Robotech II : The Sentinels
The Battle for Fantoma
(Part of the Rebirth Timeline)
Chapter 2: Engagement
"The Invid?" Admiral Hayes said.
"Yes," Exedore said. "They are a technologically primitive but spacefaring race who have harried the Masters for many centuries. Though their preferred method of attack is overwhelming force they have shown considerable acuity for strategy and have the ability to adapt."
"They are barbarians!" Breetai bellowed.
Less than three hours after the SDF-3 had folded into Tirol space, the REF's joint chiefs and their Zentraedi liaisons were on the bridge assessing the situation. The first order of business had been an unidentified craft that they'd pulled along with them halfway across the galaxy. While Wolfe was investigating the craft and attempting to salvage it, a plethora of blips had appeared on the radar screen. Just as they were entering visual range (at least, without a telescope) they had begun opening fire.
"General Hunter, scramble all fighters. General Grant, ship-defense positions. I also want you to take charge of the Wolfe Pack in the Colonel's absence," Hayes said.
"Roger!" the two said in unison as they saluted.
Hayes stared at the approaching fleet on the viewscreen for several tense seconds.
"Lieutenant Wilson, send a communication using common Zentraedi text protocols. Declare our peaceful intent and ask why they fired on us," Hayes said.
"You can't be serious!" Breetai said.
"It is their way, sire," Exedore said.
"The message is on its way," Lieutenant Rachel Wilson, now occupying the station that Lisa herself had manned on the SDF-1, said.
"Colonel Sterling and Captain Parino are asking for permission to launch," Ingrid Erricson, the com officer, said.
"Granted," Hayes said with a sigh. "It looks like we have another war on our hands."
"We don't know that yet," Hunter said from his station near the back of the bridge. "It's just a battle for now."
"Nice to see you're keeping some of that optimism," Hayes said with a wry smile.
Sadly this was the beginning of a battle that would last almost 20 years. However it wasn't all bad for Lisa Hayes. For most of those 20 years she had the luxury of telling her husband that she told him so.
Three Alphas screamed through the dark skies of Triol on a bitterly cold night six days after the REF had first encountered the Invid.
In the three Alphas were some of the greatest pilots in the REF: Max Sterling, commander of Skull Squadron, Miriya Parino, perhaps the greatest warrior the Zentraedi cloning tanks had ever produced, and Rick Hunter, former air circus pilot playing hooky from his job as supreme commander of the REF's Aerospace Division.
These three were but the vanguard of an attack force consisting of two full squadrons of fighters, later to be joined by ground forces that were taking their sweet time getting to the fight. Their special mission: annoy the Invid within the shielded city of Tiresia to such an extent that they sent troops out to fight them.
They zipped over the force dome and its ensconced city in a matter of seconds, they then whirled around and began firing and bombing the force field at apparently random spots. To the Invid it would appear that they were looking for weaknesses in the shield; but in reality it was to district the Invid from the weakness they'd already found: a gap in the shield wall on the exact other side of the city.
"You okay, chief?" Max's voice came over the com to Major General Hunter.
"You're the chief here, I'm just lending a hand," Rick said. "And I'm fine, why do you ask?"
"I was just thinking about Toronto," Max said.
Rick felt his blood run cold. "I think that's on everyone's mind today, we won't let it happen again."
Rick thought back to that day, how numb he had felt aboard the SDF-1 afterwards, mourning the residents of the city that had just been annihilated, and his friend Ben Dixon. He remembered thinking that Minemi had been horribly self-absorbed for calling him and asking him to visit her in the hospital; it was many years before he had the maturity to accept that she'd been dehydrated and exhausted, had slept through the entire battle and had known nothing about what happened. The next day he had received a vase of sunflowers at the barracks with a note containing only six words: "I'm so sorry, I didn't know."
The worst part, though, was when he'd gotten back to his quarters and found a message on his answering machine from the proprietor of the hibachi restaurant, asking how long he was expected to keep Ben's steak warm.
Twelve hours earlier, in the ruins of the city called Ryalck, mustachioed Colonel Jonathan Wolfe discovered that he had visitors.
Colonels Edwards and Wolfe saluted each other. Edwards had closed-cropped blond hair and the upper right side of his face was covered by a metal plate with a dark lens set over his eye socket.
"Ghost Squadron reporting for duty," Edwards said, and handed Wolfe a messenger canister. "Orders from the Admiral."
Wolfe reached under his shirt and got the key that he kept on a chain around his neck. He placed its five prongs into their corresponding slot on the cylinder and its top slid aside. Wolfe took out the communique and read it.
