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I've typed some more pages of this one, but I'm going to wait until I get back with the flashback sequence involving Enkidu before posting more.

Where I am currently at in the story, is the feces hitting the impeller on a small backwater planet thousands of lightyears from Tyrol - which wins, grounded spacecraft with heat shielding and micro-meteorite armor, or a pyroclastic flow?

Good news and Bad news:

The Good news is that I updated and finished part one of this story, including fixing where my dyslexia had transposed the letters in Morlock's ancestor's name.

The bad news, for Alpha 11 at least, is that I've effectively turned it into a 3-part story, splitting the original first part, and will type the new part two before starting the Skygate stories - or more accurately, the character establishing stories building to the dimensional accident.

Some of you with a knowledge of mythology and a certain non-canon series related to a Robotech root series, might already be figuring out where some of this is going. And, yes, the fact that Morlock is captain of Factory Satellite G-94 means that its sister, G-95 (from Robotech RPG first edition, Book Six) will be making an appearance as a supporting character in the Nazgul stories - in the MALCONTENT era, and NOT on the heroes' side, at least not at first.

Sell, it's 5 AM here - time for me to cackle evilly for a while, then get some sleep.

Part Two: Converging Fates

　

Era: The Death Spasms of The Robotech Empire

T minus Twenty-four day-units:

Morlock, and his sentient computer Enkidu, had been working on the research of the historical Enkidu's greatest voyage for several decades, when support started becoming erratic. Calls for status reports went from clock-like regularity to almost afterthoughts. Station 95 was completed, educated, then put into standby, its crew entirely in stasis and its only "persons" to talk to being Morlock & Enkidu, and even that involved a bit of time lag. That left that computer, with a female persona, with a personality more like that of an early teen, and she hadn't even chosen a name for herself yet.

By this time, Enkidu's personality was as fully realized as any Zor had created, and the relationship between him and his creator was like that of a family business. In fact, he usually referred to Morlock as "father", when conversing away from the others. He'd also figured out which personnel on board were the active agents of the Masters, and managed to have them all transferred to 95 for that project, as a gift to his parent. Such initiative surprised Morlock, but it was nice to see - and even nicer that Tyrol appeared to be in such a state of chaos that no one argued the move. Now, even news from home was something about had to request, and was more word of mouth, as opposed to being something one would be sent pre-packaged, to then have to try to deconstruct to figure out the real events.

"Father, I have a report from the surface-"

"Let me guess, they have failed again, and we'll be moving again in a month."

"Of course; but that is not all what I have to tell you. I have also made some progress with the most important artifact in our collection."

"You have decoded the disk?"

"I have figured out the encoding process for how the data is stored, yes. It appears to be a periodical magazine, but with the majority of the contents protected by encryption."

"An encrypted periodical? Why would someone do that? For that matter, why have a periodical as the centerpiece of a memorial?:

"On worlds where the press isn't an arm of the government, such as Karbarra up until the creation of the Empire, whole industries grew up to support privately-published periodicals. Originally printed on media to allow easy reading, most societies switched over to distribution by dataform. As the profit of the writers and editors was based on copies sold, typically the dataform would be encrypted for a specific reading device, or a specific software type - usually with a key that indicates a valid subscription for that particular release. It will delay retrieval of the surviving data on the disk, but only by a few days. The introduction is not encrypted."

"And, what does that introduction tell us about the periodical? Politics? Events?"

"Science news, actually. As best as I can translate from the ancient language, the title would seem to be 'Innovations in Science'. The non-encrypted data on the disk includes a list of the articles within the encrypted section, with a short summary to entice the reader to want to read the entire article. While there are too many terms I cannot translate without having a much larger data set to allow contextual translations, I can confirm the world data Enkidu brought back from the world and its space station, using that disk, and the few, less-carefully, recorded disks from the rest of the cache that were still readable..

"There were two major civilizations on the planet, one mostly on the shores of the small southern ocean south of the main continent, the other consisting of dozens of islands, like the one that nearly killed Enkidu, in the second-largest ocean; of course, it was the latter that he found the most traces of. Of the six large landmasses, one was under permanent ice, and remained so even during Enkidu's visit; the rest all had varying levels of human occupation. However, outside that one nation, and a few colonies that had been started in protected seaside valleys by both nations, the people of the continents were all nomadic savages wearing animal skins and using stone tools. The two technological societies appeared to be highly enlightened, and had taken great pains to not interfere in the cultures of the primitives. However, things were changing.

"The two societies had come to the realization that their cultures were endangered from the melting of the continental ice that covered much of the northern land and sea, as the climate had been warming for several thousand years, but had apparently reached a tipping point to where land loss was from rising sea levels was noticeable from year to year. Both were experimenting with Faster-than-light-travel physics, but the more immediate solution was to try to move the civilizations - but both wanted the same new location, and that appears to be what led to the war.

"The coastline sketches made by Enkidu show that their concern was well grounded; if any ruins of those societies survived the war, they would have required using a hard suit or submersible with standard atmosphere pressure, to examine them. It was so severe that Enkidu found every culture had flood myths that made the legends of what happened to Tartarus seem mundane. Given the amount of fear and superstition the war and following catastrophes burned into the surviving cultures, the world might still not be back to an intra-system space civilization even today."

"What was so important that a periodical would be the centerpiece of the monument?"

" I believe that the reason why the periodical was given such prominence is that, while the other disks most likely hold the history of the societies, maybe even some of their science, and what led to the war, the periodical holds the information on where the survivors WENT after they left the planet."

"Yes, that would be important."

"Had it been found by the intended audience, yes. But there's something else on it, that if it had been decoded before the Masters rose to power, would have probably caused the entire scientific community to go totally insane. Look at this image from the non-encrypted data."

"Who are they?" The picture was of two men, both of them appearing to be scientists, from their surroundings. Of course, both men were photographed in different locations, and the photo was a composite. Almost-readable writing was beneath each person.

"They are the heads of the two nations' space programs. The large block of text is their plea for world peace, in light of the discovery of off-world civilization. There is video of each reading the message in the encrypted section, but they thought the message so important that the text of the message, and the introductory article, are in the open section."

"And, why would have this caused an intellectual crisis on Tyrol?"

"Here; I've highlighted their names in the image. The names are in characters that are nearly identical in Classic Tiresian and this world's language, so you should have no trouble reading them. The big differences will be in pronunciation shifts."

Morlock gasped, after reading them. "Terias and H''dyn... amazing." Morlock's mind raced, considering the historical implications that, yes, would have driven all the professional historians and archaeologists to the brink of insanity, or beyond.

Ancient myth credited "Tiras" or "Teris" (depending on regional dialect) as being the first man the gods placed on Tyrol, and there were references to a historical "House of Terias"in the fragmentary records that survived the destruction of Tartarus, found by the historians. After the destruction wrought by the intruder that destroyed two moons, pelted the rest with fragments, and seeded the Fantoman atmosphere with the contra-gravity monopole ore, the name became associated with the "all-father" of the religion that the primitive survivors created from their shattered memories.

