REF Strategy Meeting:
"I say we press on, and attack Optera!" Lron growled, in his argument to the assembled body of dimensional travelers, fellow Sentinels, REF, and Zentraedi.
"That won't stop the Regis from devastating Earth," Scott countered. "Most of the remaining Invid are with the Regis, and we never found out where she went after leaving Haydon IV, before she showed up over Earth a year after the Masters were defeated."
"There should be evidence of where she went, on Optera," Bela argued.
"No, there wasn't on my Optera, and there won't be here, either. The Regent hasn't spoken to the Regis directly since they split over what should be done about Tyrol. After that, it was only a few subspace transmissions, mostly to make sure the two didn't get into each other's way. All that going to Optera will do is get you some measure of revenge for what the Regent did to your worlds, and piss off the Regis when she finds out you've defiled the home planet. Furthermore, she has the ability, once the Regent is dead and she finds out, to bring all his surviving Invid to her, through any blockade we could set up. Simply, the Invid would turn to energy, and escape. It's why you CAN'T stop the Invid by destroying the world they're on, because as long as they have a leader and a few minutes, they can transform and be gone - something the council and much of the REF refused to accept in my universe, and they were willing to destroy Earth in a vain attempt to destroy the Invid. But, the truth is, the Invid don't HAVE to be destroyed."
"What is the alternative?" Veidt asked.
"It will take a lot of work, but what it comes down to is making them realize that the Masters are gone, and that we won't continue what the Masters started," Rem stated, now with much of the knowledge of Zor open to him. "We have to get the Regis back home to Optera, and help her undo the damage the Masters did to Optera; not just from Zor's attack, but the further damage done to keep Optera from regreening, that they inflicted before they realized that the plant would only grow correctly there. And, we have to get the Regent to eat some of the new mutant Fruit from Peryton, once the crops come in that started growing after the curse was lifted."
"It almost sounds like it would be easier just to destroy them," Crysta said, "but that would just be more violence and death on both sides. We don't have the manpower for a prolonged war, given that the only planets not rebuilding are Garuda and Haydon IV, and the Praxians have no home to go back to. And, it would require finding the Regis."
"That's why we need to get to Earth with sufficient force to force her to parlay."
"That's not guaranteed to work, either," the elder version of Emil Lang pointed out. "She could just charge through and take the Earth, then we'd have to try to persuade her to listen to us while we hold the orbitals."
"Then what do suggest?"
"We blockade Optera - not attack, just prevent the Regent from leaving with his forces. We then use a variation of the method our visitors used before the trip here - we send Colonel Bernard and his wife to find the Regis."
"And, this can work, why?" Learna asked.
"Because Marlene is an Invid princess transmuted into human form," Bernard said, moving to the table with his wife.
The reaction of the group was pandemonium. Several of the aliens reached for non-present weapons, and the Perytonian delegation started making warding sigils in the air.
"NOW, CUT THAT OUT!" Scott Freeman shouted, pulling the only weapon in the room (an antique M1911 fitted for blanks, but the aliens didn't know that) and firing a .45 blank into the ceiling. "You all are acting like a bunch of new Zentraedi clones in a titty bar - no offense, Breetai."
"None taken."
"Marlene was an Invid; now she's human. In fact, she's undergone further mutation to become completely human, other than the fact that she can still communicate with Invid telepathically, and can probably use that to home in on the Regis. But, that will require a lot of folding around to triangulate, or stumble close enough to where she can make mental contact. If you're still concerned, it was Marlene and her sister that helped convince the Regis on my world to leave Earth, and destroy the weapons that were launched by a fanatic to sterilize the planet in an attempt to kill the Invid. So, yes, I'd trust her with my life, because she already saved my life once, saved Earth, when she didn't have to. Oh, and there's evidence to indicate that the Invid and their Flower of Life might actually be Earth life forms, modified and transported to Optera by Haydon. That kind of scheming is why we must stop this fighting, to end Haydon's meddling with our races to serve his own twisted ends. I'm calling a two hour recess, to allow you all to grab a meal, and get to know Marlene."
