SMARTALECK PRODUCTIONS

Robotech: Foundation

<A Robotech/Battletech/Foundation Trilogy by Isaac
Asimov Fusion set in an Alternate Universe.>

Prologue 1

Disclaimers:

Robotech is the property of Harmony Gold limited and
I'm only borrowing their characters and Universe for
the purpose of this story. This story is being written
with the express permission of the people at Harmony
gold. So... :p

Foundation Trilogy was created by his Almightiness,
the one and only Isaac Asimov himself. This work is
but a tribute to him and the wonderful works of
science fiction that he brought into our lives.

Battletech is owned by FASA. Again, this is but a
tribute and no harm is intended by this fanfic.

Author's notes:

I got the core of this idea [The SDF-1 traveling to
the future part] from a guy called AllWhacked on the
Delphi forums. I would like to thank him for coming up
with this wonderful idea.

C&C are welcome. Hope you enjoy the story...

***********************************************************************

The black void of space is filled with, well, almost
nothing. Sure, there are hundreds of thousands of
stars and countless galaxies in the background,
painting the endless void in an intricate web of
electromagnetic radiation of various wavelengths, but
that was all there was to most of it.

In fact, space was so vacuous that if one concentrated
hard enough, one could discern the varying brightness
of the stars, hundreds, if not thousands of light
years away as they pulsed in an ageless rhythm,
created at the very beginning of the universe.

But space was not truly empty, though it does appear
so to the viewer. The clumps of matter and the endless
ocean of electromagnetic radiation are evidence enough
of that. However, it is very hard to find large chunks
of matter in space.

Flash!

Hard, but not impossible that is.

A second bright flash of light exploded outward from a
crab-shaped machine, proving that while hard to come
across, it was not impossible to find matter in the
endless sea of nothingness that is space. The Iigaa,
for that was the name given to the mecha by the race
that had created it, exploded in a brilliant,
expanding corona of white hot plasma and countless
bits of metal and organic matter. The organic matter
flash froze and fried at the same instant, cracking
further as the temperature differential between its
opposite ends increased rapidly. Mere milliseconds
later, the expanding ball ballooned to grotesque
proportions and another mecha, this one, the shape of
an egg with two legs and half a dozen protrusions
sticking out of it, streaked out of the rapidly
expanding and cooling cloud of plasma with its own
plasma jets screaming furiousily into the vacuum.

More flashes followed, until the whole area was awash
with Iigaa and the Regult Battlepods as they fought
for dominance and survival. Scorching hot pulses of
plasma, beams of laser and the smoking trails of
missiles crisscrossed each other at random points to
create a portrait of stunning beauty with the star
studded sky acting as the artist's background.

Slowly, the battle intensfied, the mecha streaking
across the cold void firing their weapons and
desperately dodging a miasma of counterattacks only to
be destroyed a moment later by an attack from a new,
unexpected direction.

More powerful pulses appeared at irregular intervals,
streaking through the cold void, scorching the very
foundations of reality as the energy they contained
bent space and slowed time. Mecha, Iigaa and Regult
alike, melted or simply vaporized whenever they
strayed too close to one of these beams, leaving
faintly glowing clouds of matter in their wake.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the two groups of
mecha dispersed, giving way for a levithan of a ship.
If one had thought that the battle was over, one was
wrong, for the arrival of the vessel only served to
fuel the fury of the two forces, who mingled together
once again, the brief respite having served only as a
breather. And the dance continued from where it was
left off.

However, as time progressed, it became clear that
fortune seemed to be in favor of the Invid as they
slowly but surely overcame the Regult Battlepods
through sheer strength of numbers alone...

***********************************************************************

"Zor, this is a losing proposition. There is almost no
hope of us getting out of this situation alive."

Zor glanced at the VID-COM screen and nodded.

"Tell me something I don't know, Breetai."

The thirty-foot tall giant Zentraedi warrior nodded.

"You have to escape, Zor. Your survival is paramount
to the survival of the empire," he said.

Zor sighed.

"I know... I just... Very well, we will begin
evacuation procedures immediately... Send an escort to
pick the crew up and transport them to your ship."

"Zor?"

"There is no time to explain, Breetai. I'll reveal all
when this battle is over."

Breetai nodded.

"As you..."

Breetai never got to finish as the VID-COM screen
exploded as a beam of laser hit it.

Zor startled by the explosion, brought his arm up to
protect his eyes. As the rain of polymer and metal
stopped, he turned around to see an Iigaa hovering
directly in front of his hover-platform.