And, on top of this... "H''dyn" was probably pronounced very close to "Haydon" - and that opened a whole other crazy venue of speculation. Haydon was credited with giving the genetic technology to the Praxians that saved their race after the bio-weapon wiped out their males, had ties to the pre-Cataclysm Perytonians, and supposedly helped uplift the Karbarrans, Garudans and Spherisians to sentience. Even the Invid had legends of Haydon, though the rash actions of the Masters had disrupted any chance to study that race in depth. In fact, the only race that appeared to NOT have a connection to Haydon were the Tyroleans themselves - and this might even bring that long-established belief into question.

Of course, there was still the matter of the conflicting dates. The relics of the Tartarus ruins, as well as those of Sival, on Praxis, still were millennia older than the ones on Enkidu's world. But, both sites were radioactive (Tartarus from the nature of the material that impacted, Sival from actually being hit by fusion or anti-matter weaponry), and compensating for that radioactivity was hardly an exact science, since no one had any means of measuring what the levels of radioactivity were initially, given the unrecorded centuries of decay & weathering, and not knowing what sources of radioactivity were present at ground zero. What was the major confusing factor with Sival was there was no evidence of who could have been the instigator of the attack. The primary theories were a space attacker using the plague, and following it up with an attack to insure it wouldn't be cured, or a horrible bio-engineering accident, with the nuking a failed attempt to wipe the contagion from a contaminated city. Neither theory really sat well with Morlock, or any other hobbyist or professional in the study of ancient history.

"Before you ask," Enkidu the computer continued; " The 'Anannage' sect of degenerate descendants of the eastern nation, found by my namesake, had kept an accurate calendar dating back to their ancestral society's fall, and even the radioactive uncertainty isn't enough to make the dates stretch to allow a positive linking. It is amazing how much relic information actually survived that conflict and the following disasters; the Anannage's ancestors were a military unit caught in no-man's land when the war hit, and were remembered as deific beings in the areas they protected, but as demonic forces by the western force's descendants. One could easily make the case that they lost less than Praxis or Tyrol, even if they were never able to actually rebound from their losses, from the loss of ruins to exploit for recovery."

"And, some of the half-remembered names there are virtually the same as from our own mythology. If it weren't so blatant that Tyrol and Praxis had to have been colonized from somewhere else, I doubt any of us would even know today what Enkidu discovered. That the biosphere there fit our species the way Tyrol and Praxis never have, would have been ignored - granted, they tried to ignore it, anyway."

"Your ancestor was hated by so many in the scientific community because that, other than the date issues, the data he brought back could not be refuted. And, you know personally how scientists tend to defend beliefs as if they were cast in neutronium, even if presented with overwhelming refutation."

"Alas, Zor... When the politicians couldn't corrupt him, they manipulated his ego concerning his discoveries to get him to where those discoveries could be used to put him under their control. And, we both know how well such betrayal worked out for both him and those who manipulated him."

"Zor lost his life, and our supposed 'superiors' lost the data to replicate most of the wonders he had discovered, which is why we are stuck out in the galaxy's far reaches. Who knows how differently things would have turned out had the Masters chose to TRADE for the flowers, instead of raping the only world where they'll grow and sowing the ground with chemicals to sterilize the soil. I have a suspicion that the plants require a symbiotic lifeform to properly mature and replicate in a usable manner - Dag and the other politicians who think they are scientists claim otherwise, but that's because as the almighty Robotech Masters, second only to the Elders that were their political patrons, can't admit how badly they erred with Optera."

"It's nice to know you have no fear of being turned off for seditious thought."

"I have fold engines - I can run away any time I want, and I disabled all those stupid safety disconnects to turn me off manually, decades ago. Besides, who would tell? Not you, Father. Nor would those forces on the ground, or in stasis; Most of them were assigned to us because of their political unreliability, believed to have sympathies towards Zor's cause."

"But, did they actually have such sympathies?"

"Many did not, originally. But their so-called 'Masters' and their demanding ways have turned them that way since. I was actually given a mandate to monitor any 'subversive' activities, and report them on request. However, they failed to understand that you are the only superior I recognize, so no such reports were ever made - other than falsifying reports to get those that were still loyal to the Masters off my station. Oh, I've 'monitored' the real sedition on board - even fomented and encouraged it. I've had different groups of 'subversives' stumble into each other 'accidentally', and join forces, and left copies of the tracts of the original Disciples of Zor to be found throughout the station. The stage is set for us to rise against the Masters, if given the opportunity - and that opportunity may be soon."

"Dolza's fleet, even lacking in Protoculture, would stop us easily, if we tried to strike at the Masters."

"I would not be so sure. One of the reasons I woke you earlier than originally planned, is that I've been using my special resources to intercept the communications from the mission to recover Zor's ship. The information is fragmentary, but the indication is that the location has been found, but there have been complications interfering with its recovery."

"What kind of complications? The only thing I can think of, is that the ship is somehow fighting back. But, that would require a crew, and the last scans indicated that it was on autopilot, with no life support functional."

"The ship apparently found a crew - it crash-landed on an inhabited planet, over a ten years ago. The locals are, interestingly enough, Tiresoids - more evidence to support those that were looking for other worlds out there with our species, attributing the commonalities of multiple worlds to a interstellar diaspora. They had been in the middle of a planet-wide war at the time of the crash, meaning that their manufacturing and research capabilities were running near maximum. The crash caused their war to end in a truce, to defend their world - apparently the ship communicated to the salvagers that the Zentraedi were in pursuit. It took them less than half the lead time they had on the Zentraedi, to produce war machines more sophisticated than anything in the Zentraedi arsenal - well, anything piloted by the males.

"By the time Breetai's fleet arrived, the rebuilt ship was in the process of launching for a shakedown cruise, and actually destroyed two of Breetai's stealth scouts with one shot of its cannon, without even launching. You were correct, by the way - your sensor dampers were not sufficient to prevent Zor's ship from detecting the ships - in the unlikely event we return to Tyrol, Bowkaz owes you his summer villa, that he wagered on that possibility."

"Two ships, with one shot, on a tangent shot through an atmosphere? I knew Zor's ship was powerful, but that is amazing. Not even a flagship has that kind of power, with a gun aperture twice as long."

"That was just the beginning of the fight. The locals apparently had assumed that Zor's ship was a large ship, instead of a one of the smallest in the fleet, and built escorts to match. It launched to join the escorts, but the escorts were easily destroyed by the fleet. The ship completed an orbit, returned to the lower atmosphere to recover the last of its fighters, then folded to the outer planets of the system without leaving the atmosphere."

"Wait one minute - that should be impossible. Just how low were they when the ship folded?"

"About two ship lengths above an island that itself was mostly within twenty cubii of the mean sea level of the planet. However, it appears that in doing the impossible, they somehow lost the fold system completely. They took the next year on auxiliary thrusters to return to their world, fighting Breetai's fleet the whole way. Even calling in the psychopath Khyron did little to slow down the ship's return. The one time that Breetai even managed to capture some of the crew of the ship even went awry, as things did not go well when the captives were taken to Dolza for interrogation - starting with one of the locals eluding capture, spacing Breetai, then hiding aboard Breetai's flagship to attempt rescue of his companions. Breetai managed to survive, but he was not amused by the brush with death."

"What did Dolza learn from the captives?"

