Robotech Sentinels: Battle for Fantoma

by Gainsborough

Starting where the movie ends, this story chronicles the efforts of the REF to drive the Invid off Tirol and make contact with the remnants of the Masters' society. There is also the small matter of a couple of stowaways... Set in the same continuity as Rebirth, though you can read in any order.

1. Chapter 1

Robotech II : The Sentinels

The Battle for Fantoma

(Part of the Rebirth Timeline)

Chapter 1: Marriage

First impressions are important, and it is a poor relationship that is founded on a lie. Such a lie came to light as Rem turned to Capbell and said "This isn't Zor's battle fortress."

"What makes you think so?" Cabell asked in the tone he used for their tutoring sessions.

Karen Penn sat across from them, but hadn't understood a word of what had been said, though the language did seem to have some similarities to the Zentraedi language she'd become fluent in.

They were driving in an open-top ele-car to the bridge of the SDF-3. The two aliens were the first members of the Robotech Masters' race Karen, or anyone in the Robotech Expeditionary Force, had ever met. She had expected them to look human, since their cloned army was humanoid. However instead of bland military uniforms, the two aliens were dressed in outfits that Karen might expect to see David Bowie in. They both smelled like they hadn't bathed in days, but Karen supposed that she'd need to get used to that now that she was a soldier.

"The materials and design are completely different. This is a Zentraedi craft refit to look like the battle fortress," Rem said.

"Which generation would you say?" Cabell asked, still in his tutoring tone of voice.

"T-Series, I would think," Rem said. "Which would date it to about two centuries ago."

"Yes, a full three centuries after Zor had died," Cabell said, rubbing his beard thoughtfully. "However, the exterior design was sufficient to fool us. I've also seen components, both inside and outside, which seem to be from Zor's fortress, or very well-done facsimiles. What about the two Zentraedi ships that accompanied them?"

"They were also T-Series, but the fleet markings were missing," Rem said. "They also have non-standard coloring."

Cabell grunted an acknowledgement. "Yes, the Zentraedi are not known for repainting their ships, which means they are commandeered craft, or their crews have gone native."

Karen has made out the word "Zentraedi" as well as something which sounded like a conjugate of the Zentraedi root word for "feint", which probably meant some sort of deception. The two aliens had spoken to Karen and Jack in Zentraedi when they had been rescued, as Jack had greeted them in that language. Switching over to their native tongue meant that they obviously didn't want Karen to understand what they were saying, which worried her.

The younger one had shoulder-length blue hair and eyes that were the same shade. The other was bald but seemed to have grown a long white beard as compensation. If he'd been wearing a blue conical hat, Karne could have mistaken him for Merlin.

Were these the Robotech Masters that they had come here to confront?

"Who are these people, Cabell?" Rem said, giving Karen a sidelong glance.

"I don't know, my boy, but they seem to be enemies of the Invid, which is good enough for me, at least for the moment," Cabell said.

---

Karen had won the lottery. She'd always been a lucky girl: she's survived a world war in her infancy, and the mother of all planetary bombardments as an adolescent. She'd been spared a painful, and probably lethal, prion infection because an illness caused her to miss gross anatomy on the day the unlucky corpse had been dissected. She'd also lost a coin toss which would have put her up on a shuttle that had crashed into the Sea of Clouds instead of landing at Tycho Base.

This particular lottery had as its prize an all-expenses paid trip (plus salary, benefits and pension!) to the other side of the galaxy and a chance to die for questionable reasons on a planet where Earth's sun wasn't even a star in the sky, thanks to the galactic core.

Unlike the infamous Vietnam draft lottery, Karen and many other of her fellow cadets had chosen to enter. Although almost the entire Robotech Defense Force had volunteered for this mission, taking even half of them would severely strip Earth's defenses, so it was decided that the ranks would be taken by cadets who had either newly graduated, or tested out of the program.

Once again, there were too many volunteers, so a lottery system was implemented which would allow about 10% of the applicants to join the REF. Karen had been worried that her father, a geneticist who had a great deal of pull with both the UN and RDF, would get her blackballed, but her name had been read out in the vast promenade of the Factory Satellite the morning after the Hunter-Hayes wedding, and she had 15 minutes to pack her shit or she'd miss her shuttle.

It had taken 10 shuttles, all packed to the gills, to get the 1000 cadets over to the SDF-3. As far as Karen knew, none of her shipmates had ever set foot on the massive battle fortress. (She later learned that Jack had spent a week on the behemoth as part of a training exercise where they flew vintage Veritechs and waged war on AI-controlled battlepods. Karen was filled with a mixture of anger and longing that kept her from speaking to Jack for a week.)

She would always remember the moment that the SDF-3 came into view. She'd seen pictures of it, of course, but none of them did justice to the sheer size. It looked like the pictures she'd seen of the SDF-1 before it had launched and two ocean-going battleships had been welded to its bow. However this ship had the green color scheme and blistered texture of a Zentraedi cruiser.

She saw the familiar command blister, its windows glowing yellow against the pitch black of space; it flickered as people moved about. She wondered if one of them was Admiral Hayes.

Far below the command blister was a yawning mouth, which glowed a similar shade of yellow. Holographic stripes floated in space, guiding them into the ship's maw.

The shuttle touched down; Karen and her fellow cadets filed out and queued into a set of lines that were broken down alphabetically. Karen had to admit she didn't know what they were in line for, she suspected they had to check in or something.

Very quickly she discerned a pattern, everyone in line was given an envelope. They opened it, read what was inside and cheered.

When Karen got her envelope she flipped it over and saw that it was sealed with the shield-symbol of the RDF (which she supposed was also the symbol of the REF). She opened the envelope and removed the sheet of paper from inside it. She was surprised to see her test score from the final exam, which had been displayed on-screen after she'd finished the test. The piece of paper also said that she had earned a commission as a Third Lieutenant, she was assigned to the Aerospace Corps, and her commanding officer was Miriya Parino in Red Squadron.

Karen scowled; she'd wanted Skull Squadron. But then she remembered an old saying about new rope.

---

Lisa Hayes was completely naked and wet; as she was in the shower, this was expected. She really should be in the conference room now, waiting for their guests from the planet below. However she'd been sitting on the bridge for two days straight, and figured that greasy skin and BO wouldn't make a good impression on the first Tirolians they'd met.

She sighed as she looked in the mirror and saw the dark bags under her eyes; these would also make a bad impression. She brushed concealer onto them until they were invisible, the slightly lighter than her skin tone shade made her look wide-eyed and alert.

She opened the closet and looked at the long line of Admiral uniforms hanging there. Her father would have been so proud, she thought. Or would he have been? They had come to Tirol to make peace after all, which really hadn't been his cup of tea.

After pulling on the three pieces of her uniform, she took her admiral bars out of the ultrasonic cleaner and attached them just above her left breast. She took a look at herself in the mirror.

"Is this the face that will halt a thousand ships, and save our planet from a second apocalypse?" she asked no one in particular. At this point it didn't really matter, she was all that Earth had now.

An earnest-looking lieutenant saluted her as she got into the elecar and proceeded to get in the driver's side. She took in the sights as they drove the two miles between the residential quarters and the administrative center, where the meeting would take place.

Zor's battle-fortress and Breetai's flagship had been roughly the same size, if you removed the Prometheus and Daedalus from the equation. Both contained massive holds which were intended to accommodate full-size Zentreadi. Like the SDF-1, they needed to create a microscopic version of each section to accommodate their smaller size.

But even with these microscopic accommodations, there was still a lot of empty space. Enough space to rebuild a city if they had so desired, but that was a piece of history they were not going to repeat. The SDF-3 was incapable of transformation as well, but then again they weren't missing a mile of cabling between the main reactors and their main cannon either.

Instead they had severely enlarged the size of their mission, taking nearly a third of all military hardware on Earth, and nearly half of the Robotech Defense Force. The SDF-3 had more people on it than the SDF-1 ever had, and ten times more mecha than Gloval had ever had at his command.

Several years later, while she was fighting the campaign to liberate Karbarra, she received a brief letter from Dr. Lang in the daily databurst from Tirol. It informed her that Dr. Lang had completed his assessment of the abilities of the Robotech Masters. If they had been present when the SDF-3 had arrived, and had been hostile, the entire REF would've been destroyed in five hours.

But that's far in the future, as of this moment Admiral Lisa Hayes thinks that she's going to be meeting with representatives of the Robotech Masters. She is no longer in awe of the Master's prowess, in fact she has begun to feel superior to them, as they had been hiding underground from an enemy who the REF had been able to soundly beat. They'd even sent them a message telling them which building the Invid had set up their headquarters in; leaving unsaid "if you could attack this place for us, we'd be so appreciative. We would, but we don't want to waste the Protoculture. Our reserves are limited, and don't you know there's a war on?"

