Part 2: Converge
Chapter 1
Bron watched, and ground his fingernails into his palms. The bulbous, pelican-winged VTOL transport the UEG had provided him continued to orbit the site of the shipwreck, veering to avoid the plume of black smoke that piled upon itself until it towered a mile high. A hundred meters below, UN Navy hovercraft skimmed across the choppy surf to search for more Zentraedi survivors, plucking bodies from the chilly water, or bouncing up onto the tiny sandbar where shivering figures huddled. The captain of the refugee freighter had just managed to limp the ship to within half a kilometer of the sandbar before it capsized, mortally wounded by two anti-ship missiles launched by an F-16 bearing the blue and black insignia of York. Bron watched. He watched, because Mary Brennan had told him in no uncertain terms that he could not order the VTOL down, that he could not dive into the oil-slicked waters and help as best he could. He must leave the rescue to the professionals, and observe what was happening. Bron ground his fingernails deeper into his palms, until he gritted his teeth from the pain. It didn't help.
"How many… how many people were on the ship, do they think?" he asked hoarsely.
"The Hamilton was a big freighter," Mary answered. Their voices were flattened by the microphones and headsets of the flight helmets they wore. "Global War vintage. Maybe as many as a thousand people. Mostly Zentraedi trying to get out of Manhattan, but we think some Terran families as well- they've found some children, and a few elderly."
"And how many survivors?"
"Search and Rescue will be on site for the rest of the day, so we won't know for sure for quite a while. They think maybe half."
It wouldn't have been even that many, if the Rain of Death had not lowered global sea levels, revealing the narrow sand bar just out of sight of the ruins of the Brooklyn Naval Yard. Or if the climate recovery efforts to reverse the Nuclear Winter of the first year had not temporarily altered the ocean currents and temperature of the Atlantic to conditions that were more survivable than was normal for December. The captain's plan to set sail in the pre-dawn darkness had not allowed them to evade York's blockade, but it did mean there were plenty of hours of daylight left for the rescue operation. The captain had gone down with her ship, right after lifting a badly burned Zentraedi into the last, overburdened, inflatable life raft.
The giants were the most painful to watch. There had been eight crowded onto the deck of the Hamilton. One still floated, face down, a few hundred meters on the other side of the wreck. The rest had managed to reach the shallows and do their best to help move micronian scaled survivors to the sandbar. That continued until the sandbar was full, and then they sat, in water up around their knees, allowing their smaller brethren to cling to their sleeves and jackets. There they remained, exhausted, torn and dirty, bleeding, oil smeared, shaking from the cold, and dripping wet in great streams of saltwater. Massive as they were, there was no way to miss their hollow-eyed gaze, putting human faces to the tragic event even at the altitude that Bron's transport flew at.
"Mary, what am I doing here?" Bron asked, his voice anguished. "If I can't help, what's the point in sending me?"
"I'm sorry, Bron, but you need to see this firsthand." There was no playfulness in her voice today. She was deadly serious. "You three speak for the Zentraedi on Earth, more than any others. Konda is working behind the scenes with the UEG Assembly in Monument, and Rico is handling the public statements for now, but you need to witness what's happening, and share what you are seeing, so the world knows what York has done, and holds them accountable. And not just York, but hold everyone else accountable as well, the people who can do something about crimes like this."
Bron sighed heavily. "I understand. Then what's being done for them? The giants?" He gestured down at them urgently.
"I'm not sure," Mary admitted. "They're just… so big."
"That carrier out there - the uh-"
"SLV Persephone," their pilot supplied. "A landing ship like the old Daedalus that was attached to the SDF-1."
"It's plenty big enough to carry them." Bron remembered that during one of Khyron's attacks, battlepods and destroids had fought an entire pitched battle on the deck of the Daedalus. "Can you get me the captain of the Persephone?"
A moment passed, then a clipped voice answered. "This is Captain Kekoa of the UES Persephone. Go ahead."
"Thank you, Captain. This is Bron Nantes, Special Representative At-Large for the Ministry of Zentraedi Affairs. I've been appointed Inspector General by the Speaker of the UEG Assembly. I'm overseeing the UEG's response to this incident and the Manhattan Crisis."
"Yes, Inspector General. How can I assist you?"
"Can you move your ship close enough to rescue the giant Zentraedi?"
"I'm afraid not, sir. General Carter, commander of York's Air Defense Fleet, has warned us that if we move a major ship any closer to Manhattan, they will treat the action as an attempt by the UN Navy to break the blockade, rather than a humanitarian rescue operation."
