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I dedicate this book of R:TFC to all the fans that have been bugging me to finish typing this story for the last 12 years. I never thought I'd still be working on this story 19 years after I started writing it in my bunk at Fort Knox.


Wake me up in the middle of the night
Tell me what you've seen
Ivory clouds in a sea of blue
Fields of endless green
But we lie here and we search for stars
Or big red letters all the way from Mars
The sky is black and the moon is pale
And we cry for this world of ours

In the dark we still believe
In the dark we see

We dream in color
But we live in black and white
We dream in color
Like a rainbow in the night
We dream of peace - we dream of love
But still the dream is not enough....
- Starship, "We Dream in Color"

(Note: This Book covers events through episode 85 and beyond. This specific part covers the fanfic version of the events from "Midnight Sun" to "Hired Gun")

---

Part Sixteen: Final Approach



"I used to love snow when I was a kid. We'd get one of those big Montana snows, over a meter deep, with five meter deep drifts. Without any close neighbors, I spent the lonely winters turning those drifts into snow forts and igloos, connected by trenches and tunnels, hoping that before they melted, one of my adult cousins in the military would come to visit, and we'd spend the short winter day in snowball wars. But, as I approached my teen years, the visits dropped off - one of the cousins had fallen in the Malcontent Wars, and the other departing on the SDF-3, only to die over Tyrol in the battle that resulted on the ship's arrival there.
"But, after the events of late 2034, having to cross from the Pacific to the Great Plains over the mountains, I vowed to get as far away from snow as I could. Does this qualify?"
- Alex Tyler, interview given to Maria Bartley-Rand, 2058, at the Tyler Plantation on St. Croix.


"Damn, it's cold!" Alex muttered as he staggered into camp, dropping the deer he'd shot to the ground before he stepped into the ring around the fire. "It took me longer to make it back than to actually track the thing and kill it, and I really didn't FEEL the cold until I had to lug the carcass back."

"Lucky you - the thrill of the hunt kept your mind off it," Rand replied. "I felt it the entire time I was out checking my snares, and only got a few rabbits to show for it. Imagine how cold you would have felt if you'd walked back empty-handed."

"Uggh..."

"At least Scott managed not to burn the last part of our last kill; tastes pretty good, actually." That kill four days ago had been a feral sheep, several generations removed from its domesticated ancestors. Inexperience with cooking mutton had resulted in half the meals being only marginally edible. "So, our efforts will go toward breakfast in the morning. What should we have tomorrow, Annie? Bambi or Thumper?"

"Do you have to put it that way???"

Alex removed his blood-splattered poncho from over his cold weather gear, and sat down next to Noel, who opened her thermal blanket wider to let him in with her - she had similar attire on underneath the blanket, but she was using the blanket to channel in and hold the heat from the fire. Once he was seated, Rook passed him his plate of mutton, with some small potatoes from a garden long gone native after its owners fled California (or died there) in 2011.

"So, Scott;" Alex asked, "Figured out where we are yet?"

The lack of a functioning GPS system since 2029 made this much more an issue than the half-century before. All of the mecha had inertial mappers as standard equipment, but after traveling hundreds of kilometers from their last certain position (a marker on one of the pier bases of the long-gone Bay Bridge, between the craters that once were San Francisco and Oakland), with all the odd moves that mecha made switching modes and moving in those modes, the systems could not cope, and you could park the Factory Satellite in the space between the inertial readings of the three Alphas.

"Based on the different mecha readings, and the local terrain, I'd say we're within a few minutes one way or another of 39 North, 120 West. With all the snow, it's hard to be more accurate." He passed over an atlas of topographic maps of Nevada and California they'd recovered from the ruins of a pre-Zentraedi library.

"You're kidding, right?"

"Why would I be joking about it?"

"Donner Pass."

"So?"

"They probably don't teach United States History in space or South America, do they?" Alex asked rhetorically, then continued. "Let me enlighten you. About two centuries ago, the middle of the continent was still an untamed wilderness, with wagon trains crossing the unsettled Great Plains and Rockies bringing settlers to Oregon and California. One of these was the Donner Party. They attempted to take a 'short cut' going into the Rockies that ended up costing them most of their supplies, not to mention taking twice as much time as the normal path, due to conflict with hostile Indians - the reason why no one else used the 'short cut' in the first place. They finally found themselves in this pass, about this time of year, with conditions similar to this - a year where winter came much earlier than normal, with heavy snows. In no time, they were stuck in the snow, with no way to continue or retreat."

"What happened to them?" Rook asked.

"Already short on food, they tried to hunt to survive, but couldn't find enough food. Not only had most of the game been driven out of the hills by the unseasonable weather, most of their hunters had been killed or had left the group. They even threw the one person that could have led them to safety out of the party, and he beat them to California, while his family was still in the caravan. They eventually ate their animals, then resorted to eating their own dead to survive, before they were rescued. Even that was because the person they threw out was organizing searches for his family, and was ready to go to the rescue when a few survivors sent to find help staggered out of the mountains, with the location of the rest of the party. Another day, probably, and the 'Forlorn Hope', as the attempt to find rescue was called, would have probably died, and the party wouldn't have been found until the thaw uncovered their corpses in the spring."

"Oooh, gross!" Annie squealed. "Eating bunnies doesn't sound bad after that."

"Don't worry, Mint," Rand responded. "We can always fly out of here if we have to, though that means risking the Invid."

That was true enough, but they only had enough Protoculture on hand to power the Cyclones reliably, to the point that they'd had to leave all but one of the Alphas in California, with the plan to go back for them once they procured enough Protoculture to power them. California and Nevada never had any human-held Protoculture stores after Dolza's fleet destroyed all of California and the mecha test facilities at Nellis AFB in Nevada (ironically, the only Nevada target successfully hit). But, there was an Invid farm in Arizona that drew irrigation water from Lake Powell, and there had been ASC facilities in Utah that might still hold Protoculture. Getting to them would require getting into Nevada.

"Ohh..." Marlene moaned in pain, breaking up the frivolity; it wasn't the cold causing her to shudder. Noel, on the other hand, rarely had more than headaches from the Invid anymore, but she could confirm what they all dreaded.

"There goes the Invid alarm," Noel joked darkly, wincing from the pain as she and the other combatants threw off their blankets and pulled their H90s, not yet activating them in case the Invid were just passing close by from coincidence. A couple of minutes passed, nervously, before they dropped their guard, thinking the danger had passed. They had just sat back down, when the Invid let them know their assumption was wrong - the Invid transmissions had only gone silent while they got into their positions, and resumed when they got the attack order. A plasma blast barely missed them - a miss that would only be seen as intentional months later. It served its purpose, causing the freedom fighters to spread out, as they made a fighting retreat to the slope that led to the dense woods.

Alex and Noel were the furthest from the slope when the fighting retreat began, and were the last ones over the edge. It was a wild ride down, as there had been a partial melt and refreeze some time before they had chosen that campsite, and the hillside was covered with an ice sheet an inch or so below the fresh snow. Making it up the hill with the dead deer had been the hardest part of Alex's hunt from the lack of traction - but the same ice now made the trip down not unlike that of a bobsled pusher that fell off during the run, a slide with no real control over final speed or destination. They watched in horror as the new mecha with a human pilot flew right over Scott, as if to study him before the killing blow, before Lancer distracted the female pilot with a couple of near-useless pistol shots. Then, something sounding like a MAC II volley sounded from above them, followed by deep rumbling from the direction of their camp.

"Avalanche!!!" Scott yelled, having scrambled to his feet and into a run at the bottom of the slop - but Alex and Noel had nowhere to go, not yet to the bottom of the hill. They tried to stand and run as they hit level ground, but the mass of ice, snow and mecha was too close. The air pressure in front of the avalanche knocked them back off their feet, and everything went black.

Unable to come to their aid due to the pursuing Invid, the others could only hope that the Tylers weren't seriously hurt, or buried too deep to dig their way out. As it was, they were more concerned with their own survival to turn back and search for the couple in an area with no cover from the Invid, and no way to detect the location of the two avalanche victims.

***

Alex woke up to the sound of distant gunfire. He was lying on his back, deep in a snowdrift, looking up at the stars through a hole that was at least as deep as he was tall. He initially thought he was partially buried, but raising his head slightly allowed him to see that the weight on his chest was actually Noel, who was still unconscious.

"Noel, wake up," he said softly, putting his hand on her shoulder. As he tried to gently wake her, fearing collapse of the sides of the hole they were in, he wondered how they actually got in that hole. It was impossible that they could have been thrown from the avalanche into an undisturbed drift, and there weren't any drifts this size in the path of the avalanche. The only way they could have impacted like they did was from a fall - one from a considerable height, at that.

"What... happened?"

"I was hoping you could tell me."

"We were being overtaken by the avalanche, then I lost my footing. I grabbed you as I fell. That's the last I remember."

"My guess is that you've finally recovered enough to have instinctive use of your powers. Your self-preservation instincts kicked in, and teleported us clearof the avalanche, like back in Monument at the hospital."

"This was different; a blind teleport. We could have ended up in a tree, or inside solid rock, or worse." The prospect of accidentally teleporting INTO a solid object had always scared noel, though Karen seemed to have little fear of such an accident. "As it we must have fell quite far before we hit snow; we would have been seriously hurt, even killed, if we'd hit anything on the way down."

"But we didn't. I personally think that's a sign that it wasn't as undirected as you think. The important thing is that your powers are coming back. It's a good sign, of your healing."

"Is it? Sometimes I wish I had never had any powers. All they have done is caused me trouble and pain."

"You know that's not true. Both Zor and Rolf are alive now only because you had the power to save them, and the willingness to risk yourself to save them."

"A lot of that was Karen's doing-"

"Saving me in the ruins of Monument, wasn't. Your saving me resulted from a simple flash of precognition, and you risked yourself without any physical power use to knock me off my bike before it was hit by the bioroid's weapon fire."

"You... you are right, of course. I may not have asked for this, but I have these powers, and they are my responsibility. It just seems too much responsibility to bear, some times."

"Remember; I'm here - you never have to bear the burden alone, with me at your side." Alex then tried to change the subject. "The sounds from above are getting more distant; we need to get out of here and help them. Besides, we need to get out of here while we can still move. My other arm's almost numb from your weight on it."

"Oops - sorry about that."

***

After ten minutes of digging, they had compacted enough snow on one side of the hole to attempt to crawl out of the drift on their stomachs. Eventually, they reached snow with a hard enough crust (though under another foot of fresh snow) to allow them to stand, as loud crashing sounds came from the deep gorge cut by a nearby stream. By the time they reached the avalanche field, the others were beginning to filter in from the opposite direction.

"Where'd the Invid go?" Alex asked.

"Home, I hope," Scott replied, wearily. "We destroyed a few, but the big one fell over the cliff into the river, and I doubt that fall would be any more fatal than one of the Veritechs fell, but it was having trouble dealing with the water - the river's still flooded from the partial melt before yesterday's storm. I'm sure we'll see her again. Lancer says it's the same woman he encountered on the island, so apparently we're getting some special attention. We managed to pull the protoculture cylinders from the two we dropped in the woods."

"You lured them into that old Forest Squad training camp?"

"Rand did. He even repaired the the anti-mecha traps on the fly, and got a kill with them. Whoever designed those traps was a lunatic; a very skilled lunatic, but crazy nonetheless. Rand said it was like watching one of those old cartoons with the coyote. Anyway, if the scout caught in the avalanche is dead, and still there, if its power cell is intact we'll have three relatively fresh cells, and that will be enough to fly us out of here, even with having to carry the jeep."

"Then, let's dig out the hovertank and get the other stuff ready to move. This place has a history of tragedy from October storms, and I don't feel like sticking around to add to it."




Nun 1: "Such a lovely name, Reno..."
Nun 2: "...AND GOMORRAH!!!!"
- Sister Act

Three days later, they pulled into the ruins of Reno, having put off the retrieval of the other Alphas until they could get into a relatively secure position. Reno had been abandoned since shortly after the Zentraedi assault, not from direct damage but from its infrastructure being insufficient to handle the influx of refugees from California. By the time it and the other cities of Nevada had been evacuated, they had taken much more damage than most other cities that had been spared by the orbital bombardment in more habitable areas. Reno and Las Vegas, despite the looting, still stood as ghost towns, testaments to the excesses of pre-Zentraedi Earth.

But, the ghost town would provide a temporary respite from war, even if it wouldn't provide weapons, food or other supplies. Scott and Lancer would fly the Beta back to California and bring back the other Alphas, while the others explored the abandoned casinos and hotels, still imposing even though small in comparison to Las Vegas. Vegas, while more likely to hold leftover supplies, was also well within the boundaries of the Invid reservation that used Lake Powell to irrigate vast Flower farms, and was bounded on the other side by a radioactive hole where the old US/UEDC mecha testing facilities once were, at a military base once rumored to be the site of UFO research. They set up their camp at a resort and casino made to look like an oversized mansion on the outside, with an oil derrick out front and, strangely, interior decorations from a stereotyped version of century-old southern Appalachia hill culture. It was weird, but it would do.

***

"Lunk, how's the generator coming?" Alex asked, sticking his head through the fire door into the hotel's engineering section.

"I'm about ready to jump-start the pony engine."

"Pony engine?"

"The generators are diesels, like what was used on locomotives; you have to have major battery power to crank one over, or a pony engine to get them turning over before turning them on. These batteries are totally flat after 20 years, but I'm hoping I can charge them up enough with the pony, so that the pony doesn't have to do all the work when I finally try starting the mains. The fun part has been adjusting the diesel injectors to burn protoculture bio-diesel. This stuff makes the old petroleum products seem about as flammable as water, and it's hard to get the injectors tuned to run THAT lean." Lunk attached the jumper cables from his truck, and stepped back from the small, formerly-gasoline-powered, pony. "Okay, Annie, start her up!"

Annie hit the start button; the pony sputtered a bit, but failed to catch. Lunk adjusted the choke of the old-fashioned pony engine, then motioned for her to try again. This time, the engine ran raggedly for a few seconds before dying. He made a few more adjustments, and had her start it again. It ran rough initially, then Lunk took his wrench and whacked a large protrusion. Immediately, the engine began running smoothly.

"The fuel filter clogged; it didn't know what to do with the particulate matter. It should be okay long enough to get the diesels started later."

"So you cleared it using maintenance rule #1-"

"Yeah - 'When in doubt, hit it with your wrench.' You need to go isolate the circuits you want to power before I start the diesel. I can run a generator on low output for a day or two, with my fuel supply for the truck, and the backup batteries will be charged enough for a day or two more if you just power the staff block after tonight."

"Where's the breakers?"

"It's actually a computer-controlled system - it will let you isolate areas more precisely than a normal breaker system, though you will have to turn on the physical main breakers before you can power anything. What all are you going to power tonight?"

