"Mayday," Michael cried into his radio. "This is Phoenix-four! My starboard engine is out! I'm going to have to put down!"

Not that he believed that anyone could actually hear him; for all he could tell, his squadron of six Alpha fighters and six Beta fighters had been completely wiped out. All except for him.

Where did they come from? he asked himself. This was supposed to have been a routine patrol!

The warning indicators in his cockpit were telling him that his starboard engine had just caught fire. Lieutenant (jg) Austin craned his head around to look over his shoulder. Though most of the engine was blocked from his view, he could see a black column of smoke trailing behind him. Michael held his breath, and began to override the safeties that would allow him to purge the starboard hot fusion reactor of its twenty million degree plasma. With the magnetic bottling on the verge of collapse, it was an explosion just waiting to go off. Even purging it would be risky at this point, but it was the only alternative. Michael braced for whatever would come, shunted all his remaining reaction mass to the starboard engine to help cool the superheated flow, and released the final safety. His plane rocked viciously, and a vast trail of flame poured out of the purge vents, leaving a thick white contrail in his plane's wake.

The immediate threat taken care of, Michael turned his attention back to his altimeter. He was losing altitude fast, and with one engine out, and the power couplings to his secondaries acting up, he knew he couldn't stay up here forever. I'll either have to eject or land, he thought disconcertedly. Either way, he resigned himself to an unplanned, and certainly unwelcome, stay on the jungle planet of Dahlori-4.

Michael tried to figure out where the attackers had come from. Phoenix squadron had been sent to this system to check for signs of hold-outs of the armies of the Regent or another of the small Invid hives that littered the galaxy long after their defeat on Optera. Having come looking for the Invid, they seemed to have stumbled on a nest of rogue Zentraedi instead.

The Zentraedi Quaedluun-rau battle- suit was easily the ultimate achievement in power armor, especially considering the fact that the average pilot for the suit was just a shade over thirty-one feet tall. Indeed, it had been so effective against the mecha of the Robotech Defense Force twenty-five years ago that Earth's best minds had incorporated its better characteristics into its current front-line fighter, the Alpha. Both ships were well- armored, heavily armed, and bristling with missiles. But the Quaedluun-rau was still the better ship. The 55mm shells from the old Valkryie's GU-11 gun pod could puncture the Zentraedi mecha's armor only half of the time at close ranges. Were he still flying a Navy plane, its newer beam gun would easily do the job. But the Marines were always the last to get the new equipment, and his Alpha's gun's 35mm shells didn't stand much of a chance. The Zentraedi mecha was more than a match for an expert pilot, and though Michael had all of the talent in his squadron, he was still a relative greenhorn. But it had been enough to keep him alive until now, which was more than any of his comrades could boast.

Michael's radar warning receiver light began to flash; one of the Quaedluun-rau suits was closing on him for the kill. It was the one in the bright reddish- purple paint scheme, clearly distinct from the others, which were in a dark green scheme. She must be the squadron leader, he thought. Before his engine had cut out, Michael had taken out her wingmen with enough Hammerhead missiles to put several famous bodybuilders-turned-movie-stars into orbit. But she had gotten away; she had seen through his maneuver, and now he only had one salvo of eight Hammerhead short-range and four Diamondback medium-range missiles left. Michael smiled; he knew just how to put this enemy out of commission. Michael rolled the crippled and burning plane and pulled up on the stick, going into a deep inverted dive to pick up some speed. At 10,000 meters he rolled again and pulled out of his dive behind the Zentraedi mecha, which had matched altitudes, and was trying to get within its missiles' range from him. Michael locked onto the target and fired the short-range missiles, and veered his plane toward his enemy, closing fast. The Zentraedi pilot did just what Michael expected; she fired her own missiles at Michael's, hoping to remotely detonate them as they passed by each other, destroying both volleys. It was a standard tactic, and Michael knew it well; he'd had it drilled into his head by an extremely distinguished former pilot of a Quaedluun-rau suit, his godmother of sorts, Miriya Paarino Sterling.

