The Protoculture Wars
Aubry Thonon
Robotech:
Alternate Points
Of View
Thallin
Braywater
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 MondoMage@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, 1855 hours, SDF-1 Pluto Orbit]
Thallin turned around, his brow breaking into a sweat
as he envisioned himself being dragged away in chains to
be flogged, then spaced. The person who had called out
to him was a young woman with fair Asian skin and largish
eyes. Her red hair was short cropped, reminiscent of the
20th century military. She continued saying something
which Thallin missed completely and extended her hand in
greeting. Thallin nearly extended his own to shake it
before catching himself and changing the gesture to a
military salute.
"I'm sorry," he stammered, "but who are you?"
"Lieutenant Kay Landers." she answered, returning his
salute. Was that a sly smile upon her lips? Thallin
could not be certain of it. "Pilot of the VF-117."
<Ah. The pilot!> Thallin relaxed slightly, realising
she was looking for him and not for the contents of the
gurney. "Ah yes! Thank you for saving my Veritech."
Behind his back, his grip tightened upon the gurney's
metallic handlebar. "But if you will excuse me, I'm in a
bit of a hurry."
"Sure thing," she replied, "but which Veritech? I
mean, I saved a lot of people today."
<Oh, great. I just had to get an ace, didn't I? Why
couldn't it have been some wet-behind-the-ears pilot I
could have thanked and then have him forget everything?>
"The VX-001. We were in the re-entry pod when I shut...
when I went unconscious."
"Oh yes, that was it. You're in pretty good shape
considering how badly beat up your mecha was." <Oh
good,> thought Thallin, <she knows nothing.> "Besides, I
kinda figured you were the guy sitting in bay 5B with
that cockpit thing." <Oh bad, she knows too much.>
"Ah... Oops... Er..." <Great elocution, Thallin.
Get your mouth in gear, *fast*.> "Yes... That *was*
me... But..." Thallin's mouth was still trying to
reconcile the conflicting thoughts going through his mind
when the elevator dinged and opened behind him. <Saved
by the bell.> "I'm sorry, but I'm *really* in a hurry,
and if you don't mind, I have to go now." he stammered,
backing away from Lt Landers, pushing the gurney behind
him into the elevator. For the first time since the
conversation had started, Thallin believed he might
actually get away.
Lt Landers stepped forward and placed her hand upon
the elevator's doorjamb, keeping it from closing, keeping
Thallin from escaping. "Listen, I'm sorry if this sounds
rude, but I don't like being kept in the dark about
things." She pointed a finger at him playfully. "I'm
not going to let you go until you either explain this to
me or promise to explain it to me at dinn... No...
*lunch* tomorrow in the primary officer's mess."
Thallin's spirit dropped. He simply was not fated to
get away from this one easily. "All right," he sighed.
"I'll meet you there tomorrow." She looked almost
surprised at his response.
"You *promise*?". The elevator sounded an angry
buzzer, reminding those in it its doors had been opened
for longer than intended by it.
"Yes, I promise," Thallin replied. She stepped back
and let the doors close, cutting off the buzzer and
allowing the elevator to start moving down into the
bowels of the ship.
Thallin looked at the bent handlebars on the gurney
and sighed.
The room was cold, freezing in fact. It was located
against the hull of the SDF-1, which afforded it a
temperature close to zero absolute should the small
heaters around the room ever break down. This effect was
only possible because of the distance the Macross was
from the sun. As it got nearer to Earth, the hull would
pick up more and more solar heat, causing the room to
become a furnace unless it was refrigerated. Space only
was cold in the darkness. One could virtually boil alive
if left in the sunlight.
Thallin bent over the large bath he had been
converting according to the specifications from the
console's printout. It reminded him of something he had
once seen in the recently-crashed SDF-1, all these years
ago. Except there had been parts of a Marine floating in
it.
The final connection in place, Thallin placed
Christina's body into the tub and opened a valve. Green
nutrient flowed through the piping and flooded the tub,
covering the naked body it contained. Thallin shivered
as he watched the liquid goo cover the face of the dead
woman.
"Okay. The body's soaking, the controls are set, all
indicators are in the green." Thallin yawned as he
stepped towards the electronic bench in one corner of the
coldroom. "Now if I could only make sense of this
circ<yawn>... circuit diagram I can start on the bio-
electronic design for the... the... <yawn>...
custommm...."