"The small private kitchen and attached dinner theater, one of the private gaming rooms, the water treatment plant, and of course the staff block and its laundry area. And, the climate controls for the areas above."

"You don't want much, do you?" Lunk smiled. "Actually, the generator will still probably be putting out more power than the emergency batteries can take up, with all those areas powered and the generator running on minimum. We should just count ourselves lucky those generators are too big to move. Most of the furniture and half the casino equipment appear to have been sold by the casino owner prior to the Masters; he isolated the staff block for overnight use by his people whenever he came back after the evacuation to load a few truckloads of furniture to sell in Monument, but he typically brought his own generator in for powering it instead of hauling in fuel for this monster and maintaining it. I'm surprised, though, that you and Scott want me to do this - we could have stayed here without power, no problem. After all, for most of us, having utilities has been the exception rather than the rule for the last few years."

"After our close call in Donner Pass, we felt we all needed a bit of down time to unwind - not to mention let the Invid calm down a bit. A week should be sufficient, the last half of which we'll be without power anyway, unless you use some of the expended cells from the alphas to cook us up some more bio-diesel for the generator. Besides, it will let us do some badly needed maintenance on our vehicles inside the loading docks, where we're out of the elements and out of view of the Invid. Tonight's extravagance is a bit nostalgic - a hint of what it was once like to be here, before the Zentraedi wrecked it all."

***

Scott and Lancer returned that afternoon, by which time Lunk had the generator going, and Alex and Noel had dinner cooking in the kitchen. One of the reasons for the big meal was that most of their stores, from the venison to the vegetables found growing wild in California, wouldn't last long once they actually started crossing the desert. Everything not eaten in the next few days would be dried in the oven, as long as the power was available for the kitchens.

In addition, the town would be scrounged for wild-growing food plants, and wild game taken, over the next week, for food to sustain them on the trip to Utah, where farmland had been rehabilitated and producing food within a few years after the Zentraedi bombardment, and as a result it was the best place to find food for the rest of the trip. There were also rumors, that had even reached South America, of a weapons dealer somewhere in Utah. Their recent ammunition expenditures meant that the they had to chase down those rumors, whether they liked it or not.

Noel was content to watch the food during the final stage of cooking, so Alex and Lancer took the opportunity to introduce the others to the games of craps, poker, and roulette - besides, knowing what they did of Noel's past, they didn't want to take the chance she'd instinctively manipulate the variables, or pick up on mental cues. Dinner was done about the time the poker table was down to heads-up play between Lancer and Rook. They broke for their meal, resuming their match while Alex and Noel warmed up the stage equipment, and Rand (as the first person out at the table) cleared the tables and washed the dishes. About a half-hour later, Alex had the sound boards and recording equipment set, and Lancer was back, having finally beaten Rook at the poker table. Rand brought in some wine that had been left in the vault, and everyone sat down for some musical entertainment.

Noel started off the concert with a tongue-in-cheek version of "Stagefright", followed by an equally playful version of "My Boyfriend's a Pilot". Alex was met by some good-natured ribbing and cat-calls from the others after the latter, as he went on stage with a case with several types of saxophone that had been left in storage (his own personal instrument being in Africa). Noel then covered several older songs from the 80s and 90s, from Tina Turner standards to some of the Kenny G pieces that accompanied a singer. Alex then left the stage again, and Noel moved to an electric piano (programmed to emulate a real one - the real piano was too badly out of tune after 20 years to attempt to play), and played and sang some of the songs she'd written with Bowie, as well as the folk song about her aunt Tinya's doomed affair with Leonard's godson, that had been banned as subversive in the 2020s but she and Bowie had performed it regularly to thumb their noses at the censorship (after all, who would dare arrest two of Emerson's wards, one his godson, for singing a prohibited song?).

Lancer had joined her on stage to do the male part of "The Ballad of McCloud & Tinya", and switched from his male singing voice to his female voice, as the two did the song "Together", from the Hunter wedding. Noel then stepped down from the stage, and Alex synched up Lancer's DVD-R of backup music files to the recording controls. Amazingly, each song had separate tracks for each instrument, in standard digital format for use on a mixing and recording board, in addition to simple CD tracks of the combined instruments. Lancer then went through his music catalogue not once, but twice - once as "Yellow", the other in his rarely used male singing voice. Even with identical background music, the voices showed very different styles. After his male voice cover of "We Will Win" (a song not on his female song list) finished the second set, Alex went on stage to do an interview with the singer, to also be put on the recording he was making.

"That was an amazing cover, Lancer. How come I've never heard you perform it in your concerts before?"

"Alex, there's two reasons. One is that all my concerts are typically done as Yellow, and it would be hard to pass off a single song done in my natural male voice without risking my cover. The second reason is a bit more obvious, in that's it is a pretty dangerous song to perform, as it's considered a song of the resistance movement, and is banned by the Invid. When we were in South America, and I was actively working with the resistance, I couldn't risk it, as I needed Yellow to retain the ability to move free. Now that we're here and North America, and we have what appears to be an Invid group following us up from there, such subterfuge is probably not necessary anymore. If I perform as Yellow, now, they couldn't help but figure out the connection between Yellow and me."

"That was a pretty moving cover, too. It sounds like you put a lot of your emotion in it."

"Every time I perform that song, I put everything I have in it; it's one of the reasons why, when I do sing it, it's near the end of the set. Minmei probably put everything she had into it, in the battle. She could never match that level of emotion in a studio, or on stage later; that's why all the album versions are just remixed edits of her battle performance. On the other hand, my emotions on this war are fresh, and ongoing."

"So they are for all of us. I was curious; where did you get that disc of your backup music? Normally you perform with live musicians."

"Originally, it was the background tracks for my album that I recorded a few months after adopting the Yellow persona, which resulted from my being shot down by the Invid during the April Fool's Massacre. When the Invid began shutting down transportation that fall, in response to the increase of freedom fighter activity, I knew I had to take the Yellow show on the road, and would have to do it without my band, which was splitting apart as far as possible, after too close a call on a raid. So, I went into the studio the night before we were to leave, and backed up all the instrumental tracks from the masters, and mixed what amounted to karaoke tracks, and saved them to a DVD. As long as I had access to a DVD player, I could make small performances, and the individual instrument tracks would allow me to put on a concert at any location with professional equipment. After sticking Carla on the last train out, and jumping off, I went back and got my jeep, which I'd already loaded with my wardrobe and portable sound system. The sound system died about a month before I met Scott and the others, but by that time my album and concerts had gotten so much publicity, that people were actually learning the music to try to entice me to perform, as they could provide live backup musicians. Over those three years, I used those concerts to piece together a resistance group that was equally adept at music and guerilla warfare. I last performed with them shortly before we met you and Noel; we raided a collaborator town that acted as a central processing and distribution point for cells and bio-diesel produced by the Invid for their lackeys. The concert was recorded, but I don't know if the recording survived. Heck, we had to stash their share of the take and run, before the band made it out of town, so I don't even know if they made it out alive. I'm glad to finally make a live album that isn't a bootleg being distributed of a concert somewhere, like those CDs Rand has."

After a few more questions, the interview ended.

"Alex, I know we're making a copy for each of us, plus some for dropping off in freedom fighter caches; shouldn't the rest of you add your own notes to the recording? It's not like there isn't enough space, and if something happens to all of us..."

"I hope it doesn't come to that; but, who knows what the future holds?"

"Okay, everyone. Come up on stage. We're each going to leave our own notes on the recording as well."

"What kind of notes?" Rook asked.

"Whatever you want. Messages to be passed back home, shout-outs to those we've met along the way; anything you want to get off your chest."

"Hmm... tough call. Scott, you lead off while I think on it."

"Uh... I guess. Alex, how do I start the recording?"

"I've got the on/off switch over here, where I was using it for the interview. Just signal me to start and stop, as you need to."



"My name is Scott Bernard. I am a Lieutenant Commander in the Robotech Expeditionary Forces, 21st Squadron, Mars Division. After making landfall in Argentina, I assembled this resistance group in the march north to Reflex Point. The rest of my original squadron died in the attempt to make landfall on Earth, and in case I fail to make contact with the REF, I would like to say that my squadron fought well, and... and died bravely. No one is to blame for the destruction of Mars Division; at least, no human commander. We were simply outnumbered too badly from the outset, and even if we'd inflicted one hundred to one losses on the Invid that rose to meet us, they would still have won from superior numbers."

***

"I'm Lieutenant Alex Tyler, of REF Vulcan Division, Special Mecha Operations Squadron. I have been serving with Commander Bernard ever since my wife and I crashed as a result of an unconventional Invid attack that affected her while we were on a reconnaissance flight over South America. Over the last few months, we have determined that the Invid have developed a special interest in our group, possibly because of my wife and a civilian in our group being affected by the attack I mentioned, which appears to have been telepathic in nature. As a medical doctor in addition to my military training, I've had the two under my care. In fact, a specific group of Invid, led by what appears to be two human collaborators, has been following us ever since the attack, having tracked us all the way from the south to the north.
"My wife and I both served with the 15th ATAC, Armies of the Southern Cross, prior to being retrained by the REF in the year before the Invid arrival. I ask that, if we do not survive to do so ourselves, someone forward a copy of this recording to the other survivors of the 15th."

***

"My name is Noel Karen Freeman Tyler. Alex is my husband, and my uncle, Colonel Scott Freeman, is the commander of Vulcan Division. My parents and sister also serve in Vulcan Division as well. My music makes up the first half of the concert recording, a mix of classic covers and songs written by myself and Bowie Grant, my former foster brother and teammate in the 15th ATAC. Bowie left Earth prior to the Invid invasion, to lead his wife's people back to Tyrol.
"I found out during my Southern Cross service that my childhood was something much more bizarre than one could imagine. I was told I was adopted, yet I appeared to be half-Zentraedi - even more so than my foster sister, Dana Sterling. In reality, my parents, a human and a Zentraedi, had a daughter - in 2016, not 2013. That daughter showed intelligence much greater than a newborn, and an accelerated growth rate, and was indistinguishable from a five year old within five months, including walking and talking. Then, that child was kidnaped by a mad scientist, and was missing for a month. I was returned at that point to my parents, everyone believing that I was that daughter. In a way, I was - In the time Karen was missing, she underwent another abnormal aging period, and ended up growing to adult size. To hide that this had happened, she made a clone of herself - me - to return to her parents, and then joined the RDF under a false identity to guard Dana and me.
"It is hard to live up to a legend; Karen is my sister; my creator. She had a short musical career as 'Karen Ellison' - a career that should have been our mother's, had not bigots blackballed her from the industry after Project Songbird was canceled. Karen has shared the stage with Minmei, at the Hunters' wedding, to provide moral support and backup for Minmei, in case emotions overtook her friend. She went with the REF, where she revealed her true nature and powers to the REF forces loyal to the Hunters. She would later kill the traitorous clone of T.R. Edwards, to save the Hunters. Her mutant powers; how do I begin? Karen has all the powers that Zor theorized were possible through Protoculture manipulation. I, too, have these powers, but mine were a pale shadow of hers, even before they were disrupted by the Invid attack. Perhaps the powers were why I was attacked the way I was.
"If I do not survive this war, please send a copy of this disc to Karen Freeman, my sister, in Vulcan Division. I hope that if the worst comes to past, that I can face death with the same fearlessness she did on multiple occasions, but lived to tell the tale."

***

"My name is Lance Belmont. I got the nickname "Lancer" from my middle initial being 'R'. I was originally a Lieutenant in the Manhattan Wing of the Civil Defense Flying Corps of the Southern Cross, before being seconded to the GMP for a mission in New Tokyo in 2027, to make use of my musical talents to support a planetary security project. That project was compromised by advance agents of the Masters, almost two years before the official beginning of the Masters' War, and I spent most of the time prior to that war mired in the investigation of what went wrong. I ended up serving as a local defense pilot for Tokyo for the duration of the war, as I was considered potentially tainted, and barred from transfer to the TASC. On the side, I made a name for myself on the Tokyo theater scene, playing females in such plays as a pop musical remake of Madame Butterfly.
"When the Masters were defeated, I jumped at the chance to return to the west, and was retrained to REF special forces specs by the training cadre of Vulcan Division, which at the time was located in Brazil. From there I was sent to help train the Manhattan forces for the expected invasion, and to resume my theatrical career. It was ironic, then, when between training cycles, my performance company was on a tour of South America when the Invid arrived, and I was stuck in a fighter when I reported to the nearest base, to clear the way for the counter-attack from space. The counter-attack ended up aborted, thanks to the idiots in Mexico, and I was shot down. It was when I was rescued by a young woman, and we made me up to look like a woman - something I had plenty of experience with on stage. From that subterfuge, Yellow Dancer was born. The details after that point are discussed in the interview elsewhere on the disc. My message is to all of Yellow's fans - never give up your dreams."

***

"My name is Jim Cooper, though no one has called me that in years. Usually, I go by 'Lunk', and I went by a couple other alias over the last few years. I was originally a Technical Sergeant in the Brasilia Defense Forces, and was certified as a Bio-Maintenance Engineer by the REF in my retraining after the Masters were destroyed. That's a Veritech Mechanic, for those of you non-military types. The unit my company was supported was destroyed by the Invid, and we ended up fighting for our lives, with practically no weaponry. Eventually, I was the only one left, having run from a certain-death situation, and feeling guilty for not being able to save my best friend. I went into hiding, feeling I had deserted my post, when in reality there had been nothing left to desert. It took Commander Bernard to shake me out of my survivor guilt. Thank you, Scott, for being a friend. My message is to let everyone back home know I made it North, and kicked serious butt on the way. I'm not acting like a coward anymore."

***

"Uh...m... My name is Rook Bartley. I'm originally from Cavern City, but left there after a misunderstanding with the locals - Rand, don't you DARE roll your eyes at me!" (Crashing sound from thrown chair) "Anyways, my mother and sister still live there, and I just want them to know that I do love them, no matter how.... stubborn I might be, and I'll be back home as soon as I can."

***

"My name's Rand. I hope to be a writer after the war is over. I've been keeping notes as we've been traveling, so if I don't make it - though I'm sure I will - try to track me down and recover my journals. Too much knowledge has already been lost in the last twenty-five years."

***

"I'm Annie Labelle. I'm four-seven, and totally gorgeous. So, if you're looking for love on the road to Reflex Point, look me up."

***

"I-I don't know what my real name is, but I've gone by 'Marlene' ever since the others found me in the ruins of Point Kilo. By some chance you know who I am, I hope you can find me and help me remember."

***

"That's all of us," Alex said, in conclusion. "Five military, two freedom fighters, a teenager from hell and an amnesiac. Wish us luck; we need it. This was recorded 24 September, 2034, in the ruins of Reno, Nevada. May we all find what we seek, in the journey ahead."




"It is often thought that Tandler's Icarus Test Group came back with Carpenter's Task Force Mercury. If one looks at the actual equipment assigned to the two commands, though, their separate origins become obvious.

