Converge Chapter 5

Bron took a seat at a wooden bench with wrought iron arm rests, glad that the morning had warmed unexpectedly, allowing him to shed his scarf and knit cap. The blue sky and glaring morning sunshine brought color to Manhattan that had been missing since he arrived. Surrounding him were narrow, three story townhouses, their decorative facades painted pleasant shades of peach, rose, gold, and cream. The entire street was lined with mature trees. Though the limbs of the trees were bare, he could imagine the beauty of the greenery in spring and summer, when the branches would explode with leaves and the empty garden boxes on stoops and in windows would fill with delicate, fragrant blossoms.

Bron took a deep breath of clean, cool air and listened to the sound of small tramping feet on the steps leading down from the doorways, the yells and shrieks of piping voices, and the thud of bouncing balls and the crack of jump ropes on the surface of the street. The buildings on 137th street were spacious and well built; beyond the reach of most families in the days before the Rain of Death. Now, the city was nearly empty. Why shouldn't these children and their families occupy the empty townhouses? Manhattan could provide good homes for fifty times the number of Terrans and Zentraedi that currently lived here, but the people were gone- dead, scattered, or too afraid of the upheavals, raids, and land grabs to cross the wastelands and make a new life on the island.

A young woman approached, carrying a swaddled infant in her arms. Bron immediately identified her as Zentraedi by her sea blue hair, which had been thoughtfully arranged in twin French braids. She smiled an acknowledgment at Bron's friendly nod, and sat at the next bench. She pushed her baby's tiny cotton cap back away from its wide, silver eyes, arranged herself, and began nursing her child.

Bron immediately turned crimson and stood, turning away as he felt heat radiate from his face in waves. "Ah - ah - ah - I'm sorry! Sorry! I'll be going now! Sorry!"

The woman's laughter was like a warm breeze. "It's alright, Inspector General. You can stay. I wanted to talk to you."

"You- you know who I am?" Bron stammered, hesitating, and then stiffly sitting back down, intensely focusing his gaze on the game of kickball being played by a dozen rowdy youngsters in the street in front of them. He was one of little Dana Sterling's godfathers, along with Rico and Konda. Even before they had become off and on baby-sitters, he had held her and bottle-fed her many times, but while Miriya Sterling was a fiercely devoted mother, she had never tried to nurse Dana. The desperate need to put every combat pilot back into the air made that impossible. As for Bron, he had learned very early on that a woman's intimate areas were not for casual viewing, and close contact with women still sometimes made him anxious. The first time he kissed Vanessa, no more than a kiss on each of her hands, he had sweated bullets. When Vanessa then pulled him in for a kiss on the lips, his heart had nearly burst. In spite of his closer relationship with Vanessa, as he sat next to this unknown woman, he was sure his hair was standing on end, and he self-consciously smoothed it with one hand. There was a smile in the woman's voice as she answered him.

"Forgive me. My name is Madni, and, of course, everyone in Manhattan knows who you are."

"I'm not so important."

"But you are! Who else has stood up for the Zentraedi for so long? Not even great Breetai or Exedore have spoken for us the way you have."

"I'm not the only one…" Her words made him uncomfortable. He still revered the admiral and his advisor for their strength and leadership. They had changed his life.

"But you are here," Madni insisted. "We have no one else. You have the power to save us."

Bron stifled a choked sound in his throat, and squinted up at the sky, hoping York wouldn't pick this moment for another flyby. This one woman's hopes threatened to crush him. How could he tell her he could promise nothing?

"I don't- I don't have any power, Miss Madni. All I can do is report what I see. Other people have the power, money, soldiers, weapons." Vanessa would be more use against what's coming than I am. He cringed from the thought, imagining their locations reversed, her in Manhattan, the approaching mortal peril, her devotion to defending others. And if we get through this, she's still going into deep space, to face dangers I can't even imagine. But the future would have to take care of itself. After all, until he had reached the SDF-1, until he had met Vanessa, he had no future. He made himself focus on Madni's words, much as they troubled him. Madni was shaking her head at his denials.

