Second Chances 2.0
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and universe that I am about to mangle around for my own demented author amusement – sadly all Robotech characters and concepts remain the property of Harmony Gold – I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from their use. As a result, please keep the legal attack dogs – also known as lawyers – firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.
Authors Note: Well here's the first full main chapter of the reboot. Unlike in the original we will not immediately be diving into the events of the First Robotech War but instead there is going to be a bit of prequel stuff to do first both in this chapter and the one to follow it, it will all pay off in the end I promise you as its going to set in motion a number of the newer plot threads that I feel the story was lacking the first time around. Okay now that's over with let's crack on with the chapter shall we.
Chapter One
The first thing that Rick became aware of was the melodic twittering of birds, singing the dawn chorus. The sound pierced the dense veil of sleep around his mind and started to draw him out into the waking world. As he rose towards consciousness he became aware that he was lying on a comfortable warm surface, with a heavy but at the same time soft duvet blanket lying over him. Slowly he opened his eyes, wincing slightly at the thin ribbons of sunlight streaming in from gaps in the curtains and making motes of suspended dust glimmer like diamonds.
Wait a minute sunlight, Sol's sunlight.
With breath-taking suddenness Rick sat up bolt upright in bed and looked around shock giving way to amazement as he beheld the walls of a bedroom that he had not seen in decades. A room that for more than forty years had, like the ranch house in which it was to be found, only existed in his memories as it had been burnt to ashes in the quantum firestorms that had swept over the Earth during the Rain of Death. It worked, he thought gazing around in wonder seeing all the posters of his youth most about flying in some form or another though not all there were a few of the obligatory posters of scantily clad young women expected of a teenage boy. Then there were the shelves filled with model airplanes he'd made with his own two hands, he had spent many hours on dark evenings putting tiny wooden parts together, and the trophies he had earned as an amateur flying champion ever since he'd gotten old enough to legally be allowed to compete.
He moved to throw the duvet off himself so he could swing his legs out of bed and stand up only to pause when he saw his arms. They were a lot thinner than he was used to them being, while the muscles of his forearms were still toned they were nowhere near as big, thick, and mature as he was used to them being. Not to mention the skin was smooth and unblemished by the inevitable injuries he had picked up over the course of a lifetime of struggle and warfare not to mention had the undeniable sheen of youth. Combined with everything he had seen around him it was more proof – if he needed it – that he was indeed here in the past that the angelic version of Roy had indeed told him the truth and sent him across decades of time and tens of thousands of light years of space to the past and merged him into the body of his own younger self.
"Okay Rick you are here in the past," he muttered to himself, "the question is how far back are you before the outbreak of the First Robotech War."
Throwing the duvet off himself he stood up grinning when, for the first time in nearly five years, there was no immediate stab of arthritic pain from his knees. He slipped his feet into a pair of slippers and looked around for anything, a calendar or anything, that could tell him what today's date was. Then he spotted the electronic alarm clock on the bedside table which included the date as well as the time. Mentally he groaned - and cursed in half a dozen languages including Tirolian, Zentraedi, Praxian and even some Perytonian – when he saw that he was only a day before the planned festivities on Macross Island and the maiden flight of the SDF-1, both of which would get so rudely gate crashed by the arrival of a Zentraedi battle fleet. A fleet that if he knew Zentraedi tactics – and he knew them very well indeed as the Expeditionary Force had adopted and adapted many of them as the Zentraedi were well used to fighting wars in space – would be currently stopped at their version of the Mobile Armoured Repair and Supply – or MARS stations – they'd built for the Pioneer mission taking on supplies prior to making their last space fold to Sol.
"A day what am I supposed to do in a single bloody day," he muttered to himself, inadvertently speaking Tirolian as he did so since up time he'd spoken Tirolian almost as much as he'd spoken Terran English since due to their long presence as a spacefaring species – the Tirolians had been a spacefaring people for nearly five hundred years before the rise of the Robotech Masters – many of the other races both inside and outside the Sentinels had used Tirolian as the language of trade and diplomacy. Thus learning to speak Tirolian had been something of a must.
Sitting back on the edge of the bed he frowned thoughtfully. The more he thought about it the more he realized that there really wasn't much he could do to really help prepare for the outbreak of the First Robotech War. Not only was there really not enough time to do anything, he would have needed months at least if not a year or two of lead time, but he was at this point in time just a civilian pilot and the star of the amateur air racing circuit. It was something of a startling, but at the same time quite sobering, revelation that even if he had come back a bit earlier there wouldn't have been anything he could do to make meaningful change since he didn't have anywhere near the authority he was used to having up time as admiral of the REF fleet.
