Hello all! This is something that just came to me this evening.
BTW, Part 26 of The Saotome Gambit is done... with the exception
of the lemon scene (you heard me!), which my wife is supposed to
be writing. And you know the glacial pace at which she writes...
I suppose I can excuse her for this, since she just launched
her anime catgirl art page (plug! plug!), but if you would
like to offer some encouragement (cattle prods are ineffective,
in my personal experience), please do so!
An interview with VADM Richard A. Hunter, REF (ret);
December 10, 2065.
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Q. Historians and biographers paint you in the summer of 2009 as some
brash young hotshot with a chip on his shoulder and something to
prove. Looking back to that time, do you agree with them?
A. [Laughs self-consciously] For the most part, yeah. I know a lot of
people won't believe this, even after all of the interviews I've
given over the years, and all the tell-all books that have come
out about me, but the fact is that I *was* an arrogant little
prick going into the First Robotech War.
Q. When did that change? When did Rick Hunter stop being that
"arrogant little prick"?
A. I don't know if I ever *stopped* being one. [Laughs for a moment,
then becomes quiet] I guess my first real wake-up call was my
first combat mission. You know how all the biographies about me
go; how me and dozens of other rookies were slammed through a
crash course in VT piloting and small-unit tactics and then
thrown to the wolves in less than six weeks. I was totally
clueless out there, not even sure if I could pull the trigger
on someone - especially since I knew that the so-called aliens
we were fighting were practically just like you and me... Until
the Zentraedi showed up, I was nothing more than a young punk
whose entire world was encompassed by little hicktown aerodromes.
It was humbling, fighting that war...
Q. You recently attended a function at the UEG's Fokker Aerospace
Academy to commemorate the anniversary of Commander Fokker's
death. Is there anything left to be said about him after all
this time?
A. [Pauses] I think so. Even to this day, I find that Roy still
speaks to me. You would have never thought it having met him on
the streets of Macross City, or in the ready room waiting for a
mission, but Roy was one of the wisest and most clear-headed
people I've ever known. He had values and beliefs, and he lived
by them uncompromisingly. He was the kind of guy who would give
you advice about something, whether it was combat or girls, and
then *live* by that same advice. I think I learned as much from
him by watching him as I ever did listening to him, and I've
tried to live my life these many years the way he would have
done if he'd had the chance.
Q. Some would point out that Roy Fokker learned all of his lessons
the hard way. Commander Claudia Grant comes to mind.
A. Yeah, it's true that he had demons too, and sometimes you could
almost see them lurking over his shoulder, or hear them in his
voice. I know most of what I do about Roy and Claudia through
Lisa, and the talks she used to have with Claudia right before
her death. It's funny, but sometimes I wonder if she knew that
she was going to die soon, and her "advice to the lovelorn" that
she used to give Lisa about me was because she wanted us to have
something that she and Roy never got the chance to share.
Q. Much has been said about your extended engagement to Admiral
Lisa Hayes. Do you think waiting so long to get married was
beneficial or harmful to your marriage?
A. Well, you know that Lisa and I have had some real rough spots in
our relationship, and some of the worst were after we got married.
You could say it was just the stress of the times talking, I mean,
hell, we were stranded on the other side of the galaxy from Earth,
and neck deep in a war with the Invid at the time. [Pause] No,
that's not entirely true... It started a lot sooner than that...
Q. Could you elaborate on that?
A. [Fatalistic laugh] Sure. What the hell, I'm an old man now. What's
the harm? [Pause] Let's start by saying that I was always an easy-
going sort when it came to relationships, from my wingmates to my
lovers (all two of them!). I never wanted to be too pushy, so in a
lot of ways I let other people push me around, and Lisa was no
exception. The wrecks of the SDF-1 and 2 were barely covered up
before she was bucking to get me a staff job, and with the
attrition rate of the RDF being what it was, I found myself
wearing stars on my collar before I knew what hit me. Let me tell
you, I hated it. I risked nine kinds of hell from her by trying
to get some cockpit time every chance I could, and when the
Malcontent Uprisings really started getting out of hand, I was
aching to bump Max out of the Skull-1 slot and take over.
Q. Your first real action in combat after Khyron's suicide attack
was just after the arrival of the SDF-3 in Fantoma Space, where
you battled the Invid and were nearly killed. Do you think your
wife's insistence that you stay out of the action was sound given
this outcome?
A. I'm gonna end up sleeping on the couch tonight for this, but
absolutely not! The reason I nearly got killed out there was
*because* she had parked me behind a desk for six damn years.
And don't give me that crap about being too old to fly in combat.
I was on the young end of my 30s; the same age as Max and Miriya,
who did some of their absolute best flying in that time. If I had
stood up to Lisa at my promotion to flag rank and kept my squadron
slot, that time over Fantoma would never have happened.
