The Protoculture Wars
Aubry Thonon
Robotech:
Alternate Points
Of View
Izabelle
Fate
This book is dedicated to the following people:
K. Wiley kkwiley@uccs.edu Lieutenant Kay Landers
Alex profnut@nyongwa.montreal.qc.ca Warlord Agar
Derek Magic09@aol.com Sergeant David Marshall
Steve epustay@aol.com Augustine Rassimus
Kirstin adathono@cc.uq.edu.au Sergeant Tamara Sam'di
This work is c 1994-1996 Aubry Thonon, except for those names,
songs and concepts copyrighted to the appropriate owners (how
do I know who they are? They know, that's good enough).
Feel free to copy this book and distribute it as long as:
A) The copyright notices are left in;
B) If it is printed in a fanzine or any other free,
non-profit publication, could you mail me a copy
please?
C) It may not be printed in a commercial
publication without the prior assent of all the
copyright owners, myself included.
[Reality Check - Saturday Jun. 27 2009, 1326 hours, Macross Island SDF-1 Base]
"Enemy forces in Sector Four-One-Two. Repeat, Enemy
forces in Sector Four-One-Two! All Valkyries on Stand-By
Alert to launch immediately. Diamond and Spade wings to
your Veritechs!"
The voice on the comm-link sounded desperate, almost
panicked. Christina look up from the book she had been
reading and threw it over the side, somehow expecting to
hear the announcement that this was yet another drill.
Instead, her technicians prepped her plane for combat and
motioned her towards the runway which ran down the right
side of the massive SDF-1 Battle-Fortress. Running
through the pre-flight checklist with one hand, Christina
called up her sister on one of the comm-screens.
"Vanessa," she asked the figure that appeared, "is
this another of those surprise drills for the VIPs? If
it is, I'm getting *real* tired of them *real* quick!"
"Bad news," replied the young woman on the screen.
"We lost contact with some of our orbital forces. Delta-
One reports seeing gigantic explosions near the area of
the ships we can't contact. The captain expects the
worse." The figure looked over her shoulder guiltily.
"Can't talk now. Just make it back safely, OK?"
"No problem. I'll see you for dinner tonight." She
pressed her finger on an area of the screen and the
entire picture winked out, to be replaced by various
electronic controls, dials and read-outs. Christina
waited for final clearance from the tower, pushed her
thrust to maximum and took to the sky.
The battle in the air against the bottle-like enemy
fighter-pods had quickly spilled to the streets of
Macross City itself when an invading force of ground-
based mecha swarmed from the other side of the island and
fired a wave of missile at the buildings around the
Fortress. The last pilot alive in her squadron,
Christina fought back a trio of fighter-pods before
swooping down into the streets of the city to try to buy
the inhabitants enough time to reach the island's
shelters.
Several of the ostrich-like pods were already swarming
from the outskirts of the city, reaching inwards into the
heart of Macross City. Christina turned a corner and
found one of the enemy's ground mecha chasing after a
civilian. Thumbing a switch, she swung her wings open
somewhat and fired four missiles into the pod, blowing it
away into oblivion.
The civilian staggered towards her, obviously dazed.
She lowered her left hand to the ground to allow him to
step on to it, which he did. Somehow, he fell asleep as
soon as he had sat in the middle of the Battloid's palm.
"Great." she muttered to herself. "Now I'm a baby-
sitter as well." She motioned her Battloid around and
proceeded cautiously towards the SDF-1. A few minutes
later, still trying to use pieces of skyscrapers as
partial shielding, she was jumped by a couple of pods.
Again, she fired a few missiles to dispatch the enemy
mecha. "I'd better make it back soon. Ammo's running
out."
She straightened her mecha up, taking care not to drop
her human cargo, and stared down the street. "Yep, I was
afraid of that." There, moving in what seemed to be a
random formation towards her, were half-a-dozen enemy
pods. Her radar bleeped at her, registering several more
blips at her back. "Oh shit."
