Ten minutes later, Steven was back on his feet, leading the two Danas (supporting Zor between them) toward the nearest concentration of survivors. So intent were the women on keeping Zor on his feet, that they didn't notice that Steven had led them into the middle of a group of grounded assault ships, ones different than the group the 15th ATAC had flown down in.

"Fancy meeting you here," a voice called from the doorway of one of the nearest craft.

"Ron?"

"Yeah; I managed to get into town yesterday - too late to stop the chaos. After all, who would believe me, after Jon ran off to South America without me to try to save his family?"

"So, how did you end up here?"

"Well, I was able to convince one person, though it took most the night to do it. As a result, we persuaded him to order the evacuation hours earlier, and to come with us."

"You mean..."

"Greetings, Major Sterling, and Lieutenant Sterling," Anatole Leonard called out, emerging with Ron's two young sons, one in each arm. "I'm glad to see you no worse for wear, Lieutenant, although I'm a bit surprised to see Zor with you. Hirano said that he would be the one blowing up the mothership, and there probably wouldn't be a way to save him if your counterpart's fleet arrived too late to stop the explosion."

"After all I've been through, I'm tempted to frag you right here, if it wasn't for the kids."

"Heel, little sister. He's still your superior officer, and he had nothing to do with Zand. In fact, Zand's manipulations typically came down to him via orders from the civilian leadership or from vague communications from lackeys, coupled with blackmail. He's as much a victim as you, as my friend Ron can vouch for. After all, Ron's counterpart died here in the same month Zand first tried to violate you."

"But, all those deaths...?"

"They probably would have happened, regardless. If the 'Supreme Commander' had stood up against Zand's commands, the council would have replaced him with someone even less willing to work with Emerson. In fact, one of the few people that seemed to be immune to direct manipulation by Zand was Uncle Rolf - and after every attempt to remove him from the equation failed, Zand stopped trying, feeling that the same fate driving him must have also had a purpose for Rolf's continued existence. That's why he waited until he sensed Rolf's passing in orbit, to make another attempt on you."

"Dana, did Noel's backup plan work?" Hirano asked.

"Yes and no. She retrieved Rolf's body, but didn't have time to save Zor- my nephew here pulled an insanely dangerous stunt, to save him - and will probably be grounded until the next century for doing it."

"Let's see grounding work on a someone who can teleport," Steven commented.

Dana rolled her eyes. "The genes do show, don't they? He may be the son of my clone, but he sure takes after me."

Steven grinned devilishly, as he levitated himself a few inches off the ground.

"Before you bring up Rolf's death, Dana, that's what my cousin was doing when Zor here was trying to blow up the ship. We didn't have a firm timeline, so the backup plan if we arrived after you'd left the ship, was to send Noel after Rolf, first, then go after Zor. We took an advanced version of the sizing chamber the Masters created for the Zentraedi, and advanced the technology even further in the last decade, once protoculture supplies weren't an issue. As long as someone's brain is intact, and relatively fresh, we can restore them to life as easily as changing the size of a Zentraedi; it works wonders on restoring missing body parts, too."

"Lieutenant, let me apologize for all the hell I put you through," Leonard spoke up. "One of the reasons I was so hard on you, and your unit, was that my son died at the hands of your mother. You lived, but Hirano died. The persons that kidnapped Hirano's mother, and made her believe that I was behind it, actually worked for Zand. The baby was supposed to be used to blackmail me, but Seloy escaped, and the resulting chaos that she fed working on that belief served Zand just as well."

"Hirano was your son?" The younger Dana was shocked.

"Yes," the older Dana answered." In fact, one of the reasons why the Southern Cross expanded from just being the remnants of the Brazilian Army and the world forces based at the Grand Cannon site, into a hemispheric, then global, force, was so that Leonard could look for his son, whom Seloy had kept hidden after her escape. By the time of the Brasilia Massacre, she had felt emboldened enough to become more public - only to have it backfire, and she ended up back in the jungle again. What really happened that day is still argued, other than that the order to open fire on the crowd did not come from any legitimate authority."