Q. So your rocky marriage didn't start with Susan Graham at all then?
A. Oh jeez... I was waiting for you to ask me about her... Look, for
the last time, Susan Graham was a total cipher to me. She was
young, peppy, and helpful in the office, but that was where it
ended between us. The issues Lisa and I had went back years before
Susan Graham. A big part of it was what I had perceived (and
correctly, I think) as a double standard that Lisa had set for
me. I mean, once the Sentinels showed up and we were operating
outside of the Plenipotentiary Council's oversight, she got a
little *too* liberated, if you know what I mean. It's not long
after she started talking to the Praxians that all of a sudden
she's part of the sister-act, belting on a sword, and discussing
ways to break someone's neck without breaking a sweat - and at
the same time jumping my shit about taking too many risks, and
why I can't I act more responsibly? That really burned my ass,
but it took me years to realize why. As for where Susan Graham
fits into all of this, it all comes down to my general clueless
nature when it comes to women. She had this huge obsession with
me, and I never saw it. Lisa mistook my total ignorance of the
matter to mean that I was somehow encouraging this girl, and it
really cost us in our marriage.
Q. Would you say then, that the birth of your son has in some way
healed that breach between you?
A. Yes and no. While the root cause for our problems went back years
before the expedition to Tirol, it was the stress of the times
that really brought out the worst in us. Roy came along when a
lot of that stress was behind us, so it would be easy to point
at him and say that he was what saved our marriage. He did and
he didn't, if that makes any sense. I guess what I'm trying to
say is that Roy made us look closely at our marriage, and brought
us to a decision on how much we wanted to keep it - something
that we both made a decision to do, even though it wouldn't have
been that big a deal to call the whole thing off anyway. Look at
the number of kids who grew up in Roy's generation with only one
or even no parents and still turned out normal. You could also
say that he was a kind of salve for Lisa's somewhat empty
emotional life, and that's what turned her around. I mean, the
military had been her be-all end-all of existence for so long,
and having Roy meant that she was not just some cog in the war
machine, but a mother, a bringer of life instead of death.
She could finally let go of some of her need to control other
aspects of her life and concentrate on what really mattered to
her. When we finally got a measure of peace back in our lives,
we had by that time developed the emotional equipment to deal
with it.
Q. Getting back to the question of waiting to get married, did it
help?
A. [Laughs] Okay, you pinned me down on that one! Uncle! [Laughs
again] Seriously, I think it did help in the end that we waited.
I think that being married to your superior officer is never
healthy for either person, and if we had tied the knot right
after Khyron's suicide attack, I think we would have called it
quits during the Malcontent Uprisings. I think that waiting gave
both of us the maturity and the patience to see past the stupid
things that were dividing us, and gave us a level of perspective
on the issues that ultimately let us work through our problems.
Hear that, kids? Don't rush out to get married, I don't care
what the UEG's propaganda on repopulation says! [Laughs] There
goes my pension...
Q. I'm going to bring up another sore subject with you. Lynn Minmei.
A. It's not so bad for me to talk about her anymore. Go ahead.
Q. Some commentators on the Robotech Wars have gone so far as to
suggest that had Minmei taken you seriously during those early
days of the war, that she would have never become Miss Macross,
and because of that, we'd all be long dead under the Zentraedi
bombardment, and the Robotech Masters tyranny would have been
restored by the protoculture matrix hidden within the bowels of
the SDF-1. Indeed, almost every aspect of the galaxy that we
now live in would be fundamentally different if Minmei had not
pursued her career as a star.
A. It's easy to speculate on that sort of thing for fun, but
seriously? I don't think that things could have turned out
any differently than they did.
Q. Taking a line from Emil Lang? Protoculture predestination?
A. Hardly. I don't pretend to understand even a tenth of what
luminaries like Lang, Cabell, Zand, or even Louie Nichols had
to say about the Shapings, but what I do know is that Minmei
and I were so far apart in our dreams and aspirations, our
very *values,* that I don't see her ever falling for me in the
early days the way I fell for her. Even after I got up the nerve
to tell her how I felt, I was already torn by my feelings for
Lisa, and though Minmei was starting to realize that
superstardom was nothing like what she had hoped for, it was
already too late for us. Lynn Kyle was still there to shake
things up, Lisa and I were spending more and more time
together, and Minmei was falling apart emotionally. It simply
wasn't meant to be, for whatever reasons you want to put to
it; the Shapings, karma, blind fate, whatever...
Q. So the tell-alls about your brief time "playing house" together
weren't all they claim to be?
A. "Playing house" is probably the best way you could describe the
two weeks we lived together. It was pure escapism for both of us.
I pretended that I was in love with her, and she pretended that
she was in love with me. We ate by candlelight, we had great sex
together, and we slept late every morning. When we weren't eating
or sleeping or screwing, there was nothing. Emptiness. I might as
well have been dreaming the whole thing. I probably was.