Michael watched as the two salvos of missiles closed on each other, with the two mecha not far behind. Come on, he thought, selecting his medium-range Diamondbacks. "Lock on, damn it!" he told his remaining missiles, frustration in his voice. I can't let her have time to react. Soon, the two salvos of missiles had met, and went up in a tremendous explosion. Now! His enemy only hundreds of feet away behind the opaque curtain of a fiery maelstrom, Michael let loose all of his Diamondbacks and banked hard to the right. They did just as Michael had planned; racing through the smoke cloud before his enemy could detect them, the missiles slammed into her mecha with a fantastic force. The suit was sent reeling; still in the air, but badly crippled.

Michael laughed. "She fell for it! What an idiot!" Suddenly, two missiles struck the already damaged rear of Michael's plane in rapid succession. Michael grunted, realizing he'd spoken too soon. The Zentraedi had thought of the same strategy Michael had at the same time; they'd both fallen for the trick. By now there wasn't much left working to damage back there, so the hits merely added insult to injury. "Shit," he swore as he veered away from his damaged adversary into a thick cloud bank to the south; away from the direction the enemy ships had come from. Beneath the clouds, at around 3300 meters, he began to look for a place to land. The jungle canopy was frighteningly thick, and Michael contemplated a vertical landing. Damn, he thought. The VTOL thruster was dead too.

Landing in the jungle was now definitely out; Michael was brave, but not suicidal. Another possibility soon presented itself. Several miles to the west, a long finger-like lake's blue surface shimmered amidst the thick dark canopy of the forest. And not a moment too soon; Michael's main powerplants had just gone out, and he lost all cockpit functions for a few seconds before the batteries kicked in.

Michael cycled air through the empty reaction-mass tanks to equilibrate them with atmospheric pressure, and then locked them and his intakes up; he hoped to trap enough air in the plane so that it didn't sink too fast. Finally, with the fly-by- wire controls growing increasingly sluggish, he would fly in for a soft landing on the surface of the lake; or that's what he hoped.

Michael T. Austin had been a combat pilot for barely three years, and he'd been in more than a few combat actions. Nothing very big, though. And certainly nothing to prepare him for this. Michael had developed quite a reputation; as a pilot - and as a troublemaker as well.

He wasn't the only Naval Air officer see a tour flying with a Marine unit. Such rotations were common, with the express purpose of teaching the Navy pilots ground-attack skills only the Marines had really mastered. But for many of them - Michael included - it was the heightened discipline in the Corps' squadrons their superiors felt was necessary to whip the rebellious spirits out of them. Michael was lucky to have gotten his one promotion, and he'd been warned that if he didn't get his act together, he'd never get another. Not that he really cared. He was having fun. Of everything else, more than his literature, or his history books, or his music, or Takuda-sensei's dojo, or even his several girlfriends, Michael loved to fly. Getting shot at from time to time was just an occupational hazard. Getting shot down, in Michael's view, wasn't part of the bargain.

Hmmm, Michael thought pensively. I suppose if I'm going to carry the name Austin, I'm going to have to expect to get shot down once in a while. Michael's thoughts quickly turned darker. His parents, both of them pilots, had been killed in battle: his father several months before he was born, and his mother when he was just a boy. And he wasn't quite yet ready to join them.

As the last couple of hundred meters that separated him from the lake vanished, Michael hit the airbrakes and pulled up hard. The surface of the water was very close, and he wanted to hit it as slowly as possible.

The plane struck the lake as gently as could be expected under the circumstances; and somewhere in its middle, the Alpha had surrendered all of its forward momentum to the blue waters, and stopped.

Even with the air in the cargo compartment and that trapped in the engines, the plane was sinking fast. Michael popped open his canopy, unstrapped his flight harness, and withdrew his survival pack from behind the pilot's seat.