"Escort mission, eh?" Wolfe said. "I don't think you'd have a chance against the Inorganics inside the force field."
"That's why we intend to avoid them," Edwards said. "Stealth is our expertise, after all."
Wolfe nodded as he inserted the message back inside the cylinder, slid the top back into place, and then inserted the key into the keyhole upside down. He dropped the cylinder when it became red-hot as the instructions within were incinerated.
"We'll move out at nightfall, then. We converted one of the apartment buildings into a barracks, there's plenty of room, every man can have a room to himself!" Wolfe said.
"Excellent," Edwards said with a grim smile, which was broken as he was forced to wave away a pesky insect. "Seems you have a bit of a bug problem."
"Yeah, well, you know how it is," Wolfe said.
Edwards looked at him in confusion for a moment, but then he understood. This particular understanding came as he realized what he'd been smelling ever since he got off the transport.
"Men, we disembark at twenty-hundred. Until then, aid the Colonel and his men in the disposal of this dead," Edwards said.
"Sir, yes sir!" they replied in unison.
"How bad is it?" Edwards said in a confidential tone.
"For as savage as they fight, they're almost clinical in their liquidation of populations," Wolfe said.
Jack Baker was in the middle of repairing one of the free-standing water dispensers (he would call it a bubbler, but it pulled water out of the air instead of through a network of pipes in the ground) when he caught the eye of Lieutenant Benson, Edward's toady.
"Hey pleb!" Benson shouted at Jack, and then threw his duffle bag at him.
Jack quickly dropped his wrench and grabbed the duffle-bag as it hit him, but the weight was enough to knock him over.
"Take this to my new quarters, carrot-top" Benson said.
Baker said nothing, but suffice it to say that Benson never saw the duffle, or its contents, ever again.
Edwards not only helped with the disposal effort, but took it over. Over the last three days Jack and his fellow soldiers have been searching all of the buildings for the deceased and interring them in mass graves.
Edwards had his men scour the city for firewood. This proved difficult since the city was in the middle of the desert, but they demolished several of the older houses and found some furniture and relics which could be tossed on the fire. They then piled as many bodies as they could onto the pyre and set it alight with a single incendiary device.
It would burn for days, and the Ghost and Wolfe soldiers would provide it with a steady supply of bodies.
"I suppose this is more hygienic," Wolfe said.
"And doesn't it look glorious?" Edwards said with a nasty smile.
"That's for Tucson!" one of the Ghosties yelled as he threw the body of a small child on the fire.
At precisely 2000 hours the Ghost Squadron armored transport left the town of Ryalck, escorted by five of Wolfe's tanks, one of them piloted by the commander himself. Nobody noticed that the Ghost contingent had picked up an extra soldier, and Lieutenant Benson never did find out what happened to his spare uniform.
They reached the perimeter of the force field dome shortly after 11, Ghost Squadron hid in the dunes around the city, while the Wolfe Pack continued on to their appointed position on the other side of the city.
They heard, rather than saw, the Alphas fly over at 11:52. Ghost Squadron fell into formation, and began their half-mile journey to the donut-shaped rock that would provide them entrance to the city.
Aspirin Dan, so-named because he seemed to be immune to pain, took point right below the hole in the donut, and every other member of the Squadron climbed onto his shoulders and hoisted themselves through the hole. Edwards himself went last, and pulled Aspirin Dan up by his wrists.
They found several abandoned ground vehicles and broke the squadron up into teams of five and each was assigned to take a different route to a point just a mile distant from the Royal Hall. They were ordered to run with headlights off, using their night vision goggles instead. This ended up being unnecessary as the vehicles turned out to be self-driving.
When Jack first saw the Royal Hall, he couldn't believe his eyes. It was like nothing he'd ever seen before. The masonry was almost Ancient Greek, but it was snarled by many silver tubes that reminded Jack of something in Flash Gordon. It was also illuminated by a set of stained-glass windows which told the story of the Robotech Masters' conquest of the universe, much like frames in a filmstrip.
The squadron began its infiltration at 12:45 exactly. Jack realized that they were moving according to some preorganized plan, and did his best to blend in, but he could imagine at least two of the Ghosties giving him strange looks in spite of their facemasks.
Like any good soldier, REF or not, Jack did understand the hand-signals, and he understood when the Ghosty in front held up his left open hand behind him, and Jack hunkered down. He was hoping he wasn't caught, but the soldier hadn't even looked in his direction. A moment later, Jack understood.
He heard the clanging of mechanical footfalls, and in the road in front of them a single bipedal Inorganic, what he would later learn was called a Scrimm, walked in front of them. It looked forward, and apparently hadn't registered them on either its audio or video sensors, as it kept walking its patrol. The soldier in front of Jack pumped his fist to let them know not only to move, but that they had to hurry up to catch up with the rest of the squadron.