Q. What brought you both to that point? Was it the draining effect
of the war? Or the so-called "Reconstruction Blues"? Simple
loneliness?
A. All of the above, and then some. I was pissed at Lisa for being
so possessive, and I was pissed at myself for chasing after some
dream of happiness with Minmei that I knew could never come true.
Minmei was a total basket case by then. Her career was in the
toilet because of her cousin Kyle's ineptitude, his alcoholism,
and the way he used her talent to promote his anti-government
politics. She didn't have any real friends other than me to turn
to, because even in the abbreviated world of celebrity that
followed the Rain of Death, no one wanted to be seen with a
has-been. I think what bothered her most was the fear of ending
up like Janet whatsherface, you know, the woman who was supposed
to win the first Miss Macross contest, and instead ended up
becoming this wacko mystic, and the butt of everyone's jokes.
[Pauses to clear throat] Excuse me... In the end, she wanted
what anyone wants when their life is falling apart - a chance
to start over. She went running back to me not because she
loved me, but because she was in love with the idea of how
her life could have been different from the train wreck it
had become if she had chosen me over her career.
Q. That sounds rather bitter, don't you think?
A. I *don't* think so. I've had a long time to think about this, and
really, I have nothing to gain by bad-mouthing Minmei. I'm just
telling it the way I see it. She needed serious help, and all she
got was another shot at the top. Thanks for nothing, you could
say...
Q. You're referring to her partnership with the android, Janice Em?
A. Basically. There was the ill-fated Lorelei Project - Zand's racist
and completely illegal plan to track Zentraedi malcontents, sure
- but I think she was able to get away from it in time to avoid
real trouble, and it gave Lang the perfect opportunity to
introduce Janice to her. She and Janice were quickly inked to a
huge recording deal, and their first single had gone platinum
even before they got caught up in the SDF-3's fold effect. She
was going places, or so a lot of people thought, but I don't
think it would have mattered if she had stayed on Earth instead
of coming with us - she still would have self destructed, it just
would have been with some other guy.
Q. I'm not sure what you mean by that. Could you explain?
A. Sure. Minmei just couldn't let go of the past. Guys like Jonathon
Wolff and even T.R. Edwards were just enablers. Wolff let her feel
like she had some pilot on her arm again - she even held him at
arm's length for so long the way she did with me - and Edwards...
Well, to tell you the truth, I don't know what the hell she saw
in him. He's the proof that she had come completely undone by
that point. I don't even know if Rem was what she really needed,
but wherever those two are right now, I hope she's finally happy.
I know that no one who lived through the Robotech Wars got away
scot free; that we all lost family, friends, lovers, but it
always seemed to me that Minmei got the biggest raw deal of us
all.
Q. One last question, Admiral. Where do you see the future taking
the human race in a universe with no more protoculture - and by
extension, no more robotechnology?
A. I don't think it's a matter of where the future will take us so
much as where we will take the future. There are a lot of
political issues unresolved, that's true, but I find it
refreshing to walk the cities and towns of Earth and never hear
talk of war. Let's face it, the human race has had the shit
kicked out of it in the last fifty years. We were brought to
the very brink of annihilation - first in the last days of the
Global Civil War, right before the SDF-1 appeared; then, when
Dolza brought down the Rain of Death, we really were practically
wiped out as a species. The Robotech Masters would have enslaved
the people of Earth as clone-stock for their renewed war machine.
The Invid as well. I myself gave the order to sterilize the planet
with the Neutron-S weapons we had devised - and don't think for
a moment that I will ever forget THAT terrible decision. The
lights nearly went out on us forever, and I think that now, with
the planet slowly healing, and the Robotech Wars put well behind
us, we are absolutely fed up with war. I'm not saying that we'll
never fight again; I know better, and I know that there are other
civilizations that haven't known the kind of slaughter and
destruction that we have known - who don't know the terrible
price of ambition. What I'm saying is that if we have even the
slightest chance of averting a conflict, we will make every
effort to do so, and I think that in the end, nothing but good
can come of it. We'll go to the stars the way Henri Gloval wanted
us to, and we'll bring peace with us this time instead of a
hold full of VTs. Even for an old warhorse like me, I don't see
anything wrong with that.
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Author's notes:
The inspiration for this really hit me out of the blue, and I was
compelled to run with it. In the process I found myself reexamining
the world of Robotech as told to us by the Jacks McKinney, and how
I felt about the decisions they had made in bringing the saga to a
close. I also found myself refuting with Rick Hunter's voice a
certain fanfic written by Richard Lawson, where after a long and
rocky marriage, Rick and Lisa get a divorce. I could never agree
with Mr. Lawson's conclusions regarding the two, and while I
discussed the matter with him at the time, I only feel right now
that I have done anything positive to bring forward my feelings
on the matter.
Free the Nukes!