Mission Day 2:
On waking, the first thing Scott did was contact the ship's stores, and make sure that all of the overnight guests, including those that barely slept, got changes of clothes. As a matter of protocol, only he, Breetai and Gloval would be in uniform for breakfast, as commanders of their respective forces. Only Exedore had took up the offer of medical treatment overnight, but that was mostly due to Zentraedi fleet regulations concerning disorientation and health issues if you use a chamber too quickly in succession - a flaw that was corrected in the versions designed by Lang, Cabell and Nichols in the 2030s. The current chamber designs were Alex and Noel's modifications from those designs, and surpassed even the grandest designs of the Robotech Masters in scope and possibility - hence, the concerns about making them too easily accessible to persons of lesser conviction.
After placing the clothes orders, and getting his mind back off of chamber technology, he went to check on the children's bedrooms. As usual, despite having separate beds, and insisting that they needed them, the two girls ended up sharing the same bed by morning. Eventually, as they became closer to being teens, they'd probably break the habit; in that regard, it was good that they aged barely different than normal children. In the other room, Steven was asleep, cuddling a Karbarran-style giant teddy bear. Despite not yet being three, he looked closer to eight or nine, and his angelic sleeping face hid the fact that he was easily one of the most powerful child psychics, and was always getting into mischievous situations when not kept on a short leash. The only others on his power level among the minors were his cousin Catherine, and possibly Minmei's youngest; little Karen hadn't been formally tested yet. He hoped that those kids would show a bit more self-restraint than his eldest niece did.
Suddenly, he felt Marie's arms slip around him from behind. He thought she was still in bed, asleep, but she had always been good at sneaking around.
"Scott, I've been meaning to tell you something," she whispered.
"Warn a guy, will you? I could have woke up the kids."
"Well, one of our children isn't asleep; in fact, she woke me up."
"Huh?"
"Our newest one; surprise, hun; we're having another baby. And, don't give me that look - you know as well as I do that it wasn't really the dimensional fold that caused Karen; it just put Kayra where Zor could create Karen more easily, without Haydon realizing what was going on."
"So, how long do we have?"
"About five or six months; Noel says this baby's most likely the same power level as our first two girls, so that's not going to be an issue either. Hopefully, we'll get back home before she's born; after all, since we're not guaranteed to arrive home with the same amount of time having passed there as we've spent out exploring, just how would we record her birthday?"
"Good point. I'll try to help out with that, but do remember that crazy cousin of yours is the one that pre-programmed this trip, and not even Louie wants to mess with that. Now, how about joining me for a shower?"
"That sounds tempting... so, let's get started before these three wake up too..."
Most of what was being referred to already by the locals as "The Day After" consisted of further rescue and salvage operations on the SDF-2, repairs to the SDF-1, and all kinds of relief missions in the city, as the initial salvos from Khyron's ship appeared to randomly target areas of town, just to cause damage was caused in the areas surrounding the crater lake, as the SDF-1 effectively splashed down without helm control after depleting its reserve power in its one shot, and its crash-landing displaced half the water into the surrounding areas of town. In fact, one of the reasons for SDF-1 repairs was that it had landed on the still-incomplete SDF-2 that had been 90% submerged to start with, and the SDF-1 had to be moved, to reach some of the areas that had trapped people. The canal system that had been dug to connect the city's lakes to the Missouri river system for barge traffic had backflowed to refill the crater, and in doing so many cargo barges had got drawn into and sunk in the crater, complicating everything with the potentially volatile mix of the sunken cargoes.
The Dreamweaver remained on station near the city, not quite landing due to its massive size, and using the opportunity to stress test the CG lifters and station-keeping repulsors. Occasionally, it would fly over and use its Praxian and Perytonian tech tractor technology to pull barges and other debris out of the crater, or receive an emergency medical flight. Scott more than once found himself wishing that they'd found one of the Roddenberry-inspired universes first, so they could have acquired their matter transporter technology, as it would have made the rescue and recovery of personnel over in an hour, not still going into its second day. Then again, depending on the time frame of the contact, he might have just been tempted to fire the main guns into a Federation council meeting, steal their tech, and leave.
As most of Louie's on-ship responsibilities were either related to space and dimension travel, or supervisory, he had took it on himself to start using the ship's fabricators to make parts for the two wrecks below. Interestingly, his first items readied were new fold drives for both, using his technology, and taking up less than half the space that the SDF-1's missing unit occupied. As to why he made those, when the ships wouldn't be spaceworthy for weeks, he pointed out that they'd probably want to intercept the Masters while they were still within a year's travel from their departure point, and that, unlike nearly every other part, he didn't have to wait for the specifications needed to patch in the new segments - the SDF-1's drive was gone, and the SDF-2 had been a month from having its drive installed in space (a drive design that, after seven years of modifications, would have been in the SDF-3, and caused all the time-dilation headaches of that mission, that not even the transplanted Zentraedi drives of the colony fleets had).
Scott made sure to reinforce to Gloval and Hayes that he'd keep his ship here, and even go on that mission with them, when the time came. After all, getting to the Masters would be the difficult part, and both Dana and Noel had already been in that control room (which was the same on all the vessels). Zor had, too, but besides the fact that he'd been running in a red haze of vengeance at the time, and not really aware of his surroundings until shocked out of it by Dana, he couldn't teleport.
The plan was to use the three ships' fold systems to get in front of the Masters' ships, which were not using fold engines due to their Protoculture shortage. The Masters would of course pick up the ships on sensors, and recognize the SDF-1 from the Zentraedi reports on the Earth rebuild of Zor's ship. As Zor's ship is their only reason for even being in transit, they'd stop and try to posture. The Dreamweaver's three high-powered psychics (Aurora, Dana and Noel) would be waiting in a cloaked Horizon special ops variant, all three in Cyclones, with a select squad of Cyclone troopers - all of which were Zentraedi or Tiresian. They'd ascertain which of the vessels was the current command ship, board via the bridge's dedicated hangar (which besides the personal craft of the command Triads, also held the escape pod launch equipment that Dana had been ejected with in 2030) after bypassing the alarms, then storm the command center. The three ladies would grab the Master triad, and teleport them back to the Dreamweaver directly as a show of force to their targets, while their escorts would take and hold the remaining sub-commanders, using the "shock factor" of the exfiltration method of the Masters, as well as their own origins, as a means of getting the fleet to stand down.
Of course, the execution of the plan would have to wait until after repairs were done, and there were several weeks of where, besides the usual progress reports and paperwork, the involved command parties had little to do, but talk to Scott and others about the fate they'd just averted, and other trivia.
5 February 2014 (local date)
(Arrival +5 weeks)
"So, tell me why we're using our new, untested, fold engines to transport the three ships to stop the Masters, when you've done full field trials on your fold systems before your first dimensional jump?" Admiral Gloval asked.