There was a crackle that seemed to come from every direction, and the bluish tint that had covered the landscape vanished. It took a moment to register on Jack, and he looked up and saw nothing but stars in unfamiliar constellations: the force field was down. That was impossible–he thought–the forward members of Ghost Squadron couldn't even be in the hall yet, much less find the controls to–Suddenly the field came back up. Although the Ghosties in Jack's field of view seemed to have noticed the field disappearing, their body language didn't indicate surprise. Jack didn't know about Skull Squadron's decoy mission, so simply swallowed his confusion and continued crawling towards the Royal Hall.
After what seemed like an eternity the soldier in front motioned for them to halt, and held hand to ear, indicating that he was receiving an update. After a moment he pointed to the left, and they started moving away from the Hall's main entrance and towards its east side.
Jack would later learn that the Ghost scouting team had found all entrances guarded by Inorganics, but had found no heat or power signatures on the higher floors.
Jack found the rest of Ghost Squadron gathered beneath an eastern wall of the Hall. They were all looking upwards, Jack's glance followed theirs, and he could just make out a short and wiry man climbing up the walls with what looked like suction-cups attached to his hands and knees. He hoisted himself up on a ledge and siddled over to a window, there was a small flash of light as he used his laser cutter to cut open the lock, and he climbed through.
A single blue flash illuminated the window. A moment later there was a quick series of clanking noises as a foldable ladder unraveled along the side of the building.
Without even the need for a signal, Ghost Squadron members began climbing up it.
As Jack hoisted himself over the window-ledge, he was astonished to see that the room was made of polished marble, just like the building's facade. His eyes quickly detected a body lying on the polished marble floor, oozing a green ichor out of a hole in its chest. It could have been mistaken for a short human, despite the lack of hair. On closer inspection he saw that its skin was poreless and completely smooth, almost like rubber. Its head featured two lidless bulging eyes, and the back of its head was hooded like a cobra. This was the first time Jack had seen an Invid, and he would later learn that this Invid had been part of the scientist caste.
Several scouts were sent out, and after ten minutes that seemed like an eternity, the leader (Jack assumed it was Edwards himself) motioned for them to move out. They moved quietly among the labyrinth of corridors until they came to a hallway that was lined with the scouts Edwards had sent out. At the end was a door which had been propped open, two sets of stairs–one going up, the other down–were visible through the entrance.
The team clambered down the stairwells for a long time, Jack counted twenty floors at the very least. The polished marble gave away to reinforced steel as they went far underground into some kind of bunker. Finally they reached the bottom, where another propped-open door greeted them, flanked by scouts.
All of them unslung the jet-black wolverines they had strapped to their backs, Jack was a few moments late, but he hoped no one noticed. Edwards then led the assault as they rushed into the room.
There were Invid everywhere, of many different types. The ones with cobra-like heads weren't armed, but there were plenty of smooth-headed ones that were, and they fired back as Ghost Squadron cut them down with laser fire.
The battle seemed like an eternity as Jack acquired target after target and mowed them down. He was still looking for targets when he heard a human voice for the first time in what seemed like forever.
"Prepare charges," Edwards said.
It was then that Jack noticed the uncanny silence. He left behind the tunnel vision of combat and allowed himself to truly look around, and that's when he noticed the giant brain in the center of the room. It was contained with a tube that went from floor to ceiling and was filled with a pulsating blue liquid. Several of the Ghosties were already attaching plastique charges to this tube. The sole remaining Invid, both of them the unarmed cobra-headed sort, cowered around the tube.
"Wait, stop!" said an odd voice in Zentraedi.
It was coming from one of the Invid scientists. This one was wearing a black-and-gold smock, perhaps indicating that he was the commander.
"You don't need to destroy the brain! It's a very powerful computer, and it only does as it's told!" the scientist said. "It could be very useful to you!"
Edwards pulled off his mask and approached the two cowering scientists.
"What are you talking about?" Edwards said.
"My name is Tesla, I was left in command of the occupying force by my lord Regent, this is my assistant Obsim. If you spare our lives, I will show you how to use the brain," Tesla said.
"Can you shut down all the Inorganics and the shield surrounding this city?" Edwards asked.
"Yes, it can do that and a million other things!" Tesla said.
"Prove it," Edwards said.
Tesla walked over to a metal table which stood next to the tube. On it was a loop of bluish metal. He picked it up and placed it upon the crown of his head and then concentrated. Jack suspected that Tesla would've closed his eyes if he could.