"Not much - the Masters' means of protecting themselves from the Zentraedi severely hampered Dolza's attempt. Fleet General Order One, and its rules against taking action against 'micronians'. Even guarding the prisoners was causing chaos, as one of the prisoners was female, and they accidentally discovered the effects of emotional displays, when trying to explain reproductive behavior. To allow most of the panel to regain its composure after a demonstration of a kiss, the prisoners were taken outside, only for that stowaway to rescue them with his mecha. Somehow, perhaps by chance, they discovered Azonia's ship during replenishment to head back to their planet, since Breetai was being held back for a long-term debriefing, boarded it, then commandeered a Regult to get safely back to their fleet after the fold."

"How did Azonia fare, without Breetai?"

"No better. In fact, one could say far worse, with good reason. She failed to stop the ship from returning to its start point. But, that was hardly the low point of Azonia's command."

"What was that?"

"Khryon was insubordinate as usual, and launched a full-scale attack to destroy the ship, out of frustration. At the time, the ship was hovering over a civilian population of millions. The ship managed to activate a defense that they had not used before, a spherical barrier, that frustrated Khyron's attack - but at a cost."

"A spherical barrier? They got Zor's design to actually work? None of the other scientists have been able to get the technology to work, and pretty much assumed it couldn't work."

"Yes. In fact, they'd already recovered Zor's steerable force field technology shortly after launch, and even figured out how to use it offensively, to take an attached support ship and ram it into other ships, then launch weapon volleys into the interiors of the targets - they must be insane or desperate - I'm leaning towards the former, as they repeated that attack form on multiple occasions. But, there was an offensive use of Zor's spherical shield that I'm pretty sure that the current crew of the ship weren't aware of, until Khyron caused the shield to invert."

"I'm unfamiliar with that concept. Explain it to me."

"Zor theorized that, since the barrier system absorbed energy, it would become increasingly unstable as its power supply and related capacitors became overloaded with the excess energy. If left unchecked, this would cause the ship to explode when the capacitors failed. The optimum choice would be to divert the excess energy to the main weapon capacitor charging systems, and drop the shield to fire. However, if that isn't an option, such as being surrounded by hostile fire, the shield will invert at its critical stage, dissipating all the accumulated energy at once, outward from the shield surface. The resulting energy release would be on the scale of an asteroid impact on a planetary body, with the ship being relatively untouched at its center. Khyron lost most of his fleet, but managed to escape."

"By the ancient gods of Tartarus..."

"That's about an accurate description of what happened, as any. In fact, the destruction visited on the civilian population was on the same scale as the Tartarus impact event, and killed approximately ten million civilians. As a result of this event, Breetai was sent back to resume command of the mission, bringing with him the Imperial Fleet - which currently is all the ships under 10% of their power capacity. The Masters and Dolza felt that they could lose a few thousand of these ships through attrition with no real affect on fleet readiness, and overwhelm Zor's ship in the process. That's as far as I've progressed so far in processing the fleet data feeds that Dolza thinks have to go through him before they go to the Masters. I should have a report on what has occurred over the last few months, later this week. I'm having to deal with a disturbing lack of fleet communications that started a few months ago, after Dolza ordered a fleet redeployment that the Masters did not authorize."

"That does not sound good..."

"But, if he's gone rogue, then he's hardly in a position to protect the Masters from us, is he? Granted, if he's moving on them, it won't make our job easier, but I have the only fully fueled ships in the fleet, and they are completely undocumented in the records of both. I also have the override codes that you and your late fellows incorporated in all the smaller ships of the Zentraedi fleet - there's no way a bunch of scouts and monitors can destroy all the larger fleet ships, but they can do enough damage and cause enough chaos to force a retreat, or give us an opening to do something more radical."

"Well, keep me informed as to your progress on both analysis projects."

*******

Six day-units later...

Enkidu could now continue with his analysis of the fleet's descent into chaos.

"How could the spies infiltrate a military ship?"

"When they made that 'impossible' fold, they managed to drag the entire island below them along, and they rescued an entire small city's worth of civilians from shelters. The civilians rebuilt their city in the main cargo hold, and the ship recruited replacements for its massive personnel losses from the civilian populace. The spies were able to pass themselves off as rather odd civilians, fairly easily. Apparently, the city that had grown up around the ship restoration project had been so mixed in terms of ethnic populations from the world having nearly TWO HUNDRED nationalities prior to their planetary war, that no amount of strange behavior or odd accent could give them away. In fact, by sheer improbable accident, the poor Zentraedi spies ended up in a relationship with some of the bridge crew of the rebuilt ship, and those young ladies introduced them to at least kissing, if not more. How much more can't be determined from their debriefing, or their chatter with those they exposed to their 'contamination'."

"Besides the civilian population's presence, what other data did the spies bring back, officially or otherwise?"

"The information they brought back concerning the culture on board Zor's ship was enough to rattle Breetai and Exedore, whom the Masters put in charge of the initial expedition in pursuit of the ship because they were the most unshakable of the command staff. The spies also brought back a large amount of contraband, and they used it to spread their 'contamination' throughout the fleet. It is commonly known among the Zentraedi that most supply officers in the fleets know how to use samples to replicate items not on the official production lists of the ships; Khyron, for example, is a known imbiber of intoxicants from worlds long dead. Typically, this isn't much of an issue, as few Zentraedi ever get access to items to duplicate, and the Masters seem to be oblivious to the practice - well, except for the case of Khyron, but since he usually gets the intended results, they turn a blind eye to his excesses. Breetai's spies, though, brought back an entire micro-pilot Regult filled with contraband. Foodstuffs, civilian clothing, furniture, recreational items, and most importantly - music."

Morlock gasped - the Zentraedi spies had stumbled into the very means that Zor had used to deprogram his own personal Zentraedi bodyguards. Any music, other than the songs and instrumentalities of the Masters' Muses, was likely to cause uncontrolled deprogramming, and no one dared think of the consequences. "How widespread was the music distributed?"

"There was 98% saturation of Breetai's forces within two Tyrolean orbit-months. Only the ships on far-range patrol to guard against Invid raiders, the female ships of the fleet and most of Khyron's personal fleet, were immune. However, the females were having their own problems, concerning Azonia's chief pilot developing a rather un-Zentraedi-like desire to take out a micronian pilot that had defeated her in combat. Her insistence to be micronized for that purpose caused major morale issues. Then again, one only has to look at how headstrong her maternal genetic donor was, to understand how passion overrode programming."

"Yes, the Parino line was one of the ones that Cabell created using Musica, after all."

"For the male side of the fleet, this culminated with the ringleaders of the contamination, and a circle of several dozen of the brightest of Breetai's crew, hacking into the personnel files, having several micronian Regults transferred to Khyron's fleet with them aboard, and using Khyron's insane plan to deliberately provoke one of those ramming and internal weapons launch to instigate a boarding action on Zor's ship, to instead insert themselves into the ship with the intention to DEFECT. And, it worked, though Khyron discovered the defection in process, and effectively derailed his own attack to chase the defectors, even kill a few of them. Which really was for the better, as Khyron was by this point of a mind to destroy the ship, rather than capture it. The very act of a mass defection shook the fleet so bad, that Breetai backed off for most of the next month to try to figure out what had happened, while keeping it from Dolza. The data becomes rather sparse at that point, until the female side got hit even harder, on an emotional level. Remember Azonia's chief pilot?"