When she reached the administrative center, she was surprised to find her husband, General Grant and Colonel Edwards standing outside the conference room.

"What are you doing out here?" she asked her husband, making it plain that the question was for all of them.

"I didn't think we should go in there without you. Diplomatic incidents and the like, you know?" Rick said, specifically not looking at Edwards as he said it.

"I suppose that's wise. Come on then, history awaits," she said, and pressed the "open" button on the door panel.

---

The story of how Rem and Cabell got into that meeting room goes back to the day after Lisa Hayes and Rick Hunter's wedding, the day the SDF-3 launched.

The cadets, many of them hungover, and a few of them not having gotten any sleep the night before, returned to the giant chamber where the wedding ceremony had been held the day before. There were still janitorial robots cleaning up after the reception.

Each cadet had a slip with a number on it, and they each waited as the commandant of the academy read off their numbers. Jack had to wait a harrowing hour before his number was called, but he quickly ran up to join his fellow cadets, now a proud member of the REF.

He got his commission papers when he arrived on the SDF-3. He had achieved the rank of sergeant. Later on he would discover that his exam score was three points shy of that necessary for the rank of third lieutenant (and status of officer). This was because when he was taking the final exam, he hadn't been aware that voice recognition had been turned on. Tthe computer misinterpreted his verbal working out of the problem as his answer and had marked it as wrong.

Jack's assignment was to Colonel Wolfe's Hovertank squadron, also known as the Wolfe Pack. Jack would have preferred to be assigned to one of the Alpha or even Logan squadrons, but as with most of the survivors of Doomsday, he had adopted "I'm just happy to be here" as a motto.

Jack first saw combat right after the SDF-3 folded into Tirol space. Here the REF had its first, but certainly not last, stroke of bad luck. The underlying topology of spacetime indicates that certain points in space are favored for folding and unfolding space. As such the SDF-3 unfolded in one of Tirol's lagrange points, just as the Invid Regent's invasion fleet was on its way to that same point to fold out of the system. If the SDF-3 had folded in five hours later, the REF would have only had to fight the much smaller occupation fleet which was in orbit around Tirol. (As things were, they had to fight them a few days later.)

The Veritech Hovertank had a special mode for shipboard; in this mode the EM-flux generators which provided lift on the ground allowed the tank to magnetically latch onto the hull of a ship. The field modulation which allowed movement on the ground worked almost exactly the same, allowing the tanks to move around freely. As such the SDF-3 gained over a hundred small cannons whose range covered the entire sky and proved just as effective in the battle as the Alpha squadrons had.

Jack had panicked at first, since his main targets were missiles and shells, much smaller than anything he had trained on, but he was a quick study and his performance in that battle put him in the 50th percentile of the entire Wolfe Pack. This resulted in a hearty shoulder-clap and handshake from Colonel Wolfe afterwards. Jack had been very proud, but this was before Kaifun had told him about Caracas.

There were more battles; after finishing off the invasion fleet, they herded the occupation fleet into a tight formation where they could be taken out by a single blast of the SDF-3's main gun, and then the nightmare of the surface campaign began.

The Inorganics were in a completely different class than anything anyone in the REF had fought before. They swarmed, but the swarm was controlled by a human-level intelligence, and the REF suffered its first severe losses.

There was also the horrible blow to morale as the Wolfe Pack reconnoitered city after city full of decaying and eviscerated bodies. There were no survivors to be found anywhere, though they suspected there might be some beneath the glowing force field of the large city near the sea. (They would later discover that the cities on the other two large continents had been spared, but their residents had fled underground and weren't responding to the SDF-3's hails.)

Eventually the Zentraedi turned the tide, as their squadrons of battlepods and armor fared far better against the Inorganics. Combat was broken off for three days while the Wolfe Pack was taught how to fight the Invid by the giants who had once been their enemies.

Although the REF was fighting better, managing to decisively destroy each battalion they came across, the Invid seemed to have unlimited reserves of robotic shock troopers. (This was practically the truth, they later discovered that the Invid had brought an automated factory with them which was churning out 5000 new Inorganics every day.)

The SDF-3 received a radio message in Zentraedi, on a frequency usually used for Zentraedi transmissions. It contained a series of numbers, and the message: "The Invid control center is in the Royal Hall in Tiresia." The numbers were later worked out to be coordinates, and once they figured out the degrees of the latitude and longitude systems, they were able to find a large building in the sea-side city which matched the coordinates exactly. However they couldn't get to it because of the force field.

The Wolfe Pack had fortified the ruins of a city they later learned had been called Ryalck, about 50 miles from Tiresia. While not on patrol the 'Pack had the unfortunate duty of laying the former residents to rest. This had affected many of them far more deeply than the shock and turmoil of battle ever had.

Jack was recovering in the enlisted lounge from a particularly grisly shift while his friend Pierre (who would later have the distinction of being the first person to die in a battle on Praxis that almost wiped out the REF) was working on a pet project. He had made copies of the mysterious radio message from multiple sources and used the signal strengths to triangulate the source. He was able to narrow it down to a half-kilometer square within the force-field domed city.

At dawn of the next day, a full seven hours before Jack's patrol was to start, he took out his tank (telling a confused looking tech that he wanted to to "take it around the block a few times"), plugged Pierre's coordinates into the computer, and began the long journey to Tiresia. As the force field dome hadn't mysteriously shut down during the night, when Jack reached the city there was no way in. He began to drive around the perimeter of the city, hoping against hope that he'd find a way in, and preparing to face the mustachioed wrath of his CO when we got back to base.

Jack wondered why he wasn't running into any Inorganics or Invid armor when he was so close to Tiresia. Then he realized that there wasn't any need for a perimeter guard when you had a force field dome.

As he circled the city he saw craft, buildings and even some animals that had been cleaved in two by the force field, suggesting that the Invid hadn't bothered doing any reconnaissance to see where the actual city limits lay, they probably just took an arbitrary point from wherever the generator was located and decided it was far enough away.

Jack couldn't believe it when he found the hole. He had dipped into a valley that was about 10 feet deep, the force field terminating at a rock wall to his left. This rock wall was disrupted by a forty-foot wide elliptical hole that offered a view of a similar valley on the other side.

Jack blinked several times, wondering if it was a mirage, but the hole was really there. Jack jumped out of his tank and walked over to the hole, he had to stand on his tiptoes to see through it, but he didn't see the blue glow of the force field. He took a rock and chucked it, and it went straight through and he heard the plop as it hit the ground on the other side.

Jack spent the next five minutes futzing around with the controls of his hovertank. Adjusting the height of the EM flux was easy enough, but he had to make sure he could adjust it quickly enough that he wouldn't smash into the top of the donut when he went over the rock.

He took a deep breath, nudged the switch and the hovertank rose to about 20 feet off the ground. Jack drove forward, there was a painful lurch as he entered the donut, he quickly switched the lift back to 2 feet and let out a sigh.

However he forgot to readjust it when he came out the other side and plunged twenty feet to the ground, the hoverjets scraping the ground before the cushion of EM flux could be reestablished.

Jack did a good impression of Karen as he swore up a storm, and he had bitten his tongue so badly it would take five minutes to stop bleeding.

The terrific crash of Jack's bumbling had gotten the attention of a nearby bipedal inorganic which seemed to be on patrol. Jack swerved around and just managed to avoid the stream of annihilation discs that the robotic soldier blasted him with, he pulled over behind a partially destroyed building and pulled the lever which switched his tank over to Battoloid mode. The catchy ditty from the propaganda videos played through his head as it changed form.

Jack waited for the Inorganic to come into view, and was amazed as it came crashing through the ruins of the building instead. Jack did a somersault to put some distance between himself and the Invid monstrosity (the servos gave a terrible groan, suggesting they hadn't been designed for such maneuvers) and got off a couple of shots at it. It blocked them with the back of its arm.

Jack decided to make use of their proximity and lunged forward, slamming his robotic fist into the Inorganics faceplate, shattering whatever was there; Jack was hoping they were sensors.

Jack then shoved the muzzle of his rifle against the chest of the Inorganic and blew a hole straight through it.

