Another Left Turn at Albuquerque

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and universes that I am about to mangle around and mash together for my own amusement – sadly all Robotech and Star Wars characters and concepts remain the property of Harmony Gold, Disney and Lucasfilm Ltd respectively – I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from their use. As a result, please keep the legal attack dogs – also known as lawyers – firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give to anyone.

Chapter Three

UES Pioneer

Tzarlas Cluster, Outer Rim, Corusca Galaxy

Sometime Later

Admiral Rick Hunter was feeling every one of his fifty-four years of age as he read through the initial findings of the science division – since the Pioneer had originally been designed to be as much an exploration vessel and space ark for the Terran race as much as she was an immensely powerful warship they had a larger science department than any other ship in the fleet, a department now bolstered by the surviving crew of the Deucalion – on the predicament that they had found themselves in after folding to escape the black hole created by the neutron-s missile detonation. The scientists had confirmed that they had indeed been hurled across a sizeable chunk of the universe though not has far as the astronavigational sensors had initially reported to Lieutenant Pren, the discrepancy being caused by some type of odd particle interference on the sensors that had taken several hours to fully dissipate and provide truly reliable data.

What they had found was not good news. In fact, it was downright terrible news.

While the SDF-3 and the rest of the battlegroup hadn't been thrown a trillion light years as the systems had originally erroneously reported – which should have been impossible as that was bigger than the entire scope of the universe as known by any race – they had only been hurled a billion light years away from home. They had been hurled clear not only of their galaxy, or even their local group of galaxies, but had been hurled out of the galactic supercluster they had been part of and into a completely different one. Though that was not a comfort as the scientists estimated that even if the fleet folded safely and successfully every half an hour – something that was never truly guaranteed given how fickle fold drives and foldspace itself could sometimes be – it would take them over a thousand years to return to just their supercluster let alone their native galaxy.

A journey that would be frankly impossible. Not only would there be no way for any of them to survive such a long flight across the universe – and who knew how many unknown threats and dangers there would be – well unless they went into stasis but there was no way any of their ships would survive such a journey. Robotech warships, for all their firepower and durability, and robotechnology in general were after all not immune to the ravages of that greatest of all equalizers, time. Even with proper maintenance no robotech ship could last more than a few centuries as they had yet to encounter any technology that could survive such unfathomable periods of time and still work perfectly or even be intelligible as tech in the first place.

Unless something radically changed then they were stuck here.

Rick sighed and put down the pad he was reading and began to massage his temples to ward off the headache he could feel beginning. The captains of the other ships were on their way over to the SDF-3 as he was sitting here for the meeting that they would need to have. He had originally wanted to carry out the meeting yesterday evening but there had not been time. The need to evacuate all the surviving crew of the Deucalion before her life support systems completely failed had taken priority. As had repairing some of the more critical damage that some of the other ships – especially the more lightly armoured Garfish and Lionfish-class ships – had sustained from both the missile test and the incredible violence of the space fold. Thus, he had put the meeting off until today a full twenty-four hours after the disastrous events that had dumped them out here at the other side of the universe.

The sound of the door hailer made him stop what he was doing and look up before bidding whoever was on the other side to come in. The door opened with the usual muted hum of electromagnetic runners and somehow, he wasn't surprised to see Lisa on the other side.

"Rick the others are here. They're all gathered in conference room one," she said as she stepped into the room. She could immediately tell that her husband was unhappy about something, and it didn't take a genius to figure out just what that something was. "You're troubled."

Rick nodded. "I've been reading the navigation report and what every scientist and robotechnologist with any knowledge of fold navigation has said about our current predicament."

"It isn't good news?"

"Nope. There's no way home for us, even though they've now ironed our precise location down they've determined that even if we folded every half hour, every day it would take us anywhere from one and a half thousand to three thousand years to get back to our starting location." Lisa winced at that, having been the fleet admiral before she was nearly killed by that traitorous bastard Thomas Riley Edwards – an injury that had cost her and Rick the life of their unborn second child – she was well aware that that would be an utterly impossible challenge to meet.

After all, while it could seem all powerful, especially to those not familiar with it and how it could make certain laws of physics take a hike, even robotechnology had its limits.

"That's impossible."

"Yeah, and I'm going to have to break it to everyone in the meeting," Rick answered as he stood up, he hoped that the other ship captains would be reasonable and understanding about this situation. But he was also prepared to deal with negative reactions especially from some of the younger commanders many of whom had begun to, somewhat worryingly, believe that there was nothing that protoculture and robotechnology could not do.