Christina looked down at her hand and noticed that her
cargo had awakened and was staring at the enemy pod in
front and behind the Battloid. <Take a good look. It
might be your last.> She flipped on her external
speakers and spoke. "We're in trouble." The man in her
hand looked up at the Battloid's face. "Hold on, we're
getting out of here." She hoped she sounded more
confident about her chances than she actually felt.
She closed the hand holding him lightly into a fist,
then triggered the mechamorphosys into Guardian. She
checked on her ward, trying to ascertain if he was all
right. "Comfortable?" He replied something, but her
fried external microphones relayed nothing of his end of
the conversation. Instead, she ducked the Guardian into
a side street at the same time as she opened fire on one
of the advancing pod, holing it with her GU-11.
Two more pods were waiting for her down that side
street. "Hey, no fair ganging up!" she screamed to no-
one in particular. She dodged left past the rubble of a
small shopping mall and started darting left and right in
an attempt to evade pursuit. The pods behind her were
opening fire with both laser and kinetic weaponry,
causing her to slide the Guardian around 180 degrees.
She opened fire with the gun-pod and destroyed the first
one without a problem. As she holed the second one
through-and-through, the GU-11 gave out. "DAMN!" The
pods edged closer, like a pack of hyenas waiting for the
pray to breathe its last.
Before she could do anything about her situation,
something rammed her from the right, pitched her into the
ruins of a nearby building. She tried to shield her
charge as much as she could from the falling debris,
hoping the man would be all right. As she looked up to
her right, she noticed that her attacker was not a pod
but a ten-to-twelve meter tall humanoid figure. <An
enemy Battloid?> The figure moved. <Oh God - a giant.>
She lowered her left hand and opened it up, dropping the
man into the wreckage. "Take cover!" she shouted over
the external speakers. "I'll handle things, then we'll
head back for the ship." She checked her registers
before continuing. "I'm low on ammo and I've got a bad
feeling the enemy will start moving towards the bomb
shelters next... They haven't touched them *or* the
ship." Something about that neatly filed itself into her
memory for later retrieval. It would have to wait until
after the attack was over - until then, she would not
have the time to review today's events.
Christina went to Battloid, holding her empty GU-11
out like a club, swinging it around towards the giant.
The gun connected with the over- sized head and sent the
enemy sprawling to the ground. Before it could get up
again, Christina moved her mecha over to the prone body
and kicked it several time in the guts. She then raised
her gun-pod and brought it crashing down upon the
figure's head, smashing its skull.
Taking a moment to check the situation around the
corner, Christina changed her mecha back to Guardian
configuration and slid over to the man she had left
behind, taking him again in her left hand. She rose the
Veritech to slightly above roof-level and inspected the
area.
The launch field was not too far off to her left, but
she wondered if there was any reason heading towards it;
some hangars were still standing, but the majority had
given way to the earlier missile bombardment and
collapsed. Bodies lay here and there over the grounds,
some of them still aflame. Deciding to risk it, she flew
the Veritech down the length of the field to the SDF-1
and, finally, into one of its launch-bays. It felt good
to be back inside the cavernous holds of the battle-
fortress, almost safe. She lowered her hand and allowed
the man to step to the flooring. Around the Valkyrie,
ground crew swarmed with their reloading mechanism,
replacing her empty missile pylons with full ones, her
empty GU-11 with a freshly- loaded gun-pod.
The SDF-1 shuddered and the doors to the hangar bay
closed with a slam. Over the `net, Christina could her
the Techs discussion the Macross' gravitic engine and
their performance. <Smooth ride so far.> she commented
to herself. While the Techs were busy with her mecha,
she busied herself with an internal check of its
circuitry. Several of those laser shots had come real
close to her and she wanted to make sure her electronics
had not fried because of it.