At this point it would do well to consider the dangers of anthropomorphism; that is, the assigning of human traits to nonhuman things. Humans, like most intelligent beings in the universe, are self-centered. This term has come to be pejorative, but the truth is all intelligent beings begin their understanding of others and the universe at large by using themselves as a template. This has led to such odd beliefs as rocks and trees having feelings, and storms being expressions of a god's anger, or an American giggling when they meet a Japanese person named Irene Ohara. Or even when an REF soldier attacks an Inorgaic's head, speculating that since that is where the two main sensory organs are on a human, that's where they must be on this machine (they aren't). Likewise assuming that blasting a hole through the chest of the Inorganic will disable it (it didn't).

Jack only lost an arm because of that mistake, and thankfully it was not his own arm, but that of his mecha. He quickly corrected his mistake by shooting the inorganic in the crotch, which also detached its two legs. Very quickly the light faded from the Inorganic's smashed "eyes" and it stopped moving.

Jack continued following his navigator until he got to the location that the signal had originated. He was disappointed to discover that it was a large antenna, and felt stupid for not realizing that it would be. If he could track down the signal, then so could the Invid. The message must have been relayed here by computer.

His auditory sensors picked up what sounded like a garage door opening. Jack turned around and saw that one of the metal plates that made up the walkway he'd been following was now raised at a 45-degree angle, revealing a stairway. A small ditty from a half-remembered video game came to mind, one that played whenever a secret was revealed.

Two figures rushed up the stairs. One looked very old, the other was a kid who looked to be Jack's age. Jack was overcome with a murderous hatred, and seriously considered shooting them both.

He gasped at the horrible thoughts, and shook his head vigorously as if to dislodge them. But he realized now that he hadn't really thought about what he was doing; he had only thought of these people as refugees, and people who had been trying to help them. Only when he saw their bizarre dress did he realize that they were Robotech Masters, the people who had sent the Zentreadi after the SDF-1, who had ordered the genocide of the human race. The people who were responsible for his parents' deaths (although indirectly).

The two Tiresians stopped dead and started at the unresponsive mecha before them. Rem thought it an angular mess, form following function with no thought to aesthetics.

"Are you the ones who sent the message?" Jack said in Zentraedi over the PA.

"Yes!" the old one shouted back in the same language. "Are you from the ship above?"

"Yes, I am Sergeant Jack Baker of the SDF-3," Jack said.

"We thank you for rescuing us, Jack Baker of the SDF-3. Please take us to your leader."

---

Rem and Cabell weren't sure what to make of the creatures that entered the room. The combinations of skin and hair color would have suggested that they were not Zentraedi, if the mixture of the sexes already hadn't. Regardless, the most decorated one, the female, spoke to them in the Zentraedi language.

"Greetings, I am Admiral Hayes, commander of the Robotech Extraditionary Force. We come from the planet Earth and are pleased to meet you," she said.

"I am Cabell, and this young man is called Rem," Cabell said. "I'm afraid that word you use," he then said robotech in English "is unfamiliar to us."

Hayes then explained that it was their word for the Zentraedi word that was better translated as "reflex" or "reaction technology. "It's the combination of our word for mechanical automatons and the word for technology."

Cabell looked to his pupil. "I am less impressed with these people by the minute." he said in Tiresian.

Rem didn't reply, seeing that their whispered conversation seemed to be worrying the Admiral.

"You are the same people who told us about the Invid Base in the Royal Hall, am I correct?" Hayes said.

"Yes, that was indeed us," Cabell said.

"Then you have our gratitude. It seems our relationship is off to a good start," Hayes said. "We have traveled a long way to speak with you. We hope that the people of Earth and the Masters can find a way to live in peace."

"You speak of the Lords of Tiresia," Cabell said. "We are not them."

The four members of the REF exchanged worried glances.

Hayes was attempting to formulate the next question when her train of thought was derailed by Rem's outburst.

"Just who are you people?" Rem said. "Why did you disguise this ship as Zor's battle-fortress?"

Hayes, Hunter and Grant were consumed by panic and had varying success at fighting it. Edwards, on the other hand, felt only a mild sense of smug glee.

Mercifully it was at that moment that the door chime sounded. Dr. Lang and Exedore had arrived.

Rem whispered to Cabell. "Cabell, that's a micronized Zentraedi. I remember seeing it in the templates."

"Advisory class, I worked on his template," Cabell said.

"I am Exedore Fomol, formerly advisory adjunct to Commander Breetai Kridanik of the Zentraedi Fifth Fleet," the micronized Zentraedi said.

Cabell stroked his beard. The Fifth Fleet was one of the perimeter guard, located just beyond the galactic core. Their main job was to keep an eye on the half of the galaxy the Lords of Tiresia hadn't gotten around to exploring.

"You said former advisor, what is your current assignment?" Cabell said.

Exedore looked down as he spoke the next words. "I am no longer part of the Zentraedi military. I am a citizen of the planet Earth."

The two Tiresians looked at each other uncomfortably. Rem muttered a word that Hayes didn't quite catch, but sounded like muddy-something, Cabell responded with a curt nod.

"As much as I appreciate your help against the Invid, I think it's time you told us who exactly you people are, and what you're doing here," Cabell said.

---

Exedore spoke first.

"Fifteen years ago our long-range probes detected an unfold event in a distant star system in one of the spiral arms of our galaxy. Our fleet was assigned to any activity in that area of the galaxy and it was our duty to investigate.

"The power unleashed in the unfold indicated that the vessel was either extremely massive or had folded across an extremely long distance.

"We searched the spiral arm for ten years before we were able to locate the vessel on a world called Earth. We identified the vessel as Zor's battle-fortress."

Rem interrupted: "We know this isn't Zor's battle-fortress, even though you disguised it to fool us."

Exedore wrung his hands. "Yes, that was, perhaps, a questionable decision."

It was at this point that Dr. Lang took over.

"I am Emil Lang, scientific advisor to the Robotech Extraordinary Force, I was also the lead scientist on the restoration effort of Zor's battle-fortress, which we came to call the SDF-1.

"When we found the battle-fortress, it was partially destroyed. We disassembled it, reverse engineered the technology we found, and rebuilt it as best we could."

Cabell interrupted. "What about the crew? They wouldn't have allowed you to take command of the vessel."

Edwards replied. "There was no crew on-board, it had been completely controlled by its main computer."

"I suppose that makes sense," Cabell said. "Zor's fortress was not equipped with cloning tanks, so the crew wouldn't have been able to replace themselves as they died in battle or from old age."

"This computer ended up causing us some trouble," Hayes said. "On the day that we were going to launch the SDF-1, the computer took control of its systems and fired the main gun at a Zentraedi craft which had assumed an orbit around Earth."

"We didn't know about this at the time," Exedore explained. "As such we assumed a hostile posture. The battle-fortress folded out of Earth space and into the outer reaches of their solar system. This was at the same time that our scouts had discovered that the planet was inhabited by Micronians. Following the protocols set forth by the Masters we determined to leave the planet alone and follow the battle fortress."

"Over the course of many months we learned a great deal about this micronian society. We even sent micronized spies onto the ship in an attempt to learn more about them. This backfired as the spies had become so enamored with the society of Earth that they defected," Exedore said.

Cabell and Rem again exchanged an uneasy look.

"Although we had the Imperial fleet at our disposal, it was quickly rendered useless as this contagion of culture spread. The Zentraedi refused to wage war on the SDF-1, because it is unlawful for Zentraedi to kill Zentreadi," Exedore said. "We had no choice but to sue for peace."

"The Supreme Commander Dolza didn't take that well," Hayes said. "He brought his entire fleet to bear on Earth and wiped out almost the entire population."

Rem's mouth dropped open, but he said nothing. Hayes thought she could see sadness in Cabell's eyes.

"The Imperial Fleet and SDF-1 joined forces and managed to defeat Dolza's fleet," Exedore said. "And through our combined efforts we brought life back to Earth."

"But what happened to Zor's battle-fortress?" Zor said.

"It was destroyed by Khyron Kravshera in a suicide attack," Exedore said.

Cabell's shoulders slumped and he sunk into his chair.

"That son-of-a-bitch Khyron!" Rem said, slamming his fist into the table. "The Botaru Battalion should've been decommissioned years ago!" He then whispered to Cabell in Tiresian. "We need to get out of here. Now."

"How do you propose we do that, my boy?" Cabell replied. "They seem to have us where they want us."

"I'll create a distraction, and you run," Rem said.

"No, my boy, you're much too important to throw your life away," Cabell said in a conversational tone.

Rem bolted out of his chair, leapt onto the table, and kicked Exedore square in the face.

Cabell reluctantly jumped up from his chair and rushed out the door.

Unfortunately he had forgotten about the two REF soldiers flanking the door, and he was quickly wrestled to the ground.