"Mercury had a few Legios, but mostly had to make do with Vulture colony defense space fighters, and a light super-dimensional cruiser, that was originally built as an escort for the SDF-2, but ended up as one of the vessels blazing a trail for the SDF-3's mission, and looking for potential colony sites, after several smaller fold-capable craft were lost without a trace (intelligence recovered from the clones rescued by the 15th ATAC would later implicate advance forces of the Robotech Masters in the destruction of those scouts, when they were debriefed in 2032). After finishing a almost a decade of scouting, it returned to Earth, stayed in orbit during the SDF-3 departure, and for a few months after, until the Tristar completed trials, then followed the SDF-3 in its fold to Tyrol - making the very same fold miscalculations as the larger ship. Once there, it started to undergo a refit to better fight the Masters and Invid (since samples of both technologies were scattered all over the city of Tiresia). It was during this refit that the ship was 'liberated' by its former XO on the behest of Dr. Lang and the Hunters, to warn Earth of the duplicity of the Council, which was being manipulated by the Edwards Conspiracy.

"On the other hand, Icarus Test Group was a crew of only four men, of age where they could have retired (had they not been stuck light-years from the nearest Earth colony, let alone Earth itself), and was launched several years after Carpenter's mission to Earth, and several months after the last colonial attempts to break the Masters' blockade of Earth. The ship was a highly automated variant of the Garfish Super-dimensional escort and supply ship, able to be flown (but not taken into space combat) by four men. Its fold drive was a prototype, that was meant to try to correct the problems with those of the SDF-3 and later ships (like Carpenter's after refit, or those used by Venus & Mars Divisions, which were either already underway, or built and being loaded). It was also heavily loaded with enough infantry weapons of REF colonial tech vintage to arm a Tactical Corps battalion, and the plans for manufacturing more. It was hoped that the R.S.S. Mars Base Sara would be able to run any existing Masters blockade, or evade and make for the Moon or Mars. But, it was not to be.

"The Sara was laid low by its emergence from foldspace, in what had been a zone cleared of Zentraedi debris by the RDF and ASC. However, at the time of arrival, the area was littered with the debris from the final battle of the Masters' War, and a debris hit to the power plant sent surges into the system that damaged the comm and navigation systems, and the ship took even more damage in its reentry and landing."
- Zeus Bellow, The Road to Reflex Point


It was the middle of October when they finally reached the old Utah border. Invid patrols had been heavier than they expected in such a barren waste, and it had proved difficult just to get close enough to the farms south of Las Vegas to even attempt to steal the Protoculture for the next leg of their trip. The actual theft and escape delayed their departure until 1 October, and even that was under threat from increased patrols. Even the departure from Reno was painfully slow, with only about thirty kilometers traveled per day, from the stops to dodge the Invid and the low speed traveled to keep from kicking up dust that would give their position away. Then there were the famous Bonneville Salt Flats that events forced them to detour onto, but there were numerous wet spots this time of year. The group spent a nervous night on the 12th of October in the middle of the ancient lake bed, frantically digging the truck out of axle-deep mud without much help from the mecha, as they had no place to stand, and were not even able to attempt hovering in guardian mode to attempt the rescue, from the awkward flight angle that would have been required.

After the salt flats, they turned south, looking for the fertile valley that was to the south of the Great Salt Lake. However, all they found was more desert - the last days of the Masters, and the Invid, had both taken their toll on the irrigation systems. They found a well-used (though currently empty) oasis used by the roving merchants that had become ubiquitous on Invid-occupied Earth, and set up camp. Scott and Rand went ahead into the next town on their Cyclones, with Annie tagging along, to see if they could find any information on the weapons traders they'd heard about, called "The Hole in the Wall". Lancer was going to take Lunk's truck out to scout for what was causing all the Invid activity, using Marlene as a form of divining rod.

"I don't like it," Alex said, as Lancer and Marlene prepared to leave camp. "Scott's not here to okay it."

"It has to be done," Lancer countered.

"But, just you and Marlene? That's a pretty big risk."

"Wait a minute," Noel interrupted. "Why don't Alex and I join you? Two of us trying to sense the Invid are better than one, and it doesn't debilitate me as much as it does her - though that's what makes her better for the job. All either of us would be here is in the way, and we really need to have Alex with us if it gets too bad."

"She's got good points, Alex. You gonna join us?"

"Might as well. Scott won't be as mad if we both go."

An hour's travel had produced no appreciable result, until they were stopped by two men on horseback.

"One false move and I'll make a lead mine of your innards!" one of them called out.

"What are you folks doin' out here in the middle of nowhere?" the other asked.

"We were out just driving around, and got lost," Lancer replied, dropping into a more local accent.

"Yeah?" the first one responded, looking at Marlene and Noel. "Appears to me you boys had a bit more on your minds than the road."

"If'n you must know," Lancer ad-libbed, "we're on our honeymoons. We were livin' down in New Mexico when the last war ended, and now that we gots family, we're tryin' to make it up to Montana, where Alex has some land he inherited from his pa."

"Well, no wonder yer all distracted - I would be too! Those are the best-lookin' ladies I've seen since we got back!"

"Hush, Jesse!" the other snapped. "You folks might not know it, but you've really picked a bad time of the year to be on the road north. The weather's a lot worse, north of the desert, and there's outlaw groups all over the place. You're lucky to still have those wheels, and there aren't any gas stations this far north, since Moument was destroyed; you need a still if you're gonna make it out of Utah. Even worse, there's an Invid outpost up by the lake."

"Lake? The Salt Lake?"

"Yeah, up outside the ruins of the city. It's about the only area in the state like it was before the Zentraedi, but if you go in there now, you don't come back out."

"Woo-wee - I'm glad you warned us about that."

"Well, seein' how you folks are real nice people, we'll take ya where you can get the gear you'll need to make it the rest of the way north and survive. Just follow us." The two horsemen wheeled about, and started down a long-abandoned road.

"Well, what do you think?" Alex asked Lancer.

"I think we've found the way to The Hole in the Wall."

********

The two men led them to one of the crater cities common in the post-Zentraedi era - or at least the remains of one. To Lancer, it looked much like a roofless version of Rook's home town, Cavern City, right down to the entry tunnel. Unlike that hidden town in the south, this one had a weather-worn sign proclaiming it to be "New Provo", with a blue & gold jumpsuited cartoon character on it that looked like it stepped out of the mid-20th century - except that it was holding a GU-11 in a classic VF-1 pose. On entering the first crater of the complex, it was obvious that, while damaged by the Masters, it was Mother Nature that had finished off the town. Most of the crater was flooded, a waterfall cascading over the far side, where an irrigation aqueduct had broken its confines, and now poured into the city. Most of the connecting tunnels visible were partially or completely underwater.

One tunnel was still open, but it appeared to have been hastily carved after the fact, after the original entrance further down had become flooded. From this, it became apparent where the "Hole in the Wall" name came from. As they drove the short distance through the wall, an impressive sight took shape. Filling most of the crater was a spaceship; almost unrecognizable from the rubble. It was a Garfish-class colonial escort, its name "Mars Base Sara" partially covered by hull patches, to where it more resembled an actual Mars Base emblem that was applied to the more recent, nameless, fleet vessels. However, it was obvious from some of the anomalous protrusions that this was one of the fold-equipped Garfish, not the fold-less Guppy-class SDB. As such, it was an anomaly. It had been there too long to have been from Mars Division, and those were supposed to have been the first Garfish to arrive in the Solar System.

"She's old and rusty, just like her crew," Jesse commented, noticing their stares as he dismounted.

"Whose fleet was she with?" Alex asked. "Carpenter? Wolfe?"

"Neither. How much do you know about the REF?" Frank, the other rider, asked.

"A bit. Most of Noel's family left on the SDF-3. Maybe you know of the Freemans, of Skull Squadron?"

"You're Shannon's little girl?"

"Yes, sir," Noel answered, wondering why Alex was giving away part of their real identity.

"Your parents are two of the best pilots I've ever seen. When we left Tyrol, they were attacking Optera. It must have not gone well, because the Invid are here."

"No, they won," she replied, without thinking, getting glares from Lancer and Alex as a result.

"How do you know?"

"Some of our friends down south are from Mars Division, the group that came after Carpenter and Wolfe. "Lancer saved, quickly. "They survived that slaughter in orbit that killed most of their units. They told us about that crazy clone that turned against the REF. He took control of the Regent's Invid, after Breetai killed the Regent, but that guy was killed. However, the Invid Regis had been missing almost two years by that time - because she was on her way here, and had written off her husband as a loss even before then." Lancer paused, when he saw an older gentleman (but much younger than the ancient horsemen) in a Mars Division uniform. "Who's that?"

"Don't rightly know. We found him six months ago, wandering from an escape pod, but he's not said a word all that time. We just call him Gabby, because he ain't," Jesse volunteered.

"Come on in to the ship, so we can show you what we have to trade," Frank said.

Entry into the ship was through a personnel airlock normally only used with a space umbilical, as if the Garfish had been sitting on its landing gear on level ground, the hatch would be about 50 feet in the air. In the cargo area, a spread of all types of weapons were laid out on several tables and stacked crates. Rocket launchers, limpet mines, and several generations of modular rifle systems, energy and projectile.

"Nice stuff," Lancer commented.

"Gen-u-ine army issue," Jesse replied.

"How did you end up with all this gear? Surely there was more than two of you flying this ship."

Frank answered this time. "Well, Dr. Lang, the civilian leader of the SDF-3 mission, is the greatest mind Earth has produced in modern times; a modern da Vinci. Back in '28, he created a new fold drive; told us it would take two years to get back, give or take. 'Course, at that time, most people on the mission thought it was 2024, thanks to the 4 years that the first fold missed,but Lang had found out otherwise, and realized time was running out. Two years would be better than four, and there indications in messages that finally got through from the Southern Cross that the Robotech Masters might have already reached here. So, he decided to combine a test of the new fold system with a shipment of as much infantry weaponry as he could cram in her. He recruited a bunch of us old coots that were too old for combat to fly her back."

"Is that why you're not fighting the Invid?"

"We've had our fill of fighting! Me, Jesse, Shorty, and Roy were all part of the SDF-1 crew in 2009; hell, we served with Admiral Nicholas Hayes back during the Global War, and he'd originally got us assigned to the SDF-1 to look after his daughter - without her knowing, of course. Lang got us in with the Hunters' group to aid those aliens, for the same purpose, and we were with them all the way through that campaign, until that traitor tried to take over the REF. We'd all been in uniform over 30 years by the time Lang pulled us in for the flight here, as the Hunters headed to Optera. We weren't expected to fight, and Lang put in a bunch of automated flight systems so that only four of us were needed. But, when we got here, the Southern Cross was gone, and the Masters dead; couldn't have been more than a week before. Worse, there was so much junk in orbit where we came out, that we barely survived to get to ground. The entire cargo area got vented, and we about lost our engines on the way in. It's a miracle we landed."

"So, you set up shop," Noel mused.

"Yep. The city had lost most of its defenses fighting those Tyrolean clones, and had actually played dead after the war ended, out of fear it would be overwhelmed by refugees from Monument and New Denver."

Alex quietly bit his tongue, wondering if Noel would hold back as well. She had suffered for WEEKS because there hadn't been a place for Alex and the others to take her in North America, as the eastern city-states had closed their borders out of fear of their own neighbors. They had passed a few hundred miles from this city, that by all indications from its now-flooded ruins would have easily have been able to handle their small caravan when intact, and had the medical facilities to treat his patients - especially Noel and Zor Prime. He couldn't blame these old soldiers for what their hosts had done, but it still made him rage inside about how much was lost because of it.

"For some reason, all their non-battery Protoculture had turned to Invid flowers - at least were able to explain that much to them. This crater had been their old military base, and had been the only area of the town destroyed in the attack. It was also the only place we had to land. They weren't too thrilled to see us, but we came to an agreement where we gave them about half our cargo for claim to the crater. We traded some more for the camouflage work you saw outside, and the new entrance was being dug when the Invid arrived. The Invid missed us, but most of the town was dead. The survivors took off; afraid the Invid would find out about the ship and hit us again. We think they ended up in some of the shanty towns a few hours ride away. Occasionally, some of those that left will send customers to us to trade food; we've got everything else we need."

"How bad are the engines? Anything messed up other than the hull?"

"The roof leaks, most of the power system was fried by a power surge, and while we could get the dang thing flying at a snail's pace, we couldn't reach space and we'd be sitting ducks for the Invid. You sure ask a lot of questions..."

"Well, Noel's not heard directly from her family in ages; I was kinda hoping..."

"The communications are shot to hell - we can still receive some, but not transmit. That's the bad thing - the fold system worked like a charm, but we never got the chance to tell Doc Lang about it."

"YAHOO!!!!" Someone yelled from outside.

Frank took a peek outside. "Well, I'll be..."

"I wonder where they stole those?" Jesse added.

Lancer and Marlene went to look at what all the commotion was about, while the Tylers continued to examine the weapons.

"You know, I kinda expected something like this." Alex whispered to Noel.

"Like what?"

" 'Hole in the Wall'... That was the name of a gang hideout in the Old West, including Butch Cassidy and Sundance's Wild Bunch. It was a neutral ground shared by several gangs at once, and was never penetrated by the law until all the gangs were gone. With names like Frank and Jesse, and having served together so long, they probably got referred to as the" James Gang" long ago, and decided to keep up the Wild West theme here. I doubt they get much business, so they've probably supplemented their diet by rustling and banditry."

"Uh, Alex..." Lancer half-whispered as he ducked back inside. "I think we've got a problem. Come take a look at what the rest of their crew 'rustled up'."

"What is it - Uh-oh...." There in the small quasi-courtyard defined by the crater wall, were the other two members of the crew of the Sara, sitting on Scott and Rand's Cyclones. "Now, just HOW did they get those???"

"Apparently, Scott's bull-headedness got them locked up by the sheriff in Eureka, and while they and the sheriff were preoccupied with each other, those two 'liberated' the Cyclones. I think it's a good idea that we let this play out for a while, at least till we can get done here, then go after them. You know, given that WE'RE the ones trained for that kind of mission, you'd think Scott would let us do it, but that would be too logical..."

"What, and have them come here? They'd probably gotten themselves shot when Frank and Jesse held them up for the case of rations in the back of the jeep."

"Point taken."

"If you're done looking at the show outside, tell our hosts to come on in for dinner. Gabby's made dinner for all of us."

******

The stew was delicious, if a bit meat-heavy, and they were starting to unwind a bit, the old-timers playing a game that looked like a cross between rummy, poker and Fizbin. Gabby was still playing the gracious, though silent, host for most of it, before he went into the next compartment over and started warming up a communications unit.

"Didn't you say your communications were out?" Lancer asked.

"Yeah, that thing won't transmit. It will still receive, but not all that well; that's about it. It got hit by a power surge when the main power plant got clobbered by a piece of space debris. We still occasionally get messages from the Expeditionary Force, but we usually just ignore them - not like they're our business anymore."