Thallin slept.
[Reality Check - Sunday Jun. 28 2009, 1000 hours, Storage Area 5d]
The alarm woke Thallin with a start. He muttered
something obscene about having to wake up at the ungodly
hour of... 10 O'Clock in the morning. Now why did this
ring a bell? Was he supposed to be somewhere?
He stood up off the chair he had slumped into the
night before and stretched as he walked around the room,
taping this indicator, checking that valve, trying to
remember. He finally let out a groan. <Oh yes, I almost
forgot - Lieutenant Landers.> He left the coldroom and
walked to the makeshift quarters he had established
nearby. As he entered the room he noticed that the
computer console on his desk was beeping softly, trying
to attract his attention. He shuffled towards it and
tapped a few keys, requesting the message stored in its
memory to be played.
"Dr. Lang has scheduled a meeting of all heads of
department for 1500 hours today. Tabled for discussion
will be the repercussions due to the disappearances of
the Macross fold engines." The computerised voice of the
data terminal almost managed to sound smug, although with
the main computer core still in Luna, the Macross'
computational power was well below par. The Bahamoud
core had been scheduled to be remounted into the SDF-1
two weeks from now. But since Macross was in space and
Bahamoud on the Moon, it was now an impossible task.
This left the ship relying on an untrained crew rather
than on the automation it had been capable of when
originally built by its alien creators.
Thallin groaned as he opened his closet and took out a
fresh change of clothes.
[Reality Check - Sunday Jun. 28 2009, 1210 hours, Officer's Mess Deck 2]
The officer's mess was almost full by the time Thallin
got to it. The pilots were telling each other's stories
of daring rescues of civilians in distress. "...So he
orders me to go and retrieve the shelter from all of the
debris. So I tell him `Excuse me Sir, but I ain't
crazy...'" "...You should have seen what was left of the
giant after two days hard vacuum..." Thallin moved on and
scanned the crowd, looking for an empty table. He
eventually spied Kay Landers sitting by herself, nursing
a cola.
"Is this seat taken?" he enquired. She raised her
head and smiled at him, getting up to greet him with a
handshake. He responded by giving her a small salute.
"You're ten minutes late," she commented, smiling.
"I'm sorry about that, the lifts were being used by
the reconstruction crews - I had to use the stairs."
They both sat back down at the table and Landers waved at
a passing waiter.
"It's okay," she said while the waiter made his way
towards their table, "It gave me a chance to listen to
the shipboard gossip." She looked up as the waiter
approached and opened his pad. "Would it be possible to
have a steak sandwich, please?" she asked of him.
The waiter shook his head. "I'm afraid that with the
restrictions it will not be poss..."
Thallin flashed his ID badge in front of the standing
man long enough for him to read it. "The lady asked for
a steak sandwich. And I'll have my usual."
"Yes *Sir*," the young man answered briskly, then
disappeared back into the crowd as Thallin put his ID
back into his pocket. As he did so he noticed that
Lieutenant Landers was staring at him.
"R.H.I.P." he said.
"Rhip?"
"Rank Hath Its Privileges." he answered. "And before
you ask; No, I'm not *that* important, just important
enough to get you that steak sandwich you wanted."
"Sorry if it caused any trouble, but I just had to
ask." A small pause which Thallin used to take a drink
from his glass. "So tell me. What did you have on that
gurney, a dead body?" Thallin nearly sprayed the
contents of his drink in surprise and instead started to
choke on it. "Are you okay," enquired Landers. "You
look a little pale."
Thallin waved her away until he had managed to get his
coughing under control. "Do you *always* skip the small-
talk and go straight into the matter of the subject like
this?"
"Why? Is there a problem?" she asked.
"No, I guess not."
"I suppose it was some sort of equipment for your
plane. Weren't you the guy I saw sitting in bay 5B?
*And* the pilot of VX-001?"
"Yes, I was both. And the trick of it all is remote
controls. It's a pet project of mine."
"Well, that explains why the VX-001 was whisked away
so fast. So how does it work? VR? Neural connection?"
"Nothing that complex, I'm afraid. We're still
working with a modified simulator control set coupled
with a super-computer."
