A shuttle from Tirol touches down inside the flight deck of the U.E.S. Anatole Leonard. A jet bridge sleeve soon links up with the shuttle's door.
Lieutenant General Marie Crystal, and a few others walks through the bridge ansd into a large room. Several uniformed personnel await.
"Welcome aboard, General Crystal," says Captain Sawyer, wearing his service khakis.
"Thank you, Captain," replies the general, who wears blue overalls with her nametape and rank insignia instead of the Service Alphas.
Sawyer could still recall the joint staff assignment seven years ago, when he was under her command. He had learned so much. "We are prepared. Our pilot is ready."
Crystal sees a man wearing CVR-03 armor. His most notable feature is that the left side of his face is metal, with his left eye clearly electronic. He stands maybe about tyhree inches taller than General Crystal.
"And you are?" asks the general.
"Cromwell, ma'am," he replies. "Lieutenant Commander Ian Cromwell."
"Nice to meet you, Commander."
"Commander Cromwell, will you go to your veritech?"
"Aye aye, sir!"
Minutes later, Cromwell is inside the cockpit of an Alpha veritech in iots fighter mode. The flight crews make last-second preparations. The veritech pilot checks his instruments, making sure nothing is wrong on his end.
"Air Boss to Sleuth," says the air boss of the Leonard, "you are clear for takeoff."
Commander Cromwell looks ahead at the exit into open space. Taking a last-second glance at his instruments, he pushes the throttle forward.
"Sleuth is taking off," he says.
The Alpha zooms out into the vacuum of space.
Cromwell can see the debris field.
"ETA ten seconds," he says.
General Crystal pays close attention to what she hears from the speakers in the command center.
The veritech pilot takes a deep breath as the robotechnology debris pieces look bigger. He moves the stick and presses the pedals to activate vernier thrusters so that the robotech war machine can avoid these large solid jagged pieces which are a testimony of a large battle nearly thirty years before.
It takes all of his concentration to dodge the debris pieces. The commander has no desire to be a casualty of a battle between the Robotech Masters and the Invid Regency.
He has to be still.
He has to take each piece one at a time.
His very brain feels like it is in high power mode.
Move left.
Move right.
Dive down.
And then the pieces disappear. All he sees is part of a gas giant planet and a field of stars.
"This is Sleuth," he says. "I am out of the debris field. Permission to return to nest."
"That's an order," says Captain Sawyer.
It is only a few minutes before the Alpha is back on the flight deck of the Leonard.
Even as he steps down the ladder from the cockpit, thoughts swirl in the veritech pilot's head. Twice, Commander Cromwell witnessed the massive loss of human life.
And just recently, Lieutenant Hyun Seuk became another lost human life, no different than Anh Tran or Amanda Manowska. He squeezes his left mechanical hand into a fist.
He feels that there must be a way to stop this.
An hour later, General Crystal is on a sbhuttle heading to the moon Tirol.
Ooooo
Lieutenant Roy Hunter sits on a wheelchair on the exterior grounds of the Spacy Hospital in Joint Forces Air Field Tirol. The exterior grounds were covered in grass, with a few tables and benches and some oak trees with thick trunks. Opnly a few other people are here.
"Hello there," he hears, recognizing the voice of Commander Arihiso Hamato.
"Commander," replies the lieutenant.
Hamato walks in front of the young man, still wearing a hospital gown. "How are you feeling?"
"Well, sir, they moved me from intensive care to rehab," answers Roy. "I did hear that the rehab wing stayed pack for years after the Grand Armistice."
"Oh really?"
"There were some nurses who worked here back then. They barely got any sleep."
"So much has happened, Hunter."
"Yeah, I mean, my dad went back to Galaxy City to resume his duties as Supreme Commander of the United Earth Forces. I still have some more surgeries to be done on my legs, still more neuro surgeons actually picked out bone fragments from my legs. How are things going in class, sir?"
"Well, we resumed sim practice. The mechanics are still going over our veritechs, but we hope that we can resume live training in two weeks. The cadre will have to readjust our training."