"That's going to be fun. Well at least I'll be there to help you keep them in line and Vanessa will help as well. So will Exedore in point of fact I assume he is coming to present the science teams findings?"

"He will be. So will Janice."

"Which will help," Lisa commented as Rick joined her. She immediately slipped an arm through the loop he formed with his right arm.

"It will," Rick agreed as they left his ready room, both nodding politely to the two Cyclone armoured marines guarding the door and began making their way towards where the commanding officers of the other twenty intact robotech vessels in their exiled fleet were waiting. Neither spoke, they didn't need to and just took comfort in each other's company as they prepared themselves mentally for what was probably going to be quite a fraught meeting.

Twenty Minutes Later

A grim silence, born of a combination of shock, disbelief, dread and reluctant acceptance, hung pregnant in the air of the conference room where the ship captains were all gathered. Rick had been surprised to find, when he and Lisa arrived, Doctor Lang standing outside the conference room and offering to explain the findings of the science teams himself rather than making Rick do it. His point being he would be far more likely to be able to answer the inevitable questions that would follow once everyone overcame the initial shock of finding that they were not only a billion light years from home but that there was no conceivable way for them to return to said home in any reasonable timeframe.

Rick hadn't had the heart to refuse him, so he'd allowed it. Emil had then come in with them and presented the facts as they currently understood them, his German accent as thick as it always had been as Emil was one of the few of them who'd retained his native accent. He knew his own Northern Californian accent had faded long ago into the more neutral accent that most Terrans in the military tended to speak with.

"How did this happen?" Captain Turner of the UES Aran asked breaking the silence. "I know space folding inside a gravity well really messes up your hyperspace vectors but how could that possibly have thrown us across the universe like this? Shouldn't we have just been dumped out of foldspace at some random point in our galaxy in a ten kiloparsec sphere of our fold out point?"

"Normally that would indeed be the case," Janice answered, "but I believe I have an explanation for how this happened."

"Please explain Janice," Rick said wanting to know exactly how this had happened himself.

"As you wish," the android answered before wirelessly accessing the ships systems. After a moment a holographic image of the black hole that they had escaped the day before appeared over the conference table. "As you all know a black hole or quantum singularity is a focal point of intense gravitational force that nothing, not even light can escape. What has been known for a long time by most spacefaring societies is that the intense gravity well also makes the quantum structure of the space-time continuum extremely malleable near the event horizon allowing among other things particles that normally cannot exist in our space-time to essentially leak into the normal universe.

"What I believe happened is that as we initiated the fold process instead of immediately accelerating away and into the hyperspatial realm we know as foldspace our fold spheres became caught in the gravity well of the singularity," as she spoke Janice made multiple small images of the fold spheres of the fleet appear around the singularity and immediately begin to orbit it. "As we orbited the singularity our speed not only increased but many of the exotic particles from disintegrating space-time created by the black hole adhered to our fold spheres. This continued until momentum overcame the pull of the singularity and we were thrown away on our mutual vector – we would have entered foldspace travelling at speeds near or even in excess of those of light speed. That speed coupled with the exotic particles essentially mutated the wormhole through foldspace and allowed it to travel far further through the universe than it would normally be able to."

"Such particles would also explain why our astropositioning sensors were giving us such ludicrous positioning data when we first defolded in this galaxy," Emil added. "It's only after they decayed that we could scan our locations properly again."

"So, what do we do?" Turner asked, "find another black hole and initiate another space fold?"

"No that would be both extremely dangerous and extremely foolish," Exedore said grimly, "if the black hole was too strong – remember the one created by the neutron-s warhead was small and newborn – then we could be pulled through the event horizon and out of the universe. Even if we did survive the gravitational pull there is no guarantee that folding around another black hole would get us back to where we came from. We could easily end up in a far worse situation or even dead."

"There has to be a way back."

"There may be, and we will look for one," Rick answered, looking sympathetically at the younger officer. He could see the desperation in the other man and understood why. Turner had a wife and young son who were living on Odessa, one of the handful of colonies they'd established under the Gloval Imitative while searching for the path to Tirol and the Robotech Masters. "However, we must also face the fact that getting back to where we came from might never be possible. We must plan accordingly."