The sound of someone knocking at the bedroom door brought him out of his thoughts. A second before he felt a stab in his heart as for the first time in so long he heard his father speak. "Rick are you up," Mitchell 'Pops' Hunter called from the hallway beyond.
"I'm up Pops," Rick called back, hoping he was slipping back enough into how he'd talked as the largely carefree teenager he'd originally been at this point in time. Something that he knew he no longer was and never could be again as while his body was that of a relatively fit nineteen-year-old his mind was filled with all the knowledge, experience, and memories of a man in his late fifties and who had seen more death and destruction over the course of the Robotech Wars than anyone should ever have to see.
"Oh good. I'll get started on breakfast then. What drink do you want with it? Coke or squash?"
"Um Pops do you mind if I have a coffee with it this morning?" Rick asked, a shocked silence followed that and inwardly he smiled as he knew his father would be gaping especially as at this point in the original timeline it had been fairly rare for him to want to drink coffee. He'd always preferred squash or coke and rarely had drunk anything warm, well that wasn't drinking chocolate on a cold winter evening by the fireplace in the living room.
"Sure Rick I can do you a coffee," Pops answered after a moment. "Milk and sugar?"
"Yes please."
"Alright it will be ready downstairs when you get out of the shower."
"Sure thing pops."
Faintly Rick heard his father walk away, then faintly heard the creaking of the century old oak stairs as the older man went downstairs. I think I have freaked him out a bit asking for coffee. It's something that he is going to have to get used to, he thought even as it occurred to him that something he could do almost immediately was ensure that at very least his father survived what was coming. He wasn't quite sure how he was going to do that but he would think of something, but first he needed to have a quick shower – something that being in the military in the other timeline had taught him to master – then dress and head down to breakfast.
Ten Minutes Later
Mitchell Hunter was slightly confused as he finished fixing breakfast for himself and Rick. When he'd spoken to Rick there had been something in his son's voice, some tone that he'd never heard from him before, that didn't make a whole lot of sense. It had been almost like Rick was both surprised and delighted to hear his voice again – never mind that they'd spoken extensively last night discussing the invitation from Roy to attend the SDF-1's christening ceremony on Macross Island, determining if one or both of them would go with them ultimately deciding Rick would go alone – but had been trying not to show it. Which was somewhat puzzling though what was genuinely surprising was Rick actually asking him for a cup of coffee with his breakfast instead of the coke, orange juice or squash he would normally have.
The faint creaking of the stairs let him know that Rick was coming down so he carefully moved the maple pancakes he'd made for them – a long term favourite of both of them – to the dining table along with two mugs of coffee. After he set them down he made himself comfortable in his own seat as Rick appeared and immediately he knew something had changed and changed radically. Rick was holding himself completely differently to how he had even yesterday, there was a stiffness and poise in his manner that practically screamed military. As did the way he was wearing the blue jeans and white shirt, they were precisely tucked in and seemed to have almost become a military uniform despite being civilian clothing.
"Rick are you alright," he asked in concern as his youngest, and only biological, child slid into the seat opposite him. Even the way he did that was different, the mannerisms while still clearly Rick's were crisper and more precise and like the way he held himself and the way he was dressed felt distinctly military. Frankly it was almost like he was back in the navy again, aboard one of the old Nimitz-class aircraft carriers preparing for another sortie over Iraq as part of Desert Storm.
"I'm fine Pops," Rick replied idly before picking up and taking a sip of his coffee, almost sighing in bliss at the taste of actual honest-to-God Terran coffee. While they had been able to grow coffee beans on their ships, and more than one coffee plantation had sprung up on Tirol after the expeditionary force chased away the Invid Regent and his hoard of inorganic battle mecha as the Tirolians and Praxians like the Zentraedi before them had quickly fallen in love with coffee, they'd never quite been able to replicate the taste of coffee beans grown and roasted right here on Earth.
Mitchell noticed and mentally frowned. "Are you sure?"
"I said I'm fine."
Mitchell was startled at the tone that Rick used then and had to fight down an old instinct from his days in the navy to suddenly stand at attention. The tone Rick had used, clearly without realizing he was using it, had the clear note of command in it and the authority of an experienced senior officer at that. It was not something that he could just have learned as the ability to speak that way, even without realizing you were doing it, was not something that you could just learn. It was something that only came with time, experience, and no small amount of pain. He stared at Rick in alarm and concern.
"Rick how did you do that," he demanded to know.