"There, it is done," Tesla said.
Edwards pressed the talk button on the microphone of his walkie-talkie, which was hooked into his harness on his right shoulder.
"Sterling, is the force field dome down?" Edwards said.
"Yes, it is," the surprised voice of Max Sterling replied. "What's more, the Inorganics aren't fighting back. In fact, none of them are moving."
"Interesting…" Edwards said, but didn't press the talk button. "And you said I can learn to do this?"
"Yes, you just need this crown and a little instruction," Tesla said, taking off the crown and handing it to the commander.
"If this works, I will spare you," Edwards said, turning the crown around and around in his hand. "But you'll soon wish I hadn't."
Edwards was about to put the crown on his head, when one of the Ghosties grabbed him by the arm. "Colonel, don't do it, it's a trap!" Jack recognized the voice as that of Benson.
Edwards shoved off the man's hand and proceeded to place the crown upon his head. He suddenly doubled-over in pain.
"The calibration might be a little–Oh!" Tesla gasped as Benson shoved the muzzle of his wolverine between his eyes. "He'll be fine! The calibration process causes some neurological issues, but they'll quickly pass!"
"It's all right Benson," Edwards said, as he rose to his feet. "How do I turn it off?"
"The brain? You want to turn the whole thing off?" Tesla said, confused.
"Yes," Edwards said.
Tesla picked up some sort of computer tablet and drew on it with a stylus. "Just think of this symbol."
Suddenly the bluish glow in the fluid contained in the tube faded, and the mass of bubbles that had been floating up from the bottom of the tank stopped.
"How do I turn it back on?" Edwards said.
Tesla drew another symbol on the tablet, wiping out the first one, and held it up for Edwards to see. After a moment there was a squeal from the tube, the bubbles started coming out of the bottom and the blue glow returned. A moment later both disappeared as Edwards signaled the brain to once again shut down.
Edwards took off the crown and turned it around in his hands for a few moments, looking lost in thought.
"Benson: do it," he said.
Without a word Benson's wolverine came up, and he shot Opsim right between the eyes; green ichor flew everything.
"Wargasm!" Benson said with a chuckle, which was quickly echoed by most of his teammates.
"You said you'd spare our lives!" Tesla said.
"I said I'd spare your life, I didn't say anything about your assistant," Edwards said conversationally. He then clapped his hand on Tesla's shoulder. "Now, we need to have a little talk."
"What the hell is the matter with me?" Jack thought as he snuck towards the stairwell. He must have killed at least five Invid during the firefight, why did the death of another bother him so much?
He had gone up three flights of stairs when he was taken from behind and wrestled to the ground. Jack was amazed, he had never been a slouch in basic training, and had actually gotten a medal for hand-to-hand combat. His opponent, on the other hand, was in a completely different class. It wouldn't surprise Jack if this guy had wrestled cobras in his crib, like Hercules had done in myth.
Jack felt his mask being pulled off. "You're one of Wolfe's men, aren't you?"
"Yeah, I'm Sergeant Jack Baker" Jack said.
"What the hell are you doing here?" the voice said, Jack knew he'd heard it before, but wasn't sure where.
"I just wanted to go along for the ride," Jack said. "You know, be there when we liberated the planet."
The Ghosty released him, Jack scrambled to his feet. He got his first look at the man: he hadn't removed his mask, and he was a little taller than Jack, but he didn't have the rippling muscles that Jack had expected. How had he been so strong then?
"You're lucky you aren't dead," the Ghosty said. "You don't know what kind of man Edwards is."
"I do now," Jack said.
"You'd better get out of here," the Ghosty said. "You can probably find a place to hide before Edwards heads back to the surface."
The Ghosty started to walk back down the stairwell.
"Wait a second, who are you?" Jack said.
"The name's Kaifun," he said, and then nodded. "I'm sure we'll meet again."
"What do you mean?" Tesla said.
"The brain told me that the Inorganics are created by an automated factory in this city," Edwards said.
"The… The brain spoke to you?" Tesla sputtered.
Edwards took his hand from off Tesla's shoulder, pulled his side-arm from its holster and stuck the muzzle to Tesla's head.
"Yes, there is an automated factory, but it isn't here, none of the rooms were large enough to accommodate-" Tesla sputtered.
"Show us where it is," Edwards said, his grip on the gun unwavering.
Tesla led Ghost Squadron up fifteen flights of stairs, and they emerged into a terminus of the Tiresian subway system. The cars were completely automated. At the front of the capsule, where a driver would usually sit, was a touchscreen with a map of Tiresia displayed on it. Tesla pressed an orange square that was on the eastern edge of the city. After a clinging of bells, the doors slid closed and the capsule shot through the network of tunnels until they arrived at their destination.
