Genesis

CHAPTER SEVEN

Zentraedi combat ships of every kind cut down through Earth's atmosphere in tight, well-maintained formations, plunging at Macross Island and its surrounding waters. The alien pilots were confident, swelled with their swift and smashing victory against the target world's outer defenses.

The bright streaks of their plummeting drives seemed as numerous as raindrops. They were primed for easy kills and a swift capture of the battle fortress that had to be captured whole and undamaged, as Breetai had ordered. The invaders had had it pretty much their own way so far.

All at once that changed…and the rout suddenly became a battle again.

Protective covers had been raised from the SDF-1's missile racks; almost all incoming ordnance was intercepted and exploded in midair. Fighters of types the Zentraedi hadn't encountered before boiled up to lock in combat with them. And the elite warrior race found out, to their extreme unhappiness, that the primitives had indeed puzzled out quite a bit of Robotechnology.

In Earth's slaughterhouse skies, the dying began again.

Snoozing comfortably, Rick Hunter began to rouse a bit. If the weather had turned so bad-there was constant thunder-maybe he ought to make sure all the windows were shut. Only, he didn't seem to remember where he was. Besides, there was this bothersome voice in his ear; it had the ring of authority, and that was something that never failed to antagonize him.

"This is SDF-1 control calling VT one-zero-two. You down there, on the exhibition grounds! We're on combat alert! Why haven't you taken off?" Lisa Hayes had a million other things to do; prodding slowpoke fighter jocks was the last problem she needed, and it made her mad to have to take time she couldn't spare to do it.

Rick sighed and stretched, then tilted the strange flight helmet back on his head, leaning forward and blinking groggily at one of the cockpit's tiny display screens. A young woman's face peered angrily out of it: pale and intense, impatient. Rick Hunter was used to being regarded as something pretty special, particularly by the opposite sex; he therefore decided at once that whoever she was, she had a pinched and grumpy look.

"You don't mean me, do you, lady?" But just then he became aware of distant explosions-not thunder but the reports of incoming fire. And there were blazes in the city, and smoke and damage. Crewpeople were rushing everywhere, fueling and arming and guiding planes, getting them airborne. Meanwhile, up in the air…

What were all those intertangled contrails and afterburner glows and explosions and tracers?

"Huh? What?" Rick Hunter asked himself weakly. People were scrambling around the plane in which he sat, readying it.

"Don't waste any more time!" the pale face in the screen scolded. "Take off immediately and join your wingman! The fighter squadron's outnumbered as it is!"

Rick gritted his teeth. "What d'you mean take off? The runway's demolished!"

And so it was, one of the primary Zentraedi targets, one of the few to be hit effectively. The young woman on the screen appeared to be counting to control her temper.

"Runway two is operable. You're fully armed, and your engines will overheat very quickly at high standby, so prepare for immediate takeoff!"

Now that she mentioned it, he could hear the highpitched whine of an engine, could feel it through his seat, but it was not like any he'd ever heard before-and Rick Hunter had heard 'em all.

Rick leaned out of the cockpit for a look. Sure enough, the Veritech was armed to the teeth, external hardpoints and pylons loaded with ordnance, the jet also carrying odd pods that he couldn't quite figure out.

Then a ground crewman was next to him, standing on the boarding ladder. "All set, sir! Good hunting!" The man did something or other, and the cockpit canopy descended.

Rick was to admit later that that would have been a very good time to come clean and admit that he had no idea what was going on, that he was a noncombatant and needed to be shown to a shelter. But that would have entailed admitting that he didn't know how to fly the aircraft in which he was sitting, that he couldn't. That he was, in short, nothing but a bystander, a hick, just like the people who gawked up at him at the flying circus.

And when you regard yourself as the greatest pilot in the world, an admission like that is extremely difficult. Besides, there was that irritating female on the screen.

"Well, okay. If you insist."

Rick drew a deep breath, took the controls, and gave himself a quick run-through, remembering all the stuff Roy had told him. He waggled rudders and played around for a second, then increased throttle, taxied out, and stood the fighter nearly on its tail, like a meteor in reverse.