He opened one of the pack's side compartments and pulled out a yellow vinyl bundle: the self- inflating raft. Michael activated the inflation, and set it on one of the winglets that ran along the sides of the cockpit. He also freed his firearm from the pack. The Gallant was new - it had never been fired in combat, and Michael attached the rifle barrel and stock to the basic pistol and loaded in the energy magazine. He might just need it. Michael yanked off his flight helmet and tossed it aside, and slung the rifle over his right shoulder. He heaved the pack up, and lowered it into the raft, which was now fully inflated and floating free, as the winglet it had been resting on was now underwater. Time rapidly slipping away, Michael examined the one item that remained behind the pilot's seat; the crossbow. Michael had never fired it either. He kept it mainly to honor Praxian custom. It was a gift from Gnea, a Praxian warrior-queen, for piloting the shuttle that had rescued her and her bodyguard from a horde of Invid inorganics a year and a half ago. Praxian tradition holds that if a warrior is given a weapon by an elder to honor her valor, she must keep it with her in every battle she fights thereafter or risk insulting her patroness. No one was really sure if Praxian tradition was binding on Michael, being both a Terran and a male, but he followed it in this case; the August Lady Gnea was a friend of his late mother's and had fought alongside her in the Sentinels' Campaign. He doubted it would be of much use, what with his Gallant Pulse Rifle and all, but he strapped it across his left shoulder anyway. Hopefully, there would still be battles for him to fight, his crossbow faithfully tucked behind his seat, once he managed to get off this planet. If he managed to get off this planet.

Michael climbed into the raft just as the water began to fill the cockpit, and he pushed off from the canopy. A short row, then he'd be in the jungle. Michael assembled the oar - the shaft would double as a tent-peg and the paddles as shovels and entrenching tools - and began to row towards the shore.

The sky was a clear blue, with only a few low clouds rolling in from the east, but Michael decided he'd prefer to be hidden in the thick foliage. No aerial searches could spot him there, and soon his plane would be at the bottom of the lake. Nevertheless, if it would be hard for the Zentraedi to find him, it would be nigh impossible for Valiant. Michael had a field radio, but using that before he was sure that one of his ships could hear him would just make it easier for the Zentraedi to track him down. Besides, the planet's primary was entering an active phase; he'd heard in the mission briefing that several coronal mass ejections were expected to hit the planet over the next couple of weeks, making radio transmissions from the surface difficult. To top that off, Valiant wasn't due back in-system for another two weeks - assuming she couldn't be called back earlier - and the destroyer his squad had been assigned to would be no match for the Zentraedi by itself; they only had left a single squadron of planes and a shattered Marine battalion cut to a third its peak strength. Even if they managed to drop in the grunts, would they even know to look for survivors and where to look, or would they just assume that everyone had been killed?

Michael looked over the raft into the water. It seemed clear enough; alien fish swam to and fro in the sparkling lake. Michael cupped his hands in the water; it smelled clean at least. He reached into his pack and extracted a small metallic cylinder. The toximeter was around eight centimeters long, and had a specimen collector at the bottom and a screen at the top, with several lights to the side of the screen.

Michael dipped the toximeter into the lake. After a moment of analysis, the green light went on, indicating that the water was safe to drink. Nevertheless, the screen recommended that it be treated with iodine before drinking it. Michael returned the toximeter to his bag.

At least I won't die of thirst when my canteen's empty, Michael thought. "I just hope to God that the life on this planet has the same protein and carbohydrate chirality as on Earth; the pack's only got a week's worth of food, and I don't want to starve to death with a full belly!" he said aloud.

Despite his worries, the world around him was awesome and peaceful. Some sort of arboreal creatures were singing in the thick canopy of trees that surrounded the lake. One would begin a melody, and others, miles off, would pick it up, singing variations upon its theme. Other creatures were calling out to others of their kind, whooping and yelping from miles off.

The foliage was various shades of green and dark blue; and the bark ranged from white to burnt orange, rather unlike the trees of Earth. Not that Michael would have known. He'd never been there.

Michael smiled, "Well, I wanted a vacation!" He would have to be more careful of what he wished for in the near future, for fear that he might get that too. He tried to put the recent deaths of his comrades behind him, and attempted to concentrate on keeping his spirits up. It wouldn't be easy. Valiant, even if it finds the Zentraedi, would probably give up on ever finding him. He might end up stranded here permanently.