"You have a power. Words, truth, belief. I thought the Armada was invincible. But it was destroyed by words as much as weapons. The odds may be terrible, but we have you with us. You change people's hearts. The Terrans who live in Manhattan have been good to the Zentraedi, but after the UEG announced the integration program, after you and Rico and Konda began traveling and speaking, things changed for the better. We were given more of a voice here. More positions in leadership, better training, better jobs. The government was moved out of the Municipal Building and into City Hall Park, so that the giant Zentraedi could participate."

In front of them, a small, sneakered foot struck the dusty red kickball squarely and it soared high into the air, then bounced loudly, skipping down the street pursued by a mob of excited children. Bron again grasped for how to answer her. He had become more confident as a speaker, but somehow, responding to this woman was harder than addressing a committee, or a faceless crowd.

"The UEG might not be able to intervene in time," he said carefully. "What will you do if there's an attack?"

At first, she was silent. Then she spoke, her voice soft, but firm. "Inspector General, look at me. Please."

Bron slowly turned his head, feeling his face heat again. He kept his eyes fixed on hers. Silver, like her child's.

"We're not naive," she told him. "Not after all we've been through these last three years."

"Then you know the terrible things York has already done. They'll carry out their threats. Why risk resisting them?"

"Earth defeated the Armada. Can you claim the odds were any better?"

"But all you have to do is look across the river to see the cost." The guilt and anguish bled into Bron's voice. "What will you do?" he repeated.

"Defy the invaders," she said. "My husband is among the defenders. I will take to the boats. My responsibility is to our daughter." She spoke matter-of-factly, but he could see tears well in her eyes at the separation, the likelihood that her family would never be reunited. "We will hold onto the hope that our defiance will inspire others to resist York as well."

It was no different than the plan that President Abhram had shared, but hearing it spoken by this brave young mother made his skin prickle. Madni covered up and lifted her infant to her shoulder. She stood, patting her back.

"We have built something good here, Bron Nantes. Something worth fighting for. We're counting on you to fight for us too, in your own way."

Bron swallowed. "I will. I promise."

"Thank you." She strode down the sidewalk, weaving among children at play, lost to their own games and daydreams.

And the peace these families have found here is about to be crushed, if no one is willing to do something, Bron thought darkly. It was for them that Bron had come to Manhattan. Forget borders, symbols, and geo-politics. Forget officials and generals, United Earth and separatist governments. The children playing in front of him were what was at stake. The Assembly, and the people of Earth, needed this reminder. He had come here for this reminder. Bron was no longer a warrior, but he would fight for these people to his last breath.

"Are you sure you're up for this, Straza?" Vanessa asked. "I never intended for all of you to get caught up in this secrecy and back channel dealing."

Straza waited a moment to answer, nodding to a Zentraedi crewman passing her in the opposite direction down the corridor. "I would rather be caught up in this than have no knowledge of and no control over what happens to me or the Zentraedi." Her whispered answer was easily heard by Vanessa, who was hidden in the front pocket of Straza's mauve uniform. Reaching the meeting with Breetai would be no simple task, and it began with Straza being surreptitiously restored to her original size. She still had crewmates she trusted on the Sal-Dezir, and she needed their help to get Vanessa off the ship in secret.

It was no good trying to discuss the crisis with Breetai over coms- there was no way to set up a secure line. Either Gotta's faction, the UN Spacy, the UEG, or even anti-Zentraedi sympathizers working for York, could be listening in to the communications. Instead, a few coded transmissions were bounced through the Factory Satellite, with Admiral Hayes's approval and assistance. No direct mention was made of the purpose. The Admiral and Breetai simply accepted her request, and arranged the time and place.

Lisa. She gave Vanessa her complete trust. After all the uncertainty, struggle, and pain of the last year, Lisa still held nothing back. Vanessa shook her head, ashamed of all the discord between them. Lisa deserved her loyalty and trust in return. But would she approve of what Vanessa was about to do? The ultimatum had gone public. Breetai and Exedore had made no public statement on a change in the fleet's stance yet, and the UEG Assembly was in emergency session. There was no more time.

At the flight deck, Vanessa slipped inside Straza's helmet to stay hidden from view while the woman changed into the form-fitting undersuit and bulky body armor worn by battlepod pilots. Vanessa had already changed into a vacuum suit taken off of the REF shuttle. When she was ready, Straza helped Vanessa curl up inside one of the pouches on her bandolier. Together, they made their way through the crowded flight deck, past idling fighterpods, weapons racks, and swarms of pilots and deck crew.