"Fortunately, there are plans we can execute," Vanessa Leeds, captain of the Agamemnon, said thoughtfully even as she gave Rick a private knowing look. She knew what it was he was thinking of as not only had she worked with Rick extensively over the years, but Rick and Lisa were among her closest friends. They also had the bond that they were all survivors of the SDF-1 crew and the First Robotech War.

"What plans," Turner asked making everyone look at him as though he had grown a second head. "What?"

"Have you forgotten the contingency orders," Vanessa asked, "the ones everyone is required to read and if possible, memorize when promoted to command anything heavier than a destroyer or light cruiser?"

Turner looked a little sheepish. "I… ugh… don't remember reading them," he admitted as he had only recently been moved up to command the Aran for the plan to liberate Earth from the Invid. "With so much going on preparing to boot the Regis and her hoard of Invid off Earth I am not sure I have read them."

Rick frowned. "We'll discuss that later captain," he said, making Turner wince. Admiral Hunter was known to be something of a stickler for knowing your responsibilities and the rules of command. It was apparently an extension of the perfectionist attitude he had always had when it came to flying, one that had been honed to a razors edge over the years since the Expeditionary Force first left Earth orbit. "But to clarify there are dozens of contingency orders for any conceivable scenario including ships becoming lost or stranded beyond any chance of returning home. It is one of the reasons why all capital-grade vessels have as complete a copy as possible of our historical and cultural database."

"You are thinking of contingency seventeen?" Vanessa asked guessing that was the one Rick was thinking about, it would be the one that would most fit their current situation. She also made a mental note to ask Rick to let her be the one to talk to Alan Turner about not reading the contingency orders after his promotion to commanding an Ikazuchi-class cruiser – one of the generation-3 subtypes at that which addressed many of the problems that had cropped up with the original design. Rick, though he often didn't intend to be, could after all be somewhat frightening especially to officers of Turner's generation who grew up learning of his exploits – and the fact that he had been one of their most lethal combat pilots – during the First Robotech War and beyond it.

"I am," Rick agreed, "it is the one most appropriate to our current circumstances."

"What does it involve," Turner asked looking somewhat meek. Which was a very odd look for him since he was six foot three and built like a battloid.

"Relax captain nobody, let alone me, is going to bite your head off for not knowing though do be sure to read the contingency orders going forward," Rick answered giving the younger man a look that said he would let him off this once but if he failed to read the orders or regulations, he would not be so forgiving the next time. "But to answer your question contingency seventeen calls for the establishment of either a temporary or permanent settlement should no way back to friendly space be apparent.

"Now while the contingency calls for the settlement of a planet I am not quite willing to go that far just yet especially as we might still find a way to get back home," Rick continued. "Fortunately, there is another option to founding a colony. We build a space station, one capable of space folding on its own if a means of getting back in a reasonable time period can be devised."

"Do we have the means to build a station sir?" Captain Zendril from the Sumatra asked.

"Yes there are several kernel devices is storage aboard this ship," Rick answered surprising almost everyone, with the exception of Lisa and Dr Lang, as none of them had known that they had some of those devices with them alongside having the protoculture matrix, "now normally they can only be activated by Plenipotentiary Council order but under Contingency Seventeen I do have the authority to use them provided all captains agree and provide their command code during the activation sequence."

"I think we can all agree to that," Vanessa said prompting nods all around the table. "So, the question now becomes what kind of station we build. A full sized factory station or something a bit smaller."

"A full sized factory satellite would take a minimum of a year to complete," Doctor Lang reminded her, "and it would certainly be underused as even if we are stuck here that level of industrial capacity will not be needed. I would recommend that we build a station analogous to the MARS stations that were built for the expeditionary force during our search for the path to Tirolian space. Not only could one be completed in just two months', but it would still have plenty of industrial capability and we can always expand if we need to do so."

"That seems the most logical place to start," Lisa agreed. The MARS – or Mobile Armoured Repair and Supply – stations had been constructed for the Expeditionary Force during the Gloval Initiative period and while the twenty-five kilometres tall, thirty-two kilometre wide stations were much smaller than a factory satellite – even their own custom built versions like Space Stations Liberty and Equality – they still had more industrial capacity than the whole of the Earth had had before the Rain of Death and then some. Indeed, to this day the six MARS stations they'd built still served the purpose for which they had been built. Supporting the Terran people as they expanded amongst the stars or assisting their allies – for example MARS Four was orbiting Karbarra helping them rebuild the industrial infrastructure destroyed by the Invid Regent during his brief occupation of the planet, while MARS Six was helping the Praxians settle a new world after their original homeworld's destruction – in their efforts to rebuild their own worlds and territories.