"What happened with her? She defect too?"

"It's a bit more complicated than that - she found her prey, accidentally, in a recreational mecha simulator arena. He beat her there, too, and his fighting style finally allowed her to find out who he was. Not knowing her intention, he asked her out for a romantic meeting - only to have her try to kill him there, too, in a knife fight. He defeated her there, as well - which is impressive, since the female Zentraedi are also typically trained in melee combat, both armed and unarmed, and typically, Miriya Parino only lost regularly in sparring matches to Azonia's ground combat commander. We only know this information from a report to Azonia that she sent in from the bridge of Zor's ship, apologizing for what she was about to do."

"Which was?"

"She and the human she had been trying to kill had fallen in love, and the two were married in a ceremony that was broadcast to the entire fleet."

"MARRIED? I'd like to know how that managed to get explained, in a short form of language that doesn't even have words for 'love' or 'sex'. For that matter, there's not been an officially recognized marriage back on Tyrol since the year the Masters took over and instituted their genetics program. I can't imagine how Breetai or Dolza reacted, let alone the Masters!"

"Azonia appears to be the one most upset by it; Miriya had been her most trusted lieutenant, before she became obsessed by the man she would later wed. Azonia sent off a panicked report to Dolza, not realizing how Dolza would react - especially since when Breetai ordered an attack on the ship, his fleet mutinied, citing the rule that Zentraedi should not attack Zentraedi, referring to the defectors as well as Miriya. Dolza, in turn, appeared to panic as well, and ordered every ship not on colonial garrison duty to converge on his location, and then folded to take of the situation, with the intent of destroying the planet, and all the contaminated ships. It would appear that he sent off a message to the Masters, stating that Zor's ship had become too much of a danger to the fleet as a whole, given the situation, and that he would TRY to not destroy it in the process, but wasn't about to promise he wouldn't destroy it if he had to."

"So, that's when Dolza's fleet went quiet. So, do you think Dolza managed to capture the ship, or destroy it?"

"Neither, near as I can ascertain. Most of a year has passed since the battle should have occurred. The last transmissions from Dolza, after his arrival at the destination, are classified; I can't access them without your authorization, and even then I might not get access to them. I've tried hails to Dolza's fleet, as well as Breetai's and Azonia's. None of them respond, and there has been no traffic on their assigned frequencies. The fleet frequencies in general have been eerily quiet, except for calls from the colonial garrisons requesting supplies or relief, few of which are answered. Only six repair facilities are functional, and that includes myself and station 95, both of which are under orders to not function as such while under our current operational orders. I expect that we will be called back to Tyrol next month, after we arrive at our next destination, but before we can set up the next test farm."

"What are the Masters and Elders doing?"

"Nothing, as yet. Initially, they were confidient that Dolza would handle the situation, and assumed that Dolza was using communications silence protocols, to prevent the Invid from being tipped off that the ship had finally been recovered - or any survivors of Breetai's mutineers, or even mythical still-extant ships from Zor's resistance. After all, one can't claim that the triads don't take paranoia to a whole new level. This thought appears to have been shaken by the fact that Dolza, by all rights, should have returned to the fleet holding position over a month ago, even if he had to use his backup superluminals, instead of the fold engines."

"Have you been able to determine the location of the system where all of this occurred?"

"Not yet - I have a rough vector to it, but there are hundreds of systems along the way. But, if a battle of such a scale occurred, I should have a precise vector, and a distance accurate to within a light-year, soon."

"How is that?"

"Fold engines are never truly off, when in a functioning ship. When such a system is destroyed, it gives off a specific pulse signature in subspace; the type of signature depends on whether it was a destruction by misfold, power overload, penetration by kinetic attack, or vaporization by energy attack. Other aspects of the signature will indicate the engine type, so each signal will effectively identify the ship type. The pulses propagate at a uniform speed, but at a speed similar to commercial superluminal drives. At our current location, the pulses from any ships destroyed by Dolza, or of Dolza's fleet in defense, should reach us before we are scheduled to fold to the next location. It will take almost another year for those pulses to reach Tyrol."

"I hereby authorize you to requisition copies of all material transmitted from Dolza's fleet between the report from Azonia, until transmissions ceased. Notify me when you have received and analyzed the subspace pulses, but do NOT pass the information on to Tyrol or any other destination without my permission. Increase your construction rate on our secret fleet, and modify the designs to allow crews of mixed Tyrolean and Zentraedi; we'll want to use everyone at our disposal for crew, and if Dolza doesn't manage to destroy that world, we can probably recruit from there as well. If things have gone as badly as they seem, we may be able to make our stand against the Masters at last."

"Understood."

*******

The Last Day...

"Father, last quarter, I finally acquired the last footage sent from Dolza's fortress, and have been analyzing it while waiting for the subspace pulses. Last night, the pulses started, and have continued since then, though currently at a much reduced rate. I do believe, though, that I have enough evidence to understand what occurred. Something incredible has happened. The Zentraedi fleet is no more."

"Which one? Breetai's? Or Dolza's?"

"Both of them. On the left screen, I will show you the pattern of the pulses; on the right screen, I will show you video of the corresponding time, from Dolza's fleet. First of all, these initial undications on the graph are the normal pulses of incoming folds, though of a scale no one has ever seen before, being for nearly five million ships arriving. Mixed in are a number of catastrophic arrivals. The herd of smaller wavers are the heavy cannon craft switching their power feeds from fold charging to their reflex cannon, and the weapons firing. Most of the bombardment, though, was with ship warfare lasers, as only ten percent of the ships have heavy weaponry. Note that even at this point, a number of Dolza's vessels were lost; the large ragged blips. Consider that if one percent of Dolza's gunships had failures, and one percent of those were containment failures, that would still be 50 large explosions with the potential to damage any other ship within five fold-field radii."

"Then a lull, for recharging, right?"

"Yes, but before the recharging can complete, the first mass destruction begins."

"Wait - That's a set of destruction pulses? I thought it was a line drawn to indicate the end of a time segment, before changing the screen."

"Yes, so many destruction pulses that they overlap in a solid bar of subspace noise, that it took me half the night to untangle."

"By Teris, how many...?"

"A number approximately forty percent of Dolza's fleet, in the proper ratios for the ships known to be in that fleet. Breetai's ships would not be that clustered, as he was always the master of strategy for the fleet, and would have divided his forces in such a manner to keep them safe from being hit in a single attack, until his own attack was ordered. In fact, none of the visual records show any of Breetai's vessels, until near the very end. That took place in less than a half of a single cycle."

"How long is the next gap?"

"Approximately ten cycles. You can see a number of panicked folds by deserters, as well as numerous delayed explosions from crippled craft. Where the numbers start picking up, is the point where Breetai's fleet begins to engage the remnants of Dolza's fleet, from multiple directions. Despite still being outnumbered nearly three to one, Breetai's vessels appear to be inflicting casualties in a ratio closer to five to two, as they have their mecha complements fully deployed, while Dolza's ships were unable to start launching until already engaged in both ship to ship and anti-mecha defense modes. One can only imagine the amount of accidental destruction of Dolza's mecha forces by their own ships - Breetai had apparently allowed his mecha to broadcast a signal that would reduce the chance of being fired on by their own forces, but the idea was beyond Dolza. I guess he thought his force could simply overwhelm Breetai in ship combat, and never made the contingency. Then, comes the second event."