A late Zentraedi missile blew a hole the size of a city block where he'd been parked a few seconds before. He was hoping the ground crews had all gotten clear as the Veritech responded to his demands for speed.

Wow! The proverbial bat.

He adjusted wing sweep and camber and angle of attack, going ballistic, wingtips leaving wispy lines of contrail like spider's thread. And though he would never have admitted it, he was more than a little intimidated. He was riding a rocket.

He punched a hole in a cloud, then found himself in the middle of a vast, swirling gladiatoral combat, the biggest dogfight since the close of what they called WWII.

"Whoa-ooooooo!"

Robotech craft were everywhere, and planes of some design that made no sense to Rick; not aerodynamic but devilishly fast and mounting unprecedented firepower. Explosions flowered all around him, rocking the ship, just as a lazy, familiar voice came over the tac net.

"Skull Leader to Veritech squadron. Intercept new invader flights at zone four-two-eight. Traffic's pretty heavy out here, boys, so break formation, but don't leave your wingman!"

"Roy!" He sounded short of breath. Rick looked up, open-mouthed, as a Veritech flying the Jolly Roger insignia bagged an alien recon craft shaped something like a flying bottle.

Debris was raining everywhere; pilots from both sides screamed in agony as they were blown to oblivion up where sky met space.

And, because dogfighting was so incredibly demanding physically, the tac net was loud with gasps and grunting. Dogfighters trained themselves to lock the muscles of their lower bodies-turn their legs to iron; suck their gut to their spine. Anything to keep the blood up high in the head. Up in the brain, where it was needed even more than in the heart.

The pressure on the pilots' diaphragms was fearsome; they could draw only short, hard-won breaths, if they were in high-g maneuvers.

The tac net sounded like eight or ten wrestling teams had been paired off for the championship.

And the trophy was Earth.

"Hey, Fokker! Wouldja mind telling me what's going on around here?"

Roy had just finished dusting a bogie off Skull Eight's tail. He switched a communications screen over to ship-to-ship and was, he admitted, not all that surprised to see Rick Hunter's face.

"How's it feel to be a fighter pilot?"

"What're you talkin' about, Big Brother? I'm not a fighter pilot; in fact, I-uhhhh!"

That last, as a wash of light came through Rick's canopy, and Roy's screen dissolved into a storm of distortion. There had been explosions just before the cutoff; in fighter jocks' lingo: he tuned out. Tuning out was terminal.

But Roy cut in maximum thrust, checking his situation displays, heading for his friend's location. "Hold on, Rick; I'm coming."

The Veritech's thrust pushed him back, deep into his seat. Roy felt tremendous relief when he sighted VT one-zero-two flying level and unharmed.

Roy caught up and fell in on Rick's wingtip. "You weren't hit; it was just a close one. You all right?" The alien that had come so close to nailing Rick was coming around for another try.

"Whew! Yeah, I'm okay," Rick decided.

Roy moved into the lead just a bit. The enemy fighter was closing fast. "Combat flying's scary for everyone first time out," he said. "You'll get used to it, though; it's not that much different from the good old days at the flying circus."

So saying, Roy thumbed the trigger on his control stick and sent two air-to-air Stilettos zooming to score direct hits on the invader and blow it to flaming bits.

"Yeah, but I never got shot at in the circus, Roy." Funny, but now the flying circus seemed like another life, a million years ago.

"You'll get used to it. Just tag along with me and we'll start your on-the-job training-if you can keep up with me."

The old smirk was back on Rick's face. "If? I'll do my best not to leave you in my backwash!"

"Let's go get 'em, Little Brother." Roy increased airspeed, beginning a climb, wings folding back for high-speed dogfighting. Out of nowhere, an enemy fighter came in at Rick from six o'clock high, chopping at him with energy bolts.

He let out a cry as he began to lose control, the fighter E shaken and bounced by the near misses.

"Climb and bank!" Roy called out, trying desperately to bring his ship around. "Rick!" He himself was dodging Zentraedi cannon fire a moment later. With Rick's ship out of control and nosediving in a spin, the Zentraedi had broken off his attack and turned on the Skull Team leader. The two fighters joined in a vicious duel.

