"I'm talking about the unknown, Captain," he told Sean. "The importance of state of mind."

"Like going against the Robotech Masters was a given?" Sean asked.

Jack grew flustered. "I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that what Haydon IV threw at us was totally unlike anything we'd faced."

"Did we ever tell you about the spade fortress that put down just outside of Monument City?" Sergeant Angelo Dante asked in a conversational tone, the only one of the group who had refused to accept a commission. He swung around to face everyone, elbows flared, large hands on widespread knees. "The Fifteenth ATAC was ordered to recon the ship, see. So we tank out there and-"

"Now who's being irrelevant?" Jack cut in. "I mean, why don't we just invite some of the Karbarrans in here to entertain us with their war stories? Or how 'bout getting Gnea in here to talk about hand-to-hand."

"Yeah, I'll bet you'd-enjoy that, Jack," Marie Crystal laughed, affectionately nudging Karen Penn with an elbow. Black Lion leader during the Second Robotech War, she was just another officer here. Sean, who had been her fiance three times over the past year, was being his usual arrogant self, and while she rarely approved of his teasing sarcasm, Baker was so easy to put off balance. "What d' you think, Karen? Shall we call the Praxians in?" she contributed.

Karen smiled and regarded Jack from her seat. Lithesome and honey-blond, she appeared to be every bit Marie's opposite, but in fact the two had grown to be close friends. "That's up to Captain Baker," she said. "It's his show."

"Jeez," Jack muttered, brushing back a recently styled silver-tinted pompadour, "et too?" He spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "All right, for cryin' out loud, I'll get on with it."

The pilots applauded wildly as Jack called up memories of his brief EVA."It's like flying through a cloud," he began on a serious note. "Only there's no vapor around you, no droplets streaking your canopy. Other times it's like moving toward a cloud you can't seem to reach. I had a hard time looking forward, because everything started to go solid on me. But watching your displays doesn't help, because there's absolutely nothing happening on-screen. I kept feeling like I was close to punching through it, but it just went on and on. And it never changed, no matter which heading I took. The SDF-3 is your whole world, the only game in town."

He blew out his breath and shook his head. "I don't know what more to tell you, really. The VT performed well, no glitches in any of the systems. I thought it through a couple of reconfigurations, and there were no problems. Weapons systems seemed to be fully operational, but I was under orders not to enable. Dr. Lang's thinking is that missile propulsion isn't affected."

"When do we get a crack at it?" Sean said, rising to his feet for added effect.

As soon as Admiral Hunter figures you're ready, Jack was about to tell him, when hooters drowned out the thought. The ship was returning to full-alert status. A female voice, boomed from the flight bay's overhead speakers: "We have uncorrelated targets closing on the fortress in all sectors. Captains Baker, Phillips, Penn, and Crystal report with your teams to assigned launch bays immediately. Substations November, Romeo, Tango, Zebra, prepare for. . . "

Jack let the rest of it pass right through him. Phillips and his 15th cohorts were already up and hurrying toward their VTs, pale-faced but eager wingmen-combat virgins the lot of them-falling in behind.

Jack-stepped down from the missile pallet that had been his temporary stage, Karen was waiting for him, a grin forming.

"Cheer up, flyboy," she said, linking arms with him as he approached. "For what it's worth, you'll still go on file as being the first out."

Jack snorted sullenly. "Fame's a damned fleeting thing these days."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

The elderly spokesperson for what remained of the planetside contingent of the Army of the Southern Cross introduced herself tome as 'Regina Newhope.' The woman's associate-as facially scarred and ghoulish-locking a creature as I have ever encountered-went simply by the name 'Farnham.' I recall thinking at the time that there was something strangely familiar about the pair of them, something I wanted to connect to the deceased Lazlo Zand. Then, when I subsequently learned that Newhope's real name-her pre-Invid name-was Millicent Edgewick, I realized that the Zand connection was a sound one. And even now I'm certain that 'Farnham' was none other than the First Robotech War's most wanted political criminal, Senator Alfonse Napoleon Russo.

Dr. Harold Penn, quoted in Justine Huxley's I've Been to a Marvellous Party

The REF pilots who had escorted Scott Bernard to New York were ordered to return the colonel and his alien charge directly to Norristown rather than to the launch pad in Venezuela. The Southlands city-where tech crews ferried down from the orbiting Ark Angel had been working overtime to clear a landing zone for the soon-to-be-arriving dignitaries-had been selected as the temporary site of the reunited Earth governments.