Time slowed to a crawl and Zor vaguely heard someone
screaming 'duck' in the Tirolian tongue. He jumped to
the side, but it was already too late. Two plasma
globules raced through the air towards the Iigaa with
him directly in their path. One missed him, ionizing
the air it flew through and impacted against the hover
platform. The other too, missed the target completely
and hit very close to the weapon command console,
which stood behind Zor, incinerating everything within
a radius of four feet.

Zor felt the searing heat as it passed him and managed
to breathe a little thank you to his Gods before the
blast hit him. The concussion wave threw him into the
air, carrying him, pushing him with its buffeting
winds. Metal fragments, ejected into the air by the
exploding console and hover-platform hit him over his
body, perforating his exposed back, cauterizing a
small part of the wounds as they tunneled their way
in.

Then immediately, almost as soon as it had started, it
was over. The Iigaa fell, leaking a mass of green
ichor through its sensitive optical unit, where a
third, more accurately aim shot from the T'luaza
Milldiem 281 Model assault rifle hit it. It hit the
floor just as Zor reached the apex of his flight and
begun his journey down.

"Zor!" one of the technicians, the bravest of the lot
cried, running forward to help the fatally wounded
scientist.

Zor turned his head slightly in his flight to look at
the man and smiled, just before his body hit the
ground. There were gasps all around as crimson fluid
begun to pool around the scientist's body.

The technician took Zor's head in his hands and
cradled him in his lap, smoothing the downed
scientist's hair.

"Grreerrr..." Zor hissed, opening his mouth to speak,
but failing to do so. Blood, mixed with saliva, flowed
in copious amounts from his mouth, and everytime he
opened his mouth, the only sounds he succeeded in
producing where those soul-wrenching hisses.

"Shh!" the technician said, the others finally
crowding around them, trying to staunch the flow of
blood from Zor's innumerable wounds.

Zor shook his head, slowly. He knew that he was done
for. Not even the miracles of his technology could
save him now from the terrible wounds that sucked his
life out of him. With great difficulty, he held up his
right hand and spread his fingers out and closed them.

The medics arrived just then, pushing past the crowd
and relieving the people who were staunching the flow
of blood.

The technician rose, leaving Zor under the care of the
medics and his colleagues. Zor's eyes followed him
pleadingly, the light dimming steadily out of them
even as he tilted his head, his eyes begging him to do
his bidding.

Finally, the technician looked down on his mentor and
nodded.

"It will be done," he whispered and moved to the
control.

In spite of all his pain, Zor smiled and closed his
eyes forever.

"Rakhal," the technician said. "Order the evacuation."

Rakhal, a young blue-haired man stood up, blood
smeared all over his hands, face and uniform. He
looked at Zor's body for a very long second as the
medics tried to get his heart beating. He clenched his
fists, looked at the technician and nodded.

"As you wish, Fenegor," Rakhal said.

"I'll inform Breetai of Zor's death," the technician,
Fenegor, said and moved to the command console.

He tapped a sequence of buttons and Breetai's face
appeared on the console screen.

"Master Fenegor?" the Zentraedi said, confusedly. He
was accustomed to speaking with Zor directly and not
his protege.

"Zor's dead," Fenegor said, mechanically. "I entrust
you with returning his body to the home world and
escorting the people in this fortress to the
homeworld."

Breetai nodded in shock.

"Good," Fenegor said and closed the link without
further adieu. "EVE?"

"Yes, Master Fenegor," the sentient AI in the ship
enquired.

"Initiate plan Alpha-Niner-Tango-Zulu-Mark."

"As you wish."

The fold siren begun to sound throughout the ship and
Fenegor closed his eyes. It was finally done and he
had just signalled the end of an epoch, he thought
resignedly.

There was a whoosh and a rumble as the bridge
separated from the rest of the ship. Huge
gravitational forces created by the sudden
acceleration pushed blood away from his brain and into
his extremities, and Fenegor knew no more for a while.

***********************************************************************

Col. Jason Smith swore under his breath.

"What the fuck do you think you are doing?" he hissed
at the squad sergeant, Mike.

"Sir, I thought that..."

"Like fuck, you did," the colonel hissed under his
breath. He had never been known for his choice of
words and his superiors knew, he never would be. He
would have spoken louder, but with the enemy patrols
combing the area at irregular intervals, he could not
risk it.

Mike did not reply. He knew when to shut up and an
angry Smith was definitely one of the occasions.

"Tell your men to pull back to that ditch over there.
We will not move until it's dark."

"Yes, sir."

Smith watched as the sergeant ordered his men into
their former positions. He wished that the dunces at
high command had sent a more experienced team than
his. As things stood, most of the men were new, having
just passed from the SEAL training school and lacked
real combat experience.

In his view, the mission was important enough to
warrant the use of experienced troops, but the higher
ups in the Pentagon did not think so. They wanted to
use _expendable_ troops and he, like all other field
officers, hated to think that his men were expendable
in anyway.