When everyone regrouped, things were more settled. It was decided that Breetai and and Lron would lead the remaining Zentraedi, a force of Sentinels (mostly Karbarran & Praxian), and REF to blockade Optera, as the Regent's last ships of the line had been destroyed over Peryton. They'd tell the Regent to call his mate for talks to restore Optera, but they figured he'd be too stubborn to do it - and unwilling to launch attacks out to the high orbits that would allow the primary weaponry of the blockade ships to annihilate the transport before they could make it half way to their targets.
Meanwhile, Scott & Marlene Bernard would lead another group, this mostly of ambassadors from the various worlds, in a search pattern roughly in the direction of Earth, towards the region the Invid were believed to have gone. Somewhere in that space, the Regis regathered her troops, sent out nebula-shaped sensors to search for Earth, and would eventually try to call the Regent's Invid to her, for the final trip there.
The last group, the largest, would be the three SDFs and the Dreamweaver, as they would attempt to fold to Earth and get there before the end of the war with the Masters; the uncertainty in dates left this in doubt. Hopefully, Jon Wolfe, Ron "Lewis" and the others that left on the Tsushima weeks earlier would get there on time, and possibly affect the course of the conflict, even if the SDFs didn't.
Dimension 3, End of the Second Robotech War (2030):
"So, when are we?" Marie Freeman asked.
"The battle at ten o'clock should answer your question, sister of mine," Dana replied. The port screen shifted and magnified into a battle between several mid-sized interplanetary defense shuttles and one of the few surviving Tyrolean escort destroyers, with AJACS and Bioroids having to dodge ship-to-ship fire as much as shots at each other. "We're too late to stop the battle, and the Masters' command vessel is already descending towards the mounds. Several assault craft and an escape pod are en route from it to the surface."
"Captain to Medical Bay; is Noel suited up?"
"I'm ready to go, Uncle; just give the word," Noel replied from the cockpit of the hostile environment rescue mecha, an obscenely up-armored, non-transformable version of the old Garland mecha tested by the Southern Cross fifteen years earlier.
"It'll be too close to call, to try to intercept Zor. Go for your alternate target, and get him back to the regeneration chamber."
"On my way," Noel said, as her comm line went dead, cut off by her teleport. Odds are, by the time the unit's radio frequency-hopped to find a way through the shielding of the mothership to reestablish the radio link, she'd have her target and be on the way back. That, or she'd be teleporting out of her suit directly back, as the ship blew up around her - which she almost didn't survive the last time.
"Dana is going to need someone shortly," the mission's Dana replied. "Request permission to go groundside."
"Granted."
Dana disappeared, in the blink of an eye.
"Wow - I didn't expect her to do that," Marie said. "Normally, you can't get her to teleport short distances, let alone from lunar orbit."
"Remember just how traumatic this was for Sis," Aurora pointed out. "She'll do anything that she can do to help her counterpart through it. Then, there's the Zand factor."
"What's our current plan, Captain?" Bowie asked from the weapons console, having jumped up to cover the position after Dana teleported out. He was fervently hoping that Noel could pull off her mad gamble, and that events and locations were as they were back home.
"Broadcast to both sides that Zor Prime has killed the Masters, and that continuing the bloodshed is futile. Fire a warning shot as close as you can to that furball with one of the main guns, without actually hitting anyone, at your discretion. Since, by this point, neither side had anything left resembling that sort of heavy weaponry, that should get their attention."
"One finger of God, on its way..." It took Bowie about a minute to find a clear vector, but when he did, he immediately fired, then hit the toggle switch on the hand control for his communications headset.
"Attention surviving Southern Cross and Tyrolean combatants, this is an order from the REF forces and their allies in the reformed Tyrolean Republic. Stand down, withdraw, and await further orders. Zor Prime has killed the Masters aboard their flagship, and the REF and the Tyrolean reserve forces left behind on Tyrol have been allies for six years. Further fighting is pointless, and there is still the danger that a third hostile race, the Invid, may show up."