Hirano continued. "I spoke to your mother before the fold here, Dana, and when she found out who I was, the great Miriya Sterling broke down and cried like a little girl. She'd still been bottling up all her guilt over what happened back then. Miriya tried to confront Seloy over the attacks on humans, which had been escalated to a form of designer biochemical weapon delivered by robot bugs, that turned the infected into psychotic killers until it wore off - if they survived the stresses that were put on their bodies by the stuff. When it was apparent that Seloy was too far gone, Miriya tried to shoot her - only to have my counterpart jump in the way and take the bullets meant for his mother; it appeared to Miriya that he was just trying to get between the two of them to stop the argument, not to shield his mother, which made it even more tragic. That, of course, snapped what few threads of sanity remained in my mother's counterpart, and Miriya barely managed to kill Seloy and escape with her life."

"Mom... killed Hirano?"

"Yes. Truthfully, it was better that way. While Seloy would have never intentionally harmed her son, had she succeeded in her plan, he would died anyway. Who knows how crazy that would have driven her - she was rumored to have recovered the Artemis Array that the UEDC built before the Zentraedi arrived, that was designed to divert asteroid Apophis into a safer orbit using multiple reflex warheads used as thrusters. That's dozens of huge nukes - just missing fuel. Apophis was mined into raw material for the RDF fleet after Dolza using modified Zentraedi ships, so it was never used.

"Anyway, Seloy had forgotten that the placental barrier meant that none of us half-Zentraedi had protoculture traces in our systems, at least not naturally. Zand MIGHT have injected you artificially, just in case Seloy succeeded, much like he'd imbibed the Flower of Life himself. It was Zand that had provided Seloy, through intermediaries, the location of that biochemical weapon, which had been developed by the Neasians during the global war, and was being secretly tested in Africa. He also supplied the data needed to make the robotic injector bugs and the sensors that allowed them to tell the difference between humans and full Zentraedi by sensing the protoculture traces. The stuff never got used on my world, thank God, but my Louis managed to recover Zand's archives before we left the ruins of Monument, and he'd decrypted them and found out a lot of the secrets behind the really bad things that happened in the 20 years between the destruction of Macross and Monument."

"Maybe Steven draining all of Zand's life force to save Zor was too good a fate for him."

"You won't get an argument from me," the elder Dana replied. "He was Invid food back home, and I thought even that was too quick, even though he had to live a year as a plant in sensory deprivation before that happened."

About an hour later, the rest of the survivors from the battle aboard the mothership arrived, looking for Dana. Bowie was initially as furious to see Leonard as Dana was initially, but when he was told that Rolf had been recovered and was being revived, he calmed down a bit, though still a bit mistrusting of the "supreme commander".

At this point, Leonard was just another survivor, and whose command status was in serious doubt. Not only was Leonard technically one of Lisa's subordinates (even if he'd reorganized most of the RDF into the second Southern Cross after Edwards' betrayal), he had technically only been the commander at the direction of the UEG council. When Ron had convinced him to start the civilian evacuation six hours earlier than elsewhere, before the Tyroleans began their attack on the city, they'd ordered his removal. This didn't have any real effect on the military; after all, he'd arranged to have those with suspect loyalty transferred to Emerson's attack forces for the last two assaults (and he made sure to get rid of the political lackeys in the same purge as most of Emerson's supporters).

But, while the council had to waste time trying to drag in someone from Europe or Asia to replace him, he in turn seized the communications networks, detained the local political apparatus (many of which willingly complied, once they found out the reason for his orders), and made sure that at least locally, his evacuation order wasn't countermanded. Colonel Fredericks and the GMP managed to get a much more orderly evacuation underway, and when the assault did arrive, the drugged-up clones hit a mostly empty town, with only the Civil Defense forces left, as well as the small fraction of population that ignores any evacuation order. The CD forces did their best to evade and retreat out of town, once the evacuation gave way to combat. After all, the evacuation alert was the type for pending reflex weapon attack, which was all too true.

Some of the conventional assault ships and bioroids strafed the rear guard areas of the southwestern and southern evacuation paths where the GMP had concentrated their mecha, since the primary evacuation paths in that direction went through the former parkland that surrounded the military target of Fokker Field. The primary evacuation was to the east along the old I-90 corridor, and it was virtually untouched. Fredericks and the local politicians were with that group, and it was moving slowly in the direction of the Sioux Falls military vehicle depot (which had started sending out fuel trucks when the evacuation was ordered). From there, they'd divide into smaller groups, and most would continue to Granite City, New Chicago, and New Detroit.