Vanessa pulled the pouch shut over her head again, trying to shake a growing sense of vertigo. Bron had been right all of those months ago. Even after all the times she had been carried by giants, she had never felt so tiny and helpless. The idea that Lisa, Rick, and his wingmates had escaped from Breetai's flagship unassisted during the war was almost unbelievable. If Straza were to set her down here and walk away, it would take Vanessa the better part of a day to return to her unit, if it was possible at all. She stared at her knees, lit by the tiny band of light seeping into the pouch. How ironic, she thought. Just when she truly began to accept that she had a role to play in events, she found herself almost powerless to help the people she cared most about. Literally overshadowed. Breetai was her last hope. Unless you can pull off a miracle, Bron. But she would never ask him to shoulder that great a burden alone. If there was any way she could help him, she would.

Vanessa peeked out of the pouch. Straza was stepping over twisting coils of shiny black pump tubes for oxygen, fluids, and reaction mass that were tangled like nests of giant serpents. They were approaching the ranks of stowed battlepods. The land, air, and space capable war machines waited patiently, bird-like legs folded under them, cyclopian red sensor lenses partially lidded by protective covers. Straza scanned the designators emblazoned in red across the blue paneled sections of each hull, and moved to the next row.

"We're taking one of these?" Vanessa asked. "Wouldn't a power armor unit be better?" The standard battlepods, despite their great size, easily out massing veritechs and most destroids, were universally considered rattling death traps by the Earth forces. The Masters' automated factories had turned them out by the hundreds of millions, to be destroyed nearly as fast.

"I've never flown a Queadluun Rau unit. Only the elite squadrons of the female Zentraedi used them. The rest of us fought with the same equipment as the males," Straza murmured. "Besides, they're too conspicuous. There are only a dozen on board. The same goes for officers' battlepods. But no one will pay any attention to a lone Regult unit. I have years of experience fighting in them."

She squinted at another pod, shadowed under a burnt out light panel. "This one. My old armorer made sure this pod would be fueled, armed, and ready."

The warrior clambered up to the immense rear hatch and slithered inside. Vanessa clung to the heavy fabric of the pouch as the motion set her swinging like she was in a hammock, one suspended several stories above the deck. Straza seized the handle of the hatch and sealed it with a clang, strapped herself in, and began flipping switches, bringing the battlepod to humming life.

Vanessa could see the cockpit, now that the main instrument panel had activated. The pilot viewed the world from a circular virtual display as big as a billboard. There was a set of hand grips for manipulating the twin particle beam cannons and maneuvering thrusters, foot pedals for walking the pod on land and activating the primary thrusters, and a small number of buttons, switches, and outsized toggles for the pod's few secondary functions. Fantastic technology used to craft a simple machine for a simple, destructive purpose. The pilot was intended to be as expendable as the weapon itself.

Straza was tall even for a Zentraedi, and there was little room left in the cockpit cavity. Vanessa felt the pouch rise and fall with each of her pilot's breaths, and the interior hull was so close that she imagined she could be crushed by one careless move. She kept her eye on the main display to distract herself from the claustrophobic conditions. The protective lids slid back from the primary sensor, and Straza switched to magnetic imaging. The dimness of their part of the flight deck was washed out to fuzzy tones of lime, olive, and forest green. The battlepod rose on its gangly legs at its pilot's sure touch. Straza pumped the foot pedals, and set the machine in motion. Vanessa expected a bobbing, swaying gait that would give her motion sickness in no time, but the motions of the battlepod were well balanced, the better to aim and fire on the move.

They steered back through the main arming bay, and the crew scurried out of Straza's path. A pair of deck officers in green and gold were conferring close by, and one waved to Straza and Vanessa's pod, his expression inquisitive. Vanessa tensed, but the other officer dropped an enormous hand on his shoulder and shook his head, mouthing words she could not catch. The first officer stared, then shrugged and turned his back to them.

"Another of your friends? They don't seem very big on security," Vanessa noted.

"What did the Zentraedi have to worry about, before we met you? No outsider could be expected to infiltrate us. No soldier would ever attempt to leave. Where would they go? It is a vulnerability we still have not grappled with. And it gives us the opportunity we need."