"And me?"
"As I told the Commission, Lieutenant, I'm not a medical officer. We'll have to wait and see, Hunter."
Roy takes a deep breath. It did not seem too long ago that he had been following in his father's path in becoming a veritech combat aviator. And now, he does not know if he would walk again with these legs.
"I can tell you are feeling uncertainty," continues Commander Hamato. "I too have doubts, wondering if maneuvering through robotechnology debris should be part of the curriculum. I've had to do that while I was in the cockpit during the Wars, but now..."
"Well, sir, my dad had to dodge huge chunks of ice around this planet called Saturn during his first combat mission in the military," replies Lieutenant Hunter. "He was inches away from being splattered on a giant ice cube at least a dozen times."
"I'd have to look that up. I have to be going now, Lieutenant Hunter. The rest of the class needs me."
"Understood, sir."
Hunter looks as Hamato walks away towards a gate along the rear wall of the hospital grounds.
ooooooo
During the Robotech Wars, a seemingly minor action by one person could change the course of a war. One case was broadcasting a beauty pageant from within an interstellar battle fortress, which had caught the attention of three scouts of an interstellar power called the Zentraedi, which changed the course of the First Robotech War.
Similarly, seemingly minor actions can change the course of an investigation. Corporal Katy Dodge is an information technology specialist assigned aboard the Leonard. Earlier, she had examined the data collected by Commander Cromwell's flight through the robotechnology debris field.
She had been in IT since she was six years old. She briefly recalls basic training, and then advanced individual training, even sharing her ideas with her instructors while learning more from them.
Right now, she hopes for shore leave to Tirol. She had read about and seen pictures of historic buildings that were there when Tiresia was the capital of the wealthiest, most advanced civilization in the Milky Way in the past ten thousand years. And, of course, Tiresia does have a rather active nightlife.
She then comes across other data- the data collected from the black boxes of the veritechs that Lieutenants Seuk and Hunter flew two weeks ago. She wonders if she shiould send a copy of this data to the Commission; her superiors provided her with contact information in case she or the others come across any new information relevant to the inquiry.
She does wonder why she needs to. The physical copies of the black boxes had already been sent to J-FAF Tirol. Surely the Commission of Inquiry already has copies of the black boxes.
She then decides to go ahead and send the image of the black boxes to the Commission, figuring out there would be no harm.
Oooooo
General Crystal eats a quick dinner of ready-to-eat macaroni and cheese, cooked in a microwave oven, inside the lodge assigned to her as her provisional quarters. The lodge is much smaller than her home, of course,not having a large kitchen with an island, nor a den with a fifty-two inch television screen, a coffee tyable, and three leather couches. In addition to that, the lodge is missing her husband and her three children. She had always wanted to make sure her children had good lifestyle, due to the demands of her job.
She and the Commission deliberated over the evidence. The Air Force general had scheduled a vote tomorrow morning on the finds and recommendations that they would send to the United Earth Forces Supreme Command and the United Nations Security Council.
The telephone rings. For a moment Crystal wonders if it is the wrong number, as that happened to her at least three times. She picks up the phone, expecting to hear from someone calling for Sal's Deli.
"Hello?" she asks.
"Is this General Crystal?" asks a female voice.
"Oh, Major Gandhi. What do you hav e to tell me?"
"We received some new information from the Leonard," answers the major. "It was copies of the black box data we received earlier from Commander Hamato."
"Maybe they were being diligent."
"Well, ma'am, we took a look and there were inconsistencies."
Upon hearing that word, General Crystal knows that this inquiry would not be concluded tomorrow morning as she had thought. Gandhi would not have called her if the discrepancy in question was only a typo.
"You will explain this to the Commission tomorrow," she says.
"Aye aye, ma;am," replies Major Gandhi.
The general had been looking forward to going home. Perhaps instead she can arrange for her husband and kids to travel here to Tirol instead, visit the historic sites and even some old friends.