As the night went on, the GMP, CDU and other military personnel left behind slowly filtered into the area to the northwest of Monument, along the abandoned US Highway 212 that for two short years almost 20 years prior, had been widened to become the most heavily traveled road in North America, running between the fledgling cities of Monument and New Macross. The two clusters of assault ships that had abandoned ship after following the 15th to salvation, had settled down on opposite sides of the highway, along the part of the road that cut through what had once been the northeast corner of Wyoming, and it was there that surviving clones from the devastation in Monument were brought, having stopped fighting when Zor Prime and Dana took out the Clone Masters in the command center of the ship, and slowly coming out of their drug-induced near-mindless state as the night progressed. Many were in shock from the totally alien (to them) surroundings they woke up in, and it took the bravest of the clones that had followed Musica to safety going out with the patrols into the carnage, to go in and gather their people.

Morning saw the arrival of supplies and personnel from the SDFs and the Dreamweaver, as well as transports to take those wanting to go back up to orbit, where one of the Masters colony ships was still functional, but in dire need of repair. While conditions would be rough on it, many clones would feel more comfortable there, and the ship needed more people familiar with the technology to help with the repairs.

In the afternoon, Leonard was taken to the Dreamweaver, where he and Emerson were debriefed, and filled in on what had occurred on the SDF-3 mission. Attempts were made to get persons from the Far East and European Sectors of the UEG, but they were just as bone-headed here as back home - even more so since they considered Leonard as being relieved of command, and having refused to protect the majority of the government that blindly stayed in Monument to get incinerated - as if he could have somehow stopped the attack from the Masters' gunship after the enemy had achieved total aerial superiority. This led to Noel and a much more confident Dana going in and forcibly taking the recalcitrant politicos to orbit by force.

It took a bit longer to get representatives from the independents, and to finally make contact with Cavern City. Jon Wolfe had gone there with his unit, after leaving Hirano and his family outside Monument. After confronting his ex-wife, who wasn't really all that thrilled to see him, and apologizing for his stupidity, he took on the defense of the city, whether she wanted him to or not. He sent the civil defense fighter squadron from Cavern City to back up his son's unit in one of the coastal districts, while having the two fighter squadrons from his composite battalion take its place.

When the Masters did attack, the battle at Cavern City was much more drawn out than in the Freeman's universe, primarily from the different composition of the city defense forces resulting from the Wolfe Pack returning home. When the smoke cleared, Cavern City was still underground, but the Wolfe Pack had taken severe losses, including its commander. Wolfe had taken on the assault ship that, in other universes, blown open the cavern roof. His Alpha had trouble targeting it, so, when he managed to actually catch it and grab hold right before it was going to fire, he blasted his way into it at point blank range, and climbed inside. Unfortunately, the power plant onboard a gunship variant was much more unstable (and powerful) than that of regular assault ship, and it blew up when it attempted to fire, from the damage he was inflicting inside. Without the gunship, the battle became one of attrition, until the Masters' forces retreated on hearing of the destruction of their commanders.

On the other hand, the addition of the additional air forces helped swing the battle on the coast, to where the defenders won with minimal losses, since bioroids were most vulnerable to missile attacks. Wolfe's actions had saved his son and ex-wife, as well as his home, but at the cost of his life.

When all of the governments finally were represented, talks began once more, and preparations made. After all, no one knew as yet if the Bernards would be as successful here as they were on their first stop, in persuading the Invid to stand down. They had to prepare for the worst, while doing the cat-herding that was post-Masters diplomacy.

Captain's Log, Ark Angel (translated from the Karbarran):

"The crew is starting to get unruly from all the waiting; Bela reports the same from the Tokugawa. The only reason why things haven't exploded seems to be the team sports the humans introduced. Every ship has its own internal leagues for basketball, and, I kid not, THREE different Earth sports ALL called "Football", but with little in common with each other than the rough size of their play areas. It says much about our peoples that, the crews play the latter three are played on bare hangar decking, instead of the artificial ground surface the humans had for the games when they introduced them. Yet, even with those outlets, the fights on the field of play and intentional causing of injury have increased, especially in interspecies games.