"Bastards!" Mary spat, outraged. "If they had a ship to spare, they'd already have tried to detain the survivors and keep anyone from finding out the whole truth of what they did!"
Bron looked out at the distant shape of the navy ship, huge and angular, like a floating fortress. Red-painted cliffs of steel were topped with gray parapets. Its heavily armored bow yawned open to launch and recover hovercraft, while its near-airspace, as well as its flight deck, wider than a super-highway, was abuzz with the comings and goings of Sea Sergeant helicopters. A squadron of Valkyries hovered in guardian mode at a wary distance, the mid-morning sun glinting off of their beige armor. The Persephone was close, but not nearly close enough for the exhausted Zentraedi, who certainly did not know how to swim, to flounder their way over to it. He racked his brain for what to do. How would they have handled a situation like this back in space?
"A - a tether!" Bron exclaimed.
"Please repeat that, sir?"
"Something they can hold on to - tie themselves to. A cable, or a, uh-"
"An anchor chain!" Mary suggested. "Would yours hold up under their weight?"
"Easily," Kekoa assured them. "We should be just close enough. They can tie themselves on and we just reel them in. I'll prepare a launch immediately."
"But what if they can't keep afloat? The chain's heavy, right?" Mary asked worriedly. She and Bron could hear an indistinct answer from one of the bridge officers on the Persephone.
"Right," Kekoa said. "Not to worry. We'll unpack some Mark Eight life rafts and send them over. They can hold fifty people each. The giants can use them as flotation devices."
"When they arrive, could some of your Valkyries transform into battloids and help them onto the deck?" Bron asked, thinking ahead.
"Good idea, Inspector. I'm going to get my crew moving now."
"Thank you, Captain."
"Persephone, out."
"Well done, Bron," Mary said with a nod.
"I'm glad we can help all of them, but It doesn't change the big picture." Bron's voice was grim. "When the deck is clear again, I want to land and talk to the survivors in person."
"We can do that."
"And once the team has recorded the first statements, I want to visit Manhattan."
Mary was shocked. "You mustn't, Bron! It's too dangerous!"
"More dangerous than the Southlands?"
"The warlords were ready to negotiate! This situation is so much more volatile! You could be trapped there. There could be a war! There could be-" She cut herself off, seeing the set of his jaw, and regarded him silently for a long time, her eyes hidden by the polarized visor of her helmet.
"-I'll reach out to the Foreign Office in Manhattan and make the arrangements," she finished in a respectful tone.
"Thank you, Miss Brennan."
"Whatever you need, Inspector General."
As Mary turned to coordinate communications with the co-pilot, Bron looked up, up, high above the smoke plume, black as tar, to the pristine blue sky, and the six thin white lines tracing parallel trails across it. He felt a burning in his stomach at the sight of the obsolete, but still lethal F-16's York flew. Then his gaze dropped back to the survivors, and those less fortunate, still bobbing in the water like corks, the spreading darkness of the oil-slick, and the scattering of personal belongings and ship's equipment tossed by the waves. The burning faded, replaced by a deep sadness, and a growing sense of dread.
He closed his eyes against the sting he felt in them. Vee, I wish you were here. When you're near me, I feel more confident, more capable. You always seem to know when to speak up, when to act. I try so hard, but I'm so far behind in learning to be a micronian- in learning… everything! Am I asking the right questions? Am I making the right choices? I miss you. I love you.
"No! I won't do it, not to them!"
"Vanessa-" Lisa began, her tone placating.
"You can't ask me to do this, Admiral!" Vanessa insisted. "Deceive the Zentraedi, the way their creators did? You'd have me betray their trust in the UEG all over again!"
It was the worst argument they had ever had, worse than when Vanessa had accused Lisa of acting the way her father and the disgraced United Earth Defense Council would have. She had never directly refused Lisa before. Lisa, never one to back down within the military sphere, flared in anger.
"It is not a betrayal, Commander! It was always planned to send you over to the Allied Fleet as part of your training program."
"Under false pretenses! We weren't supposed to go there for another month. You're moving up the visit so that you can use me to spy on our own allies!"
"That is not fair!" Lisa stood, her palms flat on her desk. Her eyes were now alight with jade flame. "You know people will be outraged when the news about the Hamilton disaster gets out, and the Allied Fleet is a potential powder keg. Minister Exedore himself asked for help to keep things from getting out of hand. If even one crew acts rashly against their standing orders, the results for the Zentraedi and for Earth could be catastrophic."
