Prologue one
"Advent"


Robotech IV- The Odysseus Epic
Act One: Superdimensional Starforce Orion
by Presley H. Cannady (cannady@magiccarpet.com)
and Lou Barnes (lbj@magiccarpet.com)
_______________________________


THE YEAR 1171 WAS THE HARVEST YEAR OF RILAC, MARKING THE SIXTEEN HUNDREDTH
anniversary of the Tirolian nation-state's subjugation by the Tiresian
superpower that had arisen centuries ago out of the Plains Wars.  The hard
feelings remained, but they were buried by the euphoria that had spread
across the planet as Tirol's children reached now for the stars.  The
prospective optimists looking towards new worlds and unimaginable adventure
had joyfully named this age Aeon Lanack--after their civilization's
legendary founder.  This period in time had witnessed the greatest advances
in the history of the Tiresian civilization.  A virgin to the interstellar
community that would await her, Tirol would soon discover she was not alone
in the universe.  Her first alien contact--the ursinoid Karbarran
Hegenomy--initiated the youthful star-nation into an elite club of
star-faring folk, mostly mercantile species the Tirolians would later learn
to emulate.  The universe had changed for the Tirolians forever, and it
seemed as if the peace and prosperity that filled the life of every human
being in this day and age would never end.  The Galaxy was too vast, and the
stars were too numerous for any impression to contradict the mass
exhilaration that gripped an entire world.
    Looking up at those stars, a man of high social standing, wearing an
elaborate housecoat and the armsband of a Council Biological Scientist,
gazed with complete awe at the heavens.  They were the same lights that were
little more than interesting mysteries to his ancestors before the Galaxy
opened her secrets to their minds.  Thoroughly fascinated, the Scientist
smiled as a cool breeze broke the warm consistency of the summer evening.
Tiresia was a humid city during this time of year, but massive domes
maintained a year round paradise.  After all, the city itself was the
physical testament to Tiresia's magnificent history; a beacon to the broken
societies and cultures that eventually gathered about her mesa foundation.
Tiresia cast its terrible luminance across the face of Tirol, and poets
described the light of Tiresia as burning brighter than Great Fanto's Discus
and Valivarre combined.
    Still, poets--especially poets--often forget the times of shadow.  In
reality, Tiresia would fall trimonthly to the fiercesome shade of the
Discus.  Fortunately, Fantoma rested harmlessly in the western sky this
evening, neither threatening to blot the sun for months at a time nor
thoroughly ensuring a steady day of sunlight.   The Discus blended into the
star-field behind it exquisitely; the thick and heavy upper atmosphere of
Fantoma's edge graduating into a magical and majestic hue of complementary
colors, aesthetically soothing and yet discordant at the same time.  
    It was a time where the Invid remained dormant, peacefully entrenched on
their far off world of Optera, orbiting an insignificant star outside what
would be named the Trianguli Cluster Expanse .  In orbit, hundreds of
superluminal ships, powered by fusion drives, carried scientists and
surveyors throughout the Tirolian quarter of the Fourth Quadrant, exploring
and discovering to satisfy both the Tiresian scientific community and the
more economically and politically driven Council.  It was a time when Haydon
slept, and his feats of old were the stuff of mythology and religion.  His
legacy spread across a quadrant made of hundreds of sectors, across
light-decades from Tzuptum to Valivarre to a little known, backward world
just starting to pull her civilizations into a competitive stature with her
galactic neighbors.  The blue-hair, regal Scientist stared at the stars,
looking to the Galactic North as if trying to make out something that wasn't
there, something far off, in both space and time. His companion and
long-time friend had wondered at length of weather this seemingly lowly
scientist- one who commanded such respect -was not one of the houses of
lords that had long since ceded power to the council or joined with it.  The
young soon-to-be father continued to search out the stars, searching for
something seemingly irrelevant to date, custom, or event.  Nonetheless, it
would prove to be all too relevant.  It was a time where history was bound
to change.  He always wondered if Valivarre was once Pretoxira, a goddess
that wasn't even spoken of amongst the most of the inhabitants of Tirol.  A
point so far in the past that it bore no relevance on these troubled times.
    It would be some time, not in the lives of the children of Tirol, before
that world would be seen by anyone from this quadrant of the galaxy.
However, the night of his son's birth, his thoughts drifted elsewhere.
    The Scientist, a would-be-father, looked at the city and remembered as
another figure approach from behind.  The newcomer, who wore an even more
richly detailed attire indicating his station as a Tiresian Senator, owned
the town-house, as well as the balcony from which the Scientist gazed at the
stars.  A two-story affair, the palatial residence opened to the main
street, an archaic structure that once supported the weight of both
motorized vehicles and mu'taa-drawn carriages almost half-a-millenium ago.
A massive veranda spread out into the courtyard, enclosed by high,
cyrstalline walls and an eloborate, golden gate.  Located in the center of
the suburb there was no construct larger than the Senator's home.  Above, a
series of magnetic levitation trains moved back and forth at hypersonic
speeds, arriving from the larger cities.  At one time, the
governor-senator's mansion (this particular home) had once been a receiving
station for an old land-train, a form of transportation that had succumbed
to obscurity centuries before. 
    The Senator covered his mouth.  "Ahem.  You've been out here for a long