"The Zentraedi crews seem to be a bit more laid back; perhaps because they are getting a lot more 'recreation' than the rest of us. Karbarran crews are mostly male, Praxians, are, well, what they are - and dare I say it, every bit a match for the typical male Karbarran or Zentraedi in strength and toughness. Once it was found out that Breetai and Kazianna were expecting, without even being micronized, it seems sex became the primary off-duty activity on the Valivarre. In the last year, the number of Zentraedi in the fleet has doubled, but there's been no cloning, and all the new arrivals are in diapers, not uniforms. Just saying that would have been unimaginable in the days of the Empire.

"Now, even the Regent has gone quiet; perhaps our blockade has finally pushed the Invid into energy conservation mode, since they lost their food imports from our worlds, and had their underground gardens optimized for mecha fuel; it's not sufficient to supply their food needs even if put completely over to that use. The only activity seems to be the Inorganics, and they aren't shifting patrol patterns anymore. As it is, I think that we confused the Regent's tiny mind when we surrounded Optera and didn't attack, only fighting to defend ourselves and prevent traffic - not that there's been anyone coming in since Peryton was liberated.

"Tomorrow, we will finally assault the surface - and hopefully, not fly into a trap. Scouts will use the cloaked reconnaissance fighters that the dimensional travelers provided us to lead the way, and hopefully keep us from too many blunders."

"Captain, the scouts have broken radio silence."

"What? So soon?" Lron fumed.

"They say to call off the attack; it's not needed. The Invid are gone."

"HOW?"

"They don't know. All the Invid mechs are standing empty - as if the pilots disappeared from them while in mid-step. Some appear to have even fallen in stride, or out of the air. And, all their spacecraft are still parked where they were last seen."

"Are you sure they aren't just in hibernation?"

"Even the hives and gardens are unmanned."

"Breetai is so going to not like this." Then again, Lron thought, at least Kazianna can rest easy knowing that Breetai won't be suicidally leading the charge like he did in other universes, and according to their visitors, he only survived in some universes because others sacrificed themselves to save him - and without those, he died in a suicidal embrace with the Regent.

Two months after the Masters' defeat, Marie Freeman gave birth to her daughter, whom she named Allison. However, what should have been a joyful time was filled with apprehension. The Soviets, much like their counterparts back home, could not be convinced that the Invid existed, let alone were a potential threat, and there was still no word from the Bernards.

Two more months passed, and the only result was that the world was polarized into two factions - those who believed in the possibility of an Invid invasion, and those that denied the race's existence, or at least that it was a threat. Despite the apparent strategic advantage of four SDF-class ships in orbit, those opposed to their warnings seemed to be edging closer and closer to resistance, if not outright war, against the RDF, and they even attempted to nationalize the surviving RDF & ASC forces that had been stationed on their soil prior to those ships' arrival; and more often than not, those forces responded by taking their toys and moving to where they'd follow the chain of command they'd signed up for - in some cases, having to fight their way out. Things were getting insane.

Scott was woken by the alert claxons going off, and he scrambled to the bridge while still getting dressed.

"What's the situation, Angie?" He asked, relieving Dante, who had been the senior bridge officer for the watch.

"We've got multiple tracks coming in from deep space."

"The Invid?"

"That's the question. The tracks are coming in on completely different directions from each other, and neither match the data from the Invid arrival back home, in either direction, or nature of the returns. Of course, that doesn't mean anything here."

"How soon till you can get a visual identification?"

"I've launched fold probes. They should pop in any second, and give us visuals from a few million miles out."

"Let me know when you get more data. Have you alerted the other ships?"

"Yes, sir. I contacted them to confirm our readings, before ordering the alert. Visuals coming in now... One of the inbounds is a fleet of unidentified class ships, being led by an SDF-7 class vessel. Suggest we tag this as possibly being the Bernard mission, but we'll need to contact them. The other is... Captain, you better take a look at this."

Angie transferred the image to the main screen, and set the IFF to re-run the visual classification.

"Another SDF-3? Where the hell did that come from?"

"Should I hail them?" Bowie asked, having showed his usual regard for military authority, and standing at his station in his uniform top, pajama bottoms and pollinator slippers, his uniform pants and shoes on his console so that he could change into them as he got the chance.

"As long as you stay off-camera."

"I am kinda out of uniform, aren't I?"

"Kinda?"

