She had accentuated the fullness of her mouth, the length of her glittering lashes, the line of her long-arched brows. Breetai stared at her, openmouthed, as she saluted and began to about-face.
"Wait!" he said on sudden impulse. "What's your name?"
She turned back to him. "I am Kazianna Hesh, formerly of the Quadronos, my lord." She gave a slight smile, thumping the plastron of her armor with a gauntleted fist. "And now a Quadrono again, it seems. Some of our battle suits have been in storage all this time, and the hour is come when they're needed again."
"So it is." Breetai inspected Kazianna Hesh, not sure why he was doing so. It was one thing to interact with human females like Lisa Hayes, knowing there was no possibility of…of relations with them, at least not as far as he was concerned. It was quite another, and very unsettling, to have the smiling, rather alluring-looking Quadrono staring at him so boldly.
"And, if I may say so, sir, what with all the perils that Fantoma harbors, it is good to be serving in a danger zone under the command of my Lord Breetai once more."
She saluted again, precisely, but still with that odd half smile. Breetai responded, and Kazianna did a careful high-g march back down the little hillock. Breetai watched her go, studying her walk, wondering whether it was something about her armor-a malfunction, perhaps? — that put that nonregulation sway in her gait.
"I don't care what your platoon leader told you," General T. R. Edwards roared into the face of the cleanup-detail sergeant. "I'm telling you to stack those things in the catacombs for further study by my evaluation teams! And make goddamn sure you don't damage any!"
The sergeant chose the better part of valor, saluting Edwards, then shrugging to his men and reorganizing them. They had been using their powered equipment to move the inert forms of the Invid Inorganic fighting mecha up out of the catacombs so that the demolition crews could dispose of them for good.
The biped Inorganics, and the massive Inorganic feline automata called Hellcats, were immobilized once the huge brain controlling them was deactivated. But it still made the REF uneasy to have thousands of them lying all over Tiresia, as though they might wake up at any moment. Orders had come down to move them to an appropriate site and blow them all to smithereens.
Lang and Cabell and the other big IQs had taken a few of the things for study, but didn't seem otherwise inclined to countermand the council's orders. Be that as it might, all the lower ranks knew you didn't rub General Edwards the wrong way without risking some real grief. The heavy machinery began lugging the inert enemy mecha for careful storage in the catacombs under the Royal Hall.
Edwards took an aide, Major Benson, aside. "Get some of the Ghost Riders and keep an eye on things. Make sure the Invid mecha are all kept intact, understood?"
"Yes, sir." Benson recalled the bizarre events of the original capture of the Royal Halclass="underline" how Edwards had arranged to be first to break into the Invid command center deep beneath it.
Benson could only guess at what his general's plans were, but the aide made every attempt not to seem surprised or curious. Hitching your wagon to Edwards's star offered the chance of vast rewards somewhere down the line, but stars had a way of flaring up and destroying the things around them.
Discretion was the indispensible tool for survival in Ghost Squadron.
"Wise-man, I'm told you wish to see me," Bela said, entering Lang's lab. She seemed cheerful with the prospect of having her heart's desire fulfilled, but she stopped dead, glaring, when she saw Cabell and Rem standing by Lang's side.
Gnea had been following close behind her warlord, and now collided with her back. The smaller, younger amazon had the same lithe grace as Bela, but she was more prone to show wide-eyed wonder at the things around her, and lacked that hair-trigger temper that was already gaining Bela fame in the REF.
Gnea's eyes were a gold-flecked green, her long, straight hair a sun-bleached white. Her helm was crested with a long-necked reptilian image that had a head like a horned lizard. Her battle costume was of a different design from Bela's, but had that same look of erotic glamour to it. Gnea wore sword and knife on her harness like Bela, but where the taller woman carried a crossbow, Gnea bore a Praxian naginata and a shield with a spiked boss in its center.
"What are they doing here?" Bela indicated Rem and Cabell with an angry gesture of her chin, fingering her bow as if she were ready to fire. Gnea seemed about to bring her halberd's curved blade into the ready position, glaring beneath feathery black brows.
"They have been helping me with my research," Lang answered, surprised. "They are allies of the REF now, just as you are."
"We Sentinels do not trust these spawn of the Robotech Masters," Bela spat, "any more than we do the Zentraedi who brought suffering like the Invid did!"
Gnea, eyes narrowed at Rem, added, "And you, you who so resemble Zor-we have reason to hate Zor, too, for the ruin his meddling brought down upon us."
"But he is not Zor," Cabell told her, stroking his long white beard with one mandarin-nailed hand. "Nor am I a Robotech Master. Think of us, please, as two Tiresians who wish to help free all planets from the Invid."
Bela hissed at him in scorn and anger. Lang intervened. "Without their help, I couldn't have finished this for you in time."
He gestured, and a powered partition folded aside accordian style. Bela gasped, and Gnea cried aloud, seeing what waited there.
No one would ever mistake it for a live horse, even though it tossed its head, snorting, and dug its hoof at the deck in imitation of a real animal's movements. The two wings that sprouted from its back were articulated, and changed shape and position, but were more like something from an airplane or ornithopter than any bird.
Its leg structure widened somewhat down toward the hock, so that it seemed Lang's wonder horse was wearing bell-bottoms from which its shining hooves poked. The thing was a glittering silver with jet-black trim. Its noble mane and forelock and tail of hair-fine wire tossed and glittered as it stamped, waiting.
"She is magnificent," Bela breathed, forgetting her anger. "Superb." She went toward the mecha with one hand extended; the thing appeared to sniff at her. "Magical."
She appeared ready to vault astride, but Rem called out, "Wait!" As she whirled on him he held out her helm, showing her that the interior padding had been changed.
"Control receptors," Rem explained. "This is still a Robotech mecha, after all, and in order to control it, you'll need to do a certain amount of mental imaging-visualizing what you want it to do." She took the helm from him, settling it onto her head.
Bela held her hand out to the horse again. "I shall call you 'Halidarre,' girl-after the free sky-spirit of our great heroine.
"Halidarre I shall be," the horse-mecha answered, in a synthesized voice that sounded much like Bela's. Both women drew breath in surprise.
"There are other things you will learn about Halidarre," Cabell said, "as time passes. Things like this…"
He touched a control, and Halidarre's wings straightened, their area shrinking somewhat. From a niche in the media's back, a cylindrical reconnaissance module rose into the air, using the wings and its own lifting field. Cabell touched another control, and the module returned to its niche.
"Halidarre flies, too, just as promised," Lang put in. "But more by her antigrav apparatus and impellers than by using her wings; the aerodynamics of a live flying horse are quite impossible, of course."
"He is also compatible with some of the other REF mecha, like the Cyclone combat cycles-"
Rem was adding, but Bela cut him off with a gesture and leapt astride the Robotech Pegasus.
"Halidarre, attached to a mere machine? Don't be absurd!" she snorted. "Gnea, come!" Gnea obediently took her hand and swung up behind, one arm around Bela's waist.