---

The two Tiresians were manacled to their chairs. Exedore had been taken to the sickbay to set his broken nose. Hayes looked across the table at the glowering aliens and wondered what the hell had just happened.

"Okay, I'll ask the obvious: what the hell was that about?" Hunter asked.

"Why are you bothering to ask, you'll get all the answers you want when you take over our bodies," Rem said.

Hayes and Hunter exchanged angered and confused looks; colloquially expressed with the acronym WTF.

Sadly Rem had chosen to attack the one person who could have easily cleared up the matter. So things proceeded similarly to the process of pulling teeth.

"Why are you expecting us to take over your bodies?" Hayes said, wishing there had been a less stupid way of asking that question.

"Isn't that why you're here, to finish the job?" Cabell said. "You wiped out the Zentraedi, and now you want the secrets of the Lord of Tiresia."

"There are still plenty of Zentraedi alive," Grant noted.

"If you can call that life," Rem scoffed.

"Either my Zentraedi is worse than I thought, or what's going on doesn't make any sense," Hunter said to Hayes in English.

"I suggest we put them in the brig," Edwards said. "Then we start putting together a plan of interrogation."

"Something we said put them off," Hunter said. "I remember they kept looking uncomfortable whenever we talked about the Zentraedi defecting."

Lisa addressed the two in Zentraedi. "Am I correct in assuming that you believe that Exedore and the others allied with us because they became…." she tried to think of a Zentraedi word for possessed, but none fit the bill. "Because we took over their minds?"

"That's what Mardevlin do," Rem said.

"Mardevlin?" Hayes said. "What does that word mean?"

"Don't play coy!" Rem shouted.

"My boy…" Cabell said in Tiresian. "I'm starting to think that we may have made a grave mistake."

---

Let me tell you a story. In the year 1007 AD, in a coreward area of the galaxy known to humans as the Sagittarius Arm, the Zentraedi Second Fleet broke off contact with High Command.

Sixteen months later the fleet appeared in Tiresian-controlled space and began opening fire on the Zentraedi bases which served as the forward defenses of the homeworld.

Even more worrying was that virtually every encounter ended with a portion of the Zentraedi fleet defecting to the other side and destroying their former comrades.

The Lord of Tiresia managed to capture one of the ships intact, and were astonished to discover that the renegade Zentraedi had not been brainwashed, but had been inhabited by energy beings which proved capable of taking over Tiresian minds just as easily as Zentraedi.

The entire Tiresian colony had to be wiped out, and the Lords of Tiresia had to use one of their own space fortresses to do it, as Zentraedi were incapable of attacking their Masters.

The Masters managed to exorcize one of these creatures from the mind of a possessed Tiresian and trapped it inside an air-gapped computer. From that short detention they were able to determine that it was a member of a race called the Mardevlin, an energy race that originated on a gas giant surrounding one of the stars in the spiral arm that the Zentraedi had been conquering.

Unfortunately the Mardevlin discovered at the same time that it could change its vibrational frequency and become other forms of energy, such as light. It possessed a Tiresian via a bright burst of light from a display screen, and quickly escaped the Tiresian base and brought this knowledge back to its people, giving them a powerful new weapon.

The Mardevlin spread ever faster by sending themselves as radio transmission which translated into mechanical waves that could be processed by the ears of their victims: sound. The Mardevlin began destroying Zentraedi with song a thousand years before the crew of the SDF-1 did.

The Lords of Tiresia adopted a policy of absolute containment, and bred a new class of Zentraedi warrior without the safeguards that prevented them from attacking other Zentraedi or the Masters themselves. These new warriors also were blind and deaf from birth. Within a year there was no life left within 100 light years of the Mardevlin homeworld, and the homeworld itself had exploded like a hydrogen-filled balloon.

A new protocol was added to the Zentraedi "programming". Upon any sign of a Mardevlin infestation, exemplified by sudden unexplained defection of warriors, encounters with Micronian species, or Zentraedi being attacked with the sonic weapon known as "music", the instructions were clear: complete containment followed by sterilization.

The "Dark" class of Zentraedi that accomplished this mission ended up being another headache for the Lords of Tiresia; but that's a tale for another time.

---

There was silence in the conference room for a very long time. The near destruction of their homeworld and the attempted genocide of their race was something that those humans present had come to terms with, as best as one can. None were sure how to react now that they finally knew why it had happened.

Finally Admiral Hayes spoke. "We came here to treat with the Lords of Tiresia. Would you be able to help us establish contact?"

"I'm afraid not," Cabell said. "Our Lords left this planet almost fifteen years ago. I believe their destination was your world, as they were seeking an explanation for the disappearance of most of the Zentraedi forces, and the cause of a massive spike of reflex particles on the other side of the core."

"Earth?!" Edwards said, aghast. "They're headed to Earth?"

"Wait a second, if they headed to Earth 15 years ago, how come we never came across them?" Hunter asked.

"But 15 years ago the SDF-1 hadn't even launched yet-" Grant said, but stopped as Hayes raised her hand for silence.

"My men are correct, the Lords of Tiresia never appeared in Earthspace. Are you sure they had the correct coordinates?" Hayes asked.

"We exhausted all reflex fuel almost a century ago, their fortresses were able to work on other types of fuel, but the fold engines required high-grade reflex fuel, so they weren't able to use them," Cabell said.

Hayes wondered why Cabell kept using the word "reflex fuel" instead of "protoculture"; she would later learn that the word he used was a bad translation for a Tiresian word that was best translated as "biomatter".

"They're out of protoculture?" Edwards said in English with a sneer. "From the Zentraedi salvage alone we've got 100 years worth of it back on Earth. It would be a very short fight."

"A voyage from Tirol to Earth without folding would take nearly 100,000 years," Hayes said.

"We have older technologies from before the time of Zor which allow us to travel at thousands of times the speed of light. The Lords believed that they would reach your planet in 20 years," Cabell said.

"We need to go back to Earth, NOW," Edwards said, in English.

"I'm afraid I agree," Hayes said, first in English and then in Zentraedi for their new friends' sake. "General Hunter, General Grant, get all of your forces back on the SDF-3 as soon as possible. I want us to be ready to fold in 24-hours."

"Uh…" Lang said, but was ignored.

"But what about us? What about our world?" Rem said.

"You can come with us, in fact we'd prefer it since I think it would make negotiations with the Masters smoother," Hayes said.

"I doubt that," Rem said in Tiresian with a snort.

"There are still people alive down there," Cabell protested. "Most of the cities on the other continents were untouched by the Invid invasion."

"We'll give the Masters the fuel they need so they can fold back to Tirol, then we'll take the Invid on together. I'll also ask the Quist and Dodon to remain in the system to stop the Invid from sending reinforcements and to try to liberate the main continent," Hayes said.

"Excuse me!" Lang shouted, everyone stopped talking and turned to him. "There's a small problem with that plan."

---

Dr. Emil Lang, civilian leader of the mission to Tirol, scientific advisor to the REF, and leading expert on reflex technology, left the reception early.

While Minmei and Janice were singing he made his way down to the aft hangar and took his fully-automated shuttle to the SDF-3. He knew, sight unseen, that Janice's performance would be tape-recorder perfect.

The SDF-3 had a skeleton crew getting ready for tomorrow's launch, many of them visibly angry from having to work during the wedding. Lang took the special elevator that he'd added to the blueprints and had keyed only to himself and Admiral Hayes, that took him directly to the heart of the fortress. Main engineering, with the main reflex engines and fold drives taking up the bulk of the massive chamber, with a series of catwalks running in between.

Lang worked through the night, checking and double-checking every system, making three complete circuits of the vast chamber. He talked to the engineers and discussed both theory and practice. Finally he sat down at one of the terminals and continued his private passion project: the design for the SDF-3's successor, the SDF-4. He just hoped he'd have a chance to build it.

In reality the design would never be used; Lang threw it away after only a week of studying Zor's notes, which revealed that he didn't understand reflex technology half as well as he thought he did. The real SDF-4 was built, and abandoned half-finished, six months later. Its fold drive, the first designed by a Terran mind and built by Terran hands, didn't work.

The alarm on Lang's pocket computer went off at 0800, when Admiral Hayes was due to arrive, and Lang decided to make one last circuit of the chamber. He stopped on one of the catwalks that spanned the gap between the aft nodes of the fold drive. They were gargantuan beasts, bulged cylinders fifty feet in height.