He, Scott, Lisa and Exedore were sitting around the main meeting room of the Dreamweaver, the top section of what had once been the command bubble of the Zentraedi ship Korra'ti. It, like the bridge several floor partitions down, had a panoramic view of the park area that was once the full bridge of the ship, and the video screens that still floated above it.
"Because your fold systems are programmed by Emil and Louie; ours have a set of programmed jumps that we didn't program, for cross-dimensional jumps. Jumps that we're not sure we could bypass, even for local fold jumps. It's better to be safe than sorry."
"That imp of a niece of yours, correct?"
"Yes; Louie was quite perturbed when he showed up in the engine room the morning of launch, and found out that not only had she locked in those jumps, she'd done a system upgrade."
"If he's anything like Emil, I can imagine how well he took it."
"Actually, after working with Emil for a decade, Emil's mellowed him out considerably. Back when Louie was just a hovertank driver with a penchant for tinkering every second he wasn't in combat, he developed a new targeting system that he used for a simulator game. A couple of R&D guys saw it, recognized its potential as a new interface between the helmet systems and the aiming controls, and decided to put it into production on a rush basis, for the mecha to be used in the attempted boarding of a Masters' ship. Of course, they lied to him, and told it they just wanted it for training simulators - he was a very naive geek at the time.
When he found out, he attempted to destroy every mecha in his unit, starting with his own. The others had to pull him off, and convince him that the fact that the system targeted the Bioroid pilots, was actually a mercy killing for the semi-sentient clones, as well as for the repeatedly killed-and-cloned leader pilots. And they literally had to step in front of his plasma torch to do it. He REALLY doesn't like people lying to him, or doing things with his tech without permission."
"Since we might have to face them, why were the Bioroids so lacking in soft-kill vulnerabilities? Dana told me that on occasion, the Masters would mind-control their dissidents or even captured civilians, and turn them into pilots."
"The cockpit was the only weak point, since practically every weapon in the Southern Cross inventory by that point was an energy weapon or a kinetic penetrator, and the armor of the Bioroids was strong against kinetics and near-immune to energy. The only vulnerability was to non-directed contact explosions producing concussion effects through the armor matrix. In other words, a HEAT round's plasma jet, or a fragmentation warhead going off with a proximity fuse, would be just as useless as the other weapons, when used on a Bioroid. It had to be a standard, not anti-armor, HE round, and having it go off in contact with the armor, as to send shock waves through multiple areas of the crystalline structure from the large footprint of such a round, disrupting the very structure of the armor. It was a very efficient design for a high-tech mecha, as every high-tech society typically abandons such primitive warheads long before reaching interstellar travel capability. Ironically, it would have been a very different story had the Southern Cross had its originally-intended mecha, instead of going its own way after Edwards stole those mecha to up-arm the REF mission to Tyrol."
. "How does one 'steal' the mecha of a military force?"
"It was the result of a combination of corruption, a poorly worded delegation of authority, and a desire by some of those on the side of the 'victim' to deliberately foment hatred and distrust of the REF.
"The mission consisted of two sections; the first was the REF itself, which was a military transport and defense force, commanded by Rick, with Lisa as the higher rank, but technically subordinate, captain of the SDF-3. The other element was civilian; a council made up of a select group of elected and appointed officials acting as ambassadors in charge of a diplomatic corps, with Emil as the supervisor, given his having the greatest knowledge of the destination based on his study of Zor's computer. He also doubled as the chief engineer for the fold systems, since that was expected to be a position that would only be an issue before and after any diplomatic role.
"Almost half the council were political hacks, who only went on the mission from it offering a more opulent lifestyle than staying at home, and giving a prestige they hoped they could use after coming home as a springboard into the prime minister chair. As such, they also had ties, active or dormant, to those that had backed the Southern Cross' merger into the RDF."
"How did such a small group in the south, become so powerful? We know now that they attacked Khyron's base of operations hours before Khyron showed up here, and were shocked to find out one of the derelicts was flying off, in the distance. Had we given that report more credibility, we might have been prepared."
"Don't be that hard on yourself. Your spies had indicated that Khyron wanted that generator to leave Earth, to return to Masters' space. You even had it rigged to slag itself and send out a hyperspace signal, once the secret package detected whatever ship it was in had defolded successfully. Your analysts - and the Masters, I might add - underestimated the capricious nature of Khyron's mind. It had struck him that you were sitting ducks, and he decided to take a shot at revenge, pardon the pun, before departing - despite orders that he was not to take any action that could accidentally destroy the SDF-1's hidden contents. But, let's get back to the origin of Armies of the Southern Cross.
"The ASC as you know it is a loose association of former UEDC units and local forces that survived Dolza in the Southern Hemisphere. They retain communication and other assets that originally belonged to the UEDC, tied through the Grand Cannon facilities that were under construction in various stages in Africa, Australia and South America. The organization name actually comes from the faction under Colonel Rolf Emerson at the Australian site, but it is the Brazilian faction that will come to dominate, commanded by European Union Brigadier Anatole Leonard, who was the interim commander of the Brazil Cannon site for the construction phase. As such, the facility was about as well defended as Alaska Base was during your debriefing on returning from the misfold.
"The Australian Southern Cross primarily dealt with Indonesian and Indo-Chinese Malcontent threats - frankly, the terrain down under was too hostile even for Zentraedi, and even those that are there, are there by choice, micronized, and loyal to Breetai. The axial shift from Alaska Base's firing will eventually help it return to a climate more like that of the era where the Aboriginals settled it, but that's decades away even with active land reclamation. Emerson is destined to become a close friend of the RDF, and even served as foster parent for Dana, Noel, and Claudia's nephew, Bowie - whose lovely Tiresian wives you have already met.
"Africa's Southern Cross mainly served as a local police force, under a succession of leaders that seemed to change as often as someone could work a transfer to another continent or a commission in the RDF. There were numerous Zentraedi conflicts, but most were at best considered banditry, except for a terrorist nuke used on a meeting of those groups that were assimilating into Terran culture - and even that was done on the orders of a South American Malcontent leader. Eventually, the Neo-Soviets tried to move in and annex the greening Sahara regions that were potentially more fertile than the areas that they were rehabilitating at home, and that led to a massive land war between locals and the Soviets, during which the African ASC stayed as a neutral humanitarian force caught in the middle, for the duration. The Soviets' actions actually managed to do something a half-century of foreign aid, AIDS and the starvation after Dolza's attack had failed to do - unify sub-Saharan Africa beyond the old tribal conflicts.
"But, the Western Hemisphere Southern Cross, if you don't intervene, will quickly devolve into a clusterfuck. A xenophobic religious movement called 'The Chosen' will arise in the next year; hopefully, not to anywhere to the same extent as on my world, because the destruction of New Macross City was seen by The Chosen as a divine act, for its folly of associating itself with Zentraedi. Elements of the movement will start moving into politics north of Patagonia, and into the leadership of the Southern Cross. Eventually, those they couldn't convert, they would get their hooks into other ways, such as blackmail.