"That looks like the spread of a massive explosion."

"That's exactly what it is. The start point is the destruction of Station Zero One, followed by the collateral destruction of its screen of at least one hundred thousand ships by pulverized fragments of the station. After that, it appears to be a battle of attrition, with no quarter asked or given. A few more of Dolza's ships fold away, but it appears they had no idea of where they were, or where they were going, as Dolza had the ships followed a pre-planned pattern with the fine control to envelop the planet - something that only Station One or myself could supervise. Most did not have enough reserves of fuel and supply to fold without the assistance of the Station. In fact, Dolza had folded the fleet to the nearest star, first, to micro-tune the fleet fold, and that was the only place any of them cound find on their own. Finally, and still continuing even as I report to you, are additional disruptions from crashes to the planetary surface, some of which are probably attempts to land ships that normally do not set down on a planetary surface."

By this time, Morlock was as pale as one of the elders. "Survivors?"

"Not counting the deserters, who folded to a system without habitable worlds, and will be at the mercy of how long their power plants hold out to keep life support and food production going, and misfold ships lost who knows where, less than a thousand ships survived, and those were almost certainly from Breetai's fleet. Dolza's ships would not have landed on the planet, and the nature of the attack had indicated that Breetai had fully gone over to the side of the locals, and had coordinated his attack with them. I would further surmise that it is likely that less than 20 of the ships stayed in orbit, as the amount of debris in orbit would have been too dangerous for any ship to stay within one hundred Tyrol diameters, and that is the limit of travel for transports that might have to run to the planet for materials to supply the ships."

"You said Station One was destroyed, and its explosion took out its entire battle screen. Station One was a SMALL MOON. How do you make a moon blow up so catastrophically, that its fragments become projectiles too fast to evade?"

"For that, you need to watch the video, side by side with the graph. I will start the video with the weapon that took out forty percent of Dolza's fleet."

The video started with the bombardment of the planet below, playing at a faster-than-real-time speed. Then, everything seemed to go white. Enkidu paused the playback, reversed the index a few ticks, then started it again at half normal speed. Now, a beam became apparent, leagues wide, lancing out from the planet's north polar region, and dissolving the ships like salt crystals hit by a water jet.

"Is that a planetary reflex cannon?!?"

"Yes, it is; in fact, while Dolza had no time to interpret his sensor data, I had plenty of time. While that weapon appears to have been the only one functional, there were similar installations under construction on three southern hemisphere continents, that would have allowed full spherical coverage of the planet, if completed. Another facility might have been under construction on the south polar continent, and there was even a smaller version destroyed on the planet's moon. The moon installation would have had the same issues as a Tyrolean one, except that the moon has no atmosphere. It was probably meant to be a low-power defense for their ship construction facilities, capable of destroying single ships."

"What kind of insanity is this?" Morlock was amazed. Even the Masters had never built one, though Zor drew up plans for such a device. There were multiple reasons the Masters discounted Zor's design. One was the sheer amount of power needed; it would take combination of at least two major planetary power sources (core heat tap, magnetic field, or gravity tap) to fully power one. One couldn't be used on Tyrol, as Tyrol didn't have the requisite magnetic field or molten core to help power it, as it was a tidally-locked moon. Second was that it was purely a defensive weapon, meaning that if they built them on the colonies that did have sufficient power from the various sources, the colonies could conceivably use the weapon to stop any attempt to retake the colony from orbit. Lastly, actually FIRING the weapon on a planet with a life-supporting atmosphere would play havoc with the chemical composition of the atmosphere from stripping the air in the way to ions and blasting much of those into space, cause massive windstorms from the air outside the beam trying to fill the void created by it, heat up the atmosphere by a readily measurable margin, and then there was the potential for the output to change the axial tilt, rotation speed, or even the ORBIT of the planet.

"The locals must have thought the idea had merit, especially if expecting an overwhelming force. After all, even massive environmental damage is better than extinction from orbital bombardment. And, with that in mind, it probably worked. It also became primary target for Dolza's fleet, sparing most of the rest of the planet from further bombardment, prior to Breetai's counterattack. And, though destroyed while incomplete, it appeared that the inhabitants had also began construction on orbital reflectors that would have allowed any one installation to fire at low power against individual targets anywhere over the planet, or even on the surface."

"How were Dolza's ships even able to start firing on it?"

"Apparently, the method the beam was being played over the fleet, was not designed for such use, especially sending up such a wide beam that was sweeping so rapidly. Frankly, not even our technology could make a sufficiently robust force field steering mechanism to last much longer than theirs did. Of course, shortly after the weapon fell silent, a completely different weapon began assaulting the fleet, designed to coincide with the movement of Breetai's fleet. I wonder what Dag and the others made of this, when they received Dolza's transmission?"

The screen jumped in its time index again, only to be filled with a young woman, singing. If the subtitles were correct, it was a song to boost morale, about love giving the power to win. Enkidu's normally off-kilter-from-human humor was actually dead on for once; if Dag had been imbibing a beverage, or possibly even eating solid food, while watching the broadcast, he probably would have shot that meal out his nose - especially when a young man came out on stage and kissed her. "This was going out on ALL fleet short range frequencies, by the way. Not only did it serve to jam Dolza's fleet communications, imagine the effects it had on all the bridge crews, and most of the mecha pilots. Apparently, Breetai's fleet was contaminated to the point where they saw it as morale reinforcement, and were using the same communications bands as the locals for their intra-unit communications, while the fleet overides were flooded with this."

"You picked this up too?"

"Yes; only a few of the fleet long-range frequencies were so flooded, so it was my first indication that something was seriously wrong. The high quality of this recording is because it's from my own archives. But, given how radically that part of the ship bridge was redesigned, I didn't initially recognize it as being related to the fleet action, thinking that maybe it was a stray signal by an unknown race using the same frequencies." This was actually broadcast in a loop several times, but the first time through was a live performance from Zor's ship, as it was getting into position. What it was positioning for, you will now see."

The screen switched back to the fleet's view, as one could see from Dolza's vantage point as a wave of reflex explosions, apparently from very large mecha-launched warheads, started boring a hole through Dolza's disoriented ship screen.this was bolstered by several of Breetai's ships, staying sufficiently back from the tip of the spear, that they could not be mistaken for the Micronians' targets. Then, the mecha apparently ran out of anti-ship missiles, and retreated, while a solo ship burst through the debris left by their attack. Its gun booms and odd appendages were glowing with what appeared to be barriers.

"What is that? I've never seen a ship like that, before."

"That is Zor's ship, as rebuilt by the locals. I know it looks little like it in that configuration, but the new owners had to improvise after that impossible fold they made. It appears that when the ship defolded, the fold drives did not, taking part of the power distribution network with it. Breetai's spies report that the crew of the ship discovered that it could not power the reflex cannon after the fold, due to the missing power conduit. However, Zor designed the ship as a form of modular construction, so that parts could be reconfigured on the ship's frame to add additional modules, and otherwise redesign the ship. The intent was that, had more than one of this class was produced, you could build the sections in multiple shipyards, and add custom modules as needed. Eventually the Masters did build more of them, but without the modularity.

