And here is the second half of the (mostly) Finalised Chapter 1
Claudia Grant ducked through the hatch to the bridge of the
SDF-1 with the ease of long practice. Through the large viewport,
the gentle waters of the South Pacific Ocean shimmered a deep azure
blue. Already at their stations were the 'Terrible Trio' of Kim,
Sammie, and Vanessa. A brief frown crossed her chocolate complexion
as she regarded the temporarily empty First Officer's station.
She wouldn't have admitted it publicly, but deep inside she would
feel a lot better when Captain Gloval, and her friend and first
officer Lisa Hayes were back from delivering their report to the UDEC
council at Alaska Base. Regardless, until they did, she still had
her own job to do.
As she relieved her counterpart as officer of the watch, she
noted that Colonel Mastoff was also not on the bridge. This she
considered to be slightly unusual after his excitement at being left
in command the day before. She filed it in the back of her mind for
a moment as she worked down her list of things that she needed to
check on after assuming the bridge watch. With the SDF-1 back on
earth after a two year running battle with the Zentraedi, the list
was much shorter than it often was. The remaining items were most
important though, as they dealt with the frantic efforts of the crew
to get the several kilometer long ship ready to take the fight back
to the enemy.
It was an item at the end of her list that brought her attention
back to that fact with a vengeance. Even with the mostly volunteer
nature of the Robotech Defense Forces, in a crew of several thousand,
plus over 50 thousand unexpected civilian passengers, there were
always a few malcontents. So the final entry was always an updated
list from the military police detailing what infractions had occurred
the previous day. In one respect, the fold operation that had
dropped the SDF-1 near the orbit of Pluto had been a blessing,
forcing even the worst of the crew to realize that it was do their
jobs to the best of their ability or possibly never get home.
Discipline was tight, and there had been precious few incidents
over the previous two years. There had been a celebration thrown
for the residents of Macross City on the Daedalus yesterday though,
and apparently quite a few people, both in the RDF and not had used
it as an excuse to overindulge. What caught her attention was a
one-line notation that emergency crews had been dispatched to the
Prometheus during that time, with no follow up report filed.
Fifteen minutes later, she was no wiser, and much more
frustrated. Repeated inquiries to the MP's were being stonewalled,
and all the ambulance crews knew was that a man had been pulled from
a wrecked jeep and taken to the hospital. No one at the hospital
claimed any such admittance, though. She was convinced something
was going on and woe betide anyone who got in her way. Frankly,
she thought she detected Colonel Mastoff's hand in this, and
sincerely desired to get it cleared up before Captain Gloval
returned.
* * * * * * * * *
Any ship as large as the SDF-1 possessed a sick bay. In fact,
the original medical faculties of the SDF-1 were quite modern,
equivalent to a small hospital in its own right. However, after the
space fold accident and the needs of the resultant influx of Macross
City's fifty thousand odd refugees, most of the ships medical staff
and equipment had been moved into the reconstructed Macross General
Hospital. Since then, the original sick bay had become little more
than a glorified aid station, providing first aid for the engineering
staff rather than forcing them to travel all the way to the
facilities in Macross City, or provided overflow beds when casualties
were heavy. Thus it was that few noticed the two MP's guarding
the Intensive Care Unit, and given the frantic pace of the
engineering crews, all sadly overworked trying to perform a job that
for any other ship would be provided by a major shipyard, none of
them cared.
Inside, a lone occupant lay in a near coma, monitored by a
handful of personnel hand picked by Colonel Mastoff for their
discretion. His head was bandaged, a faint red stain visible on his
right temple through the gauss. His face was pale beneath his faint
tan, and the stranger lay still and unmoving, his mind drifting
in delirium.
* * * * * * * * *
For the first time in years, Micheal was free. Free of the
curse of being Star Ranger, free of wandering hopelessly across space
and time. He climbed into the cockpit of his waiting A-12
Thunderhawk, and smiled at the picture wedged between the altimeter
and the Airspeed indicator. 'Just one last mission, My love. Then
we can be together forever,' he promised himself. A smiling red
headed woman gazed back at him from the picture, which was signed
'Come back safe, Jedi'(1). Something in the back of his mind stirred
and tried to claim this was all wrong, but Micheal ruthlessly
suppressed it. He had one last mission to fly, and he had no
intention of letting anything distract him from it. That was how
pilots wound up with a terminal case of hill disease(2), after all.
He checked the map folded into his knee-board one last time as the
canopy lowered and the two large turbofans spooled up. It was the
sort of mission the high command saved for pilots like himself.
Three mobile scud launchers surrounded by a ring of SA-5 launchers
and triple A nestled in a shallow valley just off the Basra road.