All of a sudden, he felt something bump the raft, about half-way to the shore from where his now- submerged aircraft had stopped.

Michael looked around; the water was murkier here, and he had a hard time seeing anything. Again, he felt something bump the raft. This time, he saw the wake of a large creature as it dove back underwater and swam away.

Michael readied his Gallant. He hadn't gotten a good look at the creature, but it was big, and it was playing with him, whatever it was. Michael released the safety on the gun and waited, peering over the edge of the raft.

Michael felt something try to tip the raft from behind him. He panicked and spun around to see his survival pack slide toward his end, and fall into the water. Michael dropped his gun and caught the pack just before it went under, and managed to right the raft. Damn! Good thing this pack's waterproof. The prospect of losing his food supply and radio didn't appeal to him much. But in the rush to save them, he had lost his gun, and he sighed despondently as he realized that it was on its way to the bottom of the lake by now.

Michael cursed as he checked the raft for leaks. None were apparent, but he had now lost the only weapon he had that was even remotely capable of taking out a full-sized Zentraedi. And that thing was still out there, in the water.

He unslung the ornamental crossbow and examined it. It was cocked by a shotgun-style pump action, and the magazine, containing twenty steel-tipped bolts, was mounted on top of the bow, along with an IR sight. Austin pumped it, and tried to stay alert.

He heard a splash, and spun around. A giant reptile-like creature stuck its long neck out of the water, and was snapping at him with rows of sharp teeth in the jaws of a dragon-like head as big as Michael's torso. Michael ducked backward, away from the gaping maw, and fired once. The bolt struck from point-blank range and imbedded itself in the creature's thick skull. The monster gasped, went limp, and sank back into the murky waters below.

With his first small victory over this alien world still fresh, Michael paddled the rest of the way to shore.

Meliana's damaged ship set down in the upper hangar level as smoothly as could be expected, considering that the power conduits from over half its protoculture-cell energizers had been severed by the Micronian's missile attack. Smoke bellowed out of the holes in the armor, both from the salvo of Diamondbacks and the occasional hits from the Alpha's 35mm gun that actually penetrated the mecha's thick shell.

The canopy folded upwards, and Meliana began detaching the environmental support feeds from her flightsuit. She looked up, as two of her comrades-in-arms called her name.

Kaziana and Zeregrina dashed toward the crippled ship, and began to help pull their friend's weakened form from the battlesuit. "Meliana, have you suffered injury?" Kaziana asked. Their squadron leader had taken several shrapnel and armor-piercing sabots in her shoulder and arm, and was bleeding profusely. She nodded, and forced herself to stand.

"My battles are not yet finished," she said, echoing the Zentraedi ritual reply.

"And the others?" Zeregrina asked. "Miloria and Ezoda?"

"They have fulfilled the Imperative," Meliana replied, again in ritual fashion. "They are dead. But we carried the day!"

"Glory to the Masters!" her comrades shouted in unison. Meliana only nodded.

"Come, let us help you to the infirmary," said the blonde-haired Zeregrina. She hoisted her twenty- eight foot tall squadron leader over her equally large back, and began to carry her out of the hangar. Meliana's rich green hair spilled out of her flight helmet, and fell down behind her back.

"No," the wounded warrior said. "I must take another ship and go back out. I believe one of the Micronians may have been able to crashland."

"I'll do it," Kaziana announced. "My ship is still functional."

"The last tracking data on the Micronian's craft is in my flight recorder. I doubt he could have made it far; his aircraft was burning and heavily damaged in the engine section."

Kaziana nodded, and ran for the flight- suit locker. Meliana watched her go, as she was carried to the elevator.