"They would also gain allies from some of the less ethical members of Lang's own research unit - specifically, one Lazlo Zand, and his cabal of Protoculture mystics in Monument. That sick bastard needs to be cashiered immediately; and, though I know you all won't do it, I'd recommend executing him as soon as possible. By this time, he's already started with human experiments with Protoculture, including trying to duplicate deliberately the alterations that Zor's 'Eve' AI hit Lang with, back in the 1999 initial penetration. That 'mind boost' is why Lang went from being just one of the greatest minds on Earth, to being a 21st century high-tech da Vinci, as he had the equivalent of a century's scientific and technological advancement downloaded into his mind.
"Zand's attempts will lead to a much darker alteration, as it will tap into the dark machinations if the semi-sentience engineered into the Invid Flower of Life, to drive those consuming it as food or a drug to act in a manner that would further Haydon's plans for godhood. He even knows about little Dana's potential for power, and thinks there's some way to take those latent abilities for himself - he will spend much of the next 4 years trying to get access to her for those mad experiments, In our world, they only stopped by the intervention of Rolf Emerson, whom had become a good friend of the Grants and Sterlings after moving to Monument to be the military liaison between the RDF and the Australasian Sector. He ended up being at the right place at the right time when all of us in Dana's family were occupied by other matters. Noel, which you'd think would be the bigger target, had already scared him off in an earlier encounter - or more accurately, Karen did, before the event that rapid-matured her; and whatever dark voices talked to him, told him that Karen Noel was inconsequential to the grand goal. But, the subject we were discussing was the Southern Cross; let's get back to that.
"The Chosen were, in reality, being manipulated by Zand's cabal, to foment the strife and hatred Zand believed to be necessary to bring out the power he'd been promised by that otherworldly sentience. Unfortunately, they were such tools, that others thought they could be manipulated as well, only to find themselves ensnared in a web of blackmail as the tables were turned on them. Anatole Leonard was one of those. He found himself at a crossroads - his force was becoming more and more xenophobic, yet he was secretly having an affair with a Zentraedi woman. Exedore might be aware of her; Seloy Deparra.
"Seloy was commander of Azonia's second Quadrono squadron, therefore putting her junior only to Miriya; in fact, some say she was the pilot for the insertion of Miriya into the SDF-1. Unlike Miriya and Azonia, after Dolza she jumped at the chance to leave the military chain of command, and attempt to become a civilian. In fact, up to the point of that relationship with Leonard, she'd succeeded even better than Miriya. But, as the ASC became the military government of Brasilia, in the wake of several infrastructure crises, it also became more and more anti-Zentraedi, and it took its toll on their relationship.
"Then, one day, Seloy disappeared. When she reappeared, she had a son, and claimed to Miriya that military goons had kidnapped her, with the intent of killing her once she had the baby, and that she'd escaped. She became one of the leaders of the Zentraedi resistance, of one of the factions that advocated bringing in the RDF to displace the ever-more-corrupt local forces. In fact, she'd called Miriya in to plead her case once more, to show the mistreatment of the Zentraedi at what was supposed to be a food ration distribution point, when things went even more wrong than anyone could possibly imagine."
"A riot?" Lisa asked.
"If only... I wasn't on Earth at the time. It occurred while I was stationed in space, my squadron being considered a bit of a risk from having a Zentraedi pilot - Karen & Noel's mother. Before we had the chance to come back to Earth, we were given the mission that led to the cross-dimensional fold accident on this very scout ship, at the time a derelict that we'd intended to salvage and scrap for the SDF-3 project. By the time we were back on Earth, the events had been past almost eighteen months, and many more atrocities made it something so far gone, as to not want to even discuss it. Miriya only talked about it when she was in a really foul mood, and under the influence of something; I heard it only because she was reliving it as a nightmare, after being exposed to the atmosphere of Garuda, and Marie and I were at her side.
"The protest started, and mecha were brought in for crowd control, loaded with a mix of riot control weaponry, as well as some heavy weaponry in case some idiot decided to bring a Regult. Then, the food trucks arrived, but turned out to be empty of food. The Micronized Zentraedi began rioting, and then... then... someone ordered the Destroids to fire on the crowd - and they did so with their anti-mecha weapons, not their crowd control ones."
"My God..."
"Yeah; the incident caused the general unrest in the Western Hemisphere to explode into full-scale insurrection. It took the better part of three years to quiet it, by which time the worst part of Soviet African War hit. Between the two wars, nearly every known child on Earth with Zentraedi blood was killed, directly or indirectly, which was part of Zand's grand plan. Only Dana, Noel, and a few we secreted away elsewhere, survived on Earth - though we'd sent tens of thousands of assimilated Zentraedi to the colony worlds that you'd designated, Admiral. In fact, less than one in ten thousand of the Zentraedi currently on Earth were still here in 2020. Nearly all of the ones left in the solar system were those that had remained as crew of the Factory Satellite and a few minor vessels such as this one, after Breetai's ship was dismantled to build the SDF-3. Officially, Seloy died in that incident. In fact, she was still alive on our world in 2018, leading the most technologically advanced malcontent band, one that was providing weaponry to other groups, before disappearing.
"She quite probably was one of those that disappeared into our designated sanctuary beyond Zand's vision, but everyone who went in got a new identity, that we treat as sacrosanct, in order to put the horrors of that conflict permanently in the past. It would serve no purpose to bring out the war crimes of the past, when the whole matter of what triggered them on both sides was a bit of a 'chicken or egg' debate, and most of the witnesses are dead."
The door buzzer sounded, interrupting the conversation.
"Who is there?" Scott asked.
"Lieutenant Ron Lewis, sir. I was contacted by Noel Tyler, and told to bring Dana here."
Scott suspected something was off; Noel probably would have told Dana to bring Lewis here, had it been something she'd done. He keyed the number for Medical, where Noel was helping her husband with a bunch of amputee and congenital defect correction cases for the ship's chamber-based regeneration technology.
"Noel, have you sent anyone up here to the conference room?"
"No... let me guess - my sister is up to her tricks again."
"That's how I read it, too; I'll tell you later what comes of it." Scott broke the link, and hit the button to remotely operate the door. "Come on in, you two. By the way, that wasn't Noel, but Karen, that had you come here - either of you know why?"
"She said that events were being discussed up here that Dana and I had unique vantage points for."
"Well, somehow, I don't think she brought Dana up here to discuss a particular mad scientist, as mentioning his name often results in unpleasant actions from her-"
"-Damn straight!"
"... So, I would figure it would have something to do with the Malcontent Uprisings, Project Siegfried, or the Southern Cross. Lewis, you grew up in the Siegfried facilities, if I remember correctly. I would guess that is why you're here."
"Project Siegfried?" Gloval asked.
