to liberate a fortified installation on your own."

"Hey, I think I'm pretty well-adjusted," Janice said.

"Me too," Rem replied. "I was the top of my class."

"I have the respect of my fellow warriors and even teach," Gnea said.

"I made a promise to Bela not to disclose this information to my superiors," Jack said. "I intend to honor that promise."

"We're not fucking Samurai, Jack!" Karen shouted.

Gnea and Rem exchanged confused looks.

"Well, if you intend to tell Admiral Hayes about this, I'm a dead man. In fact Gnea will kill me where I stand," Jack said.

"Oh, yes, absolutely," Gnea said, a little unconvincing. "And then I'd have to kill you, and General Hunter, and Admiral Hayes and even," she said the next bit with relish "Colonel Wolfe."

"And we don't know how fortified the installation is, in fact that's one of the reasons we need you, you need you to fly a recon mission over the Whaashi and let us know how well defended it is," Jack said.

Karen stared at Jack for several moments "Jack, are you wearing makeup?"

Janice chortled. "Oh my god, he totally is!"

"Why are you laughing? War paint is to make someone look intimidating," Bela said. "If Jack needs to convince people to come to his side, he needs to convince them that he's a formidable warrior."

"That's… That's exactly it," Jack said."It was something Bela suggested to me earlier."

Karen let out a long sigh and paced around the empty locker room where they were having their ad hoc council of war. Her eyes watered slightly from the strong smell of chlorine from the pool water.

"I can understand you not wanting to bring Wolfe in on this, or even Admiral Hayes or General Hunter. It would be much easier to destroy the Whasshi and rely on the Praxians feelings of vengeance to defeat the Invid," Karen said.

"How dare you!" Gnea said.

"I'm only speaking hypothetically," Karen said.

"Hypothetically speaking, I can remove all of your limbs and head with three strokes of my blade!" Gnea said.

"There's no need for threats," Karen said.

"Three?" Jack asked. He and Rem glanced at each other. Rem shrugged.

"What if I take this to Colonel Parino? We might be able to do it with Red Squadron," Karen said.

"She is a Zentraedi, she will always follow the chain of command," Gnea said.

"I heard she was actually quite a hellion back in her days under Azonia," Karen said. "She actually volunteered to be micronized as a spy on the SDF-1 so she could find and kill the pilot who bested her."

"Truly?" Gnea said. "That's fascinating. How exactly did they become betrothed?"

"Look, this is all very fascinating, but the truth is that if you want to liberate an installation, you don't shell the damn thing from 10,000 feet," Jack said,

"They could do it in Battoloid or GERWALK mode," Karen said.

"But in terms of accuracy the Hovertanks would be better, and we obviously can't tell Wolfe about this," Jack said.

"I thought that mode was called 'guardian'," Rem said to Janice.

"That's the nickname the pilots gave it during the First Robotech War. GERWALK was too much of a mouthful, I think," Janice said.

"Mecha isn't the answer, we have to do this commando style, and I don't mean without underwear," Jack said.

Rem, Gnea and even Janice exchanged confused looks.

"And that's why we need you, Karen," Jack said.

"What?" Karen asked.

"I'm impulsive and a mecha jock, for this we need someone who actually paid attention at the Academy. I came up with the idea, but to actually pull it off we need your strategic skills," Jack said.

"But I'm a mecha jock, just like you," Karen said.

"You've beaten me every time we've played Risk," Jack said. "If anyone can do it I know that you can."

Karen let out another long sigh and stared off into the distance.

"I can't just fly off on my own and do that recon flight. I need a specially fitted Alpha for recon work–" Karen said.

"I can take care of that," Janice said.

"And I need a flight plan, and General Hunter handles those himself," Karen said.

"And I'm his secretary," Jack said. "I can swing that."

"I'll do it on one condition: if your way ends up being infeasible, we need to take this to Admiral Hayes," Karen said.

"But I told Bela-" Jack said.

"I'll talk to her, make her see reason," Karen said.

"Okay, but you have to give my plan your best shot," Jack said.

Karen nodded. "All right, I'm in," Karen said.

Jack stuck his hand out, after a moment Karen did the same. Janice and the other, somewhat confused, followed suit, forming a good old-fashioned hand-stack.

"All for one, and one for all!" Jack said.

It was almost dusk when Jack left HQ, and there were four figures trailing him. Sue Graham shot as many pictures as possible. When she got back to her quarters she pulled them up on her computer terminal and enhanced them.

His four companions consisted of Lieutenant Penn (there was gossip that they were an item), the strange blue-haired scientist from Tirol, the vocalist turned soldier who had dueted with Minmei at the Hunter-Hayes wedding, and a Praxian she didn't recognize in an REF uniform.

Sue rubbed her chin; what a motley crew this was. What could they possibly be up to?