Where did they come from? Meliana asked herself. She had heard about Micronians, other than the Tirolians and their supreme leaders, the Robotech Masters. But she had standing orders to avoid all non-Tirolian Micronians. The Masters and her own commanders would tell her no more. The craft themselves were especially puzzling. The vessels she fought looked somewhat like miniature versions of the Zentraedi fighter pod, though somehow they could reconfigure themselves into mimicries of her armor, only half as tall - a fact that made them hard targets to strike. They were nimble, well-armed, and their pilots were well-trained. But they were still no match for the 78191st Ragaeli Zentraedi Quaedluun-Rau Air Battalion. As far as Meliana knew, only Miriya Paarino, another from her own clone series, commanded a better squadron.

Except for that one. . . Meliana mused. His tactics were identical to the Quaedluun-Rau standard maneuvers, and he was as skilled at them as anyone I have seen. This recognition of her opponent's fighting style bothered her. Though the Masters vehemently denied it, there were rumors that Lord Dolza's Grand Fleet had been destroyed by the Micronians, and that what little was left of Lord Breetai's Imperial-class Fleet had defected to their side. Such tales were told only in hushed whispers, and for good reason: to be caught saying such things was a sure death sentence, and Meliana had herself ordered the execution of several warriors for uttering such things. Then there was the even more disturbing rumor that Tirol itself had fallen to the Invid. This might explain why the local governor triumvirate had not received reinforcements or supplies for many years and had moved the Tirolian colonists underground. It was common knowledge that their protoculture supply was desperately low.

Meliana put such stray and seditious thoughts behind her, as she was set on a table in the infirmary by her comrade, who saluted and left. The medic-on-duty was soon tending to her injuries, and before long, she was all sewn up, and sat silently in the recovery room. Presently, a screen on the far wall lit up, and the Zentraedi base commander's rugged face appeared.

"Meliana, it is good to see that we haven't lost our finest pilot," Commander Thurall said gruffly.

"I live yet but to fulfill the Imperative," Meliana replied. It wasn't often that Thurall spoke to his female officers; the two sexes were rigidly segregated on this and every other Zentraedi installation.

"I have news for you. Firstly, Kaziana has found no sign of that Micronian aircraft. There is no unaccounted-for wreckage for miles around, and the footage your gun camera shot of the vessel has shown that it couldn't have gotten far. Further flights are scheduled to search for it."

"Yes, my lord."

"And another thing," Thurall began. "It seems that the Governor Triumvirate wishes to hear your report in person. You are scheduled to be micronized in seven hours. Consider this a great honor. Few Zentraedi are permitted to go before the Masters."

"Yes, my lord. Thank you, my lord."

Michael wiped the sweat off his forehead and continued his hike to the southwest, trying to put as much distance as possible between him and the suspected location of the Zentraedi base. The jungle was dark and hot, at least during the day, and pairs of ominous, frightened, or curious eyes stared at him out of the darkness. Some were safely nestled in the trees, yet others prowled along the ground. As far as he could tell, a pack of dog-sized creatures had been following him from a distance all day, and occasionally one would approach close enough that he could make out its shadowy form amongst the trees.

"Some vacation," Michael thought aloud, his crossbow at the ready. There was more ground cover in this forest than he'd expected, and the trunks of trees were covered in blue and red lichens and mosses. The ground was soft and springy, and for this he was thankful. Normally, even a brief walk would get his right ankle to ache slightly: the result of a childhood sprain that never really healed right.

Michael began to look for a clearing. Even if he thought his chances of getting through weren't very good, he had to try to radio the Claymore, if only to warn her and her companions that the Zentraedi were about. Besides, he doubted that these creatures would follow him into the open, where he could see them.

Before long, Michael had climbed to the top of a tall rocky hill that was for the most part clear of foliage. He sat down, and began to unpack his radio. Even with a protoculture- cell energizer, the transmitter still wasn't particularly strong, but it was still worth a try. Michael activated the field radio, and began to speak into the microphone.

"This is Phoenix-four, calling Claymore. Repeat, this is Phoenix-four, calling Claymore. Do you copy, Claymore?"

Michael waited, and repeated his hail. Still, for three long minutes, there was silence.

Michael gasped when the receiver crackled, and he heard a familiar voice. "Phoenix-four, this is Claymore. What's your status, over?"