They reached the launch bay at last, and the interior and exterior hatches cycled, one after another. Straza pressed both foot pedals, and the leg thrusters fired, sending them out into space. Seeing the distant stars, and the tantalizing sphere of the Earth, Vanessa felt oddly better, less trapped. She carefully pulled herself free of the pouch and pushed off, drifting down toward the secondary screen on Straza's instrument panel.

"Are you sure about that?" Straza asked. "I will still have to maneuver and accelerate."

"Don't worry," Vanessa said. She wrapped her cybernetic fingers around a mounting bracket, and wedged her matching prosthetic foot into a narrow gap below the screen. "Nothing's going to be able to move me. No offense, but your pouch didn't make for a very comfortable trip."

"Heh, even as a micronian, I still stand above most people, but I did not expect to feel this powerful, returned to my original size." Straza sounded wistful.

"It's challenging to function in Earth society as a giant, though I have several friends who've done well for themselves," Vanessa told her.

"But there is no place for us in the United Earth Forces at this size."

"It's not fair. I had a hard time supporting the Total Integration plan, for reasons like that," Vanessa said. "I still think more needs to be done to accommodate the things that make the Zentraedi special."

"One battle at a time." Straza said grimly as they accelerated away from the Sal-Dezir in the direction of the rendezvous point. "We still have a war to stop."

Vanessa frowned, peering up at the Regult's diminutive sensor screen, above and to the left of the main display, and trying to interpret the unfamiliar icons and Zentraedi script. She had nothing to do during their solitary flight, and she couldn't help herself, a part of her would always be looking to glean information from radar, visual scan, infrared, laser emission, magnetic anomaly detection, or whatever other type of equipment was available.

"Is something wrong with this pod's sensors, Straza?" she asked, a little frustrated.

Straza's eyes flicked across her console in a few quick motions. "Negative. All instruments read blue. Why?"

"I can't seem to get any solid returns. I haven't tracked much of anything since shortly after we left the Sal-Dezir."

"That's normal." Straza shrugged. "The sensors on our mecha are rudimentary, and short ranged. For an actual patrol or battle, there would be a tactical scout attached to our unit, to provide data feeds and improved communications."

Vanessa nodded, remembering the distinctive Regult variants, which had their weapons swapped out for a bewildering array of lenses, radomes, masts, and fins. She had thought of a lean rabbit, the first time she saw one. They were always priority targets of the Valkyrie squadrons.

"Well why didn't we take one of them instead? This pod is practically blind."

Straza smiled. "I didn't realize you were such a- what did Reyes call it? Such a gearhead!"

Vanessa rolled her eye. Straza's continued exposure to Earth culture through Jose was a double-edged sword. "I just like to be aware of what's going on around me," she groused.

"Don't worry," Straza said. "We'll get to the rendezvous point just fine as we are. And I can be effective in a dog-fight or engage in ground combat with the on-board electronics. I happen to have some battle experience," she added pointedly.

"You're right, sorry," Vanessa agreed, knowing she was on-edge.

The pod's onboard coms crackled abruptly. "Unidentified Regult unit, this is Sigma Seven. Please verify your ID and flight plan."

Vanessa looked back over her shoulder, meeting Straza's glance, and nodded. Straza keyed the coms.

"Sigma Seven, this is Regult unit Doman Seven-three-zero, of the command ship Sal-Dezir. Please identify."

"Acknowledged, Seven-three-zero. We're a patrol off of Armor Seven."

Vanessa floated to the opposite side of the instrument panel and tweaked the sensors within their meager limits, keeping her eye on the scope. She couldn't manage anything better than three weak, fuzzy contacts, about the right size for Valkyries, but their Identify Friend or Foe signals came through clear and strong, confirming the veritechs' approach.

"Thank you, Sigma Seven," Straza responded. "We're on a post-maintenance shakedown flight. A loop out to the cruiser hulk at marker Lambda Two-eight-decimal-three-one and back."

Their destination for the rendezvous was the same derelict hull that Reyes collided with during the Lightning incident. A shakedown flight for a battlepod after routine maintenance made a plausible enough cover. There was a long pause, causing Vanessa and Straza both to tense.