Bowie looked over to his station, where Allegra was giving a similar message in High Tiresian, as she should be known to the commanders of the surviving forces as not having defected like Musica - of course, this universe's Allegra's fate was unknown. She could be dead, having caught the shot that Octavia took for her sister, or riding that flagship down on its death plunge, and their own universe's Noel (who had no counterpart here) too occupied with retrieving Rolf's corpse. That the local versions of herself and Octavia were probably dead and irretrievable didn't seem to bother her at all - then again, she was the clone of someone that had died many years before, and a secondary clone at that. Death came with the territory, and her muse triad wasn't even the first attempt to clone the original Musica - just the first (and only) ones to actually bond as a triad, after the individual clone attempts were found lacking from too much manipulation of their psyche.
As if to punctuate the matter, as he was starting to repeat the order, the Masters' ship blew up over the mounds. He stopped, bit his lip, and waited.
"Tyler to bridge - the package has arrived safely, and is being prepped for emergency recloning. Noel says she could see the blast waves moving toward her down the corridor, when she jumped back here."
"It was definitely better than my view last time," Noel piped in from the background.
"Actually, wasn't your view last time entirely blocked by the back of a Bioroid?"
"Well, sorta; but I was also sorta a back-seat passenger in my own mind at that point, with that failsafe protocol Karen left in my head calling the shots. And, the last thing I actually remember seeing was that parts of the Bioroid were becoming translucent from the high-end radiation from the explosion passing through it, and the force field that got thrown up around me and the Bioroid by the guardian, even as we started to teleport out. You don't expect to survive looking straight down a point-blank nuclear blast THROUGH a mecha, as if you were looking at an eclipse with a welding helmet on. It's like that joke from the Global War - 'What was the last thing that went through the mind of the Jerusalem nuke bomber?' The answer is 'Plasma'."
"Girl, that's one pretty morbid joke," Marie commented.
"I get it from the person that made me that way. I just wish Karen had given us a little more time on arrival, so that I could have tried to talk the two Zors floating around in his head down from the ledge."
Dana stood quietly on the hillock, Polly in her arms, overlooking the results of Zor Prime's vain sacrifice. He promised her he'd make she and the others safe, but if what that madman said was true, he'd only made things a thousand times worse...
"Actually," an oddly familiar voice said from behind her, "Zor Prime didn't realize he was being manipulated by the memories of the original Zor, that got implanted on the ship. Zor had sent the ship to Earth with the intent of Humanity becoming the Invid's allies against the Masters, only he saw in Zor Prime's mind that we'd almost become as bad as the Masters, so decided to give Earth to them. Of course, he didn't know the Invid had also fallen far as well."
She turned around, and saw the speaker; a woman that appeared to be an older version of herself; and the new senses that were unfolding in her mind after her conflict with Zand confirmed that the woman was exactly what she appeared to be.
"How?"
"I'm a dimensional traveler; part of a mission to contact parallel worlds. Your universe is the second one we've found, though we found the REF first, before coming to Earth."
"I wish you could have come here first."
"Me, too. I've had to live much of what you're feeling right now, though unlike you, I had a foster sister that nearly died trying to save Zor from the explosion."
"Did she succeed or fail?"
"She did it, but at great cost to herself. She has powers like the ones that started awakening in you when you caught the matrix, and that Zand opened further in his assault on you. Only, Noel's powers are much greater than ours, and she had some practice with them after hers were awakened around the time that the 15th picked up Major Carpenter from the escape pod. Even so, they weren't really enough. She saved Zor, but it took another miracle to save her, as she actually grabbed him, Bioroid and all, as he blew up the ship, and teleported them both out of the explosion."
"Teleported?"