Rick blinked. "What?" he asked looking at his father in confusion even as he took a bite of one of the pancakes and smiled at the taste, he had almost forgotten how good his father was at making maple pancakes. An alarm bell began to go off in the back of his skull.
"When you answered me the second time the way you spoke. The tone you used, that's not something that just comes to you or can be taught. It only comes through time and experience, sometimes very painful experience."
Rick blinked again and frowned before mentally reviewing the way he'd spoken to his father after coming downstairs after showering and getting dressed. Oh shit, he thought as he realized that when he had answered he had inadvertently slipped into what he and Lisa had long ago termed his 'admiral' mode. Something that his father, being an ex-US Navy aviator, and a veteran of Operation Desert Storm which had been widely seen as the first in the series of conflicts that would go on to become the Global Civil War and which would only end when Zor's battlefortress fell out of the sky, would immediately recognise having encountered it on a number of occasions. Without even thinking about it he emitted a particularly pungent Zentraedi swear word, one of many he'd picked up over the decades up time from the likes of Miriya, Exedore and Breetai.
"I don't know what you said then but it sounded pungent in true navy fashion," Mitchell said with a slight smirk, recalling the few times he'd sworn like that though not in what sounded like a completely different language. One that was not Spanish which he knew Rick could speak well due to both their housekeeper and a previous girlfriend of his being ex-pat Mexicans. More than once his swearing had had his dear late wife Jessica threaten to box his ears or get his sister Maria to fly all the way over here from Denver just to wash his mouth out with soap.
"Then there is the way your holding yourself and the way you've dressed," he continued turning serious "it is practically screaming military. So what's going on Richard Bartholomew Hunter? What the hell has happened to you?"
Rick winced at his father saying his full name, something he only did when he was being deadly serious and wasn't about to put up with any bullshitting or evasions from him. For a moment he considered trying anyway but a glance at his father let him know that that was not going to work, he would have more luck getting the likes of Khyron to turn pacifist than deterring his father from getting the answers that he wanted. And really would it be so bad for his father to know? He had after all been trying to work out how to somehow prevent his death as much as possible during the Rain. And now that he thought about it hadn't Admiral Hayes been after his father for a while, something about wanting him to take charge of one of the new veritech training schools based on one of the submersible Prometheus-class carriers like the class leader that would go on to become one of the SDF-1's arms after the space fold dumped them out by Pluto.
"It's a long story Pops," he admitted at last, making his decision. He just hoped it didn't land him a one-way ticket to the nearest asylum. "How about we finish our breakfast first and then I'll tell you. Just please don't think I'm crazy as while I know this will sound completely and utterly nuts I assure you it isn't."
Mitchell frowned but nodded in acquiescence and a tense silence descended on them as the proceeded to eat breakfast. While they ate Mitchell kept glancing at Rick and getting more and more confused and concerned. Whatever had happened to Rick, whatever he had to tell him he could tell that it was going to be something both deeply shocking and distressing. The very way he was sitting there, and the scowl on his face that was so like his mothers when she'd been preoccupied with something. It was setting every mental alarm bell he had ringing.
Sooner than either of them would have liked they had finished breakfast. Rick picked up his still half-full mug of coffee and made his way towards the living room while Mitchell for his part gathered up the dishes and put them all in the dishwasher. After setting the machine going he picked up his own mug of still surprisingly warm coffee and went into the living room…
…to see Rick idly walking along in front of the mantlepiece over the fireplace glancing at all the photos and family portraits there with a look of nostalgia on his face. Like he had not seen them all for a very long time, he especially paused on the picture of the whole family together taken just before Roy had left to join the navy and fight in the Global Civil War, which was frankly ridiculous because like him Rick saw them practically every day. The only time he didn't was when they were away at air shows, which really only happened now when Rick had a race as he was having to sell the flying circus as it was just getting too expensive to maintain all their planes not to mention fuel was getting more expensive as the world was switching more and more away from fossil fuels to newer fuels like hydrogen as well as those advanced crystal energy cells that had been reverse engineered from the alien ship that had fallen to Earth a decade ago. Far too many of their planes couldn't be converted to either so he was having to sell them, the only plane that they would be able to keep would be Rick's fanjet since it was hydrogen powered.
It was also why he was honestly considering the offer his old CO had made him. For him to return to service to serve as an instructor for UEDF Navy pilots. Not that he had told Rick that yet, though he had suspected for awhile that Rick already knew or at least suspected as he had seen Admiral Hayes arrive and leave again a little while later. Though he had not said anything.
He put aside those thoughts for now.