Tesla led them up the stairs, and showed them the completely automated factory which was, even at this minute, still mass-producing the Invid's war robots. Although there were assembly lines, as expected, most of the space was filled with massive tubes of nutrient fluid where the bio-metal components were grown.
"This isn't controlled by the brain?" Edwards asked.
"It can be, but these units are built to be completely autonomous, it doesn't even pull power from the Tiresian grid," Tesla said.
"I'm going to turn you over to high command now; if you ever tell anyone else about this facility, I will find you and I will kill you, do you understand?" Edwards said.
"I do not, but I will obey," Tesla said.
"That's a good slug," Edwards said with a sneer.
Until the day of Edward's coup, no one outside of Ghost Squadron stepped inside that facility, so no one knew about the army of Inorganics that Edward built with the sole intention of conquering the known universe.
The Battle for Tiresia, as it came to be known, ended up being a non-starter. Once the force field fell, the REF forces that had been clambering for entry found nothing inside to oppose them.
"Is it just me," Rick said over the com. "Or are they not fighting back?"
"Most of the ones I've seen aren't even upright," Miriya said.
There was a crackle on the com.
"Sterling, is the force field dome down?" Edwards asked.
"Yes, it is," the surprised voice of Max Sterling replied. "What's more, the Inorganics aren't fighting back. In fact, none of them are moving."
Rick waited for almost a minute before he realized that Edwards wasn't going to say anything more.
Max ordered them to assume Battoloid mode and began searching the city in a grid-like fashion. As Rick went about his route, he was amazed at the amount of damage the city had received. He also found the ruins of some mecha he didn't recognize, though he was able to lump them into two groups. Some of them were shaped like various crustaceans and were built out of some kind of organic material that resembled metal (he could tell because of how light played off it, it didn't have the dull gleam of metal, but left an afterimage on his iris of something consisting of facets of elongated hexagons; it was like looking at a leaf under a microscope).
The others were humanoid in shape, came in blue, green and orange and rode what appeared to be a kind of hoversled. Their guns came in two different shapes, one shaped like a barrel turned on its side, and another like a discus turned on its side. Both the discus-shaped gun and the red mecha were rare, so Rick assumed they went together. Rick set aside his Alpha's gunpod and picked up one of the barrel-shaped guns and gave its trigger a squeeze, but its only response was a sad electronic sigh: out of power.
His audio sensors picked up a sound disturbing the unearthly quiet of the dead city. With his gunpod on the ground, he couldn't pivot its camera to look, so Rick turned his Alpha around so its eye-camera would be pointing in the direction of the sound. It was a humanoid climbing over a pile of rubble. Rick's heart quickened as he thought he had found a survivor, but his mood changed to confusion as he saw that the humanoid was wearing an REF uniform, one of the black ones with the insignia's removed, the trademark of Ghost Squadron, though the balaclava was missing. He also recognized the humanoid's red hair.
"Baker?! How the hell did you get in here?" Rick asked over the Alpha's PA.
"I walked."
Jack told Hunter about sneaking into Ghost Squadron. Since Hunter was the commanding officer of Jack's commanding officer, he decided he owed him the truth.
The general's reaction was unexpected, he seemed more concerned than angry, and Jack suspected Hunter was fighting back laughter as Jack told the story. He didn't tell him about meeting Kaifun, but he did tell him about Benson summarily executing Opsim.
Hunter sent him to a western quadrant of the city that Wolfe was reconittering, where he met up with his commanding officer.
"Baker? Where the hell have you been?" Wolfe said. "I was just about to write you up for desertion!
Jack's tank was back at Rylak, so he had to "sit bitch" (as Wolfe put it) in Wolfe's tank as the Pack's reconnaissance mission continued. Once completed they had to haul ass back to Rylak for refueling. It had turned out that all the protoculture that Tiresia had left was expended in their fruitless defense of the city from the Invid.
Wolfe gave Jack the expected chewing-out. It was less than effective as Wolfe, unlike Hunter, had done a lousy job of hiding his amusement.
"Now the General wants me to mete out some sort of punishment," Wolfe said. "But taking into account your impressive performance both during our fight with the fleet and down here in the dirt, I'm going to overlook it. I just want to impress upon you that impulsivity can get you and your squadmates killed."
Jack didn't have the energy, or desire, to argue, so he simply nodded.
"All right then," Wolfe said. "Get some sleep, we're going to need all-hands when we move base to Tiriesia tomorrow. Are you any good at carpentry?"