"Sounds fine," Sigma Seven finally replied. "We just need to make a quick flyby for visual confirmation, and then you can be on your way."

"Understood." Straza blew a breath in relief, but something felt wrong to Vanessa. She folded her arms and tapped the chin guard of her helmet with two gloved fingers, her brow furrowed as she considered the IFF codes of Sigma flight, even as the Valkyries closed the distance. The codes were familiar enough... Too familiar. With a quick slashing motion, Vanessa prompted Straza to mute the coms.

"They're RDF," she said to Straza.

"What's wrong?"

"They have Robotech Defense Force ID's. They're not from Armor Seven. The RDF was officially disbanded weeks ago. That ship and its air group have already been re-designated for the Army of the Southern Cross. They should be coded for the Tactical Armored Space Corps."

"Could their IFF just be out of date?" Straza wondered.

"Not a chance."

Sigma flight was only a few hundred meters away now. Vanessa closed her eye and imagined the scenario. If the Valkyries were to approach, shift to battloid and grapple the Regult, then blow the seals on the hatch… a quick pair of gun pod shots would be the end for her and Straza. She opened her eye again. The distance tags were ticking down toward zero.

"They're here to kill us, Straza!" She grabbed hold of the instrument panel again, wedging her leg back into place. "Evade!"

Straza didn't question, didn't hesitate. She slammed both of her armored boots down on the foot pedals, and the main thrusters in the pod's feet blazed blue. Vanessa grunted as they were violently thrown into motion. Pain flared through her hip and shoulder, but the cybernetic limbs attached to them were immovable. She gritted her teeth and kept her eye on the main display.

Straza rolled the pod 180 degrees, revealing the rapidly shrinking forms of the suspicious Valkyries. All three veritechs, wearing the standard beige and white factory colors, were in battloid mode - giant fingers outstretched to grab, gun pods held at the ready in their other hands. They watched Straza and Vanessa's flight through the square, transparent green scanning ports in their heads, the elevated barrels of the lasers mounted above them giving them comically surprised looks. Then, abandoning all pretense, they triggered their own thrusters in hot pursuit.

"Commander, we can't outrun them," Straza warned Vanessa. "They have augmented boosters."

Vanessa could see the glint of light off of the top-heavy FAST packs as the Valkyries shifted back to fighter mode, wings spread, legs drawn back, arms tucked in, and the brutal snouts of the gun pods slung under their bellies seeking out their prey. The enormous add-on boosters activated, turning the Valkyries into shooting stars.

"Can we outlast them? Run their fuel out?" Vanessa asked.

"It depends on how much fuel they have left. Where do you think they came from?"

"ALUCE and L5 are too far. I'd have to guess the Factory Satellite. The Valkyries might be new, unassigned units, or they could have been pulled out of an abandoned reserve depot on Earth after the war. The pilots-"

The pod lurched, Straza rolling it away from a stream of lethal 55 millimeter rounds.

"Who they are doesn't really matter right now!" Straza gasped as she wrenched her hand grips in the opposite direction, saving them from a second burst of depleted uranium ammunition. "What matters is that I will probably run out of reaction mass before they do!"

Vanessa tried to swallow, and found her mouth was too dry. "Try- try to get us to the derelict cruiser! We may be able to find shelter there!"

They mean to killus. She felt a sickness in her soul, one that had been growing since last spring. First there were the Valkyries that had circled Adoclas Center like vultures, menacing the visitors every day, until Lisa had put a stop to it. She shut her eye tight, but she only saw Sergeant Rawlins and his destroids, remembered the pain of his attack on her in the deserted street, and his leering threats.

"Commander, we-" Straza cut off, firing full retros. Vanessa slammed into the console, dazing her, and the trio of Valkyries blew past in an instant. When her eye refocused, she could see the hostiles ahead. A quick change back to battloid had brought them around, gun pods aimed, their FAST packs jutting above their shoulders like great black horns, bringing to her the memory of Rawlins's Spartan looming above her and Cantor, metal gauntlet up-raised to crush them both. Her eye burned with tears. The Valkyries, the elite of the Earth forces, pride of the UN Spacy, her guardian angels through the whole war and after… had become her enemy. A part of Vanessa broke.

Muzzle flashes lit the void, and she locked her limbs as Straza rocketed away again, the stars spinning with her spiraling course. Vanessa tasted blood.