"Gabby keeps turning it on like he's expectin' to hear from somebody," Jesse added, laughing.

"Who knows?" Shorty added. "Like Frank said, we don't listen to them, and if Gabby's seeing anything important, he's not sharing."

"Uhhnnn..." Marlene moaned, as Noel suddenly felt a migraine coming on.

"What is it, Marlene?" Lancer asked. "Are you hearing the Invid broadcasts again?"

"WHAAATTTT!?!?!?" the four old-timers shouted in unison.

"Calm down, boys, before you have a stroke!" Alex interjected. "I may be a doctor, but I'd rather not have any new patients. Back in the south, where we hail from, the Invid did something that nearly killed these two girls. All it does is give Noel headaches anymore, but it's so bad for Marlene that it's caused her to pass out if Invid get too close."

"What could do that?"

"We think it must have been some sort of mind attack. Marlene was closer to it than Noel, so she was hit harder. I guess it's time we be honest with you. We're not newlyweds. Noel is my wife, and she's who she says she is, but we've been married three years. Lancer and Marlene are just friends, though. Matter of fact, those two combat bikes belong to our fearless leader and our scout. Speaking of the team leader, you probably remember him from your last days on Tyrol - he's Dr. Lang's godson, that teenager that tried to tackle the Edwards clone in the courtroom during that joke of a trial. Our group was needing to resupply after we spent most of our ammo fighting the Invid constantly coming up from South America. We're trying to get to Reflex Point by spring."

"Why the hell do you want to go there?" Roy asked.

"Well, Noel and I were survivors from Monument; our unit linked up with a special REF unit that got here a few weeks after you did. Right before you left, the Korra'ti folded from Earth to Tyrol, you might remember. After the final battle at Optera, they gave Noel's uncle Scott Freeman his own command, and sent that command here to Earth on the Korra'ti. It's fold engines acted funny, as usual, and got them here in a lot shorter time than most. Colonel Freeman has his command set up in Africa, and he's been working as part of an effort to force the Invid off Earth. The REF main fleet is supposed to arrive in spring, and so will Freeman's Vulcan Division. We're trying to rejoin our unit, friends and family for the final battle."

"You have some gumption - we could never try an overland trip - let alone come up from South America like that."

"Do you mind if I take a look at the transceiver?" Noel asked. "I might be able to do something with it."

"Go ahead. Gabby's the only one who uses it anyway."

"Thanks. Got any tools?"

"Over in the corner locker. Help yourself."

"Thank you -OWWWWW!" She grabbed her temple.

Marlene slumped to her knees, gasping. "The Invid - Outside!"

"They're after Gabby!" Roy yelled, grabbing an RL-6 from the weapon showroom and shooting at the lead trooper.

"Lay down some more cover fire!" Frank yelled, drawing his pistol. "I'll go try and fetch him!"

"No, wait," Lancer called, grabbing another RL-6. "I can move faster. Let me get him."

Lancer ran out, dropping one of the two troopers on the way. He tried to get Gabby to abandon the bag he was carrying, to no avail. The last Invid landed, to take a swipe at them, but Lancer was quicker, pumping a kinetic penetrator missile into the Invid's sensor at point blank range; so short, that the projectile coninued out the back side of the mecha, spewing bits of nutrient and Invid pilot over the lot. As they stood up, Rand's voice echoed from the tunnel entrance.

"We've been looking all over for you!"

"Well, if you bozos would keep your eyes on your Cycs and your asses out of jail, you might have found us earlier!" Alex shouted back. "Come on in, and you can have some of the leftovers, and get your bikes back."

"You've got them?"

"Yeah, the bandits are some REF retirees trying to keep their mouths fed. We'll explain after you eat."





"Small miracles are my specialty. If you need something world-shaking, don't ask me; that's Karen's department." - Noel Freeman Tyler
"But, if you ask either of them, give people some advance warning, okay? There tends to be collateral damage when they deliberately attempt something..." - Alex Tyler, responding to his wife's joke above.


"You cowardly scum!" Scott screamed at Frank, nearly knocking out the old soldier with a single punch.

"Cut them some slack, Scott!" Alex yelled back, interposing himself between Scott and the crew of the Sara. "If this had been a normal situation, they'd have been retired by now! They're GLOBAL WAR veterans, dammit! Just check their mission orders in the ship's log - they were being sent back to start retirement, after they turned over the ship and its contents to the ASC, and sent the navigation logs back to Lang.
"But, they came back to the aftermath of an apocalyptic space battle, and their ship barely survived arrival in a debris field. The superiors they were to report to were dead, their communications were offline, and the only place they could find to land had turned turtle and refused to allow contact with the outside world. That was one possibility not covered in their orders - that NONE of their objectives could be accomplished - not even filing the report! What were they supposed to do - starve, after their host city was destroyed, or abandon the shipload of weapons for REAL criminals to loot? It's not like the locals are all that friendly to outsiders - you got a taste of that yourself, after all."

"I... I... " Scott stuttered. Alex had caught Scott completely off-guard. It was the first time in the seven months they'd been together that Alex had really stood up to Scott forcibly, instead of just obeying orders, or trying to talk things out calmly. Of course, a good deal of Scott's closer rapport with the others was that the others had bonded more closely in that narrow escape in the subways of Uraba City (which itself was the culmination of months of bickering among the original six team members), and Scott had actually known Noel as a child. Alex was the only wild card in the group to him - other than his emotional difficulties with Marlene. "I'm sorry..." Scott whispered, his rage deflating into self-doubt.

Suddenly, a burst of radio static filled the room.

"I thought you said the radio was out?"

"The receiver barely works, but that's it. Noel's been working on it a while. The transmitter was knocked out by a power surge; something out of their league to fix - they may not look it now, but these four were part of the Hayes Raid. They're grunts, not techs. I wonder what it says about your godfather that he wouldn't risk one of his own techs on the test flight." Scott got a bit of a smirk on his face from that part of Alex's explanation.

The answer was simple - if something had gone wrong with the fold drive itself, there was nothing that even Lang could have done to fix it, so the ship was automated to the extreme, with the (mistaken) assumption that if the ship had a post-fold malfunction, the Cosmic Unit would send a repair team or a space tug, or at least send a certified pilot over. And, the Hayes Raid was the stuff of legend - after repeated attempts to get replenishment for his unit through official channel (from a logistics branch riddled with black marketeer corruption and hoarders that felt that only THEY knew what units needed), Nicholas Hayes personally led his task force's SEALs and Marines on a commando raid ON THEIR OWN FLEET SUPPLY BASE to secure the fuel depot, ammo dump and (most importantly) the food stores, as the food and fuel that should have lasted for another 6 months had all been consumed by civilian evacuees Hayes had refused to abandon to starve or (more likely) be killed. 35 years ago, questioning their bravery would have gotten Scott hospitalized, at best.

The transmission started coming in a bit more clearly, and they went in to see what was being sent.

"Expeditionary Force calling Earth Forces; Expeditionary Force calling Earth Forces. This is an alert for any forces still active in the Western Hemisphere. Please reply if you receive us."

Scott grabbed the headset from Gabby, and tried to reply. "We receive you com base... Do you receive? Come in com base...This is Mars Division calling Admiral Hunter; over."

The person on the other end apparently was unable to hear him, and Noel still had her head and upper torso under the console, working frantically with a soldering iron and parts scavenged from the ship's IFF system. The video finally came in, showing a young man in an REF fleet uniform.

"If anyone in the Western Hemisphere is reading this message, here is an update of the current situation with the Earth Liberation mission. Africa, Australia, and the parts of Asia bordering the Indian and Pacific Oceans have been liberated from the Invid. Most of the rest of Asia is either wasteland ignored by the Invid, or too cold for effective Flower growth. Naval forces and Vulcan Division are currently moving on the remaining areas of Europe under Invid domination. Everything is still on schedule for a March fleet offensive, and Admiral Hunter calls on all surviving forces to destroy as many military objectives, such as Invid outposts and collaborator havens, as possible before the start of the offensive."

"Hunter just won't give up," Jesse commented.

"He had good role models," Frank added. "Fokker, and Gloval; God rest their souls."

If they only knew, Noel thought, then yelled up to Scott "I've got the hyperspace transponder cross-wired to the transmitter - try now, Scott."

"Earth calling com base; Earth calling com base. Do you read me? This is Lieutenant Commander Scott Bernard, Twenty-First Squadron, Mars Division."

"We read you, Commander; where the hell have you been? We've had no contact with the first wave of Mars Division since the insertion. Report your status."

"Com base, Mars Division was destroyed during reentry. I've encountered only a few other survivors, and most of those are now presumably dead as well. Colonel Wolfe had negotiated a truce that had kept a substantial portion of Venus division and a number of Mars survivors safe, but circumstances led to the end of the truce, Wolfe's death, and destruction of most of the community the truce had protected. The number of survivors is unknown, but were widely scattered, according to two other REF personnel that visited the site a week later."

"Where are you reporting from? Our communications gear can't identify the transmitting station."

"I'm aboard the R.S.S. Mars Base Sara, in the ruins of New Provo, in the former state of Utah. Inform Dr. Lang that the experimental fold engines worked as expected, but the prior failure of the crew to report was due to damage taken on arrival, from collisions with debris left by the destruction of the ASC and Tyrolean fleets over Earth the week before their arrival. The crew survived, but the ship crashed here with severe damage, and loss of communications - we repaired the communications console just moments ago."

"What other military personnel are with you?"

"There's the crew of the Sara, of course. I've also assembled a team of partisans and other military survivors, that traveled to North America with me. The team has two non-combatants, two civilian freedom fighters, two former ASC that were retrained by Vulcan Division prior to the invasion, and two members of Vulcan Division that were knocked out of the air by some unknown form of Invid attack while on a scouting mission. There is also a Mars Division survivor here that was rescued by the Sara crew, that is apparently suffering from traumatic stress, and has been mute since he was found. From the nature of how he was found, I suspect he was an officer on an Ikazuchi-class vehicle. From what I saw during reentry... The Invid went after every escape vehicle that was used in low orbit or reentry - even held them in place in suicidal grapples to keep them from ejecting."

"And, the Vulcan Division personnel?"

"A married couple; Alex Tyler and Noel Freeman Tyler. You need to relay their presence to Vulcan Division; the commander of Vulcan is Noel's uncle."

"We'll do that immediately. Hold on; Admiral Hunter has just been informed of your contacting us. He will be joining the circuit in five seconds." There was a slight pause before the image split into two sections.

"Scott, is it really you?" Rick asked. Bernard had always looked stiff and too formal for his surroundings, Rick thought. Now, he looked like he'd actually aged much of the seven years he'd lost to fold time dilation, and as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders - a look Rick often saw on his wife's face, or on his own reflection in the mirror.

"Yes, Admiral. It's good to see you. Could you get word to Marlene's parents for me? She... She was killed in the insertion attempt."

"I'm sorry, Scott." God, no wonder he's in such shape. Survivor guilt plus loss of his intended. Lisa needs to know, too; she helped Scott pick out the engagement ring before the launch, and since Marlene's mother was Lisa's cousin, it would probably be best for her to break the news to them. This is going to be like losing Marlene twice for everyone involved.

"I swore then I'd not let anything stop me from completing my mission. I'll see you at Reflex Point, sir."

"I'll be glad to see you then, Scott. You said you were on the Sara. Is Frank Tandler there?"

"Yes, sir," Frank said, stepping up to the console.

"Frank, when we heard from Freeman what the situation was like on Earth, we realized you would have arrived around the time Monument fell. We weren't sure whether or not you'd even had a chance to make it to ground, since if you'd arrived during that last battle, you'd probably have been blasted to atoms by the Masters before the Southern Cross even knew you'd arrived. You have your retirement, now; all things considered, the cargo's not even worth guarding by this point, with the fleet arriving in five months. Since you left, a friend of the couple that's there with you came to Lang with Wolfe's ship, and a new set of fold equations that make the time for folds the same inside and out. I really WILL be there in five months, despite being over Tyrol right now."

"Well, Admiral, I think we'll stay here for now. When these youngsters get closer to the Invid command center, they'll probably be needing to arm more locals, that they can send back here once the routes are clear of the Invid. Someone's got to make sure that the weapons get to the right hands. Besides, we've got the only reliable electricity in the state, and I'm not even talking about the ship power. The locals wired us into their solar panels and batteries, and those survived when the city didn't."

"Who is the Mars Division survivor you picked up?"

"We don't know. He hasn't said a word since he got here. Gabby, Admiral Hunter wants to talk to you."

Gabby, who had been putting his armor on after hearing the original message, and hadn't noticed the others getting through on the formerly-broken radio, was half out the door when Frank caught him, and drug him back. That's when everyone got an even bigger shock. When Gabby stepped in front of the communications station, the split-screen popped back in.

"Dad - is that you?" The tech who had been reading the earlier call to arms said, clearly shocked.

""T-Tommy? It-it's been so long. I could see you, but I- I couldn't reply...."

Rick quickly interrupted. "Frank, Scott - let these two talk privately. I'll call back in three hours, and by then I might have a relay up to the Tylers' family in Africa as well."

"Yes, sir - see you then."

*******

Scott and Rand had gone back for Rook and Lunk before trailing the Cyclones here, but the mecha were slowly being leap-frogged this direction by Rook and Lunk (using Rook's Cyclone for the legs back to half the mecha each time) until Rand and Lancer went back to help with the truck; by dark, all the mecha were in the compound. While they were gone, Scott, Alex and Frank began planning an assault on the Invid telepathic broadcast relay that was located in the ruins of Salt Lake City's suburbs. It was the main communications link between Reflex Point, and Invid patrols operating on the Pacific coast, as well as the farms to the south. If it was taken out, the Invid would have to rebuild it, or have to send part of their forces to guard the farms, and curtail coastal patrols. The first was unlikely - it seemed that the Invid were in retreat, despite their potential numerical superiority, and rarely moved to take back lost areas. The most likely explanation is that they KNEW the REF was coming, and was conserving their forces.

It pretty much came down to firepower. Four people COULD operate the weapons of the Garfish, if it was left on autopilot; no one was a qualified combat pilot for it, anyway, and the damage it had took made combat maneuvering unlikely even in the hands of an expert. Of course, if they used it, there was no place for it to run to that the Invid wouldn't find. But, it wasn't like they could leave it here, either. Eventually, the Invid WOULD come to see what killed the ones that had been chasing Gabby. Looking like a simple camp in the ruins doesn't work when you have a convoy escort destroyer sitting on blocks in the front yard. So, a plan came together.