"Super-computer?" She raised an eyebrow. "I thought
these things were huge and required sub-zero temperatures
to operate?" Thallin nodded. "But the thing you were
using was nowhere near as big as it should have been
then. Where'd you put the computer?"
Thallin shook his head. "I'm afraid I'm not cleared
to answer some of your questions."
"Oh. I see." The waiter arrived with their
respective lunches. Landers started eating her sandwich,
then noticed the plate in front of Thallin. "What the
hell is that?"
Thallin pointed to a few things. "Pork, tomatoes,
carrot, peas, mashed potatoes."
"No, I mean these small cubes on the side."
"Silicate, borate, lead crystal, kevlar...."
"Kevlar? You chew on kevlar?" she asked
incredulously.
Thallin smiled. "Kevlar jelly, actually. I suffer
from few deficiencies in my diet." He picked one of the
cubes and swallowed it. "These make up for it. I assure
you they taste as bad as you can imagine. Except the
crystal; it tastes a little bit salty."
"Jeez. I knew Doc Lang's crew was bizarre, but this
takes the cake!"
Thallin put his fork down and looked her straight in
the eyes, his expression hardening. "How do you know
about that?" he asked softly.
"I scanned your service dossier." admitted Landers.
"What else did it say?"
"Only the usual drivel about your record. You had
some flight training, only you had some sort of inner-ear
imbalance which stopped you from graduating. So you
switched to research. You were on the second team to
enter the SDF-1 after it had crashed and you spent quite
a bit of time in there examining it, during which you
suffered some accident which had you laid up for almost a
year." Her eyes opened wide. "This... deficiency...
you're suffering from wouldn't have anything to do with
the accident, would it?"
Thallin smiled, his shoulders relaxing. "The accident
kinda screwed-up my metabolism, permanently. I now have
to chew on these cubes to try to keep the balance
stable."
"What about the VX-001? Would it be possible to see
it?"
"NO! I mean, it's currently being repaired and I'm
afraid you do not have the security clearance to see it
anyway. Sorry Lt Landers."
Landers smiled as she swallowed the last of her
sandwich. "Call me Kay. And that's okay. I'll just
take a raincheck to be the first one to see it when it
gets declassified, all right?"
"That'll be acceptable, lieu... Kay. By the way, call
me Thallin."
Kay stood up. "Well, Thallin, thank you for the meal
and the pleasant conversation but I have to get going.
Keep in touch." She started to extend her hand, then
thought better of it and saluted him before walking out
the door into the corridor.
Thallin sat there pensively for a few minutes, then
finished his lunch. Key Landers was a complication he
simply did not need at this point in his life.
The following weeks were a blur in Thallin's mind.
Between the building of the electronic components and the
supervising of the nutrient bath, he had very little time
to devote to the rebuilding of the VX-001. To make
matters worse, Lang had assigned him to the team looking
into a way to make up for the missing conduits between
the Macross' engines and the main gun's components. The
problem had become apparent when a team noting the damage
done by the disappearance of the fold engines noticed
that several power conduits had vanished with it,
including those of the main gun. To make matters worse,
power conduits were one of the few things they could not
fabricate on-board for lack of suitable materials.
So far, no-one had found the body, though there had
been a bit of a furore when it had been found missing
from the morgue. Thallin wondered how long he could keep
his little project a secret. Eventually someone was
bound to notice his coming and going from this deserted
part of the ship.
The operations upon the dead Christina were not things
he preferred to remember. It was lucky that thanks to
the nutrient bath he did not have to worry about
infections or being too accurate with closing up.
Nonetheless he had soon learned not to eat prior to
surgery. He still could not get used to the sight of
human organs laid open for inspection. But soon the need
for all this would be past. Even now, the tub was slowly
being drained and sprayed with fresh water to remove the
last of the nutrient.
Thallin stepped up to the tub and watched as the
seconds ticked away. Suddenly, the eyelids of the body
opened and the eyes began a slow scan of the room before
coming to rest on him. Thallin backed away, the eyes
following him wherever he moved. Eventually, the body
had to move to follow his movements and it proceeded to
sit up, somewhat shakily.
"Hey," cried out Thallin, "easy."
The body turned and smiled at him. "Appellation
received. This unit's call-sign now `izi'."
Thallin looked bewilderingly at the smiling body. "Oh
boy."
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