Building one here would not only not take long at all, but it would more than suit their needs. Even if they somehow ended up having to defend themselves against an aggressor as history had shown them happened all too often to them.

"I think we can all agree to that," Rick said getting nods of agreement all around.

"Now the issue becomes finding a suitable asteroid to attach the kernel to," Turner pointed out. "Which shouldn't be hard given what's in the system."

"We need not search I believe I have found one," Janice said having accessed the ships main sensors while the others had been talking. As she spoke, she pulled up a new hologram showing a large vague-peanut shaped asteroid. "This asteroid is located in the closest of the systems asteroid belts and according to our sensors is composed of sixty-percent nickel, thirty percent iron and ten percent carbon and water ice."

"It's as good a choice as any," Rick said. "How far away is this asteroid?"

"Less than seven hundred thousand kilometres. It will not be difficult especially for this ship to pull the asteroid out of the belt and into a safe position for the conversion process to begin."

"Does everyone agree with this course of action?" Rick asked looking at the assembled captains who would all be the leaders of their new civilization if they were indeed trapped here in this unknown galaxy and facing unknown dangers. One by one everyone nodded in agreement, though he was also aware that none of them would have disobeyed him if he made it a direct order. He just didn't like doing that using his authority as the fleet admiral as a blunt club, unless he had no other choice. "Alright then. We will recover this asteroid, Doctor Lang while we do that will you prepare one of the kernel devices and ensure that the correct blueprints are loaded and programmed?"

"I will see to as soon as we're dismissed," Lang confirmed, inwardly smiling like he was a young child on Christmas morning and discovering that Santa had brought him everything he had asked for. He absolutely loved it when he got chance to use one of the kernels which – next to the protoculture matrix itself – we're one of the most advanced possible applications of robotechnology and one of the applications that straddled the line between science and magic.

"Very well. Is there anything anybody wishes to discuss?" Rick asked. Nobody spoke. "Then return to your ships and begin preparations. Also be sure to inform your crews as well as all our marine and infantry divisions about what is going on. Dismissed."

Twelve Hours Later

"Admiral the asteroid is secure in its position."

Once again sitting in the command chair at the back of the SDF-3's bridge Rick smiled at the report from Lieutenant Pren. As Janice had said it hadn't taken long for them to pull the asteroid out of its position, the tractor beam technology that they had was more than capable of handling such a thing, it had just been a somewhat time consuming process as moving such a mass of rock was not easy. Of course, once it was out of the belt and in the position high above it that they wanted it in they'd then had to stop it, which was never an easy thing as Newtonian physics could be something of a bitch when it came to things such as mass and inertia especially in space.

"Very good. Navigation, move us into deployment position."

"Aye sir."

"Lieutenant Pren advise Doctor Lang that we are moving to deployment position and check with him if the kernel device is ready for deployment. Communications check with the other ships to make sure all captains are ready to input their command codes at the proper time."

"Aye sir," Pren and comms both acknowledged at the same time even as a faint shiver ran through the deck as the battlefortress powerful ion fusion sublights engaged and began to move the ship to the required position to launch the device. Within moments both reported back.

"Sir Doctor Lang reports that the kernel device has accepted and verified the imparted blueprints. It has been loaded into tube one of our number two port lateral missile launcher ready for deployment," Pren reported.

"Admiral all ship captains report that they are ready to transmit their command codes in the proper sequence to activate the kernel device," communications added a moment later, the young officer sounding quite gleeful as he said that. It was understandable given the advanced nature of the device, even though it wasn't as flashy in how it worked or what it did like other robotech systems on this ship were. Like their particle beam cannons and reflex missiles.

"Excellent."

"Admiral we are in position in relation to the target asteroid," navigation reported.

"Very well open the launch tube and begin the deployment sequence."

"Aye sir."

A faint shiver of recoil ran through the hull of the mighty battlefortress as electromagnetic launch rails lining the sides of the appropriate missile tube discharged sending a seemingly ordinary missile streaking into space. It's engine igniting seconds after clearing the mouth of the tube and speeding it on its way towards its date with destiny.