"Think of it as a form of personal space fold. Yeah, you will be able to do it too, eventually - it took me the better part of two years to learn how to do it myself, and it still creeps me out when I do it. In fact, I did it from my ship, down here to you, when I realized we weren't in time to save Monument City or Zor. I knew you'd need some support, since Mom and Dad are stuck on the far side of the galaxy on an artificial planet created by the asshole that engineered the roots of all that conflict that psycho was ranting about." Dana pointed over at the plant that used to Lazlo Zand.
"Will they be safe there?"
"Pretty much; a lot safer than we are. We sent out someone to find the Invid, but we don't know yet if the Invid will listen to reason, or just charge in here like they did back home, killing those that resist and enslaving the rest."
"Are the Invid really as bad as Musica and Zand let on?"
"At heart, not really. But they've been violated to the edge of environmental destruction and genocide by the Masters, and you personally should know how some people respond to that, from our own experiences being half-Zentraedi." The younger Dana fidgeted a bit at those memories being brought up, as the older one continued. "They've lashed out in the worst possible way, and the way they had to fight a guerrilla war since then has only poisoned minds on both sides. Even though the Masters are gone, back home it took four more years of fighting, and a group of young humans and even younger Invid, to convince the Regis that she had become the same kind of monster as the Masters - and that in forsaking that violence, she could give both the Invid and Humanity the chance to start over."
"But, for now..."
"For now, though, they still burn with desire for vengeance - one half of them did so more than the other, and it led to its near-destruction at the hands of the REF and the former subjects of the Masters. Even though the Regis predicted it would happen, it still hardened her heart, as those that fell were still her mate and his half of their children."
"So, Zor really died for nothing?"
"In an odd sort of way, he died for something, but it was really for something he would have not have condoned. His intent was to do penance for his sins, but it only made things worse. He was steered that way by Haydon, who will not have his way here if we can help it. I'd offer to let my Zor donate the cells to create a new Zor for you, but it really wouldn't be the same, and I don't think your Zor would have approved; mine's changed a lot in the last decade."
"But, you really haven't," the local Dana countered. "You're acting so brave, but it IS an act, isn't it? You're here to face your own demons, as much as you are for me. Don't deny it."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be," Dana replied. "Ten years; yet you don't have any children. Don't ask me how I know, I just do. Why?"
"I don't know. First there was his recovery; then there was the war with the Invid. But, that ended six years ago. Even Aurora's a mother now, believe it or not. But, I'm not, and there's no biological reason with either Zor or me to explain it."
"I think I might; these abilities are much more than you think they are. But, you've denied them, as much as you've denied your hopes, fears, and pains, which is why they don't come as natural to you as your cousins - or, apparently, to me, since I've not had a chance to reject them. Aren't we a pair? It really started with our denying the full extent of our feelings for Zor, not acting on them early enough to matter - and that led both of us to this hillside, in our own time. But, you had a reprieve - but that only allowed you to bottle up your feelings even tighter. You, me... we both have to stop denying ourselves, playing the Stoic inside while putting on the flighty act that everyone expects of us. We've got to stop denying our true selves." With that, the younger Dana embraced her counterpart, both of them breaking into tears.
"Don't cry, Aunt Dana."
"Wha-" the two looked, and a young boy stood there, seemingly from nowhere.
"Mom was worried about you; you've not responded to hails."
"Mom?"
"Dana, this is my nephew, Steven. His mother was an adult clone made of me made when I was five; an accidental byproduct of 'Flower-boy' over there kidnapping me and Noel for experiments - something that probably never happened to you, at least not like it did for me."
"There's something... Zand trying to awaken my powers, he claimed. Rolf rescuing me, while my parents were fighting the Malcontents."
"Like I said, it was quite different for me."
Steven looked around; everyone still treated him as a little kid. And, perhaps he might be, in some ways. But, much like his cousin Karen, he (and a lot of the others, like Karen's own little sisters) were more mature than the age they appeared on the outside - let alone what the calendar said (which was often a fraction of their physical appearance). Emotions were perhaps the area where he was weakest, but telepathy among him and his peers brought that a lot farther than anyone expected. Emotions which led him to act on his mother's worries, without permission, and now to contemplate something even more risky than a orbital teleport, because his aunt Dana and her younger duplicate were sad.