It was Jeanne. Ensign Jeanne Ducasse, fresh out of the academy and the destroyer's communications officer, had suffered through a schoolgirl crush on him for years.

"My bird went down, and I'm the only survivor of my squadron. My coordinates are. . ."

"Say again, Phoenix-four. Your transmission is breaking up. Sensors indicate an active jam. . ." Then he lost reception.

Hell! Michael thought. Those goddamned Zentraedi! He tried to boost the gain on the transmitter, tried a more focused signal, but nothing worked. Then it hit him. If they had units in the air while he was transmitting, they could triangulate his location with ease. Of course, "they" could either mean his people or the Zentraedi. Michael packed up the radio as fast as he could, and began to run. He had to get as far away from there as possible before the strafing runs began. And they came before he expected. The ground began to tremble, and Michael could see the forest around him shake. He had made it half of a mile from the transmission site before the missile barrage began in earnest. He hit the dirt hard, and waited as the world exploded around him. Under this thick canopy, they couldn't use thermal- imagers to track him, and he knew they would give up eventually. But that was little comfort now. The Quaedluun-rau suits were now using their motion-trackers, blasting anything that moved with the tri-barreled beam guns on each forearm and the two impact cannons mounted in their torsos. Michael couldn't begin to imagine how many of the indigenous forest creatures they must have slaughtered in that attack. One of the seventeen meter tall powersuits actually got within a fifty meters from Michael, who lay as still as death under a rotting log. Soon, the Zentraedi gave up, and rocketed away, presumably back to base. Here, in the jungle, the advantage was his.

Michael waited for what seemed like hours before he dared to move. By the time he got up and examined his surroundings, the creatures that had been following him had all run away. They had seemed to have learned of the danger the Zentraedi presented long ago.

Soon, it was beginning to get dark, and Michael decided that it would be wise to pitch his tent. He set up the dome-shaped structure and climbed in with his pack for the evening, and activated by remote the laser-tripwire fence that set a ten- meter radius perimeter around his tent. He snuggled into his sleeping bag, as it was getting cool, and dug out one of his MRE rations. Chicken a la King was the meal for today. Michael would have rather eaten trahl stew, hairballs and all, but he was hungry. A beer would be good right about now, he thought wistfully. A good Karbarran lager, perhaps. Or one of those Tirolian zero-gee fermented stouts.

He grudgingly consumed the tasteless and cold meal, and lay down for the night. He began to wonder if he'd ever actually get off this rock. What would all his friends do if he never came back? What about the Sterlings? Max and Miriya had taken such good care of him between the time that his mother had died and the day he entered the Academy, and he was fast friends with both their daughters, Dana, who had come back from Earth several years ago on the Marcus Antonius, and little Dawn (though she was insisting upon being called 'Aurora'). Then there were his girlfriends, Cathy and Keiko, both of whom he adored, though both were also shamelessly cheating on him, but he didn't care - he was not above doing the same to them.

And then there was Jeanne. That was the stickiest issue of them all. Only seventeen years old, she was already an Ensign stationed aboard Claymore, and was widely recognized for her enormous talent. And where the other girls in his life viewed him mainly as a sex object - which was also fair, because for the most part he reciprocated the sentiment, Jeanne, the sweet spunky little redhead he'd known for years, was really, truly, head- over-heels in love with him. And just the thought of that gave him a serious case of the heebee-jeebees. The two of them had spent the week together on Tirol before they had shipped out on this patrol, and had almost bought her a pet Cha-Cha. She had even picked out a name for the pet she eventually declined to adopt - Jean-Claude. She was going through a serious Francophilic stage right about now, and Michael was really getting tired of hearing her try to romance him in French.

The more he thought about Jeanne, the more depressed he became. In the week before they shipped out, the two shared a picnic in a rather secluded park just outside of Tiresia. Michael had imbibed the Rilacian daelraed-berry wine a little too heavily, and his judgment suffered for it. Nothing had really happened, except for a fair amount of kissing, a few ungentlemanly gropes, and a lot of disheveled clothing, but he felt guilty of having taken advantage of her as far as he had. It had also set an ugly precedent in their relationship, and he knew that when he got back - if he got back - Jeanne would have a whole different set of expectations about what was really going on between them.