Everyone would spend the next day either moving the ship's contents into the dry area of the ruins, or getting the Sara ready for her final run, in many ways emulating the fate of the base she was named for. She would make a headlong run at the tower, escorted by the Alphas, either blowing it up with its weapons or, failing that, setting the self-destruct before ramming, the crew ejecting prior to impact. If the kamikaze attack isn't necessary, then they would activate the second set of coordinates in the autopilot, eject, and the Sara would fly on alone either to be shot down on its flight to nowhere, or land and sink in Lake Superior offshore of the Duluth ruins, where it could be salvaged by freedom fighter bands or REF lead elements in the spring for use against Reflex Point. It was a very simple plan, and no doubt would be modified further by the others once they brought it up to the others.

Scott got the first turn at the communications console after Gabby, whom everyone now knew to be Lieutenant Bateman - a career NCO that was given an officer's commission due to the shortage of manpower for Mars Division (and like Scott, one of the natural-born minority of the force). After about an hour, Scott emerged with a determined look on his face.

"Frank, You had a supply of REF uniforms on board as part of the supplies, correct?"

"Yep, we were to provide those to the Southern Cross for use and duplication, in order to get them and the REF back using similar uniforms - especially since the this suit type was made specifically to wear underneath Cyclones, and we had the design specs for the bike prototypes on computers meant for Robotech Research. Hell, we got a Mark 30 prototype somewhere around here, shipped disassembled in a crate. Why you asking?"

"I need you to break out the rank insignia. Part of my orders was to see that you four and Gabby get promotions before your retirement, tomorrow. Plus, Lancer, Alex and I are also getting promotions; Lancer's actually getting a double promotion - he's long overdue for it. Spending most of the last three years in drag as an espionage agent and saboteur, with no support for the most part, is definitely going above and beyond the call of duty. Don't tell him, but he's up the Medal, among other awards, once the war's over and the REF can fully document things; until then, he'll have to make do with a Distinguished Service Cross - see if you can dig one up."

"Well, I'll be..." Roy said to himself. "I don't think I'd ever have it in me to do THAT for my country."

"Yeah, it kinda blew our minds when we found out he wasn't a woman. Alex, Noel; it's your turn on the radio."

"Don't know how long it will take us," Alex replied. "We've got family reunion type stuff to deal with, plus we've technically been doing the mission we were sent out for originally, so we've got a debrief of the last seven months coming up as well. We might still be talking at dawn."

"Don't forget to talk with Karen about Marlene - if anyone can help, she can."

"I'll see what she can do," Noel answered quickly, steering Alex into the privacy of the curtains that they'd set up around the transceiver while Gabby had been talking. "Scott's hiding something," she whispered into her husband's ear, once inside.

"What makes you think so?"

"I'm getting a feeling in my gut that things didn't go well in his personal calls. Despite everything, he still holds himself responsible for his fiancee's death. It isn't healthy. You base your life on grief or revenge, and all you will do is destroy what humanity remains inside. Look what it did to Edwards, and almost did to Zor Prime. If I hadn't intervened, it WOULD have done it to Zor - straight to the grave."

"My wife, the psychoanalyst."

"Don't laugh; telepathy and empathy - well, mostly empathy right now - make diagnosis a bit easier. And, dn't forget, Karen did telepathic raids on the minds of all the shrinks that studied her quick mental development, and when she made me, she passed that information to me. I could probably get graduate degrees in medicine and psychology in a couple years of advanced classes, if I wanted, if they let me test out of stuff."

"Have you noticed the way he acts around 'our' Marlene?"

"He's falling for her - it's not just her reminding him in some way of his Marlene. In fact, those memories could do more harm than good, if he doesn't get his head straight. If he can get past that, he'll start to heal."

"Com Base, this is Tyler. Open up the relay to Africa Base."

"Connection in five seconds, Lieutenant," the operator replied.

"Alex, Noel!" Scott Freeman called out; Noel's parents and sister were standing behind them, along with most of their friends still on Earth. Scott's wife was absent, but given the time of morning there, she was with her daughters. "We thought you were dead. What happened?"

"We nearly were, on a couple occasions. Sis, did you feel anything when you thought I died?"

"Feel anything? It about felt like I died, and I ended up in the hospital under observation for a week. It was even worse than what I felt when you nearly died saving Zor. It was like I was burning alive, and suffocating at the same time - that's not counting the psychic barrage."

"Sounds like what I felt, only I was a lot closer. And there's a girl here that was at point-blank range, and she got clobbered into near-full amnesia and regression to childhood by it. Our powers made us more vulnerable at a distance, I guess. I wonder if it even was a weapon - given it hit telepaths, it might have been an accident involving a human in an Invid lab, or raiders attacking a hive that accidentally linked into something when they died."

"And your abilities?"

"They've been pretty much out of order ever since. I was put into a five hour coma, and the only reason I didn't become a greasy spot was Alex sacrificed both our Veritechs to wrestle mine out of a dive, and access the maintenance panels to cut the engines, as we hit the ground. After I woke up, my powers were even less present than they'd been before the Masters' arrival, if that's possible, and I've only started sensing others' emotions again in the last month or so, and the first indication of any other ability was last month, when I did an instinctive blind teleport to save us from an avalanche, and the exertion caused me to pass out even before we hit the ground."

"Well, now that I know you're alive, let me try to reach your mind - if we can make contact, I can temporarily copy some of that intel so we can spend more time talking."

"Go for it."

"Eww... Alex, I got some of it as a bounce off her, from your mind, but her mind is a mess. It's like trying to contact a sentient machine like Janice or a Haydonite - in other words, about as much effort needed to get even surface thoughts as it would take to do a hostile telepathic interrogation of an Invid organic computer. I don't know how well I could do it even in the same room with her. It looks like, unless we risk flying to you, or vice versa, we're going to be limited to radio. Now, what's this about a similarly-affected normal person?"

"We call her Marlene. Besides her amnesia, she's put under severe stress and anxiety, if not pain, in the presence of Invid telepathic broadcasts, even mecha pilots if they're within a kilometer or so."

"I'm using Alex's perceptions of her to reach out for her mind - at least your mind can be used as a repeater, Noel. I couldn't even attempt this otherwise. Uhh... wow - I thought YOUR mind was in bad shape, little sister. I don't think I'd attempt a touch mind meld with her with a Garudan high priest as a spirit guide. I think she's a lost cause, for now. Maybe after she has a year or two to recover..."

"Well, you gave it your best shot. So, how are things in the free world?"

From there, the conversation turned to current events, and the real after-action reports. It was four hours later by the time they had to break connection, from the communications link reaching its limits from the few satellites available (all put into orbit at lunar distance) to use as relays to the hyperspace system.

*******

"Scott, tell me how this is gonna work, again?" Rand asked. He still wasn't too thrilled with the first part of the plan. Rand was going to be piloting an Alpha this mission, and was dreading his first mission since coming ashore. The Beta, which Rand spent more time in normally (even if just there to practice, while Scott flew the combined mecha) would be in the more capable hands of Lancer, with Alex and Rook in the other two Alphas. Not knowing the effect the attack might have on Noel, she'd sit out the mission, with Lunk, Annie, Marlene and Gabby.

"Invid will typically go for the biggest target first, so we're going to have to circle around and attack the tower with the fighters, to allow the ship to come in closer. The weapons are so out of calibration they can't be trusted at over a couple kilometers, and we'd need a spaceport to get them fixed right; or at least a ship maintenance team. That thing's a bit out of Lunk's league."

"But, how long will we have to hold out? These Invid seem to be smarter than their relatives back home."

"We'll hold as long as we have to. Who knows - we might get lucky and bring down the tower ourselves."

"Lucky ? Since when did you believe in Luck, Scott?:"

"Hmph. Rand, you're with me on the first pass, coming in from the lake. Alex, Rook, you come in from the Northeast, next. Lancer, you're the third wave on your own - launch your heavy missiles at the tower, then try to pick off any Invid that get in behind us."

The five plane formation spit apart over the Bonneville flats that had given them so much trouble on the ground the week before, each taking a different circular route to the tower. Each group made their attack runs, with little effect on the tower - not even the heavy missiles of the Beta did more than shake the tower.

They didn't need to hear a war whoop from the crew of the Sara to know the Garfish had arrived on the scene - the sudden pauses of the Invid told that, and even allowed the fighters to pick off a few that stopped dodging while assessing the new situation. The pursued quickly became the pursuers, as the fighters began chasing the Invid, who in turn were converging on the warship. But even the warship's weapons were only blowing chunks off the tower, not causing major structural damage. Then, the ship shuddered from a kamikaze Invid strike.

"Damn!"

"What is it, Frank?" Alex asked, dreading the answer.

"We've been hit bad... The turret fire control is out, and the primary self-destruct is out too. If we're gonna ram, we'll have to do it the hard way."

"The hard way?" Scott said to himself, then realized just what that meant. "Don't do it, Frank!"

"Don't have much choice, sonny. We're gonna have to stay aboard to hit the manual destruct."

"Frank," a weak voice came on. "I ain't gonna make it anyway - that hit hurt me, inside. "You all go on... I'll handle it."

"You sure, Shorty?"

"Call me by my name, this last time, Jesse. You say you're tired of fightin'. Prove it, by living.:"

"You got it, Owen. You heard him, guys; let's get out of here. We'll buy a round for you in town."

The radio cut out, then the ship accelerated, ramming the tower. The escape pod jettisoned right after impact - Frank, Jesse and Roy weren't exactly high school sprinters anymore, and they'd barely made it into the pod before Owen had kicked the engines into overdrive. A second later, the ship blew, taking the tower out, along with all its support facilities. The surviving Invid fled, leaving the scene quickly in the direction of Reflex Point. Lancer flew down to pick up the three survivors, then had Alex land and join the two mecha, so Lancer could fly back. From the low altitude and not having adequate time between ejection and the detonation, the old soldiers were pretty shaken up, and needed some medical attention - nothing that would be serious for younger men, but better safe than sorry for people in their condition.

That night, the mecha stowed in one of the few dry underground bunkers at Hole in the Wall, they all sat around the campfire (well, except Marlene, who was, as expected, hit by the psychic effects of the attack). The old-timers spun yarns, half-truth, half-exaggeration, of their adventures in the Global War, and aboard the SDF-1 in its two periods in space. Probably the hardest story to believe was starring Noel's father, Owen, and Jesse, and a drunken bet at Rick Hunter's bachelor party that turned into a panty raid on the full-size Zentraedi quarters aboard the Factory Satellite. The makeshift wake was finally drawn to a close by Lunk's toast.

"To Lieutenant Owen; scoundrel, friend, and soldier - a hero to the end."




"Delta-Six was huge; a miniature city under a plexiplas dome lined with the same video technology that turned parts of old Las Vegas into an outdoor theater. When it was built, the exterior part of the dome was meant to protect the buildings below from rockfalls while allowing sky simulation, not hold out the exterior elements. After all, it was built in an underground cavern that no one expected to ever be breached - at least not without the contents being vaporized. That the dome survived having the cavern roof fragmented by a near miss, then washed away over the intervening years, is a testament to the design of the facility." - Rand, Notes on the Run (textbook edition)


They spent a few nerve-wracking days at Hole in the Wall, watching Invid flyovers, and a couple landings in the area where they'd moved the dead Invid to. To keep their minds off of the threat, they helped seal, pump out and clean some of the flooded areas, giving the remaining three old men and their middle-aged guest an easily defensible underground to run their weapons store from. Lunk also gave the solar & wind generator systems a checkup, as best as he could with his mechanical and electrical training, and relocated some of the power storage units from the panel & mill farm to the tunnels for more power security. For once, Lunk was calling the shots while Scott, Lancer and Rand did as they were told.

Of course, Alex made use of the time (and got out of the heavy labor) giving all the other males present a checkup (although that took a bit of persuasion when it came time for the rubber glove treatment). Noel did the much lighter duty of giving the girls their checkups, though it kind of threw her when she realized that all three of the others were virgins. Rook had been severely beaten by a rival gang, but only had they not raped her, she apparently was so insecure over it all that she'd not had any sort of relationship since. Annie had gotten "married" back in the jungle, but either her very naive young "husband" was completely ignorant or incapable of sex - which may have been why she left - then again, she'd been a tease even before the others met her. One had to wonder what kind of environment she'd been in between losing her parents and blundering into the freedom-fighter business. Marlene, of course, was a bit of a mystery, but odds are she'd been one of the Mars Division clones.

It turned out that Gabby had been a single father, having lost his wife to one of the plagues that ravaged the world during the post-Dolza reconstruction era, and quite the accomplished cook. He ended up giving cooking lessons mostly to the women, but Rand ended up there too more often than not - and probably learned more.

Finally, the Invid calmed down enough for them to return the borrowed horses to Eureka, and they brought Frank, Jesse and Roy along to make restitution for some of their earlier heists, mostly in the form of some weapons for the sheriff and deputies, and some less military items (like camping and survival gear) for the owners of the rustled animals. The locals were a bit wary of the whole matter, but when told of the sacrifice the old soldiers had made (and Frank trading the bartender a rifle to pay for a round in Owen's memory), they began to open up. By evening, Alex was mediating a deal being made to trade ammunition and weapons to the town in exchange for a steady supply of food to be shipped to the retirees, with the town reselling some of the weapons for its own needs, and pointing larger-scale buyers in the direction of the retirees' armory. At least, Alex hoped the others would remember the deal in the morning - by the time it was concluded, he was the only sober person in the bar, Scott and the others having left earlier.

They finally resumed the trip to Reflex Point on the morning of 25 October, heading towards the remains of Zentraedi-blasted Salina, and Interstate 70. Once on the interstate, they continued their trip east, fairly confident that the path ahead would be smooth sailing, as many of the ski resorts had been reopened in the 2020s to handle the recreation needs of New Denver and Monument, and the roads had been restored and maintained by the ASC Mountain Division. Of course, that would be if the weather cooperated. They were barely into Colorado when bad weather hit - then got worse - and worse. They were only making a few miles a day - when they were actually moving. And, the biggest challenge was ahead, of the mountain pass that had once intimidated even the railroad barons and interstate contractors. And when Alex went ahead to scout, he brought back bad news - one whole side of the canyon had caved in - possibly even hit by a stray blast from a Masters' beam weapon or a huge piece of debris coming in at meteoric speed. They ended up backtracking back down the mountain to where they could cross over to the other side of the canyon, where the rail line and old road were, but would still have to climb the debris when they got to that point. All in a blinding storm that seemed to lessen, but never end. They even considered going back, and taking their chances near the Invid farm to the south - but Marlene looked at them like "Are you out of your mind????" without saying a word, and all discussion of that ended right there.