"I mentioned it in passing, earlier. It was actually known by at least a half-dozen names, including 'Hydra', 'Fury', 'Safehouse' and 'Firewall'. It was quite literally an internal conspiracy, including myself, the Hunters, the Sterlings, the Grants, and Emil Lang; also a very few select Zentraedi that were beyond reproach, such as Exedore, Breetai, and the then-captain of this scout ship. We set up dozens of major and minor front operations, meant to divert materials to the construction of a hidden redoubt in the UEG protectorate of Arabia. While there were hundreds of people who knew that the redoubt was being built, but only a couple dozen knew that it was an even further masquerade to conceal that there was an even more secret facility in South America.
"Both facilities were meant to be autonomous from UEG, RDF and ASC control - in fact, the South American facility was unknown to all those in the Arabian base, save its commanders, and everyone else in the know about it was in space or on the SDF-3. Once sealed, they would be self-sufficient, and only the less-secret one would have any outside contact. Personnel would be limited to those with no outside family, but included both singles and entire families. The Arabian facility, Fortress Gloval, would seal its doors a year after the SDF-3 left. The other, Tisiphone, stopped receiving supplies just prior to the launch, as no one would remain on Earth, other than the commanders of Gloval, that even knew it existed. There was one major difference, besides the secrecy, though.
"Fortress Gloval was constructed from scratch, utilizing areas underground that were tapped out oil fields. The Soviets, among others, knew that it was there, but not its exact location. But, Tisiphone was already there in South America, only needing new life support facilities and long overdue maintenance, after being abandoned for twelve thousand years."
"Did you just say, twelve thousand years?"
"Yes, I did. It was an ancient space tracking facility, equivalent to NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain facility, combined with secret research labs for the pursuit of faster-than-light travel and communications. It was, as near as we can tell, the only part left from two ancient societies that destroyed each other in a war that precipitated the end of the last ice age, and nearly all traces that survived the war were lost in the flooding that followed the war. It lay hidden in the Andean foothills until Karen, Marie and I stumbled on it after being shot down by a Zentraedi derelict. And, if you're wondering, most of the people who evacuated the facility after the carnage started settling down, boarded their prototype ship in orbit, and flew off for what they thought was another starfaring civilization. What they found was an empty, though habitable, moon orbiting a gas giant in a far-away constellation. What their space probe had seen, was their own descendants - the Robotech Masters.
"The actual science makes my head hurt even thinking about it, but their propulsion system was based on tachyon-based science, that they understood even less than we did in 2040, even with the best minds on Haydon helping. They didn't realize that their hyperspace drive, using a tachyon basis, was dependent on its mass-to-thrust ratio - they erred thinking the number was a constant, not a variable. Balanced correctly, it would allow near-instantaneous travel. In fact, their in-system test bed, by a fluke, was so balanced. Unbalanced, it could send something forward or backward in time, even communications, something not readily apparent, when you can't test both ends at the same time. However, near as we can tell, it can't actually be used to deliberately alter the past.
"Their interstellar probe went forward in time, then modulated its broadcast signal until it managed to blunder into roughly the reverse time shift to its forward travel, and give the system on this end the inverse with which to establish two-way communications. Of course, before more than a few images were sent back, the Masters detected it and destroyed it, feeling that there were no unknown forces that could be sending innocent probes. And, one of its failed earlier attempts to calibrate arrived years earlier when there were no receivers, only a few scientific instruments that indicated that they received an intelligently-designed signal from that direction, leading them to explore that vector in space. In the end, their decision to go to that star system was the result of one hell of a time paradox that they created themselves."
"So, what kind of condition was the facility in, after all those years?"
"When we found it, it was mostly intact and reasonably functional. Most of the consumables were taken when the occupants left, but they left things ranging from spare clothing to the control hardware for the base systems. The original reactor was actually still barely operable, having been reduced to minimal power, and a lot of the doors, plumbing and lights still worked. However, there was a coolant leak, years after we resettled the Tisiphone force there, that got out of control. And, because we didn't fully understand the emergency shutdown procedures, that resulted in the base having to be abandoned shortly before the Invid arrival, until a couple years ago, when we had the resources to go back in and start decontamination. We're still cleaning the mess up, but at least there's a new reactor installed now, and automated decon robots cleaning the place room by room.
"The creators of the facility were an interesting bunch. Their society had traditionally, deliberately, limited themselves to islands and isolated coastal valleys, where the stone-age cultures of the mainland would have nearly no contact with them from which to be contaminated. Their rival civilization had been coastal as well, and were the basis of most Hindu myth - and no small part of Zoroastrian myth as well. Both had strong cultural aversions to permanent continental settlements more than a couple hundred meters above their sea level. Everything they made was designed to be long-lived in terms of operation, while also being easily recyclable or biodegradable.
"The facility was an anomaly to that pattern, being located in central South America, apparently as a safety and security precaution for its research. As any anthropologist can tell you, pre-Zentraedi evidence indicated that the early migrants to the Americas had never successfully colonized south of Panama during that time, though evidence existed, highly controversial, of attempts made as early as fifty thousand years ago - possibly from the ancestors of the same culture that eventually built the facility.
"The facility computer was in relatively rough shape, from memory drop-outs, but the hardware itself was still barely functional from having limited robotic self-repair and a 3C system to recycle and construct parts. However, given that the society's language involved apparently collapsed back to stone-age level once it got to Tyrol, then re-evolved, the only one that ever understood the language in the data files even partially was Karen, and that was pretty much through something akin to divine intervention from the person who manipulated her creation.
"It wasn't until 2030, after we returned from Tyrol, that they were able to fully create an emulation interface with it. Interestingly, we found out on reaching Tyrol, that much of Tyrolean tech was based on computer technology that they found in primitive archeological sites that had been turned into jewelry by the primitives, that they then reverse engineered. Between the research we brought back and what the ASC had captured from the Masters, we were able to finally back up the existing data files, and when there was a radiation leak later that year, they moved the files to Gloval. When we left, the files were STILL estimated to be about five years from being fully deciphered, because of language issues. After all - how would an alien know what we meant by the words 'watt', 'hertz' or newton', without context? Or how does one determine the length of any other unit measuring a rate over time, without precise knowledge of their time units? Those were eventually figured out, much like how the science fiction writer James P. Hogan did it for a fictional lost human society, but it was nowhere as easy for our people as it was for his characters.
"Now that I've explained WHAT it was, the lieutenant can start telling you what it was like living there. Sit down, you two - we're not exactly being formal here; hell, we're not even technically on duty for this."
"Well... That's going to be complicated." The tall, reddish-brown-haired security officer said, pulling up a chair. "I've been living under an assumed name since before I moved to Tisiphone. In fact, it wasn't until that I got there, that I was among other children for the first time in three years. They were the first kids I'd seen since, well..."
"Well, what?" Dana asked, then got a bit uncomfortable, as her subordinate looked at her.
"I've been keeping something from you, Dana. After all, it's part of the security protocols for those from the Project."
"What's that?"
"Well, the last kid I saw before my mother dragged me into the deep Amazon, was you, Dana, when my mother tried to talk your mother into taking a more active role campaigning against my father. Miriya left you with the sitter, and Mother took me and your mother to that rally at the food distribution. You know how badly that turned out."