"Rick," he said to get his son's attention. Rick jumped slightly and spun around, hand moving towards his waist as if reaching for a sidearm only for one not to be there. Thankfully Rick seemed to realise what he was doing and looked a little sheepish.
"Sorry Pops you startled me," he admitted even as he mentally chided himself for instinctively reaching for a type of sidearm, in the H90 Mars Gallant, that would exist for decades yet.
"I guessed that. Maybe we should sit down."
"Good idea this is going to be a lot for you to take in all at once but… it's better that you know, then I won't have to try and hide who I am now compared to who I was at this apparent age the first time around from you."
Mitchell blinked. "You speak as though you've somehow travelled in time," he said as he sat in his favourite armchair. Rick doing the same opposite him.
"That's because I have," Rick admitted, "I died a few decades from now and my memories, skills, knowledge everything that made me well me, were sent back here by some beings I never really believed in until now."
"That sounds a little farfetched Rick," Mitchell commented, "though given how different you are behaving today compared to yesterday I will believe you. Though the question I have to ask is why? Why has this happened."
"Are you sure you want to know Pops?"
"Rick just tell me."
Rick smirked. "Basically I – and any others who've been sent back as I was told others would be, hopefully Lisa's amongst them – am here to change the future and save not just our race but a dozen others across the length and breadth of multiple galaxies from utter obliteration."
"That's… quite the tall order."
"Tell me about it."
"Perhaps you had better start at the beginning Rick."
"Indeed. Alright this actually all begins long before either of us was born, specifically it began five hundred years ago and a few million light years away on a planet called Tirol and the setting off into space of a brilliant polymath scientist and engineer named Zor Derelda."
Zentraedi Command Ship
Deep Space, That Same Time
Exedore frowned slightly as he finished pulling on a style of uniform that until today he had not worn in decades. While he had been well prepared to be sent here into the past, with the spirit of Breetai himself meeting him in that strange white void between the worlds of the living and the worlds of the dead, it had still been something of a shock to not only wake up back aboard this ship – a ship that had been recycled decades ago in his memory with a number of components being reused in the construction of the SDF-3 – but in his full size instead of the micronized form that he had inhabited for so long. The sudden change in weight and strength had been a little disorientating, not that it was an unknown phenomenon among Zentraedi and he knew a number of methods for regaining equilibrium.
Now fully clothed in the uniform of the Imperial Zentraedi Forces, and quietly hating it as like every free Zentraedi their old uniforms had never ceased to remind him of the generations of subjugation they had endured at the hands of the Robotech Masters, he made his way over to his quarters computer terminal and sat down. After logging into the system he carefully disabled all the various tracking and monitoring systems that the Masters had installed, so they would have warning of any Zentraedi beginning to look into things that they should not and did so in such away that the security systems were not alerted. The training he'd gotten on information warfare from Terrans in the other timeline proving itself to be extremely useful once again.
Secure he first checked to see exactly what the fleet was doing. Just as it had the last time the fleet was currently in close orbit of a mobile supply station – very similar to the MARS stations the REF had built/would build in the future – taking on fresh supplies of fuel for their mecha's fusion turbine engines, food, water, and munitions for the mission ahead. The computer confirming for him that the resupply process would take another seven to eight hours to complete though computations for their next fold were already beginning. Once resupply was finished the fleet would execute the first of two full length space folds following the phased graviton trail left by Zor's battlefortress. Folds that would ultimately take them to the Terran homeworld and begin a sequence of events that would finally severe the ties that had bound the Zentraedi in servitude to the Robotech Masters for generations.
"Maybe there is something I can do to speed up that process once we arrive," he muttered to himself even as he had to acknowledge that initially there would not be much if anything he could do to prevent Terrans and Zentraedi coming to blows. The imperative imprinted in their minds by the Masters meant that it was inevitable that fighting would break out between them – as distasteful as he found it given how good an ally the Terran race would become to the Zentraedi especially once they undermined the Masters programming enough to really begin teaching them how to be more than just weapons of war wind up toys of destruction for the Masters – at least for a time.
A slight smile appeared on his face as he realized just how he could begin to speed up the deprogramming process – allowing his people to think clearly for the first time in hundreds of years – once they arrived. Music was after all the weakness of the neuro-somatic programming and suggestions that the Masters had placed inside the mind of every single Zentraedi in existence, he would just have to make sure that his people were exposed to it sooner and maybe even arrange for more Zentraedi outside Breetai's immediate fleet to be exposed. Doing so without arousing suspicion from Dolza would be challenging but he was certain that with a bit of forethought and planning – helped by the fact that he knew Dolza's thought processes – it would be done.
