"Thanks for this gift, Dr. Lang; I salute you and pledge my fealty to you."
Her expression hardened. "But as for you, Zor-clone, and you, servant to the Robotech Masters, do not try my patience, and stay well clear of the women of Praxis!"
By way of underlining her warning, she turned and aligned her arm at the wooden leg of a lab table. She clenched her fist and made a sudden downward curling gesture with it, keeping the rest of her arm steady. A thin, gleaming object shot from the slightly bulky feature built into her forearm sheath.
The three men turned to spy it quivering in the wood: a slim, hiltless throwing dagger-fired by some sort of spring-loaded device in the sheath, Lang supposed.
Bela looked to Rem and Cabell again. "Be warned," she said.
CHAPTER NINE
How I was torn when I saw that she wasn't going! Surely, the Sentinels are venturing forth on a mission far more likely to bring enlightenment than is the mere mining of Fantoma and rebuilding the SDF-3!
Just as certainly, along with the contemptible bloodshed that is war, there will be access to stupendous new horizons of knowledge and awareness. Perhaps keys to the Ultimate Truths that grow from the First Light, the birth pangs of the Universe!
Enough; Minmei will stay behind and that's only to be expected. Though the synergistic harmonies with Janice Em (and what of her? So many mysteries!) will be sundered, Lynn-Minmei seems to sense that the place for her and for her voice and her role in the Shapings-as Lang and Zand would have it-is here, with the REF.
And so it is my place too; I am content. She'll be here, away from Hunter, away from Wolff-here, near me. What feelings this stirs, I don't find myself able to put into words yet. I will allow myself some irony in this matter, and sign myself, when these writings turn to Minmei…
REF Service #666-60-937
From an enlisted lounge of SDF-3, there was a great view of the Sentinels' flagship and the small escort flotilla from the dimensional fortress, preparing to get under weigh.
Drives flared in the night of Valivarre's umbra; the strange, orange-red fans of propulsive energy from Farrago stood out like a half-dozen immense, slitted searchlights-like no drives the REF had ever seen before, dwarfing those around the dreadnought. The Ur-Flower "peat" furnaces beamed incredible power out into space.
Off duty, Minmei sat at the lounge's piano by a big span of viewport, not even realizing that she was picking absently at the keys. The Agitprop and Psych/Morale people had wanted her to sing a final farewell concert with Janice. Something to work everybody up into a liberationist fervor and prepare them for whatever lay ahead-either the back-breaking labor of putting SDF-3 in working order or the life-on-the-line campaign to dislodge the fearsome Invid hordes from the planets they had enslaved. The REF was already exhausted from