Vanessa was still trembling with fury. "I do know all of that! I want to avoid a new Global War as much as you do, but that's not the point. You're asking me to abuse the trust that the Zentraedi have in me as a public figure in order to find out their secrets and manipulate them. It could trigger the very 'rash action' you're worried about!"
"I don't believe that," Lisa replied, her voice harsh. "I don't believe that will happen, because you're the one I'm sending. You're trusted, by them and by me, to do what's right! I don't need a spy, or a manipulator. I need someone on the scene who will observe, be aware of what's happening, and act, if it becomes necessary, to prevent mistakes from being made."
Vanessa was not satisfied. "I can't be what you want me to be, Admiral! Time and again, you've acted like I'm some sort of silver bullet that you can point at any Zentraedi relations problem to make it go away. But the problem isn't the Zentraedi! The problem is with the murderers ruling York! What they did to the Hamilton proves they won't stop. Bron is down there, on the scene right now, and that's where we should be, not checking up on our own allies and convincing them to stand idle while their people are being killed! What use is our precious Pioneer Mission if we won't even defend innocent people from other humans?"
Lisa tossed her head as if Vanessa had struck her, her hair rippling around her shoulders. The admiral's face turned the color of porcelain against the solid black of her uniform. There was a darkness in her eyes as she bit the inside of her lip hard enough to draw blood. Even in their lowest moments, Rick had never thrown such accusations in her face. Vanessa, angry as she was, cringed inside at the things she had just said. It had been so difficult for her and Lisa to heal, to come to terms with their losses and their friendship, and move forward. The pressures of Lisa's responsibilities over the Pioneer Mission, and the demands of Vanessa's training, had strained that friendship ever since they entered orbit. And now, she feared she had undone all of it. The admiral's features were cold and hard, like the apparition from Vanessa's recurring nightmares in the hospital, all of those months ago.
"Lieutenant Commander Leeds." Lisa's voice was low, and tightly controlled. "There is a lesson that I have tried to teach you. A lesson that I learned, with great difficulty. You must learn the limits of command."
Vanessa listened silently, taken aback by Lisa's forced calm, as her superior continued.
"I command the Pioneer Mission of the Robotech Expeditionary Force. There will be hundreds of warships, thousands of veritechs, hundreds of thousands of soldiers under my authority. If it were up to me, Rick and I would take a shuttle to Armor Seven, right now. Gather Armor Seven, Hecate, Lilith, Morgause, every veritech in near-Earth space, Breetai's fleet… we would descend like God's Judgement on York. Bomb every base, crush their toy tanks under foot, and blast every one of those flimsy F-16's out of the sky.
"But I can't do that, Commander, because I'm accountable to the chain of command, to the UEG, and the people of Earth. The Army of the Southern Cross has responsibility for Earth's defense and security. I'm not a warlord. I'm not allowed to interfere on Earth unless ordered. If you can't accept that, then you need to resign. Do you wish to tender your resignation, Lieutenant Commander Leeds?" Lisa's voice was soft as she asked the question, but her gaze was uncompromising.
Vanessa tried to swallow, and found that her mouth was too dry. Her mind spun with her anger, her frustration, her fear for Bron and the people of Manhattan. But there was nothing that Lisa had said that was untrue. Reacting in the moment to save a pilot in distress was one thing. Making decisions that would touch the lives of tens of thousands was another. And was there any difference she could make by walking away now?
"No. No, I don't," she answered, feeling despair. Lisa seemed to understand. She put her hands on Vanessa's shoulders.
"Then trust me, the way I trust you. I'm depending on you, because I have very few options. My command doesn't extend to Earth, but I'm responsible for making sure the situation in orbit doesn't deteriorate. The Zentraedi are the only faction not already locked into a course of action, but after this latest escalation, Breetai and Exedore are undecided. They could make the situation better, or worse, or do nothing at all. Individual crews may seek to act on their own. Either way, I need you with the fleet. We can't do anything directly for Earth, but you could make a difference here. Do you understand?"
"Yes ma'am. But it's still wrong."
"I know." There was sadness now in Lisa's eyes. "Think of how many times Admiral Gloval faced the same dilemmas."
Though the anger remained, sympathy and regret welled up in Vanessa's heart. She hesitated. "Lisa, I'm-"
Lisa shook her head. "Not now, Vanessa. We'll figure that out later. I need you to get your cohort ready. A shuttle is being prepared. One-nine-five Squadron will escort you. Lieutenant Reyes will answer to you, during your deployment."