"Hirano?"
"Yeah... Guilty as charged. I'm the one that caused Anatole Leonard to go rampaging across the Southlands for three years, trying to find me. Mother never forgave him, for what he supposedly did to her while she was pregnant - but I found out things back while you were fighting the Masters, through those back doors into the Southern Cross computer systems. I thought about telling you back at Brasilia, where we were being retrained for the Invid invasion, but I wasn't sure how you or your old squadmates would handle who either of my parents were.
"Father wasn't the one who had Mother kidnapped - it was the SPOOK cabal, who wanted to kill Mother after I was born, then use me as a hostage, to control Father. My disappearance, and presumed death, made it to where they could only attempt to manipulate him, and when you brought down Petrey's Alpha sabotage scheme as a teenager, it meant that the Southern Cross was relatively free of his influence - though that was little help, given that the UEG was the one really calling the shots during the war, and they were completely in the tank for 'he-who-must-not-be-named-around-Dana'. Had the Edwards clone not misappropriated all of the Southern Cross and Fortress Gloval's Alphas before delivery, Father's frontal attack strategies probably would have worked against the Masters, from the Bioroids' vulnerability to missiles - and that would have been before the Masters resorted to sticking Zor in a cockpit, or got close enough to Earth to start kidnapping civilians for replacement pilots."
"So, after the Massacre, you ended up living in the jungle?"
"I wouldn't quite call it the 'jungle'; at least not until much later. Mother fell in quickly with a group of Zentraedi that had received various levels of technological training, some of it illegal. Part of the initial slowness of our departure, was that one of her closest friends had taken a fifty cal round through the abdomen, and by some miracle it didn't kill her. It did, however, mean that it was weeks before we could move her from the illegal clinic we took her to, and that actually was to our benefit, as by that time, the locals were more concerned with terrorist attacks than trying to locate us. I grew up relatively innocent, as best a child can among a society who had no concept of childhood. Most of the ugly truth was above my ability to comprehend, but when one is living in an underground city with little else to do for a decade, I eventually found myself talking with the others, about the crazy events of the years outside.
"We went from the clinic, to the makeshift factory that the gearheads were using to try to repair and rebuild mecha. Mother gave them much better direction, convincing them to put more standardized elements in their work, instead of everything being custom-built. Eventually, we were contacted by that one rogue RDF Zentraedi that terrorized Indochina and South America for much of 2016 and 2017, but only Mother recognized that poor woman's condition for what it was - insanity resulting from a near-toxic exposure to raw Protoculture. Way too much like Khyron, and Khyron's insanity was one of the reasons she told Azonia 'no', when they tried to recruit her. Still, she was useful, and the temporary alliance got the Scavengers a new factory, and she let the old one get 'discovered' and destroyed, to try to make the military think they'd destroyed us.
"Then, one of the teams buying salvage from the African conflict reported back that the locals had found something they didn't quite understand, and were looking to sell. It was a chemical weapon; a biotoxin that was being experimented with by the Neasians in the 90s war, using unsuspecting allies in the despotic African regimes to cover their trail and provide test subjects- complete with the equipment to grow the medium that produced it, and the refining equipment. One of the other teams had been experimenting with the new equipment to make insect-sized robots, originally for spying or possibly carrying tiny explosive charges for sabotage. These two items seemed to be meant for each other, and the bots were modified to have syringes to deliver the toxin, and sensors to detect Protoculture traces in the sweat of targets - only those without the traces would be 'bitten'."
"What did the toxin do?" Lisa asked.
"Initially, a fever, but as it was metabolized, the by-products caused extreme paranoia and hallucinations, as well as heightened aggression, as it throws everything out of balance. As you can figure out, the combination of these effects would result in a group of victims trying to kill each other, and anyone around them. If someone managed to survive that stage, they'd still have to deal with 'coming down' from the hormonal effects, which were as stressful as detox for a hard-core drug addict. It was a really nasty thing, and some commented long after the fact that any race disturbed enough to develop such a thing deserved having it used on them. Cooler heads pointed out that the existence of Tisiphone proved that we were the same race, and that neither branch of humanity had gotten any wiser in thirteen thousand years. But, before it could be used on more than a few human and Zentraedi test subjects, Karen Freeman intervened."
"How was that?"
"Karen had been tracing the events of 2016, where her mother supposedly did something on Earth, when in fact, Kayra had been in an alternate universe for six months, coming back pregnant with Karen in late December. This led to finding out about her mother's clone-sister, who was the person I mentioned earlier, that survived that horrible wound. On doing her own freelance intelligence work, with her psychic powers, she pretty much was able to do in two weeks, what the RDF & ASC intel hacks hadn't managed to do in 2 years - find the Scavenger base. She brought Miriya in to confront my mother, but not before using her powers to infiltrate several installations and plant explosives that she detonated during the confrontation. She also pointed out something that was very important for me - that Dana and I, as well as Karen herself, would be read as human, and subject to attack by the robotic bugs, as the placental barrier kept half-Zentraedi and naturally born ones from having the Protoculture traces of their parent. After telling Mother that implementing the plan would not be tolerated, she gave us an out - instructions on how to get to Tisiphone, when things turned bad. Karen then left with Miriya, and destroyed the bio-weapon facility minutes later, in a rather flamboyant display of her powers for the time.
"The Scavengers stayed long enough to shift the balance of power in Africa in favor of the alliance of Zentraedi and micronians fighting the Soviets, then over half of us made the trip to the Peruvian Andes. Karen's aunt remained behind, resulting in the events that became immortalized in song - at least when Father wasn't trying to get the song banned."
"A song?"
"A song against inter-racial violence, and the futility of conflict between human and Zentraedi. Karen's aunt was, prior to her injuries at the Massacre, romantically involved with a young human man that had managed to infiltrate the Zentraedi resistance. That man was the godson of Anatole Leonard, and was there only with one goal - to find me. Ironically, he found love, instead. On the day of the Massacre, he was going to confront my father, and tell him that he was going to marry Tinya, even if it meant being disowned. But, fate intervened, and he believed her killed in the attack. In the end, he changed from Intel to ground forces, to distance himself from what happened, and on the fateful day of the Scavengers' last stand, he faced off with the Scavenger leader, in a no-holds-barred battle between a Glaug-based custom mecha and his Spartacus Hovertank. Only at the end of the fight, did the two former lovers realize who they were fighting, and by that time, she was mortally wounded. He held her as she died, and died himself from his wounds on the battlefield, refusing to seek help as he sat there, on the field."
"That's incredibly sad... did it really happen that way?"
"Amazingly, yes," Scott answered. "The onboard recorders on the hovertank caught it all. I got to see the raw footage, because of what happened later. Ron, if you want to continue?"