"I… uh, I've dabbled, sir," Jack said. "But isn't that more of a job for the SeaBees?"
"In my unit everybody fights, and everybody works. Dismissed, soldier."
Jack grabbed a quick shower and then made his way to the mess, fighting off severe fatigue: he hadn't slept in almost two days and the pep-pills he'd found in Benson's duffle-bag were wearing off.
He was patiently waiting in line with a lunch tray when someone grabbed him by the shoulder and wrenched him around.
"Where the hell is my duffle-bag, pleb?" Benson growled at him.
Jack's mood quickly went from confusion to terror, and finally to a feeling that can only be described as "not giving a fuck".
"I threw it into the river," Jack said. Which was the truth. Once he'd taken out the spare uniform and kit bag, he'd thrown it from one of the bridges that lead into the city.
"What the hell did you do that for?" Benson shouted.
Jack looked at the smug face that floated before him, and all he could see was the Invid scientist's head exploding over and over again. Without so much as a thought, he hit Benson dead-center in the face with the lunch tray, leaving an imprint on it like one of those pin-art boxes.
A round of cheers went up, Jack looked around and saw all of the Wolfe Pack and some Skull Squadron jocks cheering him on. Apparently he wasn't the only one who'd have enough of Ghost Squadron.
Benson stood there, stunned, blood dripping out of both nostrils, his left eye blackened. He quickly recovered and was about to take a swing at Jack, but Jack kicked him in the stomach and hit him with an uppercut as he doubled-over.
Benson was laid out front on the ground, Jack sat on his chest and started repeatedly punching him in the face as his teammates cheered him on. Eventually he felt someone grabbing his forearms from behind and lifting him off of Benson.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Baker!" a somewhat-whiny voice chided him.
Jack looked up, and was amazed to see that it was indeed Major General Hunter.
LINE-FEED
"This is the third time in a week that he's gotten in trouble!" Hunter said.
"Come on, Benson had it coming, you heard about what happened in the Royal Hall!" Wolfe rebuffed.
"Benson was only following orders!" Hunter said.
"Oh, we're accepting that as a defense now?" Wolfe said.
The door to Wolfe's ad hoc office in one of Rylak's office buildings creaked open and Edwards stormed in. His usual sneer was turned up a couple of notches.
"I am busy with other matters, General, but I just wanted you to know that I will accept any punishment you want to mete out for this grunt. I'm not pressing charges," Edwards said.
"But he assaulted one of your men," Wolfe said, in spite of himself.
"If a tank jockey is able to sucker punch one of my men, his training was inadequate. If he had been trained properly, Sergeant Baker would be in the infirmary or dead," Edwards said, and then left as if his statement ended the argument.
"He's a monster, but at least he's consistent," Jack said.
"Muzzle it, Baker!" Wolfe said. "You're not helping your case."
"Sorry, sir," Baker said.
Hunter let out a long sigh. "He's your man, Colonel, so I'll leave the punishment up to you. I just hope it's a little more severe than your last one," He then turned to Baker. "You've made a very powerful enemy in Colonel Edwards today, I hope you realize that."
"I do, sir," Jack said, with authentic soberness.
"Watch your back from now on, Sergeant," Hunter said, and then saluted. The two returned the salute, and the door creaked as Hunter made his exit.
"I was going to give you a week of R&R after we moved, due to your remarkable performance during the Battle for Fantoma. I am rescinding that as your punishment," Wolfe said.
"Uh… Yes, sir," Jack said.
"Now go get some rest, soldier," Wolfe said.
"Yes sir!" Jack said with a salute.
"Are you proud of yourself?" Kaifun asked.
Jack recognized him by the voice, he was now in a normal REF uniform with Ghost Squadron patches. He also realized that he'd seen him before.
"Wait a second, you were the bartender in the mess on the SDF-3!" Jack said.
"Ole' Patch? You really think all of us Chinese look alike, don't you?" Kaifun said with a frown. "Are you going to invite me in?"
"Oh yeah, of course," Jack said, as he stood back to allow Kaifun to enter his quarters.
"No roommate?" Kaifun asked.
"No, well, yeah, but he's still in Tiresia. He was part of the scouting party Wolfe left behind to find us new digs."
Kaifun hummed an acknowledgement and sat down in one of the quarters' two chairs.
"What was that you said about me being proud?" Jack said.
"I was in the mess and saw what happened. It wasn't very honorable, what you did," Kaifun said.
"That's rich coming from one of Edwards' men," Jack said.
"Consider me the white spot in Edwards half of the REF's yin-yang," Kaifun said.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but why do you care? You aren't my CO, "Jack said.