"Aye."
They exchanged salutes, but then Vanessa stopped at the hatch and turned back, torn. "Lisa, this isn't the time, but I made a promise… to a friend."
"A friend?" Lisa's eyes looked tired now.
"There are seats being held for you and Rick at the concert tomorrow. I think you should accept them."
Lisa's eyes narrowed. "Minmei?" she demanded, her voice incredulous and angry. "Your friend, Minmei?"
Vanessa nodded, and kept her voice even. "Yes, she is. She's been a good friend to Bron, and she's become one to me as well."
"Why should I want to have anything to do with Minmei? Or to let her anywhere near Rick?" she asked indignantly.
"Because she's growing up. Changing, like we've all had to change. And we're all struggling with that. She wants the chance to make up for the mistakes that she made, for the way she hurt you and Rick. To maybe even be a friend to you both."
"I find that hard to believe."
"We carry enough scars from the war, Lisa. If there's any possibility of healing one of them, doesn't it make sense to try?"
Lisa frowned, not answering right away. "I'll talk to Rick about it," she finally said.
"Thank you."
Seeing Lisa and Rick at the concert seemed to Vanessa like the only good that might have come of the entire conversation. It was a small measure of solace for her as she neared the Zentraedi fleet, feeling lost… still trapped in orbit.
The Sal-Dezir was a vast ship, bigger than the SDF-1, bigger than anything Earth had ever built. The Kardis, the Tou-Redir class destroyer that had answered Minmei's call a mere day earlier, and which should have been the host for Vanessa and her fellow trainees in a month's time, easily out-massed Armor Seven by a wide margin, but the Sal-Dezir was an entire order of magnitude greater. From a distance, the ship's hull resembled the elongated and smooth body of a cuttlefish. The outer plating was the deep, sea-serpent green of all male-crewed Zentraedi ships. At the fore was a module capable of separating and entering combat independently. It was sleek and spined, with downward-jutting sensor masts that gave the whole craft the aspect of a ferocious, whiskered dragon's snout.
The Sal-Dezir was a command ship, a sibling to the ones commanded by the warlords Khyron and Azonia. It was the last of its kind among the Allied Zentraedi Fleet, out-matched only by the staggering five kilometers of Lord Breetai's Nupetiet-Vernitzs class flagship. It was a linchpin of the remaining Zentraedi forces… which was why Vanessa and the others had been diverted to it.
As the shuttle lined up with its escorts for the final approach, Vanessa watched May, in the seat next to hers, drinking in the sight of the deadly vessel. Then Vanessa looked across the aisle, and saw Straza. The normally stoic officer was completely closed off, staring silently ahead. But Vanessa noticed her hands held the arms of her seat in a white-knuckled grip.
"Straza, is something wrong?" Vanessa asked in a concerned tone.
Straza frowned, hesitating, but obedience won out. "I did not expect to ever return to the Sal-Dezir," she said in a hushed voice.
"You mean- this is the ship Breetai, assigned you to?" She lowered her voice to match Straza's.
"Yes. And I do not have many pleasant memories of my two years there. The captain and I did not part on good terms."
"Captain Gotta? What can you tell me about him?"
"He is a difficult man. Exacting, intolerant of any dissent or questioning of his leadership, yet indolent. Even as the ship began to fall apart around us, he did nothing on his own initiative. He said that Lord Breetai would ensure we had whatever we needed. This, even as junior officers suggested scavenging the debris field at L2 for the parts we needed and studying the ship's systems to learn how to maintain them ourselves. Several were involuntarily placed in cryostasis for their 'impertinence.' I wondered when my turn would come, until the UEF announced that Zentraedi would be permitted open enlistment."
"It sounds like a terrible situation to be in, worse than anyone I've ever served under," Vanessa said sympathetically. "But he doesn't sound like someone liable to disobey orders," she noted carefully.
Straza's brow furrowed as she thought about it. "I don't know. The only time I saw him active, energized, was during the operation to capture the Factory Satellite. His entire demeanor changed. He was still harsh, and demanding, but he was so impassioned, so energetic, that he swept the whole crew along with him. After the operation ended, he became even more stubborn and morose. I think he expected the capture of the Factory Satellite to mark the beginning of a new grand campaign, and he was disappointed. I think," she said, after another moment's thought, "that he is looking for an enemy to oppose."