"Father tried his best to suppress the footage, but it was leaked out, and there was a massive legal battle over the remains of the two. After the SDF-3 left, he tried to have the song banned, but it was still performed in spite of such bans - most notably by Noel Freeman and Bowie Grant, who were immune to that sort of prosecution before their enrollment in the Robotech Academy, though getting caught later got them busted to the point that they left the Academy as privates in Dana's hovertank unit, instead of technical NCOs away from combat."
"So, what happened from there?"
"Fortress Gloval, the less-secret of the two facilities, was about 90% human, 10% Zentraedi," Scott said, taking back over the 'history' lesson. "The ratio was about 50/50 in Tisiphone. Only about one in ten thousand of the Zentraedi forces of the Soviets remained. Most died, but about twenty percent either defected or were captured, and those were forwarded onto one of the colony ships converted from Zentraedi fleet ships and launched that first decade, to settle habitable worlds along the planned SDF-3 course. The Russians, once their Zentraedi population was reduced to a level that their agriculture and failing food processors could sustain, pulled back to eastern Europe and parts of Siberia, and this made the Scandinavian sector feel a bit more secure, since most of the pressure that caused Soviet saber-rattling was gone. The REF made a big push to recruit most remaining Zentraedi in the Americas for colony or fleet positions, as the Southern Cross became the heir-apparent to the RDF on Earth. The Sterlings didn't trust Leonard, and, frankly, he hated them, as their child survived, when he lost his. But, it was Leonard that the UEG wanted to be in charge, simply because they loathed Rolf Emerson for being incorruptible. Technically, the ASC would be subsumed into the RDF, and the command structure merged, but the events surrounding the SDF-3 launch threw a wrench into things."
"Edwards, I believe you said." Lisa said.
"Yes. Well, in our case, he had taken a more belligerent role, due to some of Haydon's manipulations of Zand. When we showed back up in December 2016, unexpectedly, in our original home universe, with this Zentraedi scout loaded with technology ten years in advance of what the RDF currently had, Zand panicked. He realized that we had knowledge of the events to come, and that his contingency plans I had accidentally overheard before I left, had to be put in motion. Edwards took some of his loyal goons, and set off to eliminate Emerson.
"Zand had already been thwarted by Rolf once, trying to get access to Dana, and the top secret preliminary data transmission we made to Lang about where we had been intercepted by Zand. When he saw that his test subject was going to be put over into Emerson's care when the SDF-3 launched, and that Edwards' loyalty was going to be called into question, he ordered Edwards to take Emerson out, in transit between Earth and the Lunar shipyards. Emerson was already being looked at to assume command of Earth's defensive space forces after the SDF-3 departure, since his Southern Cross branch was most closely allied with the RDF; and as such, he was involved in the development of the Tristar class system defense frigate. There would be a tight window where he could eliminate Emerson's transport before we could get back to Earth, and maybe even do something to stop us - it wasn't quite apparent that we were coming back with more than a repaired ship. When we realized what was going on, we launched our Horizon transport we brought back, which had its standard Alpha and Beta pair attached to the underside, and closed that window. We weren't about to use the fold engines - after all, the fold back had been just as unplanned as to the fold to that other dimension. We defeated Edwards, but we had to kill him and his men to do so. Too bad he didn't stay dead."
"Excuse me?"
"Zand had already taken cell samples and a brain scan of him. This allowed him to use an unmodified cloning chamber to bring back Edwards - more than once, in fact. He made one to act as a hidden agent, that we eventually discovered and rooted out a year before the SDF-3 launch. Another one, made to appear much younger than either the original or the other clone, was infiltrated into the SDF-3 complement, into his old squadron. The clone ended up doing many of the same things the original did in the universe we visited. Damn Haydon and his interference."
"What was it that he did, initially, to the SDF-3 mission? You've already explained how he subverted the REF, and attempted to set himself up as the conquering hero."
"He asked Emil if he could draw additional mecha to be placed onboard the SDF-3, a couple days before launch. One of the concerns about the mission was that we might be under-armed, should the Masters call our bluff, and Edwards played on it. As Edwards, then known by the alias of Riley, was technically a subordinate and proxy for Leonard, he could make the request without drawing immediate attention from the Earth centrists, when all hell would have broken loose had Max, Rick or Lisa made a request for more weapons. However, on Zand's recommendation, Edwards took EVERY Alpha and Destroid that had already been produced for, but not delivered to, Fortress Gloval and the former Southern Cross units. Leonard didn't find out until the fold countdown was too far along to abort, and by that time, we had the distraction of Janice and Minmei flying into the fold bubble. The REF didn't even realize the extent of the thefts until they were looking to arm the former subjects of the Masters against the Invid.
"As a result, Leonard demonized the RDF, not realizing it had been done on Edwards' orders, and reverted all the ASC back to that force's original names and order of battle. The RDF was given to Emerson, and turned into an underfunded reserve force, while additional ASC branches and units were mustered for the Northern Hemisphere. Zand's flunkie Petrie, now on the outs with his former boss Leonard, further undermined the Southern Cross by using backdoors in the operating software of the Southern Cross version of the Alpha, and literally flying the project into the ground via virtual reality links. They actually had a school set up for student prodigies, who were using the VR equipment to make the Alpha pilots seem to go rogue, or crash, almost always fatally for the pilot. Dana, and the fiancé of one of the dead test pilots, managed to bring down that conspiracy, though I don't think Dana or the school were all too willing of the matchup."
"Damn straight I wasn't! I also wanted to strangle the bastards that tried to insinuate that Terry and I had a sexual relationship. I had a crush on him, yes, but he was over twice my age, and was mourning his dead girlfriend, even after Petrie was taken down. It was more of a big brother/little sister type of friendship. He finally got sick of all the scandal-mongers, and ended up in Tokyo, joining a top secret mecha development program. I lost touch with him, not long afterward. I later found out he was one of those killed in the Andrews Incident in 2027, having been on the transport that an advance force of the Masters captured, coming back from Mars."
"That would probably be the next major event in the history of the Southern Cross," Scott continued. "The Masters' agents killed the passengers and crew, and replaced them with clones with their original memories, but programmed to disrupt the defense of Earth. Only one person escaped prior to execution, managing to stow away after he was cloned, and tried, unsuccessfully, to get the word out to the ASC. He eventually was killed, but not before he got one of the unit's prototype mecha out into the open, hoping that the compromised secrecy would alert the command in Monument that something was seriously wrong in New Tokyo.
"The civilian that ended up getting his hands on the prototype managed to disrupt the clones' plans to start a war between the Soviets and the Southern Cross, but only barely, and a decade of detente went up in flames, so that the Soviets sat out of the defense of Earth from the Masters. It also tipped off the Southern Cross command that something was seriously wrong with the communications that were supposedly coming from the REF, and that war was imminent."
"As much as Uncle Rolf and Leonard fought over how to fight the war, it was only their working together furiously in the eighteen months between that incident and the actual Masters fleet's arrival, that actually got the Southern Cross as prepared as we were," Dana noted. "What eventually caused their rift during the war, was that each thought the other's strategy squandered the resources they'd fought so hard together to scrape together in the year before the war." Dana started getting one of her melancholy looks, as she finished up, so Scott jumped back in to continue.