********

From the Journal of Alex Tyler:

4 November: I hate being a tow truck driver! I think we've been doing this for three weeks now, at according the calendar in the tank's display. It's been hard to tell - with all the storms, and the little progress we manage each day, the days have started to blur. We had to switch to the back roads on the 22nd, and some of those back road maps date from before Dolza, so who knows what the real road conditions are. What scouting I did using the hovertank only let me see general conditions - the snow's so deep that what the surface is like underneath the snow - or even how far UNDER the snow that surface is, is anyone's guess. Part of the delay was rigging the skis onto the veritechs' landing gear - we had THOUGHT we could walk them through, but after having to dig out of holes where 2 meters deep became 10, that the hovertank and truck easily drove over before the battloids broke through. While I knew, on some level, that the veritechs had the skis as part of their landing gear package, not even Lunk or Scott knew how deploy the things. It hadn't even crossed our minds to use them in Colombia, as we only had one area that was snowy, and all the aircraft flew over it, en route to the Mountain Squad fortress we had to blow through. And, back in California, we slogged through in Battloid, and only parked in Jet mode.
The worst thing is that the hovertank makes a pretty poor vehicle for towing, because it doesn't make direct contact with the surface. Of course, it also doesn't have to worry about getting stuck in the snow, either. The main thing I'm doing is using my superior sensors to pick the route, and if I pick wrong, I can pull the tow table taut to keep the truck from sinking into the snow too deeply. Other than that, I'm just here to add a little bit of pull to the truck's own. At least when we get through to I-25, I'll know the route better, from traveling it 4 years ago. But when will that be? I'm beginning to dread the jokes we made back in Donner Pass, six weeks ago. THIS is what kind of conditions the Donner party really had to face, after all.

9 November??: This latest storm has been the worst one yet. We've been holed up in this snow shelter for, well, I don't know how long - at least a day and a half. Those of us with watches took them off when the cold weather hit, for comfort reasons, and haven't been carrying them on us. We had to stop on the 7th, and I'm glad I remembered enough of my childhood snow engineering to marshal everyone in near-whiteout conditions into building this, though the Cyclones were laboring after three hours of work in -40 wind chill - I don't think we'd have pulled it off without them. Once we were all inside, Lunk rigged one of the spare CO2 scrubbers he had in his veritech parts crate to operate on a deadman's switch, so whoever's on safety watch has to keep the switch held, or the scrubber kicks on. Of course, the scrubber will be running every time the person on duty has to take their hands off it to clear the PVC pipe we're using for ventilation. Here's hoping you're reading this in a war archive, not finding this as a last entry on a bunch of thawed corpses found in the mountains after the war.

11 November??: Well, the storm's stopped. I'm writing this down before we start digging ourselves out, while we're waiting for the self-heating rations to warm up (we're gonna need warm food in us for this cold work ahead). We'll need to get out as quick as we can, for the simple fact none of us has gone in days.

12 November: It turns out we were down there longer than we thought. We've gotten the Truck exposed (we can hardly say it's clear - the snow's too deep to move it), and we're working on the hovertank and Beta now. Now that we have actual visibility, it appears that if we'd gone another 200 or so meters, we'd have been able to shelter in actual buildings - what looks like an equipment garage and some cabins, possibly related to an old ski resort, were just ahead, with a road going up one of the side valleys. Then again, the closer one gets to one of those, the more likely an avalanche. We'll start beating down a path to those buildings, and spend the night there. Then, after a couple nights of real recovery, weather willing, the snow will have set enough for us to get back on the road, and we'll have our own energy back.

23 November - Thanksgiving day: Yesterday was pretty bad. Scott had a bit of a personal setback in his recovery from his survivor guilt. We started spotting some wreckage scattered amongst the drifts around noon, and we found the main crash site a couple hours later. It had been a Mars Division Horizont, probably damaged during reentry as it was WAY off course, and it had hit the mountainside hard - it wasn't a blown landing, with the way it hit - if the bridge crew had been alive at impact, they must have been riding her down with no ability to steer her, as it was nearly head-on with the slope. Thank God it wasn't his ship - I don't know if any of us could have handled it. Still, it almost knocked him back to his state at Point K. I left him with Noel and Marlene, and the rest of us searched the debris. We recovered some of the supplies whose shipping containers survived the bunkers being burst in the impact; but we also found the "neck" of the craft - the cyclone troopers were all still locked into their gravity couches, killed by the impact. In fact, the neck and half of one bunker were the only parts of the craft recognizable as being what they were. We took their names, and buried them this morning in a cairn, still in their armor, while Noel threw together a small Thanksgiving dinner from our food on hand. We had to explain the ideas behind the 400 year old holiday to those who never lived here in the old US; but they caught on quickly, and the nature of the observation served as a counterpoint to the task we'd had that morning. We needed the reminder that as bad as things were, some had suffered worse, and we had better days to look forward to.

3 December: A funny thing happened on the way over the Rockies....

**********

The caravan was half-way up a long slope, near a point where half the mountainside was missing, either from an errant attack from the Masters or Invid, or just natural erosion (but it was a BIG collapse, which tended to suggest something not natural). Alex and Noel swapped out seats in the space-modified hovertank every few hours, with Annie and Marlene getting the luxury of full-time use of the hovertank's rumbleseat, which was enclosed and heated separately from the main seat in vehicle mode. Lunk was having to tough it out in his truck, which was doing the majority of the towing. Thankfully the fighters had inertial systems derived from the old FPA (all veritechs made for the REF and ASC did - in fact, the system is what made military and civilian hovercraft even possible, as well as the fighters VTOL capability), and towing the four Alphas and the Beta was only about as much a burden on the poor truck as pulling one of them without the system on. The downside, the reason the VHT was in the tow train at its head, was that such reduction of mass also meant that despite being much lighter in real mass, the truck could easily drag the whole caravan over the cliff to oblivion, from the mecha having so much mass offset. The VHT would at least have a fighting chance to keep the truck from falling, as it retained a lot of its mass, even when hovering.

Everyone else was walking, checking the path for obstructions, ready to hop into a cockpit to steer the nosegear of a veritech around a blockage or a corner, or to occasionally warm up. The most popular mecha for that was the Beta, which happened to have their field toilet in the bomb/passenger compartment (and one tends to get the urge to go, when one thaws a bit). Earlier in the day, those on foot had to be careful not to outrun the vehicles. But, as night approached, the storm picked up, and they had to struggle to keep up with the truck. They actually had been looking for a safe place to stop for the night for the last hour, or about the last couple hundred meters, but hadn't had much luck in finding a level spot. They might have to reach the apex of the slide, a couple more hundred meters ahead, and camp in the wind's full force just to be on the level.

Suddenly, Rand called for them to stop, on an area that looked none too stable.

"That's amazing!" he exclaimed, waving the ground-penetrating multi-sensor he'd been carrying while on point, closer to the ground with each pass. "There's something underneath us!"

"Yeah, we know, Rand," Rook smarted off, tired from the struggle of he day. "It's called ice."

"Rand, what is it?" Scott asked, ignoring Rook's snipe.

"I'm getting readings indicating a large open space and a massive energy source under the ground. Part of it is just under the surface."

"That can't be...Is it a building?"

"No, it's way too big to be a building. And it's just under this snow!"

"Come on, Rand," Rook chided. "You're just wasting our time."

Rand brushed away the snow with his free hand, clearing off an area about the size of a window. His eyes seem to bulge, then he turned to Rook. "You don't believe it... So I'm wasting my time... Okay, take a look for yourself." He pushed Rook up to the spot; the others followed, led by Noel.

"Huh?" Rook gasped, startled by the sight. "It's - it's a city under the ice - it looks almost intact."

Noel looked next, thought for a second, then pulled off her gloves and rapped the surface with her knuckles. "That's not ice, folks. If anything, it's a polymer like our cockpit canopies. But, it's a lot thicker."

"Sorry, folks," Scott interjected. "We don't have time to play amateur archaeologist. There's no time to explore subterranean ghost towns."

"Even towns that aren't supposed to be there?" Alex asked. "Something's really wrong here."

As Alex and Scott debated, Rand took off running for the hovertank, muttering about the place being packed with supplies. Too late, they realized his intentions.

"Rand, get out of my TANK!" Alex yelled, as Rand transformed the tank to battloid, still roped to the truck and the other mecha. He managed three steps, Annie and Marlene yelling at him, before the air was split by a thundering crash from the dome giving way from the ground pressure under the mecha's feet. The Spartacus disappeared from sight, feet first, dragging in the truck and the lead Alpha behind it. "Oh, my God!"

Everyone ran as close to the edge as they thought was safe, Scott going for Rook's Alpha, which was teetering on the edge. It was soon apparent that the reason it all wasn't dragged in, was that the mecha had landed on the roof of a tall building, that had to have been built to specs normally reserved for strategic value structures. Rand was already transforming back to transport mode.

"Hey guys! Come on down!" Rand yelled up." It's below freezing down here, but that's better than what's up there. And, there's even a cargo elevator on the roof!" This was followed by screams, as Annie and Marlene started pummeling him with the loose objects from their part of the cockpit, for endangering them.

**********

Once they got the rearmost Alphas in Battloid, they were able to pull Rook's Alpha back, then together lowered the truck to the roof, from where its front bumper had been hanging a meter off the roof. The aircraft all hovered down to street level in Battloid, while the truck and hovertank took the elevator down. Once town to ground level, they split up to investigate. The town seemed to be set up for a summer environment, though sheeted with ice in many locations from sprinkler systems that had apparently ran for months since the temperatures had fallen, inside and out, to sub-freezing levels. There even appeared to be an artificial weather system, meant to produce light rain and mists, that ended up producing a product not too different than the man-made snow of the old ski resorts. The town was a mess - especially since many of the shops appeared to have been open-faced like those in a mall.

Rook, Rand, Marlene, Annie and Noel went out exploring on the street level, as much for the thrill of exploring as for looking for supplies, while the others were preparing to go into the undercity. It appeared the building they'd landed on was the community's government center, and had numerous sublevels, dedicated to infrastructure.

"Scott, look at this," Lancer called, walking into the geothermal tap area. "I found this in the telex machine."

"'To the people of Denver...'" Scott read aloud, then read the rest quietly. "Its an evacuation notice from the night the Zentraedi fleet arrived. This must be Denver."

"No, it can't be," Alex piped in, returning from the other side of the control room.

"Are you sure?"

"I can give four reasons. First of all, Denver WAS destroyed by the Zentraedi; when I was part of the refugee convoy from Monument, driving to Mexico, we camped one night on the rim of the crater where old Denver used to be. Second, Denver was a MUCH larger city than what we see down here. Where are the suburbs, the airport, sports stadiums, and skyscrapers? And, how did it get surrounded by rock? Third, Denver was actually located on the Great Plains, where the foothills faded into the plains. You had to drive about an hour to get to the mountains from Denver in the 20th century. Lastly, most of the high-tech gear in here was made by a manufacturer that didn't exist until after Dolza, when what was left of several different companies merged. Lancer's telex machine was probably a museum piece that wasn't even hooked up. It can't even be New Denver; it was destroyed and depopulated by the Masters in the last battle."

"Then, what is this place?" Lunk asked.

"I've got an idea, but to check it out, we'll need to find the security-sealed areas and find a way into them."

"I think I can manage that," Lancer said. "Lunk, you want to help me look?"

"Sure, after I fix the damage Rand caused to our vehicles. Not much else I can do down here."

************

Scott took off almost immediately in pursuit of the others, when he and Alex got back to street level. A minute later, Noel showed up, pushing a cart of Protoculture cells and food, mostly civilian food packed using the same technology as military rations, or frozen.

"Nice haul. Where did you get it?"

"There's an open air mall a couple blocks away. The weird thing is that it was set up to accept Southern Cross & UEG pay account cards as the only means of payment; not that it mattered."

"I doubt you were able to buy those cells."

"Actually, those came from one of the armories. Every block has a clearly marked armory with small arms and armor, and even a couple motorcycles sitting in odd-looking dock units. The bikes were Protoculture powered, and they had these cells there to refuel."

"You said an open-air mall?"

Noel looked around at drifts of snow and chunks of ice. "I guess this snow and ice was unintentional."

"Yeah. The dome we came through was an artificial sky system, but it's probably not worked since the mountain was blown off it. It was cracked by that blast, and the ice is from meltwater that came through the cracks. The snow is from the artificial rain system; the climate was supposed to stay between 20 and 25 Celsius at all times, from being underground, with artificial rain to help wash the streets and keep the landscaping green - but there's little difference between theatrical rain machines and ski resorts' artificial snow machines, other than volume and operating temperature. Once the natural temperature of the cavern was compromised, all that rain became ice."

"I can't believe this place. How could it exist?"

"In what way?"

"The buildings are mostly civilian; the food is civilian too - and all of it packaged during the Masters War. The stores appeared to be self-service, in a way that no civilian store would have been in Monument, and there's no evidence of people having ever been in the buildings - at least not in the last few years. Rand and Annie were pigging out in the floor of the grocery store, and when they left, I saw a robot come out, clean up the mess they left, and it also restocked the shelves. It wouldn't let me out of the store until I gave it my old Southern Cross ID to 'pay' for their food. I guess I woke up the robotic store staff when I was messing with the register."

"There's a long, twisted, story behind this place, if it's what I think it is. Lancer's supposed to be looking for the proof right now. If he finds it, I'll explain it to everyone, tonight. Now, let's go help Lunk fix the truck and Scott's Alpha, so we'll have more free time later."

************

They'd just finished working on the landing gear when Scott & Marlene ran in, out of breath, saying the Invid were coming. It was decided to draw the Invid inside and use Cyclones, as to attempt to leave while the Invid were outside would be suicidal. However, in an urban environment, it would be the Invid at a disadvantage.

Alex and Noel went after one of the two Pincers that had been the advance units through the hole, attacking aggressively. One would act as a distraction, as the other moved to try to get a clean shot on the vulnerable sensor plate. Finally, Noel ended the fight by driving one of her CADS through the plate. They then caught up with the others as they battled the other Pincer, their arrival providing the distraction needed for Scott to take it down.

Just when they started to relax, the big green human-piloted mecha arrived, and it seemed to have it in for Scott, always going for him when the group scattered. Alex took the opportunity provided by that relentless pursuit to break away, and get the Hovertank. When he returned, the others had the foe on the ropes, having taken off one of the arms. Alex tried to shoot to disable, managing to take off the other arm with a single shot from the main gun. The enemy still managed to escape through the hole.

"Scott, get the mecha down to the lowest level, and shut down the power plant. Whatever power we need down there can come from the power plant."

"I thought about just blowing the thing and us flying out of here."

"Are you kidding? This place is too important for the rebuilding of Earth after the Invid leave, to destroy. Besides, if Lancer found what I was asking, we'll be able to bypass the Invid without them having a clue."

"And, what about the hole?"

"There's some extra dome panels over on the west wall, for repairs. We'll just stack them on top of the hole, dab some temporary bonding agent, and bring an avalanche down on it to cover the place. If we shut down the heat converter, the Invid won't have anything to home in on."

"You're sure of this?"

"I'm betting my life on it, aren't I? There's a tunnel leading out of here down there, some where - big enough to bring in the construction materials. We just have to find it."