"Because in that chamber deep under the Royal Hall, I saw something in you, and I think it's something that's worth saving," Kaifun said.
"And what was it you thought you saw?" Jack said.
"Disgust, and righteous indignation," Kaifun said.
"I was surprised, and confused…" Jack started.
"It's nothing to be ashamed of, quite the contrary," Kaifun said.
"It doesn't make any sense though, I lost count of how many of the Invid just like that scientist that I blew away. I didn't even think about it, and I don't feel ashamed even now, it was me or them. But he was…" Jack said.
"Murdered. There's no other word for it," Kaifun said.
"And these Invid, they're the enemies of the Robotech Masters, not us. They weren't the ones who ordered the extermination of our species. Who knows why they opened fire on us, they probably thought we were Zentraedi reinforcements or something," Jack said.
"And that's probably what they still think," Kaifun said. "Until we tell them otherwise."
Jack rubbed his eyes. "It might just be the lack of sleep, but this seems like a very strange conversation. What exactly are you getting at?"
"It's just that this is the farthest out the human race has ever gotten. Everything we do and say here will color how the rest of the galaxy sees us," Kaifun said.
"I'm not even an officer yet, what role can I play?" Jack said.
"You can stash the false humility, soldier," Kaifun said, though it sounded very unnatural. "Your name will be in the history books when they write about the Battle of Fantoma. But where does it go from here? Was this battle just the beginning of another meaningless round of conquest; or are we going to keep true to the ideals of our mission?"
"Peace?" Jack said, realizing.
"There has never been a nobler goal in all the history of humanity," Kaifun said. "Will you join me in pursuing it?"
Within 72 hours the bulk of the REF's materiel and personnel had been transferred to Tirol's surface. The SDF-3, Quist and Dodon took up positions in Fantoma's lagrange points to work as an early-warning system for any Invid reprisals.
Communication with the cities on other continents was established, and the other residents of Tirol welcomed their liberators with open arms. Many made the flight to Tiresia to help rebuild and repopulate the city. (The REF's searches had confirmed their worst suspicions: the entire population of Tiresia, estimated by Cabell to number around 2 million, had been massacred by the Invid.)
Lang set up shop in Tiresia's long-abandoned Academy and brought new life to it. Tirol's children had long been taught by computers, and it was refreshing and socially stimulating for them to attend school with other classmates, including some that came from across the galaxy. Both Scott Bernard (godson of Emil Lang) and Benjamin Sterling became students at the new Academy, where Minmei took on the job of head-teacher. (Lang was the Dean, but taught no classes and was rarely seen outside his lab.)
Lang and many others began to teach themselves the Tiresian language; Lang had special interest in it as it would allow him to read the notes of Zor, which Cabell had secured a copy of from the city's computers. Very soon he began to use his new knowledge to devise new fold-system designs for the SDF-3. However, before any of these plans would be realized, they would need a steady supply of Monopole.
Scarcely a month after Colonel Edwards had deactivated the Brain under the Royal Hall, REF soldiers began mining on the superearth Fantoma, which Triol orbited around. Breetai had originally volunteered the Zentraedi contingent to do this task, but Lang informed them of the Square Cube law, which dictated that a Zentraedi giant would be crushed into a pancake after 5 seconds in Fantoma's gravity.
Fortunately they quickly discovered that the mind-controlled mecha that the Masters used, the Bioroid, had an artificial gravity web built into the cockpit in order to allow them to fight on high gravity worlds. This allowed the REF to begin mining right away, while Lang figured out how to get the Master's old automated mining system up and running.
And so six months passed in relative peace, even as the command staff was filled with panic as the Robotech Masters got closer and closer to Earth.
"How are the new recruits working out?" Hunter asked as he scanned the buffet table, looking for something that resembled Earth food.
"Extraordinary, simply extraordinary," Wolfe said, as he poured himself a cup of the highly caffeinated tea that was the closest thing they had to coffee on this moon. "Janice is a natural and a crackshot. And Rem is certainly keeping us on our toes with his bioroid. I think the Hovertanks would be at a disadvantage if we ever had to face one in combat!"
They took their trays to the nearest empty table in the mess and sat down. Hunter had decided on a simple salad, the meat had looked too grisly, and blue, for his tastes.
"Don't get any ideas about Janice, you old perv, Dr. Lang is very protective of her, and you don't want to get on his bad side," Hunter said.
"What exactly is the connection between them, do you know?" Wolfe said.
"I think I remember him saying that she was his niece or something. It's probably another orphan he took in, like Scott," Hunter said.
"While we're on the subject of singers, there was something I wanted to ask you. I've heard that you and Minmei used to be an item–" Wolfe began, only to be interrupted by the beeping of Rick's communicator.