Realizing that he really did need to sleep, rather than stay up all night dwelling on such troublesome matters, Michael took a couple of depressants from his med-kit and shut his weary eyes.

"I am concerned," muttered Zened, stroking his long, graying beard. His companions, identical in appearance except for their hair color and style, looked up from their seats around the hovering mushroom-shaped console and cast their gaze upon their clone-brother.

"Yes," Garndal confirmed, shaking his shaved head slightly. "We have had no word from the Elders for far too long. We can only assume that the distress call from the homeworld was accurate; that Tirol has indeed fallen to the Invid, and then to the Micronians. Our only hope lies in the expedition to the Micronian homeworld. Without the protoculture. . ." Garndal's voice trailed into silence, and he considered his position. At last word, the Empire was crumbling, and entire sectors were being ravaged by the rapacious blood-lust of the Invid. As far as he knew, theirs might be the only world left in the Empire. It was a recent colony, with only five thousand Tirolian citizens and fifty-thousand clones bred from the Imperial Genetics Reserve's approved chromosome sequences. But with the fear of impending Invid attack, the colony-ship had been hurriedly buried, with only the hangars of the Zentraedi defensive brigade left accessible to the surface. But their power reservoirs were nearly depleted, and they were already trying to activate fusion back-up reactors that had lain idle for centuries.

Tharun, the third in the governor- triumvirate, grunted perceptibly and nodded. "But we can not count on that eventuality. If the Micronians occupy the homeworld, then they may have been able to defeat the armada sent to their world. We must proceed with our plan; the remaining fuel cells for our armies are beginning to decay beyond the point of usefulness, and we only have enough protoculture in the mothership's reactors for one fold-jump, if we have that, and still not enough to defend ourselves wherever we may go. Our only hope is to await the arrival of the Micronians' mothership and attempt to take it by force, and transfer our flag there. But the element of surprise is essential!"

"The loss of a squadron of their mecha should make them suspicious - but they must not be notified of our whereabouts. Even now, their surviving pilot has managed to contact their patrol ship. Translation of the communication has indicated that he was unable to inform them of our presence - only that his squadron was destroyed. Likewise, our jamming could easily be mistaken for the solar/planetary magnetospheric storms that have been occurring of late. They may suspect foul play in the squadron's demise, but it is likely that they will expect the Invid, not us," Garndal mused.

"If they remain ignorant of our Zentraedi contingent, we may be able to convince them that we are the remains of a stranded scientific expedition, and beg them for amnesty from the Invid. If so, we can claim that we observed the Invid destroy their squadron, and fabricate sensor logs to that effect. Once aboard their mothership, we can sabotage their defensive systems and use our clone warriors to board. If they resist, we will cripple their vessel with our Zentraedi squadrons, and take their protoculture from their own engines and storage facilities. However, this all is dependent on two things. Firstly, we must learn all we can about their technologies. Have our recovery teams retrieved the aircraft that crash-landed in the lake?" Tharun asked.

"Yes; it was only just been dredged out of the water. Our Science Triumvirate has already begun to investigate the wreckage. Their preliminary studies have shown that their power system is identical to our own protoculture cells, and their weaponry is similar to that employed by our Zentraedi. The craft does employ a number of unique systems, such as the ability to reconfigure from a aerodynamically optimized morphology to something approximating the Quaedluun-rau battlesuit," Garndal replied.

"Clever," the others added.

"Indeed," said Garndal. "Even now, our scientists are attempting to resuscitate the flight computer. It is apparently of rugged and efficient, if somewhat primitive, design. Once their computer protocols are understood, we should be able to formulate an invasive intelligent program that will shut down their primary systems: weapons, shields, hangar bays, engines, life support and so forth. That will give us the time needed to call for a boarding party."