Rick tried everything he'd ever learned but couldn't regain control of the Veritech. "I think I've had it, Roy. I'm getting no response from the controls at all!" Macross Island pinwheeled up at him.

Just then a voice he recognized came up over the net. "This is SDF-1 control calling VT one-zero-two. Pull out! You're diving straight at us!"

"Lady, don't you think I'd like to? But all the controls have lost power."

"Have you tried switching to configuration B?" Lisa Hayes demanded.

"Huh? B? What're you talking about?"

"You don't know?" This one must've really lost it-complete panic! "Listen, pull down the control marked B on the left side of your instrument panel."

The ground was very near. Rick, dizzy and almost unconscious from the g forces, somehow guided his hand to the knob in question, having a little trouble sorting it out from an identical one next to it marked G, moving it down in its slot.

The Veritech abruptly slowed in its tailspin, stabilizing, beginning to level off. At the same time, Rick could feel the entire ship start to shudder and shift, its aerodynamics changing in some way that he couldn't comprehend. He could feel vibrations, as if the fighter was-changing.

"What's it doing?" The fighter was still descending, the streets of Macross City looming up before the canopy. Rick had been a pilot long enough to know that since its flight characteristics had changed so dramatically, there was no other answer except that the shape of the Veritech had somehow altered.

What he didn't realize, and couldn't see from the cockpit, was that the ship had begun undergoing a process Doctor Lang had dubbed mechamorphosis. It was no longer configured like a conventional fighter but had, instead, gone to Guardian-G-mode, on its way to B.

In this transitional state it resembled a great metal bird of prey, an eagle, with sturdy metal legs stretched to set down and wings deployed, humanlike arms and hands outstretched.

But before Rick could figure out what had happened or the fighter could complete the shift to B, the Veritech crashed into the upper floors of an office building at an intersection in Macross City.

Fortunately, the alert had the population indoors or underground in the sprawling shelter system, and so no one was killed. The Guardian carved a path of devastation through the upper stories of an entire block, its fantastically strong armor and construction resisting damage.

Bricks, concrete, and girders flew in all directions; clouds of plaster went up like a dust storm. Signs crashed down, and broken plumbing gushed; severed power lines spat and snapped. The Guardian's engines cut out as the machine became aware of its situation and reacted to emergency programming.

Rick Hunter could still feel the plane shifting, changing, all around him. In fact, in some way he couldn't figure out, he could sense it-could actually feel it.

Rick sat where he was, realizing that he didn't know how to eject, even if the system was a «zero-zero» type that would let him survive a standstill ground-level ejection, which was far from the case.

It felt as if the crazy Robotech fighter was coming to a stop; he readied himself for a quick escape, not wishing to be in the neighborhood if a few tons of highly volatile jet fuel suddenly took a notion to catch fire. But the Robotech ship had one last surprise for him; the relatively smooth slide became a lurch as the plane snagged on some final obstruction. The fighter heaved, and Rick's helmeted head slammed into the instrument panel.

If he hadn't been wearing the flight helmet, it would have been the end. As it was, he saw stars and nearly lost consciousness.

But the Veritech was unhurt. With a creaking of girders and the racket of tons of rubble being moved, the machine began to extricate itself. The mechamorphosis to B mode was complete, and the fighter was now a Battloid.

It looked for all the world like a man in armor, a supertechnological knight sixty feet tall. The electric gatling gun that had been pod-mounted under the Veritech's belly was now aligned along its right arm, the giant right hand gripping it like an outlandish rifle.

The cockpit section was unrecognizable, now incorporated in the turretlike "helmet," the Battloid's head. Its visor swung this way and that, taking in the situation, seeing the explosions of the dogfight continuing high above.

The Battloid knew the enemy was there; it was ready to do what it had been designed to do. It awaited orders.

Rick shook his head groggily. "What d'ya know? I'm alive!" Then he saw that something was wrong with his perspective-that he was high above the street, that there were things about Robotech too astounding to believe. He saw the distant air engagement too.

Somehow Rick knew, deep down, that life was never going to be the way it had been fifteen minutes ago. Things had changed forever.