A half-hour later, they were in the undercity, watching the Invid circling via a remote camera they'd planted, unable to find the city. After a few more hours, the Invid left.

"Okay, Alex; it worked. Now what?"

"We see what awaits us through that door over there. I have a feeling that some of you won't be prepared for what's there."

"You act like it will hold Leonard's head in a jar or something," Lancer chuckled.

"Well, if I'm right, you will meet a ghost inside - one with connections to Noel, Scott, Rook, and even you, Lancer. Don't say I didn't warn you."


Chapter Six:

"Sometimes when my mind begins to wonder,
I realize that things aren't what they seem...."
-Eve Tokimatsuri, "Saved By Science"


Lancer bypassed the security system, and the door slid open. Inside were several banks of computer terminals, arranged around a holographic display tube. Art of a multi-headed dragon, taken from a 1980s cartoon show, adorned the far wall. Geeks never changed, Alex thought.

"The mural pretty much proves my hunch correct. This the this control room of the Tiamat computer control system of the Delta Six command shelter of the UEG. It was phase two of Project Megazone."

"Megazone..." Lancer mused.

"I thought you'd recognize it, Lancer. After all, isn't that project the reason why the Black School sent you to Japan."

Lancer slipped into to his Yellow persona, adding a bit of southern belle twang. "Sugar, you know the Black School doesn't exist. That's what my instructors there told me." Scott and the others just stared at them. "Seriously; how did you figure out my connection to the Black School?"

"You made too many comments that tied you to the GMP as much as the Tactical Air Forces, over the last few months."

"You two mind letting us in on the secret?" Scott asked.

"The Black School was the reason so many Southern Cross people were paranoid of the GMP," Alex explained. "They were blacker than black; only answerable to their leader, whom most people THINK was Rolf Emerson, Anatole Leonard, or both together. Personally, I'm betting on Rolf, but he evades the question. Essentially, they'd recruit people like Lancer here, prior to graduation, and use the pre-college cram school system to cover the project - hence it being called the 'Black School'. After they graduated from school, they went undercover - by joining the Southern Cross or other organizations."

"Wait a second - they infiltrated their own forces?"

"That was the entire point," Lancer continued. "We were meant to be the final line of defense against corruption and treason in the Southern Cross. In fact, they purposefully recruited outcasts and underachievers, then instilled a sense of duty into us during training, as our evaluations from high school would indicate we'd be the most unlikely persons that people would suspect as being secret Internal Affairs agents. We'd only send reports in if we found something that was a real threat. And we were to never reveal ourselves, just tip off our controller of the issue, unless things had gone way too far to wait for a conventional investigation and raid. While we were part of the GMP, on paper, half of the Black School agents actually infiltrated the GMP, because of the danger the GMP itself presented."

"So, what is this Project Megazone, and you were really sent to infiltrate it?"

"I never found out what it was, exactly. I was to try to infiltrate it through its Public Relations department, as a singer. While it was a black project, it was supposed to be revealed publicly in 2028, but the sheer amount of funds going into the project made the Black School suspicious of there being graft and other corruption. Alex appears to know more than I do."

"I found out after the Invid arrived - the project contributed to the destruction of New Tokyo. When the Invid attacked the city, it destroyed the Megazone facility underneath, and it caused what was left of New Tokyo to collapse into the hole, and the thermal tap was so badly smashed that it allowed magma to seep through. There's a volcano where the city once was - a BIG one. That ash is one of the reason the winters are so bad now. As for the project itself, the story goes like this... I had Colonel Freeman to let me access the files we'd gotten from the other Southern Cross bases when we reopened Africa Base; specifically the closed door inquiry concerning Megazone, and the coup attempt by its staff against the Japanese sector government.
"The project started in 2014, and had multiple phases. The first phase was Cavern City, in the Southlands. Yes, that's your home town, Rook. It was mainly a test of developing excavated or modified natural caverns as a form of offworld colony. In fact, the test was very successful, and the designs replicated. If you remember your childhood, Rook, you'll remember the city had an artificial sky system, based on the one of the SDF-1.There were two more phases, but they were top secret. This facility was the second phase, and the Japanese one was the last, and most sophisticated.
"The Japanese facility was meant to be the shelter for all of the Japan Quadrant, when finished. It actually used contra-gravity and artificial gravity technology to use both the floor and roof of the city cavern for buildings, with a holographic sky system to make it seem like the surface, and to block the view of the other side, which would have caused vertigo issues. It would be near-undetectable from the service, using the energy damper design the RDF discovered on Zentraedi stealth scouts like the Korra'ti to hide its energy signature. It had its own farms, military bases, even airports with secret landing strips in the wilderness ruins. It was controlled by the computer code-named Bahamut; Zor's personal research computer that had served Dr. Lang so well on the SDF-1, and that he'd moved to New Tokyo for continued research there by his successors after he left on the SDF-3. It was hoped that they could move the majority of the populace into the underground, leaving an agrarian society on the surface that would be much less of a target for future enemy bombardment. That's where you came in, Lancer."

"No wonder it was costing so much. What happened?"

"The Robotech Masters happened."

"Wait a minute - that was in 2027; the Masters didn't show up for another eighteen months."

"Officially, yes. But the Masters had very good active stealth equipment, as you should remember. They sent one of their fleet escorts ahead, that arrived in 2027. They decided to capture an interplanetary shuttle between Earth and Mars, in order to gain intelligence on Earth's military - and hit the jackpot. The project staff of Megazone had gone on a technology tour at Gallant Arms - a colony set up using the Cavern City pattern, ironically. They were on the way back when they were captured, in the sensor gap between Earth and Mars orbit. When the Tyrolean agents realized the importance of their prisoners, they sent out a message indicating that the shuttle had propulsion difficulties, and would be late getting to Earth. They cloned the prisoners, creating agents with the prisoners' memories, then sent the agents to Earth to commit sabotage, then killed the actual prisoners."

"Do you know how crazy that sounds?"

"Yeah - the UEG members on the board of inquiry refused to believe it. Leonard and Emerson did, though, because their source for the story was Darryl Embrey, the highest-ranking survivor of the UEG government from Japan. The rest were all killed by the cloned agents. He found out because Bahamut contacted one of the mecha test pilots when the AI realized the nature of the intruders - it was Zor's computer, after all - who got the evidence to a civilian friend of Embrey's daughter. By that time, though, the civilian, aided by the AI, was fighting a war of survival against the alien spies, who had already succeeded with their coup. They were trying to instigate a war with the Neo-Soviets, that would have left Earth open for the Masters' attempt to take back the Matrix. Embrey was the last loose end that could stop it, and it was only the civilian in the mecha bike prototype that saved him - but in the process, most of the spies died, and the rest suicided when their leader died."

"So, how does this place tie in?"

"While the Southern Cross high command believed the threat, the UEG did not. The Neo-Soviets definitely didn't, and that's one of the reasons they didn't come to the defense of Earth initially, as they thought it was another ruse. By the time the threat was obvious, it wasn't their problem, so they decided to wait out the war, realizing that they would be dominant after the war, regardless of which side won. The Tiamat computer here is an Earth-built duplicate of Bahamut, Zor's computer. The spies had done a data dump from Zor's computer, before taking it out, and a lot of important data was exposed to the enemy. All the new mecha projects on the computer were canceled by the Southern Cross for security concerns, though the Hurguns like the one we saw upstairs were kept in service in Japan, since they were already made. A fully self-contained transformable bike, a couple of space fighters, and a much less complex transforming helicopter-like mecha were the main casualties, and were all had been ready for production. It set the Southern Cross, already playing catchup from the unexpected loss of so many mecha to the SDF-3's last minute reinforcements, back so far that we were still using Logans and Sylphs for space duty. Had the main combat bike gone into service, we would have had ten times the mecha forces, with weapons that would have made defending Monument's civilians a lot easier.
"As for this facility, they were ordered to keep it provisioned for the UEG's use; but they refused to let the government move in, as it was probably compromised. Robotech Research modified a bunch of smaller bots with the Golem's AI, and put them in charge of maintaining the city, and rotating the food stores, but no one was told of this city's location, as they feared the idiots in the UEG government would insist on moving into it despite the danger - and leave everyone else outside, which would have been a major morale killer. As it was, they ordered New Denver to evacuate here, but never told them where "here" was - Leonard took the location to the grave, then the evacuation route was hit by the Masters' suicide infantry We found the few that made it to safety milling around the entrance to the old NORAD complex, with no way to get in. We looked for a day, for the tunnel from there to here, but never found it, and those people left with us, because we had food. We can use that tunnel to get out of the mountains."

"How do we find the tunnel? We could be down here weeks in these tunnels."

"Simple, Scott - we ask where it is. I'm pretty sure she'll tell you." Alex flipped the switch that had kept the sentient computer in hibernation since 2027. "I think though, that she will be a bit pissed at being left asleep so long, where she couldn't repair the damage upstairs - that backup system they left running wasn't designed for it. By the way, you do remember the name the SDF-1 computer called itself in your uncle's labs, don't you?"

"Yes... her name is Eve....." Scott said, his voce trailing off as all the screens lit up with the EVE command screen. Lancer got a really bug-eyed look.

"Yeah, Lancer," Alex commented. "I recognized that song 'Underground' when you put it on the recording back in Reno. That was the big clincher about your other job, not the other comments. You never knew you were doing a duet with a computer, did you?"

"Authorized user voice recognized," a familiar-sounding voice sounded. "Scott Bernard. Junior assistant to Doctor Lang. How may I be of service?" The holo-display lit up, Eve materializing in the tube, looking as real as anyone else in the room.

"That's definitely the Eve I remember from Japan," Lancer observed, still taken a bit aback. "And to think no one questioned her reality, there. The excuse I remember was that she'd developed an immune disorder, and had to do her show in a different studio than her audience."

"Eve, grant user access to the persons in this room. If you have access to Southern Cross personnel files from the backup computer, some of the persons will have files there."

"Checking... Personnel identified. Lieutenant Lance Belmont, GMP Silent Service; Lieutenant Alexander Tyler, Tactical Armored Corps; Corporal Noel Freeman, Tactical Armored Corps; Technical Sergeant James Cooper, Brasilia Cities Defense Unit. Do I correctly understand that the Southern Cross has fallen? There have been no updates to the system since 2030, and maintenance of the facility is at a critical urgency level."

"You are correct - the Southern Cross and the Tyroleans both fell in 2030, the latter at the hands of a clone they made of your creator. Shortly afterward, the Invid invaded Earth, devastating what forces survived. In the last year, the REF, operating out of Tyrol, has been attempting to liberate Earth."

"Zor had hoped that the Invid would attempt to talk first, or someone talk to them. What happened?"

"The Regent happened," Noel commented, having enjoyed just listening to this point - now things were getting serious. "The Regent was occupying Tyrol at the time the SDF-3 arrived, and immediately attacked the SDF-3, thinking it was Zor's ship. By that time, the Regent and Regis had parted ways over the prosecution of the war, and a series of conflicts between the Regent's Invid and the REF resulted in the death of the Regent and most of his Invid. The Regis then came here looking for vengeance, as well as the flower of life." (It was oversimplifying it a bit, but they would have time to give the whole story later.)

"And, what happened to the clone you mentioned?"

"He is at Africa Base, trying to figure out a way to talk to the Regis without getting tortured and experimented on, like the clone Cabell created of Zor. That clone fell into Invid hands, and the Regis did awful things to him, to get the information of where to start looking for Earth."

"Are you sure there's no chance of dialogue?"

"Definite," Scott replied, sternly.

"Did something happen to you, Scott?" Eve asked, picking up on the tone of voice.

"His entire unit, including his fiancee, were killed by the Invid when they returned to Earth" Noel explained. "In fact, most of the REF that's attempted to return have been killed before they could orbit, let alone attempt to land."

"Oh, no...." The hologram appeared to be genuinely moved by this.

"We need access to the protoculture supplies, military rations, and armory. Can you provide us with the map to those? We also need a map to the exit tunnel. We... errr... sorta came in through a hole in the roof..."

"The maps will print in the corner. May I suggest you spend a few days here? My sensors show most of you are exhibiting high fatigue levels and low core body temperatures. The civilian in the back has really skewed vitals; you need to let her get at least a couple days bed rest. I suggest that you use the security quarters down here - my repair robots will make the city chamber too noisy, plus most of the power is shut off there now."

"Just don't tip off the Invid with the work."

"I'll won't be making permanent dome repairs after the spring thaw - it would be too difficult to attempt in the current season. The whole purpose of this facility is stealth - I won't risk that, regardless of the enemy."

********
(start of newest section)
********

They spent a week recuperating in a semblance of civilization, before moving out to Cheyenne Mountain (itself a two hour drive through a tunnel). Once there, they spent another two days in the former Zentraedi community there, making sure that there was no Invid traffic. From there, they headed southeast, spending the holidays in a post-Zentraedi resort that had sprung up to replace the original town of Hot Springs, Arkansas. While there, Lancer and Noel worked on reworking some of the 20^th century songs with modern lyrics. After setting off fireworks for Annie's birthday (which confused the heck out of the Invid that they'd lured into a trap that night), they returned to the road, heading south towards the Gulf of Mexico, to try to avoid the desert the deep south had become between the Cumberland Plateau and the swamps of the coast. They only had about three months to bypass Reflex Point, to reach the New Jersey area via travel along the Gulf & Atlantic coasts, before turning west to meet the REF advance forces that were to land in western Pennsylvania at the end of March.

Chapter Seven:

"The Zentraedi Rain of Death made no distinction between civilian and military targets. Because of the poor state of the Zentraedi fleet, destruction fell unevenly and indiscriminately. The only real regulator on what did and didn't survive was that the Grand Cannon worked, and most of North America, Japan, Korea, Manchuria and the Russian Pacific coast only were struck once by orbital bombardment. Most of the rest of the civilized world was struck three times, before Dolza redirected the rest of the fleet against Breetai, the SDF-1 and the Grand Cannon, the latter eventually destroying itself from overuse, in defending from those attacks.

"For a community to survive the Zentraedi, it took a combination of luck and location. A number of high-value military targets were in Nevada, and were destroyed. Yet, Las Vegas and Reno were not targeted by the initial attacks, and the Grand Cannon made sure that there were no follow-up attacks. While the reason may never be known, Exedore theorized in the post-battle analysis that the commander of that sub-fleet could not believe that the gaudily-lit cities were real, and thought them to be decoys trying to distract attention from Nellis, Edwards, Los Alamos, and other hight-priority targets in the southwest. After Khyron's destruction of New Macross, Las Vegas would become a combat training and testing center, Reno a 'mothballed' evacuation center waiting to be reopened if another city had to be permanently evacuated due to warfare or natural catastrophe.