"We've already gone over the war with the Masters a half-dozen times over the last month, so we'll skip over it. I arrived back to Earth on this scout, as its emergency fold to escape the Masters ended up arriving right where we could use it in the civil war against Edwards - ONE YEAR BEFORE it left Earth. Yeah, it's major headache time, though we didn't realize it at the time. As it was, a fold miscalculation had made us lose a few years in transit with the SDF-3, and we didn't realize the full oddity of our time situation until months later. When left for Earth, the trip's time vector was a bit off again, putting us there right after the Masters and Southern Cross fell. We began trying to unify the factions remaining, but failed. We started training all that would agree to put Earth before their national interests, but we didn't have enough time to train more than a couple thousand, that we'd trained to be the nucleus of an anti-Invid resistance force, going out in twos and threes to recruit others to be underground forces waiting for the REF.
"The Invid came, destroyed all those that stood against them, then went into occupation mode, going back to the drive that Haydon placed in them, to try to evolve past humanity. But, actually evolving BACK to their own lost humanity was not part of his plan, but it still managed to almost work out for him- and it did work, in his original universe."
"And the secret bases?" Exedore asked.
"Fortress Gloval served its purpose well, liberating the Eastern Hemisphere in combination with my forces and the sea navy forces that the Invid missed. Tisiphone, though, had to be evacuated from that reactor accident, shortly before the Invid arrived, but while they'd been sitting there for over a decade, they actually rebuilt the wrecked ship that shot me down in 2017, and led to the discovery of the ancient facility. That gave us another ship in-system with which to defend the Earth. It was used to effect to save the third wave of the early liberation forces by aborting its approach to Africa, though most of rest of the force ended up being destroyed on approach or on the ground, over the Pacific or in the Americas."
"So, all of this can be prevented?"
"One would hope so - Edwards' court martial and execution was a good start, but we've still got to track down Zand, wherever he's gone underground to. I don't think he'll live to see trial, though - too many people in my crew have reasons to see him dead, and I'm certain that whoever does find him will let us know by an anonymous depositing of his corpse. As much as I hate that kind of lack of due process, and insubordination, I also understand that he's too dangerous to let live, even if to see trial. Some people are just not redeemable. But, then, that leads us to the next question - what do we do with the Masters, when we get our hands on them?"
As Scott predicted, the Zand issue resolved itself with the death of Zand at the hands of an anonymous vigilante - though Scott was certain it was one of the former members of the 15th ATAC in his crew. Dana and Noel were the obvious suspects, but he was reasonably certain he could account for their location at the estimated time of death. On the other hand, with their ability to teleport, it could have been done in a matter of a couple minutes. Bowie wasn't a suspect, but both the ship's doctor and chief engineer had been off-ship for most of the day that the event occurred, helping out Dr. Lang in reactivating this world's Janice. Both were "off the grid" for hours, and Louie had Janice out for a "test drive" for at least an hour, even when Alex could be placed as being with Lang. Of course, he wouldn't put it past Lang to have been complicit with such action, anyway.
As for the Masters, the decision was made to wash their hands of them. The Invid were still united in this time period, and were still on Optera for the most part; it would be left up to the Invid to decide their fate. The Masters would be delivered to them with the protoculture storage matrix from the SDF-1, which Bowie's wives managed to coax from its hiding place.
For once, everything went as planned. The takedown of the Masters was entirely bloodless, including those shriveled walking corpses that called themselves the Elders. The Elders had been the political patrons of the Masters. They had been the figureheads for the Masters' empire, though rarely they interfered with the decisions of Dag, Bowkaz and Shaizan, even less so since the refined form of Protoculture used to make the custom bodies they and the Masters had transferred their minds into were no longer available, with the remaining stocks only good for conventional cloning. Once they reached a level of degradation that made them too conscious of their potential regained mortality, they chose to isolate themselves in a temporal pocket, trying to buy time for their bodies, an older model than the Masters', to last long enough for the Masters to recover the matrix.
After the captures, they made quick superluminal trips around to the rest of the Local Worlds, to acquire others to help entreat the Invid to accept peace. The trip was also used to go into Haydon IV, and terminate the Haydon machine sentience in the planet. The latter was done without the permission of the Haydonites, who were very upset, at least until they found out their free will had only been on the whim of that sleeping entity, and that they'd been expected to sacrifice themselves on its awakening.
Approaching Optera was dangerous enough, as there wasn't any real data on what the world was like between Zor's death and Edwards' takeover of that world, where he radically altered the Royal Hive to fit his needs. It was finally decided just to send the Bernards in using one of their two-seat Shadow Alphas, with a disposable fold booster. Once they made contact, they could call in the rest of the delegation, to deliver the Masters and Elders.
Amazingly, the Bernards reported in within an hour of landing. Marlene/Ariel, despite being converted to full human by Karen, retained the ability to communicate telepathically with the Invid, and was actually able to contact the Regis directly. This led to their being taken into the hive, though the Regent was none too thrilled with it. It took calling in Noel, transporting the prisoners, to convince him of the sincerity of the petition, and to allow the SDF-1 to deliver the Matrix back to Optera. Some of the stores of the Dreamweaver had been the mutant fruits of the flower from the cured Peryton, and those were given to the Regis to feed her husband, to help cure his insanity brought on by the cursed version. Perhaps, once he was cured, he would see the wisdom in pursuing evolution.
With the galaxy at peace, the Dreamweaver and the two SDFs returned to in orbit over Tyrol, helping with the resettlement of the fleet clones to the planet. Preparations started for the next dimensional jump, since the SDFs seemed to have everything in hand...
But, then things got weird, again...
"General Freeman, we would like to go with you to your next destination."
This was the last thing that Scott expected, when Admiral Gloval contacted him. What he thought it might be was a request for him to stay longer, as Cabell was still trying to stabilize things on Tyrol, as the deprogramming to allow the fleet clones to start truly acting on their own wasn't progressing as quickly as they'd hoped.
"May I ask why?"
"We had a dream, that your mission would be better off with us along."
"We?"
"Myself, and nearly all of the command and bridge crews of both ships. For the most part, the visions were identical."
"Hmm... this sounds like someone's trying to manipulate things further. I'll have to get back to you on this, before I can make a decision. Besides, we won't be going for a couple weeks; there's no way we'll depart before the weddings."
"I was hoping you'd say that. Every one of the brides want me to walk them down the aisle, not perform the ceremony, so I have the choice of either finding a suitable chaplain, or ask you to perform the ceremonies."
"I'd rather watch them, not perform them. But, I should be able to help with finding someone suitable for the ceremony."
"Who do you have in mind?"
"If we have the ceremonies out here, Cabell would be a good choice. If we go back to Earth, Breetai would be good as well, as he actually gave Lisa away back in my universe. It would probably help morale here on Tyrol, more."
"I'll bring it up with the others tonight, at dinner. Will you be joining us?"