"Hunter here, what have you got for me?" Hunter said.
A male voice responded from the communicator. "We have a priority relay request from Admiral Hayes on the SDF-3, asking to be patched through."
"Patch her through, patch her through!" Hunter said.
"You may speak at any time, Admiral," the voice said.
"We just got a message from the Dodon, they have spotted a fleet of ships that have emerged from FTL in the vicinity of Fantoma," Hayes's voice reported.
"FTL?" Wolfe said with a furrowed bra. "Not Invid?"
"Lisa, are they Invid?" Hunter said.
"No, their silhouettes don't match any of the ships we fought earlier, and there's something even stranger: they sent a signal using the frequencies and encoding used by the Robotech Masters, and in the Zentraedi language. Rick, they're asking for help."
The End
Author notes
I didn't think I'd ever write this story. I knew I was going to do at least one sequel to Rebirth, but the truth is that the battle to free the Fantoma system from the Invid is probably one of the most boring parts of The Sentinels. We know this for a fact because we have the scripts for most of it.
This fic came about because of a desire I had to get my hands on one of the later, unreleased, Sentinels scripts and novelize it. Unfortunately all my efforts to get my hands on such a script came to nothing. I went ahead with the project anyway, writing a script for episode 40 that closely matched the style in the scriptbooks, and I put it up on Wattpad for awhile but it didn't get much interest. More on that later.
Since I couldn't get my hands on an unreleased script, I looked at the scripts which had been released. The truth is that I actually wanted to do a straight novelization of the series summary that was in Robotech Art 3, but I wasn't able to get past those first few episodes. Then I got inspiration from a very unlikely place.
There is a book called The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark which is told in a very unconventional way. It's written in Third Person Omniscient, and makes use of this viewpoint better than any other book I've read. In the first chapter we see both the beginning and end of the story, but the questions left unanswered are what came in the middle. Because the narrator is omniscient, they can fill in information whenever necessary, so the story advances not in a straight-line, but a spiral. The end of the story is actually the middle, and even though we know what happens from the first chapter, we don't understand why it happens until the last chapter, which tells the middle of the story.
I adopted this approach and used it to compress 10 episodes worth of "action" into about 20,000 words. The trick was to just leave out the boring points, and paper over the truly stupid parts from the scripts.
What I like about this story the most is that it starts right where the movie leaves off, so if by-chance you never read any of the novels or comics, you won't be completely lost, and it helps explain what's going on in Rebirth a little better.
I think of The Sentinels as a lot like the old Epic Cycle in Greek literature, which told the story of the Trojan War. There are two main texts, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which everyone knows. However these books are actually transcriptions of tales which had been passed down orally for hundreds of years. Because of that, everyone knew the particulars of how the Trojan War unfolded. The Sentinels is exactly the same: everyone knows that the SDF-3 folded to Tirol, found the Robotech Masters missing, ran into the Invid that the Regent had left behind, befriended Rem and Cabell who helped them liberate the planet. Then the Sentinels arrived, some of the REF went with them, and they proceeded to liberate each planet; and so on.
Because everyone knows the general story of the Sentinels, it's possible to set stories within that framework that are fully contained and can be enjoyed on their own. The same was done with "The Mattery Of Troy", as it came to be called. The Epic Cycle consisted of eight works, of which only The Iliad and Odyssey survive. But there were also Greek plays which dealt with the fates of the characters, and Roman poems which dealt with the background of Achilles; even Chaucer and Shakespeare wrote tales that took place during the war..
As for my own entries in this epic, I have some original fiction I'm going to work on now, but I do hope to have the novelization of Episode 40 done by the end of the year. I'll also repost the script to Wattpad at that time, since ff doesn't allow scripts. I hope to finally start on my sequel to Rebirth in the new year: both Battle for Fantoma and Episode 40 delayed that a bit. After that I have two ongoing series planned which will each have at least 12 chapters. I'll provide more details when I post Rebirth's sequel next year.
Just a couple of miscellaneous notes:
Sadly this story does break continuity with The Shadow Chronicles. I had been hoping that the Rebirth stories could always work as a prequel to TSC, but for a variety of reasons that will become clear later, I had to base these stories on the old continuity.
Also, regarding Ben Sterling: Dana said she had a little brother. It's as clear-cut canon as you can get. Macek and the TSC producers may have ignored this, but I'm not going to.
I hope you enjoyed reading this! I had a blast writing it, especially the segments with Minmei in part 1 and the way I weaved the continuity of both Macross II and Macross 7 into Robotech!
Take care,
Janice Gainsborough