Lang had personally supervised the refitting of the fold drive from the ground up. The original drive for Breetai's battlecruiser had been the Zentreadi-fleet standard: only capable of folds of about 20 light years. Lang had reconstructed it to match the SDF-1s drive, though he did run into a small problem. Large portions of the SDF-1s drive had been constructed of a metal from the fabled "island of stability" around 290 in the periodic table. They were unable to reproduce it, and Lang wasn't able to requisition nearly enough of it from the Zentraedi salvage project (most of it went to CERN and SCSC). He'd ended up using a super-heavy alloy of titanium which had the same chemical and physical properties as the mysterious metal. It seemed to work, the drive had taken them out as far as Barnard's Star.

At 8:23 the order came from the bridge to begin the fold operation. Lang walked over to where the com officers were working.

"Do we have Dodon and Quist on the line?" Lang asked.

"Yes sir," Lt. Shapely replied.

"Tell them to open the sockets on their fold computers," Lang said.

"We are getting data," Lt. Curtis replied. "Synchronization signal acknowledged."

Now the two fold drives on their Zentreadi companion ships had slaved their fold drives to the SDF-3s. They could now follow them through hyperspace once the SDF-3 had folded the galaxy up like a centerfold someone had gotten tired of looking at.

Lang went to the main fold console, he felt a sense of deja-vu as he flipped up the guard on the InitFold button. Over ten years ago he had engaged the fold drive on the SDF-1, and changed the history of entire civilizations. With astonishment he realized that this was the exact same console, as it had been salvaged from the wreckage of the SDF-1 after Khyron's suicidal charge. Without any further hesitation, Lang pressed the glowing red button.

A fold consists of three phases. In the first phase the ship is translated from the three spatial dimensions known to human perception to the fifth, sixth and seventh. The topology of the higher dimensions didn't map exactly to the spatial dimensions, which lead to a horrible, almost unbearable sense of wrongness.

The next phase commenced with the fortress and its denizens supplanting the four dimensions that humanity was accustomed to, and then an application of pure power actually folded those dimensions repeatedly until vast distances could be crossed as easily as walking across a room. The Fortress then moved forward about fifty meters and came to a full stop.

The third phase was just an undoing of the first one, wherein the SDF-3 was translated back down to the spatial dimensions. It was at this point that everything went wrong.

Everyone aside from Lang who was present would claim that there was an explosion, but that was an exaggeration. There was a shower of sparks, and there was some smoke. But the thing that Lang would remember to his dying day was the sun-bright liquid metal oozing out of the cylinders of the fold drive and setting everything around it aflame. It melted through a catwalk and caused it to collapse; fortunately no one had been on it at the time. This was terrifying enough as it was, but the terror was exponentiated as it occurred during a dimensional translation.

There was a savage jerk back to reality as the de-fold operation completed, and Lang was filled with relief, which was quickly replaced by concern. How was he going to explain this to the admiral?

---

"So you decided not to tell me?" Hayes said angrily.

"It was my intention to," Lang said, unusually flustered.

"It's been a week!" Hayes said.

"I needed to find a way to fix it, but most of the alloy was unsalvageable–" Lang started.

"You can't use an alloy for the infrastructure of a fold drive!" Rem said. "The translation process changes the physical properties of most metals, you need something with a large enough Strong Force to reinforce the metallic bonds!"

"Exactly right, my boy," Cabell said.

"Why didn't we experience this problem when we did the test flight to Barnard's Star?" Hayes asked.

"I believe it's because during that test flight we had an empty hold. With the entire complement of the REF, the amount of mass we folded would have been almost ten times greater," Lang said.

"The fold drive that Zor's fortress used was specifically designed for long distance and light weight," Cabell said. "It was intended as an exploration vessel, after all."

Hayes suddenly looked thoughtful. "What would happen if such a drive were used to move a very large mass to, say, the outskirts of an interplanetary system?"

"How large a mass are we talking about?" Rem said.

"Say about… an island, about 30 kilometers by 30 kilometers, and much of the surrounding seawater?" Hayes said.

"Not to mention the surrounding air," Lang said.

"It would be like pulling an elastic band back, eventually the pressure would be too much and it would break free of its mooring and continue on its own. The ship… and island… would slide back into normal space, once the effect of the drive was removed," Rem said.

Hayes and Hunter exchanged bewildered looks. "The same damn thing as the antigrav units!"

"We have to do something about the threat to Earth!" Edwards shouted, in English.

Rem and Cabell looked confused.

"Can we at least send a team back using one of the Zentraedi ships?" Edwards said.

Hayes shook her head. "That was actually part of our original plan, to use them as scouting ships, but they would need to make almost 1000 folds to get back to Earth, and neither of them is capable of carrying the fuel for that long a trip."

"Surely there must be refueling depots," Edwards said, aghast.

"All of the ones we know of in Earth's sector of the galaxy were destroyed during the Zentraedi Civil War," Exedore replied. "And we have no knowledge of the ones beyond the galactic core, but we can assume the same."

"Do you know of any refueling points between here and the galactic center?" Hunter asked Cabell in Zentraedi.

"None, the Zentreadi haven't been allowed in this part of the galaxy for 200 years," Cabell said. "After the Dark Rebellion the Lords didn't want them within striking distance of Tirol."

"Then it looks like we're stuck here," Edwards noted, helpfully.

The room was swallowed in silence as the REF leadership let that sink in.

"If I may," Cabell said. "The element you described, we call it 'monopole', and it exists in abundance on the planet that our world orbits. In fact, the Lords didn't bother to fill in the mines when they left, so you could start mining it within days."

"Truly?" Lang said. "That's fantastic!"

"What's more, the Lords left their automated orbital shipyards intact when they left. It might take some time getting them operational again, but once you do, you'll be able to build replacement parts and even entire ships from scratch," Rem said.

"But there does remain the small matter of our world being occupied by the Invid," Cabell said with a mock sincerity that surprised Rem. He'd never known his mentor to be snarky.

"Of course," Hayes said. "The battle takes priority. You said that their central base was located in a particular building?"

"Yes, we were also able to determine that it's the source of the force field," Cabell said.

"We're sending down a team of Seabees to widen that gap we found," Hayes said. "We'll then be able to send in ground units."

"It's wide enough to accommodate either a hovertank or Alpha now," Hunter said. "I'll lead a surgical strike team in to take it out."

It was now Hayes and Grant who shared the WTF look.

"While I have no doubts about your considerable skill with an Alpha, I think this is a situation where stealth is called for," Edwards said.

"I'm afraid I agree. Our favored tactic against these machines has been overwhelming force, a surgical strike might not even be possible," Hayes said.

"We do know from previous experience that bombing the dome will cause them to send forces outside, as one would swat a mosquito," Edwards said. "That would provide a valuable diversion for me and my men."

"Then we'll also be the first ones in," Hunter said.

"I can't have two of the joint chiefs putting themselves on the line like this," Hayes said.

"I have been training with my squadron daily since its formation," Edwards said. "My absence would be a detriment to the mission."

"And my record speaks for itself," Hunter said, though Hayes could hear some doubt in his voice.

Hayes spared Grant a look. "Don't tell me you want to go along as well."

Grant shook his head. "My destroids are worthless in these situations."

"All right then. General Hunter, Colonel Edwards, I want your battle plans on my desk in an hour. We'll plan to move out at midnight," Hayes said.

---

Janice and Minmei just happened to be taking a shortcut through the administrative section to their quarters when the Joint Chiefs of the REF and their two alien visitors left the conference room.

Rick gave Minmei a slight smile and nod as he passed, and Jonathan gave her a toothsome grin, but no one else seemed to notice them. Minmei had walked a couple of steps before she realized that Janice was no longer with her. She turned around and saw Janice staring after the departed group, with an indescribable look on her face.

"Janice, dear, are you all right?" Minmei said.

"Did you notice that boy with the blue hair?" Janice said.

"Yes, I think he's one of those aliens they picked up on the planet," Minmei said.

"I swear I've seen him before," Janice said. "When I saw him, I felt something I'd never felt before."

"Love at first sight, maybe?" Minmei said with a smile.

"I don't… I mean, I've never been in love before… Do you think that's what it could be?" Janice said.

"It sure could be," Minmei said. "It was bound to happen to you sooner or later."

---

The morning after the wedding. Again. All of the high-profile guests gathered in the hangar to see the happy couple off. Through the shimmering force field Minmei could see the space fortress, from this distance she could block it out with her delicate thumb.

Minmei let out a long sigh, full of nostalgia and longing for some sort of future she felt was escaping her. "I should be going with them," she said; the longing in her voice a stark contrast to the swell of cheers and earnest farewells.

"It's a little too late to enlist, I'm afraid," Janice said.

Janice had a tendency to take everything literally, which Minmei found refreshing: it made Janice one of the few people who took her seriously. Everyone else treated her like a flighty, empty-headed entertainer. While she was aware that she'd done a lot to earn that reputation, she knew that it wasn't who she really was.