No sooner had the VT set down than Marlene was whisked away to the REF's planetside HQ by three sinister-looking men from G2 dressed in dark suits and opaque glasses. Scott, too, was hurried off to yet another debriefing, but this time at the hands of the intel directorate chief himself, former Plenipotentiary Councilman Niles Obstat, the balding and stoop-shouldered old-guard ally of Emil Lang. Unlike the neurometric specialists whose job it had been to evaluate Scott's psychological state, Obstat was interested in learning all he could about the political climate of the Southlands. Which towns had impressed Scott most? Who seemed to be in charge? Who controlled the wealth, the distribution of goods, the private armies and fringe groups? Who had been partisans, and who had been sympathizers? And who headed up the quasi-religious movements like the Church of Recurrent Tragedy or the so-called Interstellar Retributionists?

Scott answered as best as he could, covering much of the same ground he had covered months earlier. Obstat pursued oblique lines of questioning, ever on the alert for nuance, personal impressions, the recollection of some seemingly trivial episode.

The sessions continued for two days. Scott was asked to thumb-print oaths and papers and was instructed not to discuss anything about the SDF-3 or the returning REF with "downsiders," which he understood to mean planet-bound Terrans of all varieties.

Afterward he was left pretty much to himself, and more than a week slipped by. Marlene was kept incommunicado; as far as anyone in G2 was concerned, the Invid simulagent was military property. Besides, as someone had suggested to Scott, she was a lot better off than she would have been on the streets, where if word of her background got out she wouldn't have lasted a day.

He didn't fully understand the reasons for all the secrecy about the missing flagship and the sudden inactivation of much of Earth's Protoculture-driven mecha until Vince Grant invited him to attend an introductory summit held in Norristown's city hall, a castlelike affair that had served as an Invid Protoculture storage facility during the occupation.

The REF was represented by the Plenipotentiary senators Penn, Huxley, Stinson, and Longchamps. The latter two, still in some sense allied with the old Southern Cross apparat, were a faction in their own right, hoping to reconnect with whoever was currently representing the interests of the demolished government of Wyatt "Patty" Moran, General Anatole Leonard, and Dr. Lazlo Zand. And while all three men had died during the final days of the Second Robotech War, a small group recently released from an Invid internment camp did step forward to speak on their behalf.

Planetside Earth had numerous secondary spokespersons as well, several of whom Scott recognized by sight and a few of whom he knew by reputation. Donald and Carla Maxwell, for example, from Deguello; and Terri Woods, one of Lancer's contacts in the resistance, who now headed up a diverse but vocal contingent of REF supporters. Then there were the two women Obstat had told Scott to keep an eye out for: exGMP lieutenant Nova Satori, the charismatic leader of the Homunculi Movement, and Jan Morris, Corporeal Fundamentalist, whose large following advocated a return to agrarian and religious primitivism.

Loyalists, separatists, cultists ... each group took its turn at the podium, and each stirred argument, debate, in some cases violence among the gathered crowds. Scott could see that Huxley was bent on reaching accommodations with one and all, even though her patience was wearing thin. The Council's principal aim was the restabilization of humankind's understandably paranoid mind-set in the hope that Earth could avoid a return to the feudal mentality that had prevailed during the Masters War and the occupation. It was obvious that the REF figured to achieve that with the promise of advanced technologies in exchange for a large piece of the planet's geopolitical pie.

No mention was made of the missing SDF-3, nor was any attempt made to explain mecha failure or Earth's sudden energy crisis. The Council not only acted as though the situation were easily reversible but suggested that they had even had a hand in bringing it about!

No decisions had been reached by the time Scott was shuttled up to the Ark Angel to attend a prelaunch briefing. Justine Huxley, Longchamps, and the rest, backed by several squadrons of functioning mecha, remained on-world to press the REF's case. A select few were apprised of the fact that the Ark Angel would soon be leaving Earthspace.

The briefing was held in a dungeonlike cabinspace located on the starship's engineering level that had come to be called the Sentinels Bay, for it was there that campaign strategies had been hammered out. Scott arrived in the company of the Grants' adjutants and aides; Vince and Jean were already positioned at the compartment's horseshoe-shaped table, along with Dr. Penn, Niles Obstat, and a dozen or so of the ship's command and intel officers. But the briefing did not get under way until the table's remaining seats were occupied by five of the most bizarre-looking civilians Scott had encountered in quite some time. Dressed alike in tight-fitting black jumpsuits studded with what looked like chrome stars, the five sported round mirror-leaned goggles and hairstyles that made the outlandish razor cuts and permtints of the century's first decade seem tame by comparison.

"Professor, I believe you're acquainted with everyone here," Harry Penn said by way of welcome. "With the possible exception of Colonel Bernard." Turning to Scott, he added: "Colonel Bernard, Professor Nichols, and his team from Cyber-Research, Doctors Stirson, Gibley, Strucker, and Shi-Ling. "

The five Penn had addressed as doctors nodded in unison; they might have been clones or biogenetically engineered quadruplets. Of their apparent leader, a short, lantern jawed man with an enormous pompadour of henna-colored hair, Scott asked, "Nichols, as in Louie Nichols, creator of the Syncron drive?"