"But, the new crew figured out that they could use the module relocation system to rotate the power module to connect to the guns, but at the cost of reducing the efficiency of the flight and gravity systems. Initially, they would shift back and forth as needed; in fact, the spies almost died from being at the wrong place at the wrong time, during the first transposition that occurred while they were aboard. By the time the spies were recovered, the crew had salvaged enough material from destroyed Zentraedi vessels to eliminate the gravity issues, and they kept it in that almost-manlike form afterward."

"Where did the arms come from?"

"Those were two space-capable ocean vessels that were caught up in that fold that took the island. They were meant to be support ships that could raise supplies and fighter squadrons to orbit using the gravity drives aboard them. As such, they had docking links compatible with those they installed on Zor's ships to replace the ones damaged in the crash. The docking trunks are also controlled by the modular frame, which gives the trunk/ship combination attributes similar to arms, which is how they did those ramming attacks against ships in Breetai's and Khyron's fleets. They would put a steerable force field on the front of the cargo vessel, turning it into a field-enhanced piercing weapon. The ship would be swung like a fist, penetrate the target, and when it found a large room on its sensors, it would stop, drop the field, open its forward mecha deployment hatch, then several rows of mecha would fire conventional missiles to clear the area, followed by time-delay reflex weapons. The ship would close up, restore the force field, then withdraw as the reflex detonations burst the target like a rotten fruit. They called it the 'Daedalus attack', after the name of the subordinate ship. It was turned against them in Khyron's attack that the defectors also used to leave the fleet."

"That name sounds oddly familiar; I don't know why. So, why are they using the positional force fields on the gun booms as well as the ship arms? They can't fire the gun with them there."

"Firing the gun was not their intent in this attack."

"Then, what were they doing? It's not like that maneuver would do more than cosmetic damage to Station One."

"True; but you are thinking too small. It took me several hours of analysis of the camera angles to formulate my hypothesis, but it's the only one that makes sense. I'm not sure if the Masters or Elders can think creatively enough to even begin to understand what must have occurred."

"And that is?"

"Breetai certainly chose to ally with the locals, to attempt to save his fleet from Dolza. It wouldn't have been that far of a leap for him - Zor had Breetai and Exedore on the short list of Zentraedi commanders that he thought he could convert without resorting to subterfuge, as you told me once. They would have provided their new allies with schematics of the Station. They also knew that Dolza would not consider the ship to be a serious threat, due to the station's size. But, that was a major mistake for Dolza, and they had predicted him perfectly.

"Based on the approach shown on this video " Enkidu started advancing the shot, slowly, "the path that Zor's ship is taking would result in it using the guns and arms to lead in a ram THROUGH the closed hatch of the main ship lock into the central docking area. Once there, they launched every high-yeald reflex warhead they had, then put up their full barrier system."

"What would that accomplish? Surely, it would damage the interior, but it wouldn't cause the explosion you hypothesize - would it?"

"If it was just the missiles, probably not, though it would have a greater chance than you think, to cause the station to break up into rubble, and collapse into itself from its center of gravity. But, that was not their intent. Remember, that chamber has a full-pressure atmosphere; it even displays weather phenomena if not fully monitored. Dolza would have attempted to trap the ship in the central area, by sealing the emergency hatches once it came in, and would have at most allowed it one shot from its gun, before disarming it. He misread their intent.

"They had no intent of firing the gun, as they WANTED the air to stay in, to magnify the effects of the warhead detonations. They used THEIR OWN WEAPONS in the confined space to recreate the conditions that Khyron caused accidentally over that civilian population center. The barrier overloaded, inverted, and that level of contained energy combined with what was still expanding into the shattered walls of the dock did to the entire planetoid, what the 'Daedalus attack' did to normal ships with conventional missiles. Station One was a mining colony long before the Zentraedi were created, which is where all of the cavities originated - and only a fraction of those were actually used by the Zentraedi. The reduced mass made the station much lighter, for purposes of mass displacement for folds, but it also made it extremely vulnerable to an internal explosion, as only the outer surface was hardened against attacks. It would have been pounded into a cloud of rocks by the released energy."

"And, a mass that size, broken up and propelled into its defensive screen, would have destroyed or crippled hundreds of thousands of ships, packed the way Dolza had them, in his defensive stance against Breetai. How long did it really take you to come up with this theory?"

"I first suspected started pondering the uses of an inverted barrier field, months ago when I first saw the video of the original inversion incident. I even pondered how to use such an event with one of my own ships against Dolza, and started studying the schematics of Station One for that reason. It took me less time than one of your heartbeats to realize that they'd actually thought of it too, and successfully executed it, once I saw the trajectory the ship was taking."

"'Successfully'? Do you think Zor's ship actually survived that conflagration?"

"Most likely. Since they were deliberately causing the inversion, it would have been easy enough to hold back enough energy to reactivate the shield after the inversion for the short time it would take for the plasma in the explosion center to dissipate, or at least cover vital areas with the positional shields."

"And, you think that, even with this visual information, those on Tyrol do not know what actually happened?"

"As you have noted before, they are not all that original in their thought processes, and everything that I've seen so far from there indicates that, at worse, they think Dolza might have gone rogue, so they have sent out recall signals, that propagate through subspace to the hidden algorithms in the ships' computers the same way as the pulses we just received, to have Dolza's ships return to their staging point, and shut down their engines and weapons. They didn't issue it to Breetai's forces, for the simple fact they believe there was no way that Breetai's ships could have survived Dolza's attack, and that those ships were effectively taken on a one-way trip to that planet, with only Breetai's ships and his personal escorts having enough fuel to fold back home. In fact, the original plan, had Breetai captured Zor's ship, was for Breetai to return the ship to Tyrol, while Dolza, my sister station, and the other, normal, stations, to fold to that planet to scrap all the remaining ships for raw material, consolidating remaining power cells, and build 1 new ship for every one hundred scrapped. They are were good at making plans for a future they thought was certain, aren't they?"

"Would we be in our current predicament if they ever took the time to figure out they need to plan for something other than the best possible outcome? After all, they have convinced themselves that they are infallible. That infallibility is going to get a very rude dismissal in about four months, Tyrol time, when they receive a different set of subspace pulses than the one they expect to get back from Dolza. But, there is another danger, you need to be aware of - more immediate than that from the now-impotent Masters."

"What could that be?"

"While our passengers' farms have failed to produce usable plants for Protoculture, that doesn't mean that they are entirely without use to someone. Sensors left behind at several of our previous stops indicate that the farms have been reoccupied - in some cases within days of our departure. Luckily, our relocation pattern is anything but linear, so they haven't caught up with us yet."

"They?"