"Unidentified SDF-3 class vessel, this is the Dimensional Exploration Ship Dreamweaver, in orbit over Earth. Please identify yourself."

"This is Admiral Lisa Hayes Hunter, in command of the SDF-3. Our sensors indicate a modified Zentraedi Scout is part of your vessel. By any chance is there a Scott Freeman aboard your vessel?"

"I'll take it from here, Bowie. Put me on the main screen - narrow focus, for obvious reasons." Scott sat down in his command chair. "This is General Scott Freeman, commander of the Earth Dimensional Corps. I gather from you knowing my name, that I was a guest of yours over Garuda and Haydon IV?"

"You are correct, though it was one of my bridge crew that recognized the Korra'ti as the core of your vessel."

A split screen popped up. "You're looking good, brother. I guess you made it home all right after all."

"Jan?"

"I guess it's been longer for you than it has been for us."

"Quite a bit. We rebuilt this ship into this form over 20 years after our return home; fates conspired to keep us from putting most of the information we brought back to use, and we ended up fighting Edwards all over again here, then the Invid on Earth. The world below is the second Earth we've contacted on our maiden voyage."

"This is our first stop on ours," Lisa added. "It looks like Earth had a rough time here. We used the data gathered from studying and repairing your ship, to develop fold systems that got us home in time to force the Masters to come to the table for negotiations, though we still ended up having to launch a decapitation raid against them when they tried to use the talks as a cover to raid the Macross ruins. The Invid arrived a couple years later, and managed to seize the Earth by bypassing the fleet. We sent emissaries from orbit, instead of trying to drive them off, and persuaded them to go home with the promise to help them rebuild."

"Speaking of which, we've got what we think are the local Invid coming in from a nearly opposite vector from you, that we sent some of our people to talk down from their frenzy."

"Who did you send? Zor Prime? Rem?"

"Actually, Scott Bernard. Things went really bad on our Earth, with the Masters and Southern Cross destroying each other, and he ended up as one of the few survivors of an REF mission to liberate Earth. He ended up fighting his way to the Invid Regis, only to find that his girlfriend was an amnesiac Invid simulagent, who in turn defended humanity in front of her mother, and convinced the Regis that the Invid were just as wrong in their actions on Earth as the Masters had been for their actions against the Invid. The Invid left, saving Earth from a lunatic that launched a planetary sterilization attack after the SDF-3 never arrived from a misfold. Scott and his Invid wife, as a result, were the perfect choice for Invid ambassadors, and have already done it once on our trip, already."

"Seeing as you have an SDF-1 and SDF-2 with you, I think I can guess the time period of your first stop."

"Yeah, arriving just in time to blow Khyron to bits."

"We'll speed up and join you in Earth orbit, just in case your diplomacy failed, and the other group of ships is hostile."

"That will be fine. It will be easier to catch you up in person."

The other fleet, indeed, turned out to be the Invid. They were arriving already in the process of taking human form, after the Regis and Marlene/Ariel had a long telepathic talk. The primary reason for the delay in communications on arrival was that the Regis was still in the process of getting the Regent cured of his Peryton-curse-triggered insanity, and converted into a more humanoid form.

The Invid set up temporary homes on the mostly-deserted Indian subcontinent, from which they would travel back to Optera to restore that world to its original state. In some ways, the Invid had come full circle, back to their ancestral homelands, and it was apparent that many of them would not return to Optera when it was restored.

While this went on, the four Earths represented talked about their pasts, presents, and possible futures. While trade and immigration might not be a viable option for a decade or more, the groundwork for such was laid, and mutual defense, technology and exploration agreements were made. The two groups already using their own ships to venture into other dimensions exchanged coordinates, and made plans for more exploration missions together.

Eventually, almost a year later, they took the 2014-era vessels back home - and found that they'd brought them back only days after their departure. Similarly, when they arrived home, they'd only been gone weeks. Later contact with those same worlds seemed to have time pass on a 1 to 1 basis, but something about those first missions (and many of their future first contact missions) resulted in an effect that Louis Nichols referred to as "visiting Narnia", where it was only after repeated contact that time passage would become synchronous.

The next voyage of the Dreamweaver would be to the world promised by Cindy, a normal Earth influenced by Karen; later missions would contact other dimensions that took completely other paths - but those are stories for another time.