"Adapter of the Syncron device, Colonel," the professor said, adjusting his glasses as if to sharpen their focus. "But yes, one and the same."

"I'm honored, sir," Scott said in obvious awe. The Nichols drive, as it was sometimes called, had been responsible for assuring the nearly instantaneous return of the REF fleet from Tirol. "Your reputation has reached clear across the Quadrant."

Nichols smiled tolerantly. "And we've heard about you, too, Colonel."

Scott's face flushed; Nichols's tone of voice left it unclear whether he had been complimented or insulted. His assistants, meanwhile, had begun to set up some sort of computer station off to one side of the table. Scott had never seen decks or consoles quite like the ones they were unpacking.

"Dr. Penn informs me you have some news for us, Professor," Vince was saying.

"Yes," Nichols said after a moment, "thanks to the colonel's capture of the simulagent."

Vince appraised Scott with a quick, look. "'Capture' might be too strong a word, Professor. As I understand it, the Invid, er, operative voluntarily turned herself over to REF custody."

Nichols made' a dismissive gesture. "File it where you want, General. The important thing is that the simulagent gave us the go-to we needed on the Protoculture. Based on what we managed to access from it-"

"It has a name, Professor," Scott cut in angrily. "We called her ... Marlene."

Nichols stared at him from behind the mirrored goggles. "Sorry about that, Colonel. I screened it but misfiled it somehow. Well, this Marlene, then, gave us a solid return on our investments. The Regis did in fact wed her race to all existing Protoculture at the moment of transubstantiationthe incident that gave rise to the 'phoenix vision' some of your own ship's crew have confessed to experiencing, Doctor."

Penn leaned back in his chair, stroking his chin as muttered questions and exclamations were exchanged around the table. "But Professor," he queried at last, "you said all existing Protoculture. And yet dozens of mecha remain fully functional, to say nothing of the Ark Angel herself."

Nichols traded amused looks with his associates. Scott noticed that the four had linked their terminals together, employing cables of peculiar design. From each console dangled equally strange-looking umbilical jacks.

"A valid prompt, Doctor, but you don't need a simul.. .er, a Marlene to run it. What I should have said was all the first-generation Protoculture-the pure strain that came from Zor's original matrix, along with the home brew the Regis was concocting from the orchards here."

"As distinct from what?" Penn asked.

Nichols let out an exasperated sigh. "As distinct, Doctor, from the Flower stuff the REF cooked down in this facsimile matrix Lang and the Tiresian-what's his name?"

"Rem," Gibley said.

"Rem. What Lang and Rem cobbled together on Tirol."

Penn and the REF staffers mulled it over for a noisy moment.

"That would account for the fact that certain mecha are still functioning," Vince offered. "But of course we'd have to do a complete craft-by-craft accounting. As far as the Ark Angel is concerned-"

"It is Sekiton-fueled," Nichols completed.

Penn's ruddy face registered astonishment. "My God. You're saying that the SDF-3 ..."

Nichols nodded encouragement. "The fold generators of the SDF-3 were taken from Breetai's flagship and the Robotech factory satellite, both of which were fueled with firstgeneration Protoculture."

"And that Protoculture," Penn said, "was caught up in the Invid transformation that occurred here, on Earth."

"You've got it," Nichols told him. "If we can learn where the Invid went, we'll find the SDF-3."

"But how can we do that?" Jean Grant asked.

"Folding for Haydon IV is a good way to start," Nichols said. "The more I hear about Haydon and this 'Awareness,' the more I'm convinced there's a lead there. Second, we can take the Invid ... woman along. Some part of her is still on-line with the Invid group-mind, wherever it is, in this dimension or some other."

Some other dimension? Scott wanted to ask him. Wrinkled foreheads and bobbing Adam's apples suggested that he was not alone in his concern. Nichols's group, however, seemed to be taking the revelations in stride. Scott watched the one named Gibley. He had one of the umbilicals in hand and seemed to be applying some sort of spray lubricant to the jack.

"'We,' Professor," Vince said. "Can I take that to mean that you and your associates have agreed to accompany us?" Nichols nodded. "But not for the reasons you probably imagine, General," he was quick to add. "Like most of you, we have friends on that ship who are important to us. But as for viewing Protoculture as a necessity in shaping Earth's future, we couldn't disagree with you more."

Scott's mouth dropped open as he saw Gibley part his long tail of bleached hair and insert the multipronged jack directly into the base of his skull.

Nichols caught Scott's expression. "They're called cyberports," he told Scott, fingering aside the hair on the right side of his cranium to reveal a similar alloy receptacle.