Eventually satisfied her Veritech would not die at an
inopportune moment, she removed her helmet and sat back,
trying to cool her head. Her hair, covered with sweat,
clung to her hand in damp mats. The feeling was not
comfortable, but she could endure it. The technician in
front of her gave her the `thumbs-up' signal. Christina
re-started the Veritech's turbines and tested their
reactions before looking left and right at the
technicians there. Both gave her `all OK' signal. She
noticed the man whose life she had saved had not yet left
the landing bay. He was waving his arms frantically,
trying to tell her something. She smiled and gave him
the `thumbs-up' sign before gunning the engines and
roaring out of the now-opened air-lock.
Christina circled around the massive dimensional
fortress in Fighter mode, taking in the scene. A call
shook her to life. "All remaining units of yellow, green
and red squadrons converge on the shelters -" She
turned the radio off. She did not want to hear this any
more - she had gotten sick of hearing the death cries of
her wingmen and squad mates.
The Valkyrie rattled as it was strafed by an alien
fighter-craft passing overhead. Christina let it
overshoot her and waited to get a missile lock on it
before she fired a trio of high-explosive missiles
towards the alien craft. The enemy fighter quickly
picked up speed and managed to shake the missiles off.
He - at least she assumed it was a he - circled around
wide, trying to take her from the side. She veered
towards him, in her more manoeuvrable Veritech, but
almost did not make it; the alien's beam weapons missed
by a matter of inches. She brought the GU-11 to bear on
the fighter and opened up on it, unloading a few dozen
rounds into the pilot's cockpit. He was dead. She was
certain of that.
The fighter-pod taken care of, Christina made visual
contact with the alien ground forces. She circled the
shelters, high above them in fighter mode, closing, in on
them in the direction opposite the shelters. She
targeted the ground pods for strafing. She acquired lock
on one and released a volley of three missiles; they
crashed into the pod, exploding it in a beautiful
fireball. She targeted another and fired. And another.
She was almost out of missiles, so numerous were the
enemy pods.
She switched to the gun pod. A burst from an
anonymous autocannon hit the fighter's belly and `walked'
its way to the fuselage. Christina felt searing pain
shoot through her back. Auto-cannon rounds pierced the
fuselage; shrapnel was released into the cockpit.
Christina's worse fears had come true - she was hit and
she knew it. At least a dozen shards had entered her
back, the exact number did not matter. Pain shot through
her body. <I'm sorry Vanessa. I tried...>
Christina lost control of her plane, feeling it go
into a spiral. She clasped the transformation lever,
bringing the plane into Guardian mode and slid the
controls into retro-thrust. She did not want to plow
into the shelters below her and explode amongst them.
The engines slowed her descent and she eventually
managed to get the Guardian level. By now, she had lost
all feeling in her feet and her arms had become numb.
The mecha hit the ground at a slight angle, actually
gliding above it for a few seconds before it came to a
halt, plowing into a cloud of battlepods dotting the
ground, bowling many over.
The ejector seat did not work when she tried to hit
the button. It did not matter, she knew it was too late.
She saw her life's story pass before her eyes - her
friends, her family, her colleagues, the stranger she
rescued...
Christina looked at the sky as the life drained out of
her... everything around her took on a surreal quality.
The blue of the sky faded, all that was left was the sun;
normally a glowing yellow ball it had become an angry
white light, like that of a surgeon's lamp but more
fatal. Her already labored breathing became more sparse.
In her last moments, she saw a dot rising to the sky.
<The battle fortress...? Going into space...?>
Christina Leeds closed her eyes and died.
Neoculture (Crash-Test Dummy On The Information SuperHighway)
-------------------------------------+------------------------------------
Dans le froid glace de l'Olympe noir | Dans le vide de l'espace infernal -
Les Dieux malins ont en vain | Fatigue, lasse, vainqueur -
Use de leur puissance, leurs pouvoirs| Ulysse pres d'une Aurore Boreale
Contre Ulysse 31. | Rechauffe un peu son coeur.
-------------------------------------+-------- Aubry.Thonon@qed.qld.gov.au