"Several cities in the Ohio Valley survived relatively unscathed from one of those statistical disasters that one will get with a fleet so large. The flagship in charge of that section of Dolza's fleet had a catastrophic failure of the capacitors for its main weapon, exploding moments before the ships in its command were to fire. The blast damaged and displaced all the nearby ships, actually destroying several of the smaller ships . As a result, Detroit and Knoxville were dealt only glancing blows, Cincinnati was spared completely, and the ships that were firing on the St. Louis area was knocked out of position to the west, sparing Granite City and the other Illinois suburbs from direct hits (though the weapons meant for them hit St. Louis proper, and the western suburbs getting hit with the heaviest fire). The combination of surviving high tech facilities (Cincinnati's GE aircraft engine plant & the nuclear plants of the Tennessee Valley, that survived the destruction of Oak Ridge) and revitalized Rust Belt facilities would prove vital in the following two decades, before being severely damaged from the diversionary attacks in the last week of the.Masters' War, then being blasted to oblivion by the Invid during their construction of Reflex Point.

"The survival of Manhattan is also probably the result of a power failure, though the fact that the other boroughs and neighboring states were scoured by the attack indicates it wasn't as catastrophic as the one on the ship targeting Cincinnati. Mexico City was similarly "spared", but the massive earthquake triggered by the gravitational upheaval of Dolza's ship would have made vaporization a mercy by compassion, since there was no one to come to their aid, as millions lay trapped, or diseased and starving in the ruins left by the 9.0 quake. 99% were dead, but the RDF helped the survivors rebuild in 2012. Most likely other areas worldwide had similar catastrophes, but few would survived to tell the tale.

"These were the 'lucky' cities. Most other urban survivors only did so because the evacuation plans for major cities were implemented immediately, and this allowed several times as many survivors as would have otherwise occurred. But, what would those spared by the attack have to endure? The next decade made many think those that died that first night were the lucky ones."

-Harold Carr, The Great American Desert: Survival in the decade after Dolza (Introduction)

From the Journals of Alex Tyler:

January 23: "I remember reading stories about pre-Dolza Louisiana as a child; swamps as far as the eye could see; alligators, Cajuns, moss-covered cypress trees and voodoo. But that was the Louisiana Before. Before Dolza. Before the sea levels dropped several meters from the climate changes brought on by the Rain of Death, draining the bayous. Before the lack of maintenance of the Old River Project allowed the Old Man River to finally trump the works of man, and go down the Atchafalaya river channel like it had been trying to shift to for the last century.

"Now, it was hardly different from anywhere else. There were trees along the New Mississippi, but few things growing elsewhere. The formerly gentle hills of northern Louisiana now resemble the buttes of the western desert that we'd passed through last fall, battered by over two decades of dust storms that had lain waste to the American South, from the combined destruction of Dolza and the climate shift that gave the region worse drought conditions than the "Dust Bowl" of a century ago.

"We are camped on the banks of the Old Mississippi, a sluggish shadow of its former self, outside the small post-Zentraedi town that calls itself Baton Rouge. Whether this is just nostalgia, or we are near the ruins of the old city, I don't know. There is, however, a Mars Division emblem burned into the city limits sign, so Scott's in town as I write, trying to find out who's there."

January 23 (Evening): "There are six Mars Division survivors in town, out of seventeen that had originally set up operations here. The other eleven are dead, killed not by the Invid, but by a rogue REF trooper named Dusty Ayres. The six still left had all heard of Scott, especially Commander Burdette, the senior survivor of the group. Burdette also knows Noel's family, at least professionally, given the small number of officers in the REF when it left. Noel, Lancer and I are going into town to perform tonight, to brighten up the town's currently somber and fearful mood, but I'm not sure how much that'll help. Something bugs me about Commander Burdette, though. I can't pin it down, but he reminds me of the bad old days, somehow. I'm not going to say anything, just yet, but I'm sure he's hiding something; something big."

**********

The impromptu concert was interrupted by two of the soldiers bursting into the saloon, claiming to have a picture of Dusty Ayres. They said they had just developed it from a roll of film that was in an old camera belonging to one of the three men that Ayres had killed earlier in the week.

"So, this is Dusty Ayres," Scott mused.

"Doesn't look so tough to me," Alex added. Something was out of place with the picture, but he couldn't quite put it together. A few minutes later, he noticed a tattoo on Burdette's arm, as they were all leaning on a table, going through papers and making plans. That mark sent off enough warning bells to finally register.

"Noel, I need some fresh air. Care to step outside with me for a bit?"

"Sure, handsome. About time you remembered you were married."

They went out the front door, onto the covered boardwalk. He put his head over her shoulder, as to be intimate, then whispered into her ear.

"Something's been driving me buggy about that commander ever since we met him. While I'm sure that's his rank, the rest of his story isn't adding up."

"I've been getting the weirdest vibe off of him too - I hope what you're getting is your own, and not me subconsciously projecting."

"I'm pretty sure its my own alarm bells, not yours. Did you see that tattoo on his arm?"

"Yeah, it looks like an old squadron insignia. Lots of people get them."

"Yeah, but it's not an RDF or REF insignia - looks like an old US Navy one. He's too young to have been in that force, and he claims to have been a troop commander, not a fighter pilot, for the arrival here. Go back to the tank and get that aviation history book from my gear. I have a really bad feeling about this."

Noel met him back outside, after he went back in for a minute, and got another quick look at the tattoo without being too obvious about it.

"Okay, turn to the section on squadrons from the pre-Global-War era. Look for a diamond, with a robed horseman, waving a sword."

"Found it... VF-142 - Alex, you aren't gonna like this...."

"Why?"

"VF-142 was one of the squadrons that were ancestral to those of the SDF-1. VF-84 was ancestral to Skull, you know..."

"'Jolly Rogers', yes. So?"

"VF-142's nickname was 'Ghostriders'."

"Oh, shit. No wonder he wasn't trusted with a Veritech squadron. He was one of Edwards' goons that managed to escape court-martial, somehow." Alex leaned against the building.

"Hold that pose, Alex."

"Why?"

Noel took a couple steps back, and made like she was taking a picture with an invisible camera.

"I knew there was something wrong with that picture! It was taken here in town, and there's no way that Ayres could have been here with hostile intent when that photo was taken, from his stance, and the angle it was taken. Who knows how old that photo really is. They've been feeding us a load of crap when they tell us they don't know much about him - he'd never have stuck that pose for a stranger to take a photo of him, especially not at this range. What do you want to do about it?"

"Let's play along for a while, and hope we get a chance to get Scott and the others away from Burdette long enough tomorrow to tell them what we found. Right now, though, we've got to go back to camp and get the others here, before we try something. If we bring it up now, we're still outnumbered by Burdette's men. When we go out tomorrow, we'll have to find some way to take Ayres alive, and confront him and Burdette to find out what's really going on."

************

That night, Noel noticed what the others didn't - Rook's reaction to Dusty's picture. Eventually, she was able to get Rook alone, and convinced Rook to tell her side of the story, after promising she wouldn't tell the others until she had to - besides, if what Dusty had told Rook was true, it wouldn't have been safe for them to tell the others, in the presence of the locals.

The next morning, they had gone out looking for Ayres, but had been found by the Invid instead. However, the Invid retreated when Ayres arrived. He took out two of the three local Cyclones immediately, as Scott, Lancer, and the survivors of the town's forces maneuvered, trying to get Ayres to stray into the fire from Lunk's machinegun. However, this only resulted in Lunk's truck being taken out (Lunk himself only surviving because he was manning the gun, instead of driving, and was thrown clear), and the remaining former REF from town being killed. Scott managed to pound Ayre's motorcycle, a Cyclone modified to the point of non-transformability with a missile sidecar, into flaming debris - but Ayres walked out of the explosion, seemingly unhurt. As Rand and Rook, in their Alphas, took out the Invid (who seemed to be more intent on watching the human vs. human battle than fighting), the others saw why Ayres had survived - he was some sort of cyborg, and the non-human parts practically screamed "Invid" in their point of origin.

Ayres advanced on the group, laying out Lancer with a single punch, and nearly doing the same to Scott, despite Scott being in Battle Armor mode. He then pointed his blaster at Scott's chest. "Stay there; don't get up."

Fearing the possibilities, especially if Scott tried to play hero, Noel dropped her Cyclone and weapon, and advanced on Ayres, hands open.

"Dusty, it's over," Noel said calmly. "You've got your revenge."

"Who are you, lady, to tell me what to do?"

"Not your enemy. Neither are these people. They only know what Burdette told them. How about telling them your side? If you don't, then how are you any different than Burdette?"

By this time, Rook had landed her Alpha, and approached as well. "Dusty, let them go. You told me that you just wanted revenge; that you weren't after the rest of us."

"They tried to kill me."

"Only because they didn't know the truth," Noel said, removing her helmet to make herself more vulnerable, to reduce the tension that was still at the point of breaking badly, on a wrong move. "It's over; those people who betrayed you are all dead. There's no need to fight anymore."

"Is it? Do you think flyboy here will stand for my walking away unpunished for my 'crimes'?"

"What do you think would happen?" Rook asked. "They were told you were a murderer, not someone seeking vengeance for treachery. If you kill them, you will be a murderer. If you must kill them, start with me, because these people mean more to me than life itself."

"Rook... I couldn't do that; I just couldn't. Maybe, if I'd had friends like you, none of this would have happened. I see that now."

"Look out!" Alex yelled, seeing one of the fallen Invid stagger back to its feet - one of the elite command units.

"It's too hurt to be a threat, to us," Dusty said, but he was wrong, as somehow, the Invid managed to start powering up its guns. "No!"

Dusty shoved Rook and Noel back, then turned and started firing point blank at the Invid's vulnerable sensor area. As it blew up, it still managed to get off its final, deadly, attack. When the dust cleared fron the explosion and the Invid's fire, all that remained of Dusty was his hat, which had slipped off his head as he charged.

They waited to see if more Invid would show, but none came. That evening, they returned to the town, to find the locals seemingly more relieved that their "defenders" were dead, than for the elimination of Ayers. They sat around a table in the saloon, and talked it over.

"Scott, we didn't know how to tell you safely, before the battle, but there were signs that something was wrong, even as early as last night."

"How's that?"

"Here's what I've been able to piece together from Dusty's story to Rook, along with what some of the locals have told me since we came back. Dusty really was the victim. It started back when your mission was put together at Tyrol."

"Okay, start there."

"Burdette was a former Ghost Rider, that decided to bail on Edwards, rather than run to Optera. Mainly, it was because he thought running to some god-forsaken alien planet was insane, not from any real loyalty to the REF. He and some of the other troops that had been on the wrong side of things back then were put into a special unit, to serve as infantry, not pilots of full mecha, and it pissed him off. They ended up at Point K, and Burdette and about fifty others were were in the process of deserting when the Invid hit the place and destroyed it. Ayres was one of the few survivors that escaped the carnage, and didn't find out until much later that the reason the group he had joined back up with had survived was that it wasn't in camp. In fact, they'd noticed the Invid about to attack, but did not give a warning, expecting the attack to cover their escape - they never dreamed that it was in such force that it would actually DESTROY Point K. A couple of the deserters actually killed themselves in remorse over what happened, afterward, having not been able to live with the fact that they'd killed six thousand people by their inaction - and Burdette personally shot another, that had tried to give a warning of the Invid threat, during the departure."

"The bastard! Even Wolfe had better reasons for his actions."

"They managed to make it here, after a few months that cost them over half their force. They found a town seeking protection from the Invid, and Burdette decided to set himself up as the de facto ruler. This quickly soured relations with the locals. Ayres was always a dissenting voice in their plans, and it drove the other seventeen nuts. Finally, they hit on a solution. The Invid were looking for test subjects in the area, so they arranged to have Dusty captured, in exchange for some Protoculture and a pact of non-aggression with the Invid. What they hadn't counted on was the nature of the experiments, and that Dusty would survive the experience."

"It's even worse than I thought;" Scott said, banging his fist on the table. "And, to think we were helping him!"

"You had no way of knowing;" Alex replied. "In a way, Dusty was the last victim of Edwards' tyranny. But, then, we are victims, in a way, of this senseless war. If the Regis had just tried to talk to us before landing her invasion in such a brutal way, and we could have gotten Zor Prime to talk to her safely, maybe none of this would have been necessary. Instead, the Invid killed without mercy on landing, and the stupid Mexican dictator escalated the war before we could deliver a counter-attack that could have pushed her into peace talks - or at least, knocked out the ability for the Invid to blast later arrivals out of orbit before landing. At least Dusty is free of the war now, wherever he is."

******

He awoke in a dark room, a cool rag on his forehead easing the burns from a too-close plasma burst. He couldn't tell how much time had passed, or where he was. He did know, though, that he shouldn't be here; there's no way he could have survived, even with his augmentation. He could also tell that there was someone in the room with him, sitting at his bedside.

"Where am I?"

"That's a bit of a long story. Your arrival was quite the surprise."

"Arrival?"

"I think little sister is up to her old tricks again, but I don't think it was something she consciously did; after all, she doesn't feel comfortable teleporting herself right now. More likely, she just didn't want you to die, and her subconscious acted on it. You showed up five days ago, falling in a ball of fire onto the floor of the Africa Base CIC from about eye level. Luckily, I was there to help save you."

"Africa, how did I get to Africa?"

"Think back to before you left Tyrol - what was the big story about what happened to the Edwards clone, on Optera?"

"Officially, or unofficially?"

"Both."

"Unofficially, that some member of Skull was a mutant, and used her mind powers to fry Edwards when he wouldn't release the Hunters. Of course that sounds silly."

"Well, it's true - and I'm the mutant in question. Noel is a clone I made almost 20 years ago, to cover that I'd become an adult practically overnight. She has powers similar to mine. She used those powers to send you here, and while you were recuperating and having those Invid bionics studied by our lab guys, I was debriefing you with telepathic probes. You're an interesting man, Sergeant Ayres. If we make through this war, you'll probably be remembered as the 'Count of Monte Cristo' of the Robotech Wars. Of course, officially, you'll be dead; some people won't take your killing seventeen soldiers for revenge lightly, even if they deserved a firing squad for what they did to you and to Point Kilo."

"And, unofficially?"

"Well, the first step is to get rid of those bionics. I'm pretty good with a protoculture chamber. I can move myself and a few hundred kilos from point to point at stellar distances, teleporting, so as soon as you feel up to it, I'm going to take you to one of our Zentraedi ships in Mars orbit, clone you a whole body, and we'll transfer your mind into it. It's like Zentraedi resizing, but with a full cellular rebuild like the cloning process. One of the processes the chamber can do, from its own programming, but it was locked out of the commands that Zentraedi could order - otherwise Breetai would haven't needed that cybernetic eye plate installed. After that, you get a whole new identity, and get incorporated into the crew of the ship. What you do after the war's over is your decision."

"Lead the way, then."

Dusty staggered to his feet, and Karen took his arm. In a small flash of light and a breeze, she took him to begin his new life. To herself, she thought, "If only the road to my new life had been so easy; and I've still got months to go before I can try to regain what I lost all those years ago."

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