Jean Grant blanched as the rest of Nichols's team began to follow Gibley's lead.

"And we call this-headlocking," Nichols explained, regarding the table for a moment. "You see, despite what you may think, Protoculture's reign is finished. Robotechnology is dead.

"It worked its final shapings in the Quadrant when it merged with the Invid. I suspect, in fact, that that was its raison d'etre all along-to be both mate and propellant for the Invid transformation.I "But I repeat: It has no place in the world it reshaped in the process." Nichols shook his head, his eyes a mystery behind mirrors. "No. From this point on it will be up to us to shape our destiny as a race, and we will have to look to superintelligences to help us define and design our course."

He motioned to his headlocked associates, their activated consoles and rapt expressions. "'Machine mind' holds the answers. Through it we will accomplish all that we have failed to accomplish in the past. Through it we will achieve where we have failed. Through it we will journey where we have never been."

The table waited in silence.

"Not out among the stars, either," Louie said with a grin. "But in a reality we will create. Using the power of our own enhanced intellects and the immortal machine bodies we will someday soon fashion for ourselves."

CHAPTER NINE.

During the cruel reign of the Robotech Masters, Karbarra had exported its revolution (along with tens of thousands of its pneumatic projectile rifles) to several Local Group worlds, including Garuda, Praxis, and Spheris. During the Invid occupation, Karbarra had seen its very future (i.e., the Karbarran childcubs) held hostage. The origin of the planet's subsequent turn to dreams of empire is most often traced to its solid defeat over the (T. R.) Edwards-controlled Invid on Optera (see La Paz, Mizner, London, et al.). But who if not Haydon himself [sic] was Karbarra rising up against-Haydon and the curse of his [sic] Ur-Flower.

Noki Rammas, Karbarra

Dana was ready to jump the first Haydonite that glided across the laser-barred threshold to the Sterlings' plush level-four lockup. But when that visitor turned out to be Veidt, all she could do was quietly lay aside the Praxian hardwood war club she had fashioned from a table leg, try to ease unnoticed from her place of concealment behind the couch, and join her parents and Exedore in questioning the being who had been like family to all of them in their time on-world.

She was encouraged to hear Veidt address everyone as "my friends."

Exedore made his relief known with a slow exhalation of breath. "What is going on, Veidt?" he asked, staring up into the hovering figure's bilaterally symmetrical suggestion of facial features. "I certainly can't tell anything from your expression."

"Would that you had learned to discern our nuances," Veidt sent to everyone. "You would have undoubtedly noticed alterations in my countenance since the initial stirrings of the Awareness some months ago. Our inner states are as much on display as your own, you know."

"Tell us what's happening to you," Exedore said.

A dull, pulsating glow lit Veidt's dzentile. "Thoughts come not without great difficulty now, Lord Exedore."

"Try, Veidt," Miriya said, "please."

Veidt's hairless head rolled briefly within the high collar of the robe. "One might compare it to the Compulsion the Robotech Masters used to extract unfailing allegiance from the Zentraedi." The Haydonite regarded Max. "I have found nothing in Terran history that invites comparison, although my intuition tells me otherwise."

"We Haydonites nevertheless have as a world been forced to respond to a type of behavioral programming that up until recently has lain dormant within us. But it appears that those of us who have had continued contact with offworlders can exercise intermittent control over the programming."

Exedore and the Sterlings could sense Veidt's musings. Alone among his planetary companions, Veidt had shed tears on the occasion of the death of Sarna, his mate in captivity, whose body had been delivered into the cupped hands of Haydon IV's towering shrine to its creator.

"The process is somewhat analogous to the defenses your bodies utilize in the resisting of biological contamination or infection," Veidt continued.

"I guess Anad and Llan haven't got the hang of it yet," Dana said.

Veidt rotated to face her. "They were probably more helpful than you realize, child."

Exedore spoke up before Dana could respond. "But what brought this about, Veidt? Surely it has something to do with the Invid's departure. Only a believer in coincidence would fail to see the connection."

Veidt's sendings ceased for a moment. "The Event has occurred, Lord Exedore. I can offer little more data than that. From the deepest center of my being arises an understanding that this world itself has been waiting and preparing for the Event for countless millennia, and yet I cannot speak of it. I know only that the waiting is complete."

"You're telling-us you've no idea what you've been waiting for?" Dana said.

"I am. Nor do I know what to expect."

"Why have we been arrested, Veidt?" Max demanded. The Haydonite glided to the center of the room and back. "Arrest is not the appropriate term. You've done nothing illegal, nothing to warrant imprisonment."

Dana pointed to the laser-barred threshold. "In case you haven't noticed, Veidt, we're not exactly free to come and go as we choose."