The REF shuttle docked at one of the twelve primary launch bays on the broad starboard flank of the command ship. Vanessa prepared herself for an experience much like that of docking with the Factory Satellite; a cavernous space, nearly empty, making it dizzyingly difficult to form a sense of scale, with a handful of Zentraedi mecha or drop ships scattered throughout. She expected a greeting from the captain and a small honor guard, or even just a pair of aides, depending on the captain's mood. When she emerged from the shuttle's hatch, she realized she couldn't have been more wrong.
The bay was enormous, and in a state of minor disrepair, with missing or dislodged deck plates leaving perilous open shafts. Great coils of wires and tubing, shiny and black, spilled out of the bulkheads and ceiling like the decaying viscera of a beast of the void. The cold blue overhead lighting flickered, and some of the panels had failed entirely, leaving large sections of the bay nearly dark, except for the shine of reflected light off of the hulls of parked mecha - and there were a great number of Zentraedi mecha, the most Vanessa had seen in one place since the end of the war.
A line of tri-thruster Gnerl fighter pods rested on their landing skids, stretching far beyond Vanessa's line of sight. Their nose-mounted, devastatingly powerful rapid fire energy blasters canted upward threateningly. The blank white, armored hatch that completely encased the cockpits of fighter pods combined with their flared green hulls in a way that for some reason always reminded Vanessa of a killer whale. Hanging above the gathered war craft was a veritable forest of munitions racks, heavily laden with sinister looking missiles that sported red-tipped warheads and charcoal gray casings.
Filling every other available space were rank after rank of Regult battlepods, crouched low, waiting for their pilots' call to arms. Their long, narrow legs normally lent a clumsy, avian aspect to them, but here, stowed in tight, endless clusters, they looked more like a hive of some white and blue mutant strain of giant rhinoceros beetle, crowned with twin horns of heavy particle beam cannon.
The shuttle and its escorting Valkyries were squeezed into a narrow open space in the midst of that arsenal. On every side were lines of armored Zentraedi troopers. Their helmeted heads presented featureless visors, like cyclopean green eyes. They each held auto-rifles as big as a Valkyrie's gun pod at port arms. Interspersed among their ranks were a dozen Queadluun Rau powered armor suits, standing head and shoulders above the others. Vanessa winced at the memory of the damage a single rogue armor suit had wreaked on Monument General Hospital the previous winter.
This was no honor guard, that was for sure. Reyes's escorting Valkyries, which had landed in guardian configuration, stood close to the shuttle, looking like nervous chicks around a mother hen. Standing at the top of the shuttle's disembarkation steps, with May waiting in the open hatch behind her, Vanessa scanned the vast assemblage of soldiers and war machines, and fought to keep the fear from her face, to let the other trainees believe this greeting was expected. Was this a show of force, meant to intimidate her and the others, or worse, was Captain Gotta preparing to strike out at a target, and didn't care who knew about it?
The captain himself stepped forward from a nearby group of officers, all of them grim-faced and regal in red, blue, or green half-capes and gold braid. He did not match the image she had formed in her mind. He was tall, taller than any Zentraedi she had seen, besides Lord Breetai himself, but his limbs were lean and almost skeletal. His cheekbones were sharp, his chin narrow and cleft, and his eyes were the murky green of a forest bog, under a thick mop of hair the color of sun-ripened grain. The deck resounded with each step he took, until Vanessa had to crane her neck and look nearly straight up to meet his downturned eyes. She swallowed, and carefully saluted.
"Lieutenant Commander Vanessa Leeds and REF training cadre, reporting as ordered. Permission to come aboard, Captain?" she asked loudly, in the hesitant Zentraedi that first Bron, and later Turvel, Juhron, and Straza had been teaching her when time permitted. She was amazed that she had kept her voice from quavering. Lisa would have been proud of her.
Captain Gotta stared back, long enough that Vanessa was almost convinced he would not grant permission. He might begin what he was planning right now, by ordering them all to be killed. Reyes could maybe survive, if he was quick to react, and focused on escaping, but there was no chance for anyone else. While all of these thoughts were racing through Vanessa's mind, the corner of Gotta's mouth lifted slightly.
"Lieutenant Commander Leeds," the giant repeated slowly, in a voice like liquid smoke. "The Survivor." The way the name rolled off of his tongue made Vanessa suppress a shudder. Then his lips split into a smile, revealing even white teeth the size of newly cut gravestones. "I am pleased indeed to grant you permission to come aboard. There is much to be done."
Next time… voices from the borderline, under the blade, and plans by lantern light…