Calmly he opened a program and began to carefully write a computer virus. It would take some time for it to be ready as he couldn't afford to make any mistakes. Mistakes could cost him and the people he was trying to help – not just the Terrans and those among them he had and would hopefully one day again call friends but every race threatened with genocide by the Haydonites – everything. Thus he would be careful but once the virus was finished and ready to deploy, well Zor alone knew how far it would be able to go and how many of his fellow Zentraedi it would be able to free from the cage crafted for them by the Robotech Masters. If Lady Luck was on his side it might even extend to Dolza himself and wouldn't converting him to the greater cause of not just freeing the Zentraedi and defeating the Masters – again – but stopping the genocidal plans of the Awareness be quite the coup.
The sound of his door hailer brought him out of his thoughts and he quickly saved and closed the file containing the virus. "Enter," he called out pulling up a list of the ongoing resupply process and looking like he was reviewing it for Breetai.
The door opened and a security trooper came in. "Forgive me for disturbing you Minister Exedore but Commander Breetai would like to see you in his chambers immediately," he said.
"Very well," Exedore replied, switching off his computer and standing. A few moments later he was walking down one of the command ships cavernous halls to the chambers inhabited by his long-term friend, a friend he had dearly missed since he had been killed in single combat with the Invid Regent. He had actually been quite emotional when he had seen him again in that strange white void, before he had been told the mission he would have here in a past a mission that – to quote a Terran saying – was quite a doozy.
After taking a moment to compose himself and bury his feelings deep down as it wouldn't do to show anything other than the normal Zentraedi calm here as pre-liberation Breetai wouldn't understand, he reached out and pressed the door hailer. Immediately he heard the familiar deep timbre of Breetai bidding him to enter. The door opened and he stepped inside.
"You asked to see me commander," Exedore asked.
"Yes Exedore I did," Breetai said from where he was sitting at his desk, with a gesture he bid Exedore to sit opposite him which he promptly did. "Our latest finder beam sweeps have been concluded. They have determined that Zor's battlefortress is somewhere in an unknown, unremarkable star system fourteen kiloparsecs from our current location."
"That is good to hear my lord our long chase might at last be coming to its end."
"Indeed however the fact that we are going so far into unknown space concerns me," Breetai admitted, "we know little of this galaxy or the spacefaring races, if there are any, who inhabit it might be and what their capabilities may be. I would like to hear your thoughts while the fleet completes its resupply operations."
"I am here to serve as always Breetai. Do we have any long-range probe telemetry of the system where the battlefortress apparently lays," Exedore asked playing along. He knew what was waiting for them, and that Zor's battlefortress would be operational and would greet their arrival with a blast from its reflex cannon, but he couldn't let that on to Breetai. Not without risking some very awkward, very hard to answer questions being fired at him.
"We do however it is limited," Breetai answered picking up a data pad and offering it to him. Exedore accepted it. "Everything we know is on that pad. Review it and then bring your recommendations to me as soon as possible."
"I will begin at once commander."
Optera
That Same Time
Deep within the confines of the royal hive on the decimated wasteland that had once been the green and fertile cradle of her species, until Zor returned in the company of the Zentraedi and stole all the Flowers of Life, the being known as the Regis frowned as her psychic senses told her something was happening. Something was changing, it felt almost like a distortion in the whole of the space-time continuum.
"What is it," the Regent asked from beside her also sensing the disturbance with his own quite considerable psionic abilities.
"Some type of shockwave in the space-time continuum," the Regis answered frowning in a combination of concern and confusion. "I do not know where it is coming from. Do you have any ideas?"
"No like you I have never felt anything like this before. We should have the science caste investigate further."
"Agreed."
Authors Notes: Well the chapter bites the metaphorical dust. I hope you all enjoyed it and the introduction of the newer elements – Mitchell 'Pops' Hunter is going to have a significant role to play in the story beyond what goes on aboard SDF-1 and the Invid thanks to their psionic abilities know that something is up. That something is changing though they currently have no idea what that something is. Finally I hope you liked the reveal of Exedore being a time traveller in this new version as he has taken the place of Miriya who was sadly being under-utilized in the original so I removed her – and by extension Max – as time travellers. There is another new time traveller who will be revealed sometime in the next few chapters, though when exactly that's for me to know and you to find out. I will say they will be revealed during the events to take place on Macross Island after the Zentraedi show up to so rudely gate crash the SDF-1's commissioning party. Until next time.