"I'm sorry, Commander," Straza panted, "but I can't out fly them in a Regult. You must let me-"

"Return fire," Lieutenant Commander Leeds ordered flatly.

Let go of fear, let go of sentimentality, regret, and hesitation. Command. After seven years in the Earth forces, Vanessa, for the first time, ordered a subordinate into battle. She ordered Straza to kill another human being.

From the day Straza strode forth, dripping, from the cold metal and glass womb of a cloning cylinder, she was a warrior born, tempered now by a hundred battles, a thousand brushes with death. She wasted no words, upending the battlepod without bothering to change their direction of flight. A gentle caress of her thumbs across the firing studs, and twin lines of blue-white destruction reached across the darkness. They met one of the pursuing battloids just above the joining points between its FAST packs and main fuselage. Its up-turned scanner port was lit for an instant by the reflection of the particle beams, and then the entire payload of missiles and reaction mass stored in the FAST packs detonated. Vanessa closed her eye against the glare, and when she opened it again, Straza had already rotated the pod and boosted away on an entirely new vector.

"Target- target one eliminated," Straza informed her. There was an odd huskiness to Straza's voice. What did it mean to her, a Zentraedi, to have left her old fleet, her old life behind, to join the REF, and to now be back at the controls of a battlepod, ordered to take the life of a fellow United Earth Forces soldier?

"We cannot fail our mission, Lieutenant," Vanessa told her. "Too many lives are at stake. We must reach Breetai."

The remaining pair of Valkyries had scattered at the sudden destruction of their wingmate, giving Vanessa and Straza a brief respite.

"They won't be caught off guard again," Straza said.

"Keep moving toward the rendezvous point. I don't think they've used missiles yet because they're still hoping to keep a low profile. If we can get to the derelict, we may be able to use it to find cover or split them up."

"Can we call for help?"

Vanessa shook her head reluctantly. "The situation is too confused. We could make things much worse by drawing outside units into a dogfight between Zentraedi and Earth mecha."

Straza flew an erratic course, confounding the gun pod fire of their attackers, who were keeping a more respectful distance now. Who are they? And who sent them? Vanessa could not help wondering. The obvious answer was York. Did they have agents, or sympathizers, on the Factory Satellite? On Lisa's staff? With the world devastated and thrown into chaos by the Rain of Death, UEF soldiers and officers continued to wander in from the wastes months or years after the apocalypse. It would be a simple matter for someone with links to York to rejoin the UN Spacy under a real or assumed identity. The events of the last year had proven there was still plenty of hatred directed towards the Zentraedi. It would take as few as a half dozen traitors in the right posts to discover the meeting location and launch the operation to kill Vanessa and Straza. Once they were dead, the Valkyrie crews could jettison their FAST packs and re-enter Earth's atmosphere over York, arriving to a hero's welcome.

"They're closing in again," Straza announced at the same moment that Vanessa saw it herself, on the monitor. They were still a hundred kilometers from the cruiser hulk, and the enemy clearly did not want to give them any opportunity to slip away.

"We need an advantage," Vanessa murmured. She was picking up a clutter of weak contacts on the Regult's sub-standard radar, contacts she was able to identify at once. "A secondary debris field!"

"What?"

"Wreckage from when the cruiser was knocked out, slowly drifting away. It's not much, but maybe we can use it!"

"Alright, let's try," Straza agreed, changing course and adding extra thrust.

They were under constant fire by the time they reached the debris field. Twice they took non-critical hits, but then a third round struck, and the instruments flickered. When they came back up, the readout for the port-side vernier thruster was yellow. Vanessa's heart sank. This debris field was negligible in size compared to the Green Zone, and far more diffuse. She couldn't rely on experienced pilots simply smashing into a piece of wreckage to save them. They would be caught in moments, unless…. It was awkward, but she could just reach the sensors console, and began to scan the debris for anything that might help them, then grunted as Straza broke hard to the left, inverted the pod, and scissored in the opposite direction, compensating as best she could for the damaged thrusters. One of the Valkyries overshot and disengaged, scrambling to avoid Straza's return fire. The other diverted around a blackened thruster port from the cruiser, and circled to link up with their wingmate and try again. Using the small amount of breathing room Straza had gained them, Vanessa steadied herself, narrowed her scan, and tried again. There! She quickly highlighted the object.