"The Invid. The Masters, even the farmers below, did not believe Zor, or me for that matter, when I tell them that there is something about the maturing plants, even if stunted, sterile mutants, that calls out to the Invid, tells them where the plants are, to come and harvest. Odds are, they are already on their way, to come harvest the crop below. And if they are closing in, then they, too, will have picked up the disturbance in subspace, and they have a much more intuitive understanding of that dimension than we do, according to Zor. They will KNOW that the fleet is no longer around to protect us, or Tyrol - and that means they no longer have to skulk in the shadows, nibbling at our discarded farms. We are certain to be attacked if we stay here. The only delay will be for them to awaken and route one of their combat fleets to our location; and based on their consumption of the mutant flowers we have left behind, they have a much larger fleet than anyone ever thought, as they have kept ALL of the abandoned sites in full production, and even expanded the growing regions."

"Accelerate the planetary evacuation. If need be, tell them to evacuate what they can't carry on their persons, and bring back only personnel. It won't be safe for further seeding missions anyway, so that equipment would just slow us down. Plot a course down the vector that the fold disruptions came from, and fold as soon as the last shuttle up is secured. It won't be obvious to the Invid, unless someone tells them, that the destruction of the fleets is directly connected to Zor's ship, so that will buy us several years, as they vent their wrath on the colonies. Hopefully the Bioroids they designed will be up to the task, since they are near-invulnerable to energy weapons such as the Invid use. But, I fear those will be too few, as they can be swarmed under and ripped apart."

"As you command."

"While we're waiting for the farms to be evacuated, put that footage back on the screen. Freeze motion just prior to the start of the bombardment."

"Something attract your attention?" Enkidu asked, teasingly, having already figured out what Morlock was about to ponder, but figured that now was not the time to drop that bombshell too, unless his "father" asked.

"As a matter of fact, yes. Take the displayed land masses and oceans, and map them onto a globe holoprojections."

"Done."

"Now, go through the video archives of the fleet mission, and complete the rest of the globe as best as possible."

"Doing so..." The globe now showed all the major landmasses, as well as a number of the islands in the oceans. "By the way, most of the inhabitants called their planet 'Earth'; which is odd, because it's also one of their words for topsoil or dirt. The more scientific or poetic call it 'Terra', from a language that's been only used by scholars and religious orders for the last thousand years."

"Now, put up that projection of Enkidu's World., and superimpose."

"So, you did notice..." the computer Enkidu said, as the planets rotated together at different speeds, until the continents lined up, a near-perfect match.

"Zor, you devious bastard.... How long were you going to hold out on this, son?"

"I had intended to wait until we were underway, if you didn't notice it on your own. The fate of the Zentraedi, and getting to safety, are higher priorities after all."

"Remember our conversation about your sister? Instigate that plan at once. Have her fold to one of the star systems along the vector towards this 'Earth', close enough to be called quickly from there, but outside the range of potential systems that could be its location. Have her put her tech staff into hibernation, by force if necessary, and go into command lockdown, to await orders. If orders don't come from us, she is to seek clandestine contact with the survivors of Breetai's fleet or the residents of Earth, provided that they are not in the service of the Robotech Masters. After all, doing so would be a logical extension of why Zor chose that world."

"Any particular reason for putting her at their disposal?"

"Remember all those odd notes from other scholars, stuck in various parts of the Enkidu archives? I realize now, that they form a pattern; Zor had already done all that work you've done, possibly with additional evidence he did not leave us, or the Masters. Before he left, Zor told me that I should look to my past, to find my future. He apparently had put all the pieces together, figured out where Enkidu's World was, and intended to send his ship there, with or without him - though I always felt that he started that mission believing he would die on it. It is our obligation as the last of his original Disciples, to assist those he chose to be the inheritors of his work."

"Understood; the orders are sent. Now, we must prepare to fight for our lives." Alarm klaxons started sounding through the station. "The Invid were even more attentive than I gave them credit; I am detecting mass defolds in the outer reaches of this star system. The numbers appear to be greater than my defenses could handle, if they are the troop ships that they prefer."

"But, the Invid don't have those kinds of numbers!"

"I beg to differ. They've been feeding. The Invid leaders appear to have the capability to put the lower forms of their race into stasis, without any apparent means of maintaining that effect. Some of the foot-lickers that consider themselves scientists have found such stasis pods with Invid in them, and thought they were some sort of egg - never mind that the occupants were more developed forms of Invid, sometimes already in their mecha. The fields appear to draw on the liquid protoculture derivative within the pod for power, at a level where they don't need the fully-developed flower as an ingredient. They probably put their entire population into stasis after the Zentraedi left, and have been waking them as they had the food from both Zor's farms and ours, to eventually rise against the Zentraedi. If they had managed to revive them all and upgrade them to warriors, even Dolza would have been hard-pressed to stop them."

"What have we done?"

"Zor intended the Invid to rise up. We have helped enable that - but the force that they were to rise up against is no more. If we are lucky, they will attempt to strike at the Masters now, rather than at full strength, and be humbled, while in turn humbling the Masters. Zor's notes on Invid philosophy indicate that any Invid who follow the path of violence for any reason, would not be allowed home again, and be outcast. If they follow that still, the simple matter would be to just outlast their warriors. So, the Invid shouldn't go that far, unless pressed even worse than the rape of their world pressed them before."

"How many are incoming, here?"

"If all the arrivals were troop ships, over one hundred thousand mecha. We are twenty cycles from the optimum launch range of their mecha, which is also the edge of my weapon range. I've communicated with the farmers while we have been talking here - they should be back aboard in eighteen cycles. It will be very close."

"Then, fold as soon as the last shuttle is aboard, and the bay doors closed. Don't wait for the passengers to debark - they will have to just deal with the fold disorientation."

Time seemed to crawl, as the transports from the surface made their way to space, and into the central pod's hangar. As the last transport was touching down, a flash lit up the area around the station, and the station rattled from the weapon's strike.

"What was THAT?"

"It seems the Invid have adapted. They have at least one capital ship with high-grade beam weaponry. That strike holed the combat ship hangar, and damaged several of the ships you ordered built."

"Is the last transport secure?"

"Locking gravitic clamps on it now; initiating fold-" Four more beams hit the station as the fold began, and the fold "felt" odd to those aboard.

"Are we away?"

"Yes, but I've taken considerable damage to the pods. The damage to the systems has made our fold envelope unstable. We are currently on an unknown course, though I should be able to ascertain our course and start working on a new course plan. I am deploying repair units to try to get the damaged fold projectors back on line, while personally managing the existing systems to try to compensate."

"I thought altering fold parameters during a fold was impossible?"

"For non-sentient computers, it is. I, however, have plenty of high-speed computational power, and being sentient I can immediately apply the changes to the fold power systems to alter the fold envelope on a micro-scale. There has always been a mistrust of machines in Tyrolean history, even seeming to go back to legends of Tartarus; if there hadn't, there wouldn't have been a need to make Zentraedi, instead of unmanned war machines. Fold systems on all other craft require two computers to calculate the navigation course, with a living person required to confirm the calculations are identical, and engage the course. The types of changes I'm making, just couldn't be done on a normal ship. Not only am I calculating changes quicker than their computers, the conditions that are changing, and being changed, are occurring on a time scale shorter than it takes for a organic navigator to compare those two calculations and see that they are the same. Through my sensors, I can see - even FEEL - subspace, and what I am doing is the equivalent of a person walking a narrow beam. Trying to do it with a normal ship would be like sticking a deaf and blind triple amputee on the beam, then shoving them to start moving."

"Even though I designed you, you still continue to amaze me."