If she'd voiced her feelings to any of her other companions, that silly manager on the SDF-1 whose name she couldn't remember, or… her cousin; they would have either not replied or mouthed some reassuring empty platitude, possibly even patting her on the head to drive it home.

She'd met Janice almost five years after she'd disappeared from public view. After leaving Rick and Captain Hayes in the smoking, radioactive ruins of Macross city, she'd gone to the no-longer-smoking and not-all-that radioactive crater of what used to be her home: Yokohama, Japan.

There were nearly 50 million survivors of Doomsday on the islands of Japan. Her country hadn't fared as well as the United States, their high population density had ended up doing them in. All major cities were destroyed, and most of the population was living in tents in the forests around Mt. Fuji as they waited for the rains and tides to make their coastline cities free of fallout, just as they had done with Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years before.

The first major city, Shin-Tokyo, was built on the ruins of Koutou ward, in east Tokyo, but as of yet the only major site there was the Robotech Research Center, which was Dr. Lang's worksite when he was planetside.

Minmei applied for, and quickly received, a residential permit and proceeded to move into a trailer-like mobile unit similar to the ones that had made up the residential areas of Macross City.

For the next five years she did absolutely nothing. This suited Minemi fine, though; her life had been far too eventful as it was. She cut her hair in a pixie cut and snipped off the ringlets that had become her trademark. She then got a job as a waitress at a local cafe and let the world slowly forget about her. She quickly lost her status as the most popular of the world's few celebrities as a new animated series about color-coded toys that came to life and fought crime caught on with both children and adults who yearned for a more innocent time.

Sadly those yearnings would stay unfulfilled, as the situation in the universe at large just got worse. What appeared to be opportunistic, but otherwise unrelated, Zentraedi uprisings in the southern hemisphere exploded into the interstellar Zentraedi Civil War which destroyed much of the Zentraedi fleet that the RDF had relied on for the Earth's protection. The REF dusted off Admiral Gloval's plans for a diplomatic mission to the Master's homeworld, and the construction of the SDF-3 began. All of this Minmei learned about from the news and the occasional glimpse at a newspaper while she was cleaning a table at the cafe. Sometimes at night she'd sit in the splendid garden she's cultivated beside her cracker-box house, with a strong drink in one hand, and stare at the dim star that would cross the sky every hour and a half, and imagine the SDF-1's counterfeit that was being constructed there.

For her, those years were uneventful, with two exceptions. The first was in 2015 when a pair of sergeants from the nearby RDF base appeared at her front door. They informed her that then-Colonel Hunter had ordered a search for her to ensure her well-being. They told her to not hesitate to call the base if she needed anything, and left her in peace.

The second was in 2016 when the Population Restoration Program began, and she was required to go to a local hospital and give a sample of her DNA to be used in creating a cloning template. She used her real name on the forms, leading the staff to be starstruck, and she was ushered to a private room for the extraction, whereas everyone else had it done in a large room with workstations that were set only ten feet apart. On the application she checked the box which said that she didn't want to be contacted by any of her progeny. She knew that 20 templates were made from combining her DNA with others, and the PRP informed her that there were 5 of her children out there in the world; but she barely gave them any thought.

A couple of weeks before the fifth anniversary of Khyron's attack on the SDF-1, Minmei discovered that the smoking crater that was once her hometown had become part of the Biomass Restoration Project, an attempt to regreen the Earth to ensure that the oxygen levels could be maintained with the steadily growing population of cloned humans.

Minmei decided to go take a look, it was only an hour away by train. What she found at the end of that trip was underwhelming: she had expected a meadow or grasslands, but the Yokohama area had been designated as an arboreal zone, and was filled with saplings, the tallest of which came up to her knee.

Standing among this miniature forest made her feel like a giant, and she was feeling a little goofy. She made a fierce face and lumbered among the trees, making howling noises.

"Oh no!" A voice said from behind her.

Minemi whirled around to see a woman with chestnut blonde hair, who was probably around her age. She looked frightened. "It's Godzilla!" she said, her mouth continuing to move without sound in a parody of bad dubbing.

The realization that the other woman was joking filled Minmei with relief. She chuckled and greeted the other woman with a smile.

"I thought I was alone," Minmei explained.

"That's all right, I've had the same urge myself," the woman said.

Minmei took a closer look at the woman: she had sparkling green eyes which almost seemed to glow of their own accord, and not simply reflecting the sunlight. She wore a lavender woolen dress with stockings and sensible shoes, along with a deep purple tartan cloak fastened at her throat to keep out the winter cold. Her appearance was so striking that Minmei knew that they'd never met before, but she couldn't help feeling there was something familiar about her.

"Did you come down from the city? You're not exactly dressed like a ranger," Minmei said.

"Looks," the woman said, with exaggerated hand gestures. "Can be deceiving!"

"I meant a forest ranger, not a sentai ranger," Minemi said, gracing the stranger with a genuine smile. "Though you do have a color-coordinated outfit."

"I just have a passable sense of style," the woman said, returning the smile. "Yes, I'm from Shin-Tokyo, I work at the Research Center."

Minmei nodded, most people did, it was the city's only real employer. She paused for a few moments, waiting for the woman to give her name. When she didn't, Minmei decided to bite the bullet.

"I'm Lynn Minmei," she said.

"I know," the woman replied.

Minmei furrowed her brow; had this woman followed her? Was she a stalker?

"I… uh, don't bother with the disguise anymore, most people seem to have forgotten about me," Minmei said.

"I wouldn't say that's true," the woman said. "And the haircut does a better job of a disguise than that silly hat and glasses you used to wear on the SDF-1. I recognized your voice, that's all."

Minmei blinked in surprise. "Really?"

"Yes, vocal recognition is only one of my many talents," the woman replied.

"The fact that you know so much about me, and I know nothing about you, makes me a little uncomfortable," Minmei said.

"Being a celebrity, you should be used to that," the woman said.

"I was only a celebrity for a few years, I've spent most of my life as a normal girl and woman," Minmei said.

"I'm sorry, I know this will sound strange, but have we met before?" Minmei said.

"I worked in the computer center on the SDF-1, so it's very possible," the woman said. "I'd been to a couple of concerts, but I doubt you could've picked me out of a crowd."

"I'm sorry to be rude, but you still haven't told me your name," Minmei said.

"Oh, I'm so sorry about that. I'm Janice, Janice Em," Janice said, and bowed in greeting instead of offering her hand, something which Minmei found comforting and endearing.

As they parted that day, they exchanged phone numbers, but Minmei had let a week go by without calling her new friend when there was a knock on the door. She opened it to find a figure who she'd met a few times over the years, but never had a conversation with, she had seen him on the news far more often.

"Hello, Dr. Lang, this is a surprise," Minmei said.

"One that is far overdue, I am afraid. We live in the same city, if you could call this kleinstadt that, it's obscene that one of us has not gone to visit the other before now," Dr. Lang said.

"I figured you were too busy to entertain a burnt-out old rock singer like me," Minmei said. Seriously, though, she wondered what they could possibly have to talk about. She was quite surprised when she found out.

"You are far too critical of your own abilities, and you exaggerate your age by an exponentiation. It is actually your singing I wished to speak to you about, I believe you came across my assistant in Yokohama the other day," Lang said.

Minmei was taken aback, but quickly hid it by inviting Dr. Lang inside and making them tea.

"I didn't know she was your assistant, Janice didn't say anything about what she did," Minmei said.

"Well, she's a very private person, the sort that only gives one word answers," Dr. Lang said.

"Strange, she didn't seem like that at all when I met her," Minmei said.

"Well, of course, she was starstruck. I imagine she babbled like a brook and blushed like a tomato," Dr. Lang said.

Minemi spared a look at the English Expression of The Day calendar she had next to her princess-style telephone. She imagined that Dr. Lang had one of those as well.

"She is a great fan of yours, and that's actually why I'm here," Dr. Lang said, after the tea had been served. "She has a good singing voice; not, I would dare say, anywhere in your range, but she's too modest to take singing lessons, and I thought that you might be able to help her."

"I'm afraid I'm not much of a teacher," Minemi said.

"Have you ever tried? You might surprise yourself," Dr. Lang.

Minemi looked down at her tea leaves and thought about it. This was a very strange request, it was almost as if someone….

"Did Rick request this?" Minemi asked.

"Uh, no, Major General Hunter has nothing to do with this request," Dr. Lang said.

"Oh, he's been promoted," Minmei said.