It took only a few moments for the missile to reach the asteroid and plunge into it before coming to a stop. Had it been a normal missile it would be at this point that the warhead – be it a plasma warhead or the rarely and far more devastating reflex warhead – would have detonated and either shattered the asteroid or outright vaporised it. But this was not a normal missile so within seconds of coming to a stop the aft engine part of the missile was thrown away by explosive bolts that sent it flying off into space on a vector that saw one of the battlefortress defensive lasers automatically track, lock onto and destroy it.

The sides of the missile separated, opening almost like the petals of a flower and contacting the surface of the rock. In the centre, sitting completely unharmed by its landing, was the cylindrical form of the kernel device itself. Coupled with the open petals it made it look somewhat like some giant technological flower which given what its intended purpose was quite an apt description since at the end of the day the purpose of almost all flowers was to enable reproduction. For a few moments nothing more happened then some lights on the kernel device lit up as it powered up and began transmitting a tight beam signal to the battlefortress.

"Admiral the kernel device has deployed and is now requesting activation codes be sent."

"Understood," Rick replied before taking a small object from a chain around his neck. He put the biometrically locked security key into his command console and turned it a quarter of the way around to the three o'clock position. Immediately a panel on the console opened revealing an illuminated keypad and a series of lights.

Immediately he entered the first command code. The keypad bleeped as it – and the kernel – accepted his identity and authority and commenced its activation sequence causing one of the lights to turn green. Slowly over the next minute other lights turned green as one by one all the ship captains sent their own command codes to the device. Finally, only one light remained red waiting for Rick to enter the final commit command code. Which he promptly did causing the last light to go green.

"Kernel device has received and verified all command codes," communications reported after a moment even as the distant kernel fully lit up and began deploying its first wave of small spider and crab-like drones that would mine the surface and bring everything to the sub molecular furnaces and atomic printers within the module. Furnaces and printers that would over the next two months break everything down and reformat it accordance with the design programmed into the complex, but very compact, quantum matrix computer in the core of the module.

"Conversion process commencing," Lieutenant Pren reported watching her sensors as veritable swarms of small drones – each no bigger than the palm of her hand – descended the petals and began gnawing away at the rock with everything from lasers, to drills and tiny shovels, to nano-disassemblers. "System uplink established. The modules computer estimates sixty-three days, fourteen hours and fifty-eight minutes to completion of the station."

Rick smiled and nodded. Pleased that the deployment of the kernel device had gone as planned. This was always an initially risky operation but now that the device was active there wouldn't be any problems – there were too many safety systems built in for anything to go wrong with the conversion process – at least not with the device itself. They would however have to stay here and protect it until the process was completed and the new MARS station – the first to be built in nearly two decades – which itself had had its design updated with their latest robotech systems would be ready to begin its service.

It was at that moment that the communications station chimed for attention.

"Admiral we're picking up a signal of some kind on our new fold comm system," communications reported sounding somewhat confused. "It's on a really odd frequency, certainly not anything we or anyone known to us has ever used."

"Can you tell what it is and where its coming from?" Rick asked.

"It's coming from a star system twenty-seven light years away from us," communications reported as the officers' hands flew across his console helping their computer try to make sense of what exactly the signal was. "I believe it's some type of distress call but the computers having trouble… ah ha got it. This is damn weird."

"How so lieutenant?"

"Sir the signal it looks almost analogue while having some digital overtones to its structure. It's weird. I have it now though it's definitely a distress call I have visual."

"Show me."

"Aye sir."

Immediately a projector field powered up and a new holographic screen pixeled into existence. For a few moments it washed with static and there was a noise from the speakers that Rick hadn't heard in a very long time, radio white noise. Then the image stabilized, and he couldn't help but recoil in surprise when he found himself looking at a human, or at least a being who appeared to be human, wearing a strange blue uniform adorned with some type of rank insignia that he didn't recognise. Do we have to run into sibling species everywhere we go, Rick thought wondering not for the first time why human stock races seemed to be so common in the universe.

The other man was speaking in a language that Rick didn't understand but he could guess what he was saying as the room he was in – which looked to be the bridge of a starship, though the controls looked strange oddly clunky and awkward with none of the sleekness inherent with robotechnology – was constantly shaking as though whatever ship he was on was under attack. An impression that was further enhanced by the fact that manning various consoles he could see other humans and strange bald blue skinned aliens working frantically as if they were trying to keep their ship together and in whatever fight it was in. Stange mechanical beings – some kind of robots – that looked almost like motorised dustbins were moving back and forth as well doing who knew what.

"Communications can we translate this," he asked.