"Straza, I have an idea."

The pilots of the surviving pair of Valkyries pressed the pursuit, flying in guardian mode and easily dodging around the larger chunks of scorched metal that streaked past them They were eager to be finished with the frustrating chase, and finished it seemed to be, when the battlepod veered off, then suddenly about-faced, silhouetted by its own bright thruster wash, and approached them head-on. It did not lash out with any of its weapons, even as the veritechs closed ranks and emptied their gun pods at it. They scored hit after hit, yet to no obvious effect. The gun pods clicked empty, leaving a snaking trail of glittering shell cases for hundreds of meters behind them. Desperate, the assassins pointed and fired their undercarriage laser turrets. The high-intensity beams left great glowing orange arcs just in front of the Regult unit, but made no mark on its armored skin.

Before either veritech's pilot could react, the battlepod plowed directly through them, dislodging hull panels and sending them tumbling in opposite directions. One gun pod, jarred loose from metal fingers and bent out of shape, spun off into deep space.

"It worked!" Vanessa crowed.

Straza rotated the battlepod and abandoned the transparent armored observation port she had been pushing ahead of it. The fifty meter across dome, blown clear of the derelict cruiser during its final battle, had done its job in shielding her and Vanessa. Now Straza took aim, and her particle beams dragged across the legs of one of the Valkyries. Its thrusters, powering up to stabilize its flight, exploded. The main hull, burning out of control, somersaulted a short distance further, then blew apart. Its wingmate fared better, using the agility of its guardian form to quickly recover and come about.

"I'm going to make a final run on the derelict," Straza told Vanessa, but no sooner had she put on speed, than the pod's cabin lit up with alerts, and a strident warning tone sounded. "They've given up on keeping this quiet," she snarled.

Vanessa tracked a full spread of sixteen missiles as they leapt in clusters of four from the concealed launch ports that ringed the Valkyrie's FAST packs. Her whole body went cold. She had witnessed elite veritech pilots evade or shoot down that many missiles at once, but a battlepod?

"Hold tight," Straza hissed, kicking the pod over like a swimmer doing a back- stroke. The screen filled with gold target icons as the red-tipped missiles raced into view, their thruster trails intertwining in their wake. Straza flipped a toggle on her hand grips and brought the Regult's smaller, chin mounted autocannons into action. Throwing hundreds of rounds back at the approaching warheads, she burst two, three, then four, and the missile swarm disappeared in a fiery display of fratricide. Vanessa released her breath, but a final trio of trailing missiles streaked through the dispersing cloud of hot gases. Straza hauled them into a tight turn and roll. Vanessa braced herself, watching two missiles miss wide and fly off into oblivion, when the third corkscrewed and-

Spots slowly cleared from Vanessa's vision. There was a great weight pressing across her entire body, pinning her limbs and forcing her helmeted head to face to the left. The ache she felt went all the way into her bones.

"Nnnn." She fought against the weight, trying to roll on to her side, to no avail. Steeling herself against panic, against her body's memory of the violations done to it when Khyron's ship crashed into the SDF-1 last year, she focused on her right arm and left leg, levering at the object imprisoning her with all the strength of her Robotech enhanced cybernetics. Slowly, the metallic shape inched away from her, and kept going, drifting toward the other side of the cockpit.

It's- it's the casing of the instrument panel! she thought in dazed shock. The force of the last missile's explosion hadn't been able to break the fantastically strong grip of her hand, but it had knocked loose the entire panel she had been holding onto during their flight! She was floating at the back of the cockpit, just above Straza's right shoulder. Below her, an intricate tangle of sparking cables and cracked, translucent circuit modules were revealed where the pod's internal electronics had been exposed. The main display strobed black and white, a crooked fault line running across the tough polymer surface. Somewhere there was a hiss of escaping atmosphere.