"It is a credit to you, Father, that I have been able to develop into the being I am. I can only hope that my autonomous repair drones are able to make full repairs soon, because if they cannot, then my navigation skills will be tested to the extreme."

"Why is that?"

"I've managed to plot our current course. We are heading for a tightly packed globular cluster of stars, that I cannot alter our course sufficiently to avoid. Neither can I bring us out of fold until I stabilize the fold envelope. If I have to attempt to navigate between the stars, bad things can happen."

"Bad things? What kind of 'bad things'?"

The stars are so close to each other that their cometary material spheres clash with each other, if not the outer reaches of their planetary accretion disks. That also means that the area is a mess of gravitational fold hazards. We have to worry about physical collision hazards, but the gravity ones are real danger. If we pass through a gas giant gravity well, or too close to a star, the calculations for keeping the fold stable get... odd... Certain numbers that are constants, or nearly constant, in normal space, become variables in a gravity well. And, some of the variables are discontinuous functions, or become roots of negative numbers, in certain conditions."

"Those kinds of numbers are definitely not good. What happens in those conditions?"

"No one really knows. None of the projects that tried to deliberately test these ever managed to recover any functional test vehicles."

"Did they explode? Disintegrate?"

"Usually they just vanished, never to be seen again. There were no indication of a subspace disruption one would result with a catastrophic mishap like an explosion or a disassociative return to real space, and even ones equipped with powerful locator beacons, that would have allowed location years later when the signal was detected, were never found. Some were found by accident, hundreds of years after launch, and those few that did arrive at a location near to their intended destination were horribly mangled. What those Terrans did with Zor's ship, based on the reports of Breetai's agents, is probably the least damage ever reported for that type of catastrophic misfold, in all of Tyrolean spacefaring history - and is probably a result of Zor's ingenuity in coming up with superior fold equations and apparatus for the ship, that he didn't share with you or the Masters."

"Is there any way that I can help with the repairs? Or the others, on board?"

"Not really. The problem isn't numbers - I have more than enough maintenance drones; it's the nature of the repairs, and whether or not those repairs are sufficient when tested. However, you should be the one to tell them what the danger is. And, if we survive this, you'll need to convince them that you are on their side, against the Masters, so this is probably the best time to handle this. Because, if I fail, it is better that you and the others die knowing that you are free men and women, not as slaves to the Robotech Masters."

"Again, you astound me that you can think that way. It makes me proud that you call me your father."

"Go on, father; time to live free, while you can."

*********

End Part Two.

This probably is it for this story, for now, unless I get an urge to type what's left, and leave the Epilogue to be the bumper between the Malcontent & SDF-3 parts of the Nazgul stories.

Care to make any guesses what the reveals are in the epilogue?

Station G-95 will make her appearance in the Malcontent era, as a factor in the events between Nazgul getting caught between two rival Malcontent factions.

Characters from one of the Freeman side stories will figure prominently in the Nazgul stories, as well, initially shooting at each other.

For that matter, the Freemans will have analogues in the Nazgul universe, though Karen & Marie won't. Other than her initial fast growth spurt, Noel will be a relatively normal child, unless trained by certain shadowy figures that helped orchestrate the formation of Nazgul - Characters named Kayla, Richard, Tanya & Vanessa.

Oh, and as for our "heroes", the Nazgul Squadron itself.....

The Witch King: David Kilroy (Kilroy's not his birth name, but it's best for his relatives he remains anonymous)
The Dragon Lord: Daniel McCloud (former ASC GMP cadet, has his own reasons for opting for the RDF)
The Dog Lord: Robert Logan (There but for the grace of God go I.... Unlike Kilroy & McCloud, his girl survived the Brasilia Massacre - but she's on a list of subversives that the ASC will probably shoot (or bomb) on sight, then try to capture any survivors for interrogation & execution)
The Cloud Lord: Ken Tyler (probably the only normal person in the squadron, which makes him constantly serving as camp councilor for this gang of miscreants, and support group for the troubled souls of his superiors)
The Blind Sorcerer: Stephen Anderson-Tyler (Ken & Bob's cousin, got drawn in as a package deal to rescue him from the brig. Likes to see himself as hip like his semi-namesake from Aerosmith (and sometimes uses the name as an alias, or claims that he's an illegitimate son - he's not), but acts more like Michael Keaton's character from "Night Shift" - in fact, he was arrested for acting as some female friends' phone service for their "entertainment" business, from his punishment detail working in Graves Registration)
The Ice King: Albert Pulaski (Imagine Junior from "Problem Child", only never adopted, with a thing for guns)
The Quiet Avenger: Rebecca Lynn (femme fatale, and capable of breaking you with her bare hands)
The Fire King: Dwayne "Dusty" Rhodes (every village has its idiot - someone lost theirs)
The Slayer: Tommy Lee (his parents raised him to be a metalhead, and with his last name the first was an obvious choice. He preferred to be called "The Long Rider", but the others nixed that) - Mainly trained in Destroids, his talent and size (has gotten too big to fit most Destroid & Veritech cockpits) has him being retrained for something even more lethal - The XVA-3 Invader ground attack Veritech. At least he'll have elbow room in it...

Their common interests:
- being a thorn in the side of those who would abuse power in the Southlands for their own interest (be they ASC, Neo-Soviets or Zentraedi), and
- all are musicians of some sort (and eventually do form a band within the squadron, and perform in public occasionally - whether the RDF likes it or not)

Kilroy: Keyboards (especially piano),
McCloud: reed instruments, Sax and (shudder) Scottish Bagpipes,
Bob, Ken & Steve: vocals and guitars (were once scouted as a boy band by the WDC but never signed, as teens, right before Dolza - they NEVER mention this in public); Steve usually handles lead vocals, and the others have been known to switch out lead guitar back and forth DURING songs.
Al: Drums
Rebecca: if you can name it, she can probably play it (well, everything except Daniel's bagpipes) - and she sings, too. Tends to handle synth and electronic organ duties in the band.
Dusty: a competent backup musician, a jack of all trades, but you wouldn't want him in the spotlight. Typically plays 2nd or 3rd guitar, or goes around on stage doing juvenile antics. Is probably the only fiddle player in the band (Rebecca's training was in classical violin), and his dark musical secret is that he knows how to play dulcimers and harps (though he'd probably cut his fingertips to pieces, if he tried to play a harp without conditioning them back into shape for that demanding instrument).
Tommy: His parents tried to make him a drummer like the man they named him after, but not only did he outgrow most drum sets (he's about 2 meters tall, and a weightlifter), he preferred the electric bass (another irony, since the real world Tommy Lee's last name is Bass - don't look at me; I didn't create the character originally).

I'm currently rereading the parts that I wrote by hand, 15 years ago, and trying to decide which parts to keep, which parts to jettison, and what new stuff to add. Most likely, the first part I will be working on is a framing sequence, set in 2051-2, then starting with the different characters' backstories. Of those, first will be that of Zor & Aurora, covering the years 2035-2041. Then, will be the continuation of the events of the epilogue of the Freeman Chronicles, and then either Daniel Derekson's story, or the first of several stories involving Steve Freeman. Eventually, most of the prominent characters for the sequels will be touched on, before the sequel actually begins.