The valley was deep enough that a normal attack would be vulnerable
to fire from the SA-5's, and the Nighthawks had other, higher
priority targets tonight. Muck had taken a look at the intel from
the sight and pointed out a way, and was rewarded with being the one
assigned to take them out.
'Just another walk in the dark,' he thought to himself as the
Thunderhawk rolled down the runway and lifted off into the dark
dessert night.
* * * * * * * * *
'Ung' was Fred's first real thought after the accident.
Although rough terrain was part of the design specifications
he had been built to, the collision with the tow cart had definitely
exceeded it. A quick check of most of the most critical systems
confirmed what he had expected. The force of the collision had
knocked everything off line. Secondary systems had performed
as expected, but the force of the crash had taken the main reactor
off line, and it had taken almost 24 hours the secondary systems
to bring things back on line to the point where he could re-boot
himself.
He wasn't sure if Micheal would be nearby or not, so he opened
up their private communications channel, only to receive no answer.
A few seconds of checking yielded the answer to his concerns.
His communications equipment was operational, but wherever it was he
was at the moment, he seemed to be unable to transmit or receive
transmissions in the radio spectrum. He checked the other sensors
he was equipped with, and noted that the more esoteric ones, the ones
he used to compute the co-ordinates for a portal jump were still off
line, but he suspected that it was just because a connector had come
loose in the crash. Looking out through other sensors showed him he
was in some sort of laboratory or garage, with heavy metal walls.
A drive systems check revealed the right front wheel assembly was
absent, presumably torn from its mountings in the crash. Until it
was replaced, FRED wasn't going to be going anywhere.
With no way of getting a hold of Micheal, nor anyway of being
able to go search for him, Fred did the only thing he could. With
the patience of a machine, he made what repairs he could to his
internal systems, and waited.
* * * * * * * * *
Muck grinned behind the cool rubber of his facemask as the plane
raced up the shallow valley leading to the Scud site, staying below
the tops of the hills and thus undetected by any radar in the area.
These were the sort of missions he did best, and only the new
Thunderhawks could carry it off. Outwardly, it looked like the
venerable A-10 Thunderbolt, but inside it contained all new top of
the line Avionics, including a fly by wire system and a Heads up
display that was the largest ever mounted in a military aircraft.
Three Slam missiles hung under each wing, already programmed
with the location of the SA-5 launchers, would be launched
automatically by the bombing computer, followed by the cluster bombs
for the triple A. This left Muck free to concentrate on the real
target, the Scud launchers themselves, with the 30mm rotary cannon.
Depleted Uranium rounds were overkill against a soft target like
this, so Muck had ordered Willie Pete rounds loaded instead. One hit
to the fuel of either the scud or the launch vehicle and the white
phosphorus rounds would blow them sky high. The Thunderhawk
screamed around the last twist in the canyon and lined up on the
killing ground.
* * * * * * * * *
The quiet of the sickbay ICU was suddenly shattered as several
of the monitoring devices hooked to the stranger erupted in a
cacophony of pings, beeps, and other alarm tones, galvanizing
the attending medical personnel into action. Though unconscious,
their patient struggled against his restraints, as though fighting
some demon only he could perceive. Convulsions shuddered though
is body as the medical team raced over. Suddenly, the patient tore
one arm free of the restraints holding him to the bed, snapping
the thick material as if it was tissue paper.
"Sedative, NOW!" snapped the chief resident as the staff vainly
tried to hold their patient down. He grabbed the flailing arm, only
to be thrown against a bulkhead for his troubles. The commotion
alerted the two MP's standing guard at the door, causing them to
burst through the door with their weapons ready.
"Hold him down," the chief resident snapped to the two MP's as
the med nurse quickly filled a syringe and handed it to him.
Dropping their weapons, the MP's grabbed the failing arm and held it
still while the others held the patient down. The chief resident
checked the syringe for air bubbles then paused for a moment in
shock. The patients arm seemed to crawl, ripples running up and down
its length like water. For a moment it seemed as if the whole arm
became metallic, then returned to normal. Timing the ripples,
he jabbed the syringe home while the arm was flesh-like, and emptied
the syringe into the patient.
The powerful sedative took effect almost instantaneously,
the patient going limp. The medical staff took a step back while
the chief resident checked the patient's vital signs to confirm
that the patient hadn't been sedated to heavily. Satisfied with the
readings, he turned to the two MP's. "Thank you, gentlemen.
That will be all for now." He then turned to one of the nurses.
"Get me Colonel Mastoff. Now."
