Genesis

'There has to be a reason, but it's beyond me. Surely, the Robotech Masters-'

He was interrupted by an urgent message from the tech at the threat-prioritization computers. 'Commander Breetai! Two enemy cruiser-class vessels are approaching; they could be the ones who launched the missile bombardment.'

Breetai smiled, but his single eye was chilly. 'Destroy them!'

Specially designated main and secondary batteries opened fire: phased particle-beam arrays and molecular disruptors, long-range and fearsomely powerful.

Armor Two was hit on the first volley as hundreds of spears of high-resolution blue fury ranged in on it. It tried to evade the barrage; house-size pieces of armor and superstructure were blown from it. Many of the smaller defending craft were completely disintegrated.

Breetai, waiting for effective counterfire, lost patience. Perhaps the foes' hesitation to use reflex weaponry fit into some strange plan, but to forgo use of any advanced technology, to sacrifice troops to this kind of slaughter, was perverse.

Incredulous, Breetai wondered if somehow this victory was going to be far easier than it had seemed when that first mighty bolt rose from Terra. 'Those idiots behave as though they don't even know how to use their own weapons! Full barrage, all cannon!'

The Zentraedi command ship cut loose again with all forward gun turrets. Armor Two was instantly holed through in a hundred places, the enemy beams penetrating it like ice picks through a cigar box.

Hull integrity went at once, and internal gravity; hatches and seals blew, and space began sucking the atmosphere from the cruiser, tossing crew and contents around like toys. Still more hits made a sieve of the pride of the orbital defense command and destroyed its power plant. A moment later it disappeared in a horrendous outpouring of energy, while lesser ships all around it met a similar fate.

Lisa, more pallid than ever, kept her voice even as she reported to Gloval: 'Armor Two is destroyed and Armor Ten is heavily damaged, sir. Other losses extremely heavy. The Orbital Defense Forces are no longer even marginally effective. Alien fleet is closing on Earth.'

Gloval sat in his command chair, fingers steepled, chin resting on pressing thumbs. 'I had hoped this moment wouldn't come in my lifetime. SDF-1 kept us from exterminating ourselves and let us achieve worldwide peace, but now it has brought a new danger down upon us. We face extinction at the hands of aliens whose power we can only guess at.'

Henry Gloval's mind ranged back across a decade to that first investigation of the wrecked SDF-1. Miracles have a price. And this one, I think, will be very, very high.

Claudia and Lisa and the other members of the bridge crew swapped quick, worried looks.

'I had hoped that war was a thing of the past. We all had.' Gloval looked up from his distraction like a knight at the end of his prayer vigil, ready to take up a shining sword, a gleaming shield.

'But here we go again, like it or not.' He rose to his feet, shoulders back, and a vivid current of electricity that hadn't been there a moment before hummed in the air. Gloval was suddenly strong as an old oak.

'All right. Give the order to move out!'

'Yes, sir.' Lisa relayed the command crisply. 'All forces, deploy in accordance with Contingency Plan SURTUR.'

More Veritechs launched all across the island as Lisa's words reverberated to every corner of it, like the gods' final war song. 'We are under attack by alien invaders in sector four-one-two. This is not a drill, I say again: This is not a drill.'

Roy Fokker, clambering into his fighter, pulling on his flight helmet, gasped, then hissed. He'd been so busy saddling up Skull Team when word came that there was trouble that he'd forgotten all about Rick!

Then he calmed. The fighter in which Rick was sitting had been seconded from active duty for the public relations events; it wasn't as if some angry pilot would be wrestling him out of the cockpit. So Rick was as safe there as anywhere else for the time being.

Lisa's voice rang across the airfield. Roy didn't mind it, but he couldn't help wishing it were Claudia's.

Then Roy got back to the job at hand, settling the all-important helmet on his head. He switched on the tactical net, trying to sound casual, just about bored. The fighter-pilot tradition; dying was something you sometimes couldn't help, but losing your cool was unforgivable.

'Well, boys, you heard her. This is the real thing.' Roy practically yawned.

The sky was filled with climbing flights of fast-moving aircraft, vectoring off to their assigned coverages. Dozens, hundreds had arisen from the carriers and the island. The flattops were making ready to stand out to sea so that the foe couldn't concentrate his attacks; that would take some time. But at least with the combat squadrons aloft, Earth wasn't as vulnerable to a single, concentrated strike.

Lisa's voice came over Roy's flight helmet phones. 'Wolf Team has cleared. Skull Team, prepare for takeoff.'

'Skull Team ready.' Roy knew the men in the other parked Veritechs would be watching him as well as listening over the tac net. He gave a quick thumbs-up. 'Awright, boys; this is it.'

More fighters were streaking up from the flight decks of the carriers, launched out from the waist catapults or propelled out into the air over the Hurricane-style bows.

'Let's go,' drawled Roy Fokker. Robotech engines shrilled.

'What a disorderly arrangement!' Breetai exclaimed, studying Macross City on long-rage scanners. The populace, the military forces-they were so unbelievably concentrated! 'These people must be completely ignorant of spacewar tactics!'

The sensor image panned until an image-interpretation computer locked it in. Breetai leaned closer to the fishbowl surface that protected his command post.

'What's this? The battle fortress! But-what's happened to it?'

Exedore took that as leave to speak. 'It appears to have been completely redesigned and rebuilt, perhaps by the inhabitants of that planet.'

Breetai set his fists on his hips. 'Mere primitives couldn't possibly have captured a Robotech ship.'

Exedore fixed Breetai with his great, protruding eyes, their eerily pinpoint pupils hypnotic, mystical. 'Perhaps it crashed on their planet and they managed to salvage it.'

'But what about the crew? Zor's traitors wouldn't just let these creatures have the vessel!'

'Maybe they perished in the fighting with the Invid, or in the crash,' Exedore suggested delicately. It was an answer of high probability; Breetai saw that at once, chose not to contest it, and congratulated himself on having a friend and adviser like Exedore.

'Even so…' The commander sidestepped the discomfitting idea that the primitives were antagonists to be feared. 'The ship would have been terribly damaged. And these primitives wouldn't have the technology to repair it.'

This Zentraedi arrogance of ours gets worse with every generation, Exedore thought, even as he readied his answer. Someday we may all pay for it.

'I know, sir, but is there any other explanation? It is a Robotech vessel, and we know they have-'

'Reflex weaponry!'

'Precisely. And this makes them very dangerous. So we must exercise extreme caution.'

Breetai turned back to the projecbeam displays, uttering a feral growl. The instruments and transparent bowl rang with it.

A command center coordinator's voice came up over the intercom. 'Target pinpointed, Commander. We're launching fighters!'

Breetai and Exedore contemplated the image of the dimensional fortress.

CHAPTER SEVEN