"We are trying sir the language is odd," communications answered, "it appears to be a mixture of a very old form of Tirolian dating back to their earliest settlements, old Praxian and a hodgepodge of old Earth languages such as a very old form of Greek, Sumerian, Assyrian and some I cannot identify. The computers working to build a translation matrix, but it does take time."

"Old Earth languages here a billion light years from Sol," Lisa exclaimed from where she was, as always, standing beside him. "How the hell is that possible?"

"Not a clue," Rick replied a moment before the sound of an explosion on the hologram caught their attention. They both looked at it to see a console had exploded, likely the result of a massive power surge, throwing one of the blue skinned aliens to the deck. The alien was picking himself up, though obviously with difficulty, even as flames began to lick up from the damaged console. But only for a few moments before two of the dustbin-like robots trundled up to it and snuffed the fire out with sprays of a white gas that Rick thought was probably halon.

"Sir we have a translation matrix. It might be a bit rough as some of the syntax is being a pain in the backside to pin down, but I am tying it in now."

Rick nodded in understanding a moment before the screen flickered then he heard the other man speaking in Terran standard English. His accent was appalling but he was at least legible now.

"…Repeat this is Admiral Kalsab Keanuth aboard the Endurance calling any aligned vessel in the Tzarlas Cluster. Tzarlas Four is under attack by a massive pirate and slaver force, planetary defences failing we request any assistance you can provide," the man was saying as the bridge he was on shook again with even more force, the man looked to one side frowning and a look of real worry appearing on his face before he looked back at the camera. "Repeat we need assistance immediately; deflector shields are failing and forward turbolasers are beginning to sustain damage. Some of the enemy ships are beginning to bombard the shield over the capital it won't hold long. Please assist."

"Turn that off," Rick ordered. The holographic display pixeled out of existence and he leaned back in the command chair thinking about what to do now. There was no way he would ever ignore a distress call like what that one clearly was though at the same time he was cautious about getting involved with a conflict he knew nothing about, and which really didn't involve them.

"We need to help them," Lisa said softly from beside him, speaking low enough that only he would hear her. "The fact that he mentioned pirates and slavers…"

"…yeah, I caught that as well," Rick replied looking grim. Pirates and slavers were a constant problem back home as the chaos that had followed the collapse of the Tirolian Empire – which for five hundred years had been the dominant force in their galaxy and one thing the Masters had been very good at was stamping out pirates – had been a boon time for them. While things were getting better – the Expeditionary Force had as much patience with pirates as the Masters had had and often treated them the same way by introducing them to the business end of a particle cannon – but it would be a long time before the pirate and slaver threats went away as much as you could banish such things.

"Alright we can't let this stand," he said at last. Though we cannot leave the kernel device here unprotected either, he thought not that it was a big problem as he did have a few ships he could spare. "Communications contact Captains Leeds, Zendril and Turner. Give them the coordinates the distress signal is coming from and have them make their way there with all haste. Pirate and slaver attack, normal rules of engagement for such groups."

"Aye sir."

Within a few minutes of receiving the orders from the SDF-3 the Eisenhower-class battleship Agamemnon and the Ikazuchi-class cruisers Sumatra and Aran moved away from the rest of the battlegroup which was now arranging itself in a defensive formation around the newly activated kernel module. The three ships moved into formation, crews racing to their battle stations, and engaged their fold drives heading for the coordinates of the distress signal that they had received…

…and an encounter that would shake the criminal underworld of this new – to them – galaxy to its very core.

Authors Notes: Well, another chapter bites the metaphorical dust, I hope you all enjoyed it. Now before anyone asks the kernel devices are not actually a part of Robotech canon and originally came from deathzealotzero's fic The Robotech Invasion over on Twisting the Hellmouth where they were known as SEED modules. He was just kind enough to let me borrow the idea and run with the technology and the kernels were the result – I hope you all enjoyed seeing the beginning of one in action as they have been mentioned in many of my other works but never seen – and I do think they do fit in with the general level of technology they have in robotech. Especially in the era that the SDF-3 and the rest of the ships that are now in Corusca come from. Ideally Rick would have liked to have kept their presence hidden for a long time yet, at least until their new space station is finished in just over two months, but the distress call and the mention of pirates and slavers – who everyone in the REF hates with a passion especially those who are Zentraedi or of Zentraedi descent – hate with a burning passion. Hehe some criminal scum, are about to get a very, very nasty – and for most of them quite terminal – surprise. Until next time.