"Several times, another war, and how wars make great men, you know," Dr. Lang said.

Minmei literally felt a bad taste in her mouth in response to that remark. Dr. Lang was very nervous, which suggested to Minemi that she'd been right.

"I'll see what I can do with her," Minmei said. "But I can't promise miracles."

Dr. Lang gave a sigh of relief. "Thank you, I think it will stop her being… I believe the expression is 'down in the dumps.'?"

"Yes, I think that's the right description," Minemi said.

The following week Minmei and Janice met in an unused auditorium in the Robotech Research Center. Minmei sat in the front row while Janice stood before her on stage.

"Sing whatever you'd like, I just want to get a handle on how much work we need to do," Minmei said.

"Sure thing," Janice said with a smile. "Kyuuun kyuun, kyuun kyuun…"

Minemi grimaced inwardly, not this song again. Well, at least it wasn't Stagefright. Minmei was impressed at first with Janice's rendition of My Boyfriend Is a Pilot, but she became nervous as it continued. She wasn't able to put her finger on it at first, but there was something eerie about this performance. The song was almost over before she realized why: Janice was not only singing one of her songs, she was repeating one of her performances perfectly. Minmei even knew which one she was repeating, since she taped all of her early performances and rewatched them incessantly to see how she could improve. Janice had just recreated her first public performance of the song, right down to her saying "takedeo" instead of "dakedo" in the last refrain.

After Janice finished, Minmei just stared at her for a long time. To her credit, Janice didn't look uncomfortable at all. Eventually she said: "Well?"

"There is a gizmo, I forget exactly what it's called, that shows the frequency of a sound, do you happen to have one of those here?" Minmei said,

"Yes, it's called a frequency counter, and we have many of those, do you want me to get one?" Janice asked.

A few minutes later, after Janice had retrieved the device and plugged it into the sound system, Minmei sat on the edge of the stage with the device. She remembered how her teacher on the SDF-1 had used one of these in one of their first lessons to confirm one of his suspicions.

"Okay, give me an A above Middle-C," Minmei said.

Janice sang the note and held it for six beats before Minemi told her to stop. It had been 440 hertz exactly. She worked her way through the scale, and Janice hit every one of them dead center.

Minmei climbed up on the stage (not bothering to walk around to the stairway) and went over to the piano that Dr. Lang had graciously provided.

"Face the audience," Minmei said. Janice nodded and turned her back on Minmei. Minmei struck the keys in a random sequence, and had Janice call out each note as she heard it. Finally, she was satisfied.

"Amazing, you have perfect pitch," Minmei said.

"As do you," Janice said. "In fact, you didn't need the frequency counter to know that."

"Maybe, but I'm a little insecure about my talents these days," Minmei said. "Let's try another song. Ummm, do you know your Huey Lewis?"

"Of course!" Janice said.

"All right, do Hip To Be Square," Minmei said.

Janice didn't even get to the first refrain before Minmei shouted for her to stop. Janice looked hurt. "Did I do something wrong?"

"You sounded exactly like Huey Lewis, which I think is the most insulting thing you can say to a girl," Minmei said.

"But that's how the song sounds," Janice said.

"You need to recreate the song, reinterpret it in your own terms, be an artist instead of a tape recorder," Minemi said. "Do you know Space Is Super Weird?"

"No, but I agree with the sentiment," Janice said.

"You never watched Urusei Yatsura?" Minmei said.

"I grew up on a military base in the South Pacific, I only learned who Snoopy was last year," Janice said. "I do know swear words in 10 languages, though."

Minmei played the piano and sang the song, then asked Janice to repeat. Which she did, in exacting detail. Minmei gritted her teeth, it felt like hearing her own voice on a tape recorder, it felt like Janice was mocking her.

"Now let's get all folksy, like it's a song from a video western," Minmei said, and did the song slower. Janice sang it with a Southern drawl and plenty of folksy posturing.

"Now, like you're an opera singer," Minmei said. She was astonished when Janice sang the song in Italian and gave it massive flourishes that could have shattered glass.

Minmei sat at the piano for a long time and didn't say anything. When their session had started, she felt a little indignant, but had really started to enjoy it, teaching seemed to agree with her. Now, however, she was starting to feel a little inadequate.

"Let's try it like a Golden Era Hollywood musical," Minmei said, and began to bang the keys like Scott Joplin. Janice didn't miss a beat, literally, and soared to the heights hit by Julie Andrews or Idina Menzel.

Once the song was finished Minmei rose and walked over to Janice. Despite the workout she had put her throat through with her singing, not to mention the rest of her body with her dancing, she looked perfectly relaxed without a drop of sweat on her.

"You have incredible range, and I'm not just saying that to spare your feelings. Why the hell are you working as a lab assistant?" Minmei said.

"Well, I've been working for Dr. Lang since we were on the SDF-1 together, but he does feel I should start to branch out into other things," Janice said.

Minmei would eventually discover what Dr. Lang's plans for Janice had been, before they had gone and ruined them. She would also discover that their meeting in Yokohama hadn't been an accident. But that was years in the future and many light years away from the empty auditorium where they now stood.

Janice began singing nights in a nightclub, with Minmei accompanying her on the piano. Her fame rose so precipitously that the patrons realized who the familiar-looking piano-player was, and the audience demanded they do a duet, which caused the slowly-recovering internet to break when the bootlegs hit.

Their fame had endured, and some were beginning to forget that Minmei had ever sung alone. Lynn Minmei and Janice Em went together like Sonny and Cher, Bonnie and Clyde, or Kim Young and thongs.

It was this fame, along with Minmei's associations with the SDF-1, had led to her being invited to the Hunter-Hayes wedding, and why they were standing in this hangar bay, watching her old love and the captain of the SDF-3 leaving the Factory Satellite to begin their journey into the unknown.

"You've been lost in thought for quite awhile," Janice said. "Is something the matter?"

"I just feel like I'm left out. Those years about the SDF-1 were the happiest of my life," Minmei said.

"Well, that's easy to understand, those years ended with the near annihilation of the human race. Anything would seem great compared to the aftermath," Janice said.

"I'm serious, Janice. The SDF-1 would have been destroyed if I hadn't been aboard," Minmei said. "I'm worried that they won't be okay without me… I suppose that's sort of narcissistic."

"It's also true," Janice said. "But they have recordings of all your songs, in case they run into other Zentraedi."

"I still think I should be onboard," Minmei said.

"Well, if that's how you really feel, I can make it happen," Janice said.

"Don't tease me, Janice," Minmei said.

"My dear, you know I never boast. If I say I can get you onboard, I can make it happen," Janice said.

Minmei turned to look at her friend, she could tell that Janice was being completely serious.

"Is this what you want?" Janice said.

"Yes," Minmei said, after a moment.

Janice rotated the wrist of her right-hand and looked at the face of her watch. "All right, we need to hurry."

---

Janice and Minmei rushed across to the aft-side hangar bay. Unlike its counterpart, it was virtually deserted. Everyone was saying their good-byes to the Hunter-Hayes couple, and there would be a long breakfast afterwards where General Reinhardt would make a long droning speech about the importance of the REF's mission; while the real leaders of the mission were busy getting ready for the fold.

They climbed into Minmei's fanjet. This space-capable plane had been a prize for winning Miss Macross back on the SDF-1. It had been based on Rick Hunter's blueprints for the fanjet that had gotten him into so much trouble on the SDF-1s launching day, but the techies on the SDF-1 had equipped it with a reflex engine which made it capable of working in the vacuum of space as well as within Earth's atmosphere.

Janice called for clearance and a confused, possibly hungover voice asked her to wait a moment. Almost a minute later he granted them clearance. Janice pulled back the throttle and they were out of the hangar like a shot: literally, they were traveling faster than a bullet from a handgun.

Minemi looked through the canopy at the behemoth of the SDF-3.

"So are you just planning on sweet-talking your way aboard?" Minemi said.

"Let's just say I learned the lessons of Macross Island," Janice said.

Minmei sighed. "Sometimes I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Let's just say that I don't want to ruin the surprise," Janice said.

Several moments later Janice cut the throttle and used the maneuvering jets to slow them to a crawl, and then to an absolute stop.

"What are you doing?" Minmei said.

"Waiting," was Janice's only reply.

"Waiting for what?" Minmei said impatiently.

Janice's hands gracefully flew over to a red button on the control panel that had a safety cover, which she flipped up and let her finger float over. Minemi knew from experience that it was the button that engaged the rocket boosters. But why would Janice be firing those? Their only purpose was to get the fanjet free of Earth's atmosphere.

They sat in the immense darkness of space for almost two hours.