"Excellent," exclaimed Tharun. "Now, the only worry is the plane's pilot. We can not find him in the jungle with our mecha, and our clone Terminators are not suited for such tasks. If he manages to regain contact with his troopship, they will be able to warn the mother-vessel when it arrives. He must be eliminated or captured."

Zened smiled faintly. "My brothers, it would seem that our solution has just arrived." He turned to the micronized Zentraedi warrior that had entered their chamber. Zened caused their hovering platform to approach her, and addressed the newcomer. "Welcome, Meliana Paarino. We have a mission of the utmost urgency, and we can think of no one better suited to the task than yourself."

Meliana shed her uniform and climbed into the modified protoculture chamber. It would be the second time in so many hours that she would be undergoing biogenetic reconstruction, and she had to admit she wasn't fond of the procedure. Having one's body dissolved and rebuilt around one can be disconcerting, and the void of the computer where one's brain patterns are stored during the procedure is as empty as the most desolate patch of interstellar space she had ever experienced.

But the idea of becoming a Nous-gran'diel excited her. Becoming the ultimate warrior, stripped of mecha and sensors, relying only on intuition and strength to defeat the enemy, was every Zentraedi's dream. And she had heard that many of the enhanced characteristics - reflexes, healing ability, strength - still lingered on when the Nous- gran'diel was returned to full size.

Meliana contemplated her meeting with the Masters. Her mind was still reeling from trying to understand (and speak) their dialect. Too used to the Zentraedi language, she always had trouble with Tiresian, what with the fully pronounced vowel combinations, the foreign syllable breaks, the r-l inversion, and all those grammatical subtleties. All her life, she'd pronounced her mecha as a quad.ron.o, and it bothered her to hear it pronounced qu.a.ed.luu.n-ra.u, even if that's how it was spelled. Then there's what they called her: t's.i.en- tra.ed.i. It gave her a double-take before she realized that they meant zen.tra.di. All the ritual expressions were different, and she was sure she'd gotten them all wrong. And never mind the inflections of the words which were completely alien to her agglutinative creole. Yet, every time she heard something spoken in their tongue, it carried a mysterious air of authority over her - as it did over all Zentraedi. Something in her warrior upbringing taught her that the a command given in the language of the Masters was command to be obeyed. But as she tried to fumble through the language, she thought that she surely must have seemed like a blithering idiot to her Masters.

But still, they had given her the mission. And as she began to sense the new body forming around her, she shivered in anticipation. As her body was being rebuilt around her, her mind, stored in the computer, was exposed to a series of simulated training regimens - the "dream-camp", as it was called among her Zentraedi fellows. In the virtual world she found herself in, her virtual brain experienced what seemed to be months in the field, though she knew that when she awoke in a physical body, only a few hours would have passed. The knowledge imparted to her about tracking, survival, small arms tactics, martial arts, and even field repair startled and amazed her. There was so much to know that had been kept from her when she was just a normal Zentraedi. But now she was a Nous- gran'diel! Already she had known that the name inspired fear among all the races in the Masters' Empire, and even among the Masters themselves.

A scientist opened the chamber, and her naked form emerged. She flexed her newly built muscles, and stretched. How strong this body is, she thought. She soon found herself distracted by the sound of circuitry burning. The chamber that had just enhanced her and made her into the consummate assassin was self-destructing as it was designed to do: the chamber could only produce one Nous-gran'diel. The scientist gave her a new uniform; a heavy self-camouflaging suit. She slid into it, and then moved on to the weapon the scientist had offered. She had never seen one of its sort before, but its operation had been imprinted in her mind by the chamber, and she inspected it with the same familiarity with which she normally greeted her power armor. It was a cased, chemically propelled, exploding round, rifled, projectile weapon - primitive, but effective, reliable, and accurate. Her final accouterment was her multi-spectrum optics helmet.

"You are ready?" the scientist asked.

Meliana concentrated on her mission: if possible, capture the Micronian pilot before he can contact his ship. If not possible, kill him.

"Yes."

Copyright © 1998, 1996 Robert Morgenstern, Peter Walker
Last Updated: Friday, February 27, 1998 12:46 PM