* * * * * * * * *
Micheal cursed as the SAM just kept coming, despite his flares
and evasive maneuvers. One of the SA-5 launchers had just been
relocated between when the last photos were taken and his attack,
ergo the SLAM missile had missed it, allowing it to get off a shot
at him as he peeled out of the valley. He threw the Thunderhawk
into a final desperate maneuver, standing it on its right wingtip,
but the missile was unfazed by it. With the implacability
of a machine, it closed the distance and fulfilled it's design.
Micheal screamed in agony as the SAM detonated just off his
right wingtip, sending shards tearing through him and his jet.
Outside, the scenery tumbled as the plane was knocked from flight
and began a death spin. He struggled with the controls, then stopped
in horror. The instrument panel began to warp before his eyes,
bulging, folding, taking on the shape of a face he thought he had
escaped forever... The face of his Star Ranger form.
"We have been damaged," that cold metallic voice echoed in his
ears. "We must become one again to survive," it declared, metallic
psudopods reaching out from all around him, wrapping him in a metal
cocoon. Micheal tried to dodge away, but his limbs became heavy,
distant. He opened his mouth to scream, but a psudopod lashed out
and down his throat, gagging him just before it all went black once
more.
* * * * * * * * *
Claudia had just finished resuming the watch from her lunch
relief when Vanessa delivered the news. "Message from Alaska base,
Commander(3)," the young tech reported from her station. "The
Captain and Lisa are on their way back. ETA is 1700 local."
"High Command sure took their sweet time about hearing their
report," Sammie grumbled. "They should have been back hours ago.
I'll feel a lot better about everything when I know when we can get
the people of Macross ashore and out of danger."
Claudia gave Sammie 'The LOOK', and the young tech fell silent,
but her expression remained defiant. "Contact Colonel Mastoff,"
Claudia told Vanessa, "He should be down at MP headquarters
this time of day. Send him my respects and inform him the captain
will be coming back aboard at about 1700." She then turned back to
following up on the work in progress aboard the SDF-1, only to be
interrupted again a minute or two later by Vanessa.
"Commander. Colonel Mastoff isn't at MP HQ. His Aide thought
he might be going down to sickbay, though. Shall I page him?"
Claudia thought for a moment, then waved her relief back over
before addressing Vanessa. "No, I think I'll go down to sickbay
and deliver the message in Person," she informed Vanessa with an evil
glint in her eye.
* * * * * * * * *
Claudia observed Colonel Mastoff exit the guarded door to the
sickbay's ICU and ducked back around the corner and waited for him.
"Ah, there you are, sir", she opened as Colonel Mastoff came into
view. "Captain Gloval has left Alaska Base and will be returning
aboard at about 1700 hours, sir," she reported with a swift salute.
"Hmm?" stalled a distracted Colonel Mastoff for a moment as the
content of the message seeped into his brain. "Oh. That's good to
hear, Commander. Carry on," he replied as he returned the salute
before continuing on out of sickbay, a very distracted look still
upon his face.
'What are you up to, Mastoff?' Claudia wondered to herself
as she watched his retreating form. 'I'll bet that whoever it was
that was in that accident is in that ICU under guard. But why
haven't you reported it yet?' Shaking her head in confusion,
Claudia headed back towards the bridge. 'Only one option, I guess.
I'll tell the Captain what I've found once he comes back aboard.
Maybe he can order some answers out of you...'
To be continued in Chapter 2...
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1) For those of you who haven't read the first book of this, That's
not really a picture of Jedi. Jedi doesn't have red hair. Patricia
Haruna does, though...
2) Hill disease is a pilot term referring to letting one's altimeter
register a negative altitude...
3) Yes, I know Claudia's rank is Lieutenant Commander, but in actual
usage, it gets shortened to commander, unless your deliberately
making a distinction. It's the same thing as a Lieutenant colonel
being addressed as Colonel unless his boss is peeved at him.
Couple of notes, some of these are in rebuttal to comments from
pre-readers.
4) Carrier hanger decks do have a sprinkler system. The thing is,
that's a misnomer. Fire on a carrier is nothing to sneeze at, so
those sprinklers have a flow rate of over a hundred gallons a minute.
Its more of a deluge system than a sprinkler system. Because of
this, its not something that you turn on lightly. You wouldn't
turn this on unless there actually WAS a fire... and there wasn't
one here.
5) Someone commented on the long delay of the paramedics. If you
think about it, from what I've described here, it wasn't that long.
2-3 minutes tops. I assumed a couple of things. First was that most
of the medical personell were over on the Daedalus, at the big party
we see there. The paramedics that were there for flight ops would
be up on the Prometheus's FLIGHT deck, not the hanger deck. It would
take them at least a minute or two to get down there, IMO.