Before he was born, Karen had given his parents a collection of videos and books from other worlds, where the story of the SDF-1 and its heirs had been fictional stories. For various reasons, those materials (which had been dropped off in the middle of the night, with no one actually seeing Karen) had been classified black - only a handful of people in the post-Invid RDF even knew they existed, and most of those had come over to the Freeman household to study them, under the cover of poker games, kid's pool parties, etc. He, of all people, wasn't supposed to know anything about them. But, once again, he was a telepath - and once he found out about them, he managed to get into the safe they were stored in, and study them.
One of the books talked about the place that the SDF-3 had gotten trapped in, temporarily - and how the children of the SDF-3 got them out (since they didn't have Karen to help them). That otherworldly incident involved a dozen or more kids retrieving something temporally, but not only did they do it in a space between realities, the object was something the size of a small shuttle - and, truthfully, it wasn't even the right item they were looking for, but close enough. His intended target was much smaller, much more recent... and much closer.
If he was going to try it, he'd need an external power source for it. The two Danas wouldn't be enough - besides, they had already drained a lot of their potential. His eyes shifted up the hill... That will do.
"Steven, what are you doing? Stay away from that monster!"
He ignored his aunt, and reached into her counterpart's mind, to that last moment aboard the ship. He had the target, and the exterior power source, lacking a gestalt. He hoped this would work; otherwise, it could get messy. He placed his hand on the massive flower...
{I don't know if you're still sane in here, you bastard, but I hope you appreciate the mercy I'm giving you, even it's the ultimate denial of your plans}, Steven thought, reaching into the energies of the plant that was once Lazlo Zand. The plant withered brown, then crumbled to dust, as Steven began glowing brightly with the stolen energy. He then reached back, and up, using the psychic traces with Dana combined with the book and video descriptions of the moment he was trying so desperately to change.
Contact - then blackness...
The two Danas started running up the hill when they saw Steven reaching for the plant, but were too far to reach him. When he started glowing, it made them stop short, anyway - the last time the older Dana saw someone glow like that, it was Karen and the Regis, at Reflex Point. Then, there was the explosion, that knocked them both off their feet.
As they struggled to their feet, they could see a crater where Steven had been standing, and they ran, panicking and calling his name. They crested the edge of the hole...
...and found that the boy wasn't the only person there. He looked as if he was a rag doll, tossed to the side of the hole, but it was obvious that he'd actually been blown upward, then fell back to his position, after the explosion. At the center of the crater was another body, similarly storm-tossed, but much older.
The older Dana went to her nephew, and was relieved to find him breathing, and actually starting to regain consciousness.
"What have you done?"
"I wanted you to stop crying, Aunt Dana...Did I do something wrong?"
Dana looked over to her counterpart, who was holding the other person to her chest. That person, too, was beginning to stir.
"I guess it runs in the family... Don't EVER do something like that again, at least not without asking for help AND permission first. But yeah, you did good, kid."
"You're still crying."
"Yeah, I guess I am; but it's a different kind of crying. Are you hurt?"
He reached up, touched her, and some of his color came back as he nudged her healing powers into working on him. "Not much; too tired to stand, though. Can you carry me?"
"Sure, you little rascal. By the way, just how did you do that?"
"Ask Mom about the kids in The End of the Circle."
"I'll pretend I didn't just hear that - I only know enough about that book to know that very bad things happened to my counterpart in it, and that's all your parents ever told me about it. How did YOU know about it?"
"Since when did being told something was off-limits ever stop you as a kid?"
"Good point."
They got over to the other Dana, as Zor Prime finally started shaking off the effects of the concussion he had, at least until the younger Dana's unconscious use of her own awakening powers took care of it.
"Dana... How did I get here? And... why are there two of you?"
"That's a long story... It's funny - my Zor said the same thing when he first woke up."