What could be more important to those fools than the
future survival of humanity, he had asked himself many
times, since he had first been debriefed on the
mission. Even now, he did not know, but as they were
already on the Island, he did not care.

It was the tenth successive year of conflict in the
world and even America's economic juggernaut was under
strain. The small group of conflicts that had erupted
all across the world a decade ago had spread like
wildfire and now, most of the world was involved
directly in the war. The tabloids called the planet
wide conflict, the Global civil war. There was nothing
civil about it and it was definitely not global, like
the World Wars with clearly defined opposing powers,
though if things went the they were going right now,
that situation would not last very long.

Lately, he had been hearing rumors about the planned
use of tactical Thermo-Nuclear warheads to gain the US
and it's ragtag team of allies, the war. Smith, with
his twenty-year experience in the black ops, knew that
there must be some truth behind the rumors. That
scenario scared him very much. He certainly did not
want to see the destructive power of Thermo-nuclear
warheads put to use anywhere in his lifetime.

That was why; he and his team were on this remote
Island in the South Pacific situated right in the
middle of no-man's land.

Macross.

That was the name of the Island. The name had a nice
ring to it and the Island looked every bit like a
paradise on Earth.

Well, almost like a paradise on Earth. There was that
Chinese doomsday weapon research facility on the other
side of the Island, where Chinese researchers were
building a bomb more powerful than a Thermo-Nuclear
one, but excluding that tiny detail, Macross was, in
every sense of the word, a paradise.

There were three other SEAL teams on different parts
of the Island as well as a couple of Rangers, but all
of that would count to nothing if one of their teams
were spotted. The Chinese researchers might escape,
which would mean that their mission was a failure and
the US and it's allies might very well end up losing
the war and their national identities.

The think tanks in the Pentagon had obtained
intelligence about the Chinese research groups
whereabouts and what they were trying to do and
everything they had on their hands seemed to confirm
one little thing. The Chinese researchers were close
to perfecting some kind of super weapon capable of
making the average Thermo-Nuclear warhead look like a
stupid little firecracker and in the eyes of the US
and her allies, that could not be allowed to come to
pass. Therefore, after a few quick intelligence
gathering flights over the island, they had ordered
the black ops teams in to capture the facility, and/or
it's researchers, or blow up all of them sky-high.

"Sir..."

"What is it, private?" Smith hissed. Couldn't the fool
see that he was thinking?

"May I request permission to speak freely, sir?"

Smith nodded.

"Permission granted."

"Thank you, sir."

The private pointed his finger at a fiery spot in the
sky.

"What the fuck is that, sir?"

Smith had to take only look at the slowly growing
orange spot in the sky to know what it was and what it
wasn't.

"Get the Pentagon... Now!"

"Sir..." the first private begun, once again.

"Private..."

"Yes, sir."

"Shut the fuck up," Smith said, curtly.

The private nodded, cowed down and made the call.
Moments later, he spoke again.

"Pentagon is online, sir. They are screaming hell at
our breaking radio silence, sir."

"Radio silence, my ass," Smith said and grabbed the
phone. "What the hell do you think you're doing,
launching a tac-nuke strike while we're still on the
Island?" Smith barked.

"Tac-nuke? Colonel, have you lost your freaking mind?
You just guaranteed the failure of the mission by
breaking radio silence," the speaker on the other side
of the line said.

"You fucking pray for a miracle that I have lost my
mind, asshole, because if you're wrong, this Island is
going to be toast in a minute when that thing hits and
all your precious research papers will be lost, too."

"My name's General Tyler and you will address me as
such, Colonel."

"I don't give a freakin' damn about who you are, get
it, pencil dick? All I care about now, is the lives of
my men on this Island - the lives that you have
needlessly thrown away." *I swear, I will never let
them get away with this.*

"Colonel, I will have you court-martialed for this,"
the General warned.

"You can burn my dick, coat it with a fine layer of
syrup and eat it for all I care, because by the time
you get your ass over here, we will all be toast."
Smith cast an eye at the fiery ball in the sky. It
looked much closer and would hit land at any second.

"Colonel..."

"Colonel, my ass," Smith screamed into the phone. He
then turned towards his men. "Incoming. Hit the deck."

Seconds later, the southern part of the Island, the
part where the Chinese were perfecting their doomsday
weapon became ground zero for the fireball and that
section of the Island disappeared in a huge flash of
light.

The visitor had arrived on Earth!

***********************************************************************

Notes:

The super weapon I am referring to is not a figment of
my imagination. It can be built provided mankind finds
a way of harnessing zero point energy. A single
weapon, the size of a shoe can easily wipe out the
entire planet. How's that for firepower?

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