time, my friend.  Is anything troubling you?"
    The Scientist remained quiet, his eyes fixed on the firmaments.  A
minute passed, and another, before he spoke. "Will you make sure he's
well-educated?  By the best?" 
    The Scientist abruptly turned to his friend and confidante.  The Senator
nodded.
    "I swore on Fanto I would," he replied.  "But my friend.  You should not
be so appre--"
    "I've been your friend for twenty seasons, Charsea," the Scientist
interrupted, "and I know you will keep your promise.  I also know you're as
worried as I am, or you will be soon.  Your wife to will soon deliver your
first son."
    Charsea Derelda nodded with a sheepish smile, which broadened when he
saw his friend do the same.  The Scientist reach across his friend's
shoulder in a brotherly gesture as they made there way back inside.
However, the Scientist stopped just short of the entrance.
    "It's a good thing that they will be born so close together," he mused.
"My son will need a companion.  A friend he can really trust--someone who
will help him find that path he must follow in life." 
    "I understand.  You need not worry.  I will raise him and my son.  I
promse you'll be proud of them both."
    "Thank you, my friend," the azure-haired man bowed, reverting to the
respectful non-familiar.   At that moment, his ears pricked as the sounds of
labor eminated from the next chamer.  "Come, she'll be waiting for us."
    A few hours later, with the birthing finally over, Charsea smiled
broadly as the midwife held the infant to his father, offering thanks to
Valivarre for the baby boy's health.  She thanked Fanto and and H'ydon, the
Gods of Thought, for the flickers of intelligence that raced across the
child's eyes.  The mother's face beamed with an indescrible joy; her eyes
sparkling brightly as the Tiresian midwife set the infant upon her breast.  
    Another witness, elder kinsman of Charsea and a Council Scientist, to
this miracle of life stood near the Senator.  Zol d'Na Derelda looked
bewilderly at the child, utterly bemused after witnessing this most
miraculous of events.  Even more so, he was confused by the erratic actions
of the child's parents, who seemed to be the victims of Tirol's changing
place in the grand scheme of things.  The Age of Tirolian expansion into
space had halted with the near stagnation of bureaucracy that existed
between Tirol and her intersteller counterparts, mainly Karbara and Haydon
IV.  A crossroads of trade, Tirol had become, unfortunately, the victim of
economic conquest by the Karbarran markets and resources, victimized from
her own lack of usable resource.  Though holding a monopoly on the slightly
preferred monopolar ore of Valivarre (the primary planetary body of this
system), she was left without enough to compete against the alien economic
boom.  Thus, the Tirolian political arena had encouraged the sending of
massive technovoyagers in discovery of resources beyond the limits of her
Local Group colleagues, while they desperately worked to solve the crisis
from a more local point of view.  Charsea's friend had been one of these,
having spent some four solar years in space to return empty handed (though
he often did not express disappointment).  The senator had noticed his
friend's fixations on two points in the sky, to constellations of very
little importance.
    "Amazing how the whole question of the universe, everything that I work
for can be summed up in the birth of one small, innocent child," Zol
reflected to himself.
    The young parents huddled closely to their suckling newborn, and it
disquieted both Charsea and Zol that their friends would have to surrender
the child for some time--perhaps forver  Still, both the Scientist and the
young mother were resigned to the separation that lay ahead.
    "Look at him, honey," the mother cradled the baby to her breast as the
father gathered next to the child, seemingly ignorant--blissfully
oblivious--to the pain that accompanied the foreknowledge of her eventual
separation.  
    Honey, Zol pondered the alien word.  He had never understood the names
that Charsea's friend and his mate fondly referred to each other by..  The
mother was the strangest of the two, having a voice not only for the psalms
of the Pre'toki Hymns, but a strange music she called "pop."  Yet he
couldn't deny her natural beauty; her blue, twin locks wavered in the
moonlight as her face glowed with its own special radiance.
    "Well, my friend," Senator Charsea beamed as he joined the two young
parents.  "You must choose the child's name now, considering that you will
not be present for the naming ceremony.  I promise you that your choice will
take precedence."
    The Scientist looked at his wife silently for a moment, and then turned
back to the Senator.  "Valivarre has forbidden us to consider any other name
than...Zor."
    "Zor it will be then," Charsea announced proudly.  "Zor, the Foundation.
Zor, son of Rem; and now, Zor of the Family Derelda.  May he be as great a
friend to my son as you were to me." 
    The Scientist, whose called himself Rem Derelda, embraced the aged
Senator and his kinsman.  The family gathered around the two as they admired
the brotherhood that Charsea and Rem had forged.
    All except Zol.  His eyes remained fixed on the wife of Rem and her
newborn child.
    Lin Minmei's thoughts were galaxies away as she caressed the first
incarnation of Destiny.

*  *  *


*  *  *

+-----------------+-<The Badass Reverend of Funk Prez>---+
|    Presley H.   | Political Science / Computer Science |
|    Cannady II   | and Electrical Engineering Undergrad |
|<revprez@mit.edu>| at the Mass. Institute of Technology |
+-----------------+-<Anime Manga Development Group>------+
+     Author of Liars and Dreamers, a Robotech fanfic    +
+-------<http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/1731/index.html>-+
| MIDN 4/c A-2-2 SQD, MIT-Harvard-Tufts NROTC Battalion  |
|_|"The art of war is of vital importance to the state"|_|