"Aren't we going to run out of air?" Minmei said.

"Don't worry your pretty little head, unlike General Hunter's plane, this fanjet was made to operate in space," Janice said.

Minmei thought back to that time with Rick and the original fanjet. Rick had tried to protect her by lying about where they were, and what the sucking sound from a gap in the canopy had been. But Minmei had been no fool, and she wasn't going to embarrass Rick's attempt at heroics, even if it was the final minutes of their life. Minmei let out a long sigh as she thought about Rick.

"Something wrong?" Janice said.

"Just wishing that things could have worked differently," Minmei said.

She was about to elaborate when Janice punched the button, and Minmei had the wind sucked out her as she was pushed back into her seat. She began to wonder if she was passing out from the G-forces as the world seemed to be crazy around her, she was seeing double and the stars were going through their spectrums, but then she felt the terrible sense of wrongness that she had felt once before, in a fanjet just like this. A space-fold.

Minmei had gotten used to the G-Forces as she and Jancie had blasted all around the world on her fanjet, but dimensional translation and folding of space was something completely different. Mercifully the blackness fell around her, and oblivion took her.

---

Minmei awoke to find herself laying on something hard, as she opened her eyes the first thing she saw was a mustachioed face that peered out of an open spacesuit helmet, he seemed somehow familiar. Her sleep-addled mind was able to make the connection. "Colonel Wolfe?"

"You remember me, I'm glad," Wolfe said with a smile.

Minmei sat up and saw that she was in a hangar bay, but one that was much smaller than the one on the Factory Satellite. To one side of her was her fanjet: Janice was still in the cockpit and was talking to an amazed looking technician on a ladder next to her. On the other side was a white rowboat-shaped plane, there was an emblem of a wolf on the front of it.

"I'm afraid I have to go, my unit is waiting for me," Wolfe said.

This was when Minmei realized that there were many people running around, and a great deal of shouting.

"What's going on?" Minmei said.

"We're under attack," Wolfe said, rising to his feet.

Minmei sighed. "So much for the diplomatic mission."

"This isn't the Masters, though, it's a race called… I think it was the Inbit," Wolfe said. "I've already contacted Doctor Grant, and she's sent a couple of her nurses to take you to the sickbay."

Minmei nodded numbly, Wolfe gave her a smile not unlike his namesake, and then rushed off.

Janice climbed down the ladder and came to kneel beside her. "You don't look too worse for wear," she said.

"Are we really on the other side of the galaxy?" Minmei asked.

"Seems like it," Janice said.

"I'm so embarrassed, I didn't pass out the first time I went through a Fold," Minmei said. "I must be getting old."

"Maybe, but I think it's just because you skipped breakfast," Janice said.

"Thanks," Minmei replied sarcastically.

"You're welcome," Janice replied.

---

After getting checked out in the sickbay, Minmei was taken by an annoyed looking MP to what would be her quarters, and was locked in. Janice was down in the engine room, resuming her job as Doctor Lang's assistant after a frantic request from him made via viewscreen.

What seemed like an eternity later (it ended up being 11 hours) another MP arrived and informed Minemi that the Admiral wished to speak with her. An ele-car ride later, she and Janice were in the Admiral's office.

"This is another fine mess you've gotten me into," Janice said with a smile.

"This was all your doing, I just agreed to it," Minemi said.

Admiral Hayes entered, looked harried, she gracelessly sat down into the chair behind her desk and let out a long sigh. "I can't get away from you, can I? Are we really going to do this love triangle shit again?"

Minmei was stunned, but a strange part of her, which went against her cultural programming, was happy that it was all out in the opening and they could speak plainly. Janice, on the other hand, started laughing.

"I'd watch your tone, Miss Em, I could have you thrown out an airlock," Hayes said.

"I think Doctor Lang would be very upset about that," Janice said.

Hayes sighed again. "Yes, I suppose you're right about that. I suppose it's time you told your side of the story, Minmei."

"Well, I just didn't like the way we left things, I wanted to say good-bye and let you know that I didn't have any ill feelings-" Minmei started.

"She felt she needed to be onboard for the mission to succeed," Janice said, cutting her off.

"We're quite the narcissist, aren't we Miss Minmei?" Hayes said.

Minmei gritted her teeth, but thought it wise not to respond.

Hayes sighed yet again. "The most annoying thing is that you might be right. The SDF-1, and by extension humanity, would've been doomed if you hadn't been aboard. However, things are much different now. There are no civilians aboard the SDF-3, this is purely a military operation. Therefore you are both drafted into the REF."

Minmei was glad her cousin wasn't here to see this; not for the first time, she wondered if he was even still alive.

"You're both given the lowest rank of enlisted status. Specialist Em, you are assigned to the STC, your CO will be Doctor Lang. Private Lynn, you are assigned to the Service Corps and will be handling KP until further notice," Hayes said.

"Deja vu," Minmei mumbled.

"Anata ta wa," Janice added.

"What was that, Specialist?" Hayes said.

"Just me being a smartass, Admiral," Janice said stiffly.

"Your candor is welcome, just as your insubordination isn't," Hayes said. "All right, you are dismissed."

They rose, and Janice saluted. Minmei quickly followed suit. They then began to leave.

"Just one more thing, Specialist Em," Hayes said. "I've been going over the sensor data, and you were going at an incredible speed when you entered the vicinity of the SDF-3. If you'd arrived 30 seconds earlier or later, you wouldn't have got caught in the fold. If you'd overshot you would've been marooned in space."

"The time of the fold was public knowledge, and I knew that the translation stage of the fold reduces the velocity of everything to 0 meters-per-second, so I knew we'd be okay," Janice said.

"Although I can't approve of hot-dogging like that, I might suggest that you'd be of more value to us in one of the armored corps," Hayes said.

"I'll definitely take that into advisement, admiral," Janice said.

---

Jack was unable to sleep, the adrenalin rush of his first time in combat hadn't worn off yet. He tossed and turned in his bunk for an hour before giving up. He took a quick shower and put on a clean uniform and made his way to the canteen. He thought at first that he must've dozed off and not realized it, because this had to be a dream. There was no way Lynn Minmei was up on a table singing My Boyfriend's a Pilot.

"Jack!" a familiar voice shouted.

Jack saw that his CO was sitting at the bar, next to that creepy Colonel Edwards. Jack smiled and walked over to him.

"Take a seat!" he said, slapping the seat of the stool next to him. Jack smiled and took the offered seat. "This kid is a crackshot, he got a 65% hit rate on his first sortie!"

"That's very impressive," Edwards said, but his eyes were like two chips of ice.

"So what's going on with this?" Jack said, motioning towards Minmei.

"Amazing huh? She had her plane fly into the fold and come along with us. I had to go out and save her in a rowboat," Wolfe said.

Edwards smirked at Jack's confusion. "A Logan."

"Oh!" Jack said, and nodded.

"What can I get you?" the eyepatched bartender asked.

"Ummm… Can you make me a vodka martini, shaken not stirred?" Jack asked.

"Of course, sir," the bartender replied and went to work.

"She's quite a beauty, isn't she?" Wolfe said.

"Yessir, a little old for me, I'm afraid," Jack said.

"She ages gracefully, though," Wolfe said with a drunk (or lovesick?) smile.

"Do you think she does doggy, or just missionary?" Edwards said.

What happened next occurred so fast that it was over before Jack could process it, but he quickly figured out what had happened. The top of the martini shaker flew off, and Colonel Edward was covered in vodka, vermouth, gin and crushed ice. He leapt to his feet and grabbed the bartender by the lapels. To his credit, the bartender didn't look intimidated in the least.

"My apologies, Colonel, these damn things get slippery with the condensation," the bartender said.

"T.R., let it go," Wolfe said, resting his hands on Edward's forearms. "It was an honest mistake."

Edwards tried to stare down the bartender, but he didn't flinch. After a moment Edwards let him go, upended his drink and stormed out of the canteen.

The bartender sighed, grabbed a towel, and began to sop up the two messes.

Wolfe stared at the bartender for a moment, he thought that he recognized him, something from a long time ago. He then shook his head, it couldn't possibly be. He thought the bartender looked like an old film star, but it was impossible for Bruce Lee to be tending bar on the SDF-3.

To Be Continued….

Notes:

Just a small one here, since I'll save most of the usual blather for the endnotes of part 2. I skimmed The Devil's Hand while writing this, the first time I'd read it in over 30 years. I was rather astonished to discover that there was a member of the Wolfe Pack called Quist. When I chose that name for one of the Zentraedi ships, I had completely forgotten this character existed. It's weird what our brains remember sometimes.