"Straza! Straza?" Vanessa drew herself along the lower curve of Straza's helmet, and was horrified when she reached the spiderwebbed surface of the woman's face shield. With a jolt, she realized that she was probably only alive because the casing had glanced off of Straza's helmet, absorbing some of its momentum, before it pinned her. Peering through the face shield, she found Straza's eyes shut, her face set in a pained expression. A few perfectly round droplets of deep red blood floated inside the helmet. Her shoulders rose and fell a few inches with each of her shallow breaths. Vanessa grimaced, flashing back to her friend Aryanna's eye injury at the protest in Monument. Now another Zentraedi woman she valued as a friend had been wounded in front of her because of her world's injustice.

She pushed herself around with one hand to face the instruments, wondering what she could do to help her unconscious comrade-in-arms. The image on the main display twisted, then stabilized, revealing the battlepod's scorched and severed right leg drifting off in the direction of the derelict Zentraedi cruiser they had struggled so hard to reach. So close... and then a shape dropped in front of them, blocking her view of the war relic.

The last Valkyrie, battloid configured, battered but intact, faced them, matching their motion with small jets of its leg thrusters. The emerald green scanner in its head was sighting along the barrel of its gun pod, which it cradled in a two-handed grip. The muzzle of the weapon looked enormous, almost pressed against the battlepod's front hull plate.

Vanessa prepared herself for death, regretting that she would not complete her mission, would not be able to help Bron… to dance with him one more time. Make things right with Lisa. See Earth at peace. Explore those distant stars.

A blinding blue ellipse of plasma energy struck the top of the gun pod, splitting it like a broken matchstick. The battloid's head snapped up, searching for its attacker, but then a stream of plasma blasts rained down, piercing the forearm that gripped the remains of the gun pod, the opposite hand, the shoulders, and the legs. A final, larger spear of plasma vaporized the head in a blossom of molten fragments, burning out the core of the Valkyrie along with its pilot.

Vanessa, frozen in shock, drifted in the stillness of the cockpit, her knuckles tucked under her chin. A Zentraedi powered armor suit jetted lightly into view (Nousjadeul-Ger, male-type personal body armor, a distant part of her mind muttered), and planted one massive foot against the still glowing torso of the ruined Valkyrie, shoving it away. The armor suit had a leaner, more conventionally humanoid shape, compared to the bulkier, almost insectile Queadluun Rau armors. The faceless helmet turned towards their pod, reminiscent of an ancient Roman helm or the head of a 1950's B-movie robot, studying their mecha. Its hull was butternut brown, with black, gray, and gold accents, ornamented with indecipherable unit designators and campaign honors. The heavy plasma cannon mounted over its right shoulder swiveled into a vertical position, then rotated to the left and re-racked itself across the suit's back. The barrel of the smaller plasma blaster it clutched in its right fist still glowed with slowly dissipating heat. The drum shaped power supply gave the weapon the look of a bulky, high-tech Tommy gun.

Back inside the battlepod, a small blue light above the left hand grip began blinking for Vanessa's attention. She shook herself from her paralysis, and carefully pushed off with both arms to cross the narrow confines of the cockpit. Reaching the button for the coms receiver, she crouched and kicked back off of it with both feet, managing to activate it and coming to rest with her back against Straza's breastplate. A distorted face glared back at her from the main display. The face of Admiral Breetai.

"Commander Pentiet, report!" he barked. His voice, powerful, low, and growling, reverberated through the cockpit. Like Vanessa, he had lost an eye in battle, long ago. Unlike her, the damage to his face had been much more severe, and most of the right half was covered in a chromed metal plate. A dark green lens replaced his eye socket. The visible portion of his face possessed strong features; lantern-jaw, short, wiry black hair, and a thick, bushy eyebrow over a deep-set, sharply watchful eye. His skin was a cadaverous, blue-tinged gray. Vanessa cast a nervous glance at the slowly dropping cabin pressure indicator, and unsealed her helmet.

"Admiral Breetai!" she called out as loudly as she could, and waved exaggeratedly for his attention, holding onto Straza's bandolier with her other hand.

Breetai's eye narrowed. "Lieutenant Commander Leeds?"

"Yes, sir! Please! Straza was hurt in the attack! We're losing cabin pressure, and she needs help right away!"

Breetai wasted no time with pointless questions. He gave a short, jerky nod. "I will convey you to my shuttle immediately. We will render whatever aid you need. And then," he added darkly, "perhaps you will be able to explain why the Zentraedi fleet may again be at war with Earth."

Next chapter… chain of command, reckoning, and horror...