"Maybe. First, I've got to check on my suspicion about your vision. It's high time I try to get some answers from Karen."
"How do you plan to do that?"
"Through someone she's already used as a mouthpiece on this trip. Karen's a sucker for requests from children."
Minmei let him talk to her youngest daughter later that afternoon, while Kyle had the other two girls at one of the recreational facilities for martial arts lessons. When Karen understood what Scott wanted, she put herself in a trance state, where she was more able to understand his requests. Most of the Seconds had this ability; effectively, it allowed them to function off some of the enhanced mental function their telepathy had absorbed in utero from their mother (and occasionally their father). Karen Freeman was the only one that seemed to have had the ability to keep absorbing such things after birth, from anyone she had contact with - but then, they literally broke the mold after Zor influenced her creation; not even Noel retained it.
"Karen, try to reach out and find the woman who talked to you before," Scott asked, hoping that the request was simple enough for the child to understand.
"I- I can't find her. She not there."
"What do you mean, 'not there'?"
"Nobody home."
"Try again. Maybe they just didn't hear you."
"Okay... somebody there now."
"Is it the one who talked to you before?"
"No, she's diff'rent."
"She?" Scott balked, wondering if he'd accidentally contacted the Regis, or worse.
"I hope you're not disappointed, Uncle," a voice said from behind him.
Scott turned, to find a girl standing there that looked to be, physically, between the age of his daughters and his son. She had emerald hair to her waist, that almost seemed to glow with its own light, and her eyes were like sapphires.
"And who exactly are you, if I didn't already have a good idea."
"My name is Cynthia, and yes, Karen is my mother. You can call me Cindy. My parents are working on something in another dimension, right now, so I was staying with my grandparents, when I heard that someone was trying to contact Mom."
"And, just for confirmation, just who are your father and grandparents? Karen told some of us, but we chose not to print all of that section of her book, due to its potential inflammatory nature."
"Zor is my father. My grandparents are his universe's counterparts of Minmei and Rem. Yes, I know that sounds rather icky, not to mention a bit of a paradox, but substantial parts of Rem's genetics were altered during cloning by Cabell, so that the Masters wouldn't detect him as being a Zor clone. I'm glad that you've kept that part of things under wraps; having it known openly would only make things harder for my two oldest siblings."
"That, it would. Why did your mother pick little Karen here to talk through?"
"Part of it was that Mom considers Minmei to be part of our extended family. Kayla, after all, has half of the genetics of Zor, coming from the same egg that in Father's universe, was fertilized by Rem. Minmei has things that she needs to resolve for herself, and this trip will help do that, as well as help give her counterparts closure. Other members of your crew will have to face personal demons as well; these will require you giving them a bit more latitude in their discretionary powers."
"Does that include why this universes' SDFs want to go with us to the next stop?"
"I would say, 'yes', but I wasn't in the loop on that. As it is, Mom and Dad would probably be mad at me for even talking to you. Don't worry; once you get back home from this extended shake-down cruise, you'll have full control of your vessel's destination, such as that is; you'll still be shooting blind for the most part. There's only one destination that they will want you to go to after that, and that's the world that they are currently shaping into a position to be a first contact situation for you."
"What kind of world would that be?"
"Late 20th century, at least by the time you get invited over. That way, you should be able to help them with some of their planetary issues. And, no, none of the foes you have fought ever existed there."
"That's some comfort."
"Well, I need to go, before my grandparents figure out I'm here. Both my big sister and I have been manipulated to where we've had fully normal human childhoods, but of course you know how that isn't any bearing on my mental development. Would a ten-year-old talk to you like this? Tell my brother and sister to come visit me some time; Musica has the innate power to make the trip, and she should be able to get the destination from linking minds with young Karen, here. Of course, Karen won't remember anything about what happened here today." Cindy bent over, kissed the toddler on the forehead, and the child fell asleep.
"Thanks for answering."
"I did the best I could, under my own limitations. Good-bye, Uncle; hopefully we'll see each other again, on that world Mom & Dad are at right now." She kissed him on the cheek, and faded away.
Scott didn't really get all the information he wanted, but there was one line that was a give-away, that he wasn't sure if Cindy gave deliberately, or accidentally. Specifically, the line about Minmei giving her "counterparts" closure. "Counterparts", being plural, would seem to indicate that there would be at least one more stop in a different alternate history. That would give, at least, an idea of what to prepare the three ships for.
"Did we have to have all the weddings the same week as our departure date?" Scott mused. "Just because OUR Rick & Lisa did, doesn't mean they had to, as well."
"It's one of those things; people want new beginnings. At least they chose not to do them on the day before, and go straight from the honeymoon into the mission." Marie replied, snuggling up to her husband.
"And, what was with that blessing at the end of the ceremony?"
"What? 'May the Principal bless you both'? I think that Cabell meant it as a bit of a jest, having read it in one of those Heinlein books Lang gave him. At least, I hope he did it as a joke."
"I wonder what Gloval thinks about being the only single person left in the original SDF-1 bridge crew?"
"Like a proud substitute father, really. Of course, the only ones still on the ship with him are the Fokkers. Claudia's finally stepped up to Chief of Operations, and Roy's taking over for Maistroff. The rest of the bridge crew are a mix of the old off-shift personnel and some of Breetai's officers. Plus, Musi is going to act as a technical advisor on the SDF-2, and Noel will sit in on the SDF-1, in case we need to use some form of communications other than radio."
"What do you think about our next destination? Cindy's slip, intentional or not, means that where we're heading, there will probably be another Minmei. I'm betting on another fold to Tyrol, but that's just a guess."
"Karen did mention that there's a set of universes similar to ours, but with a completely different history. The fiction writers that spun our story as fiction for their reality, did so by merging three different, unrelated, anime into a new timeline. We even saw parts of two of those universes in Lang's and Tyler's collections. But, no one was really in a position to remember that something that looked like a Spartacus or an Alpha existed in a TV show that 99.9% of the people who ever knew the shows existed died in 2011, and any survivors would have been pushing 60, with the series being forty years prior in their youth, when the similar designs emerged. Even so, the series were sufficiently different to not obviously be related. And, we've not even found anything remotely like our history from 1999 through 2014, in what anime survived Dolza. The closest thing was some Gundam parody called Megaroad, which we only became aware of when the SDF-2 here got named that."
"Where did that name come from, anyway?"
"The grandkid of one of the people working in New Macross City's animation studio. The grandfather actually worked on that old series, but had pretty much forgotten about it, over the years. Only the ship, and the cameo Chinese take-out girl, bear any resemblance to our timeline, and the ship only barely. It launched its incredibly complex transformable fighters from the ship's upper chest, leading to a rather unfortunate name for them."
"Complicated isn't the word I'd use; losing the gun pod made the mecha incapable of landing in fighter mode. Breast fighters, indeed; as flying them would suck hind teat, to use an old expression from my grandfather's time."
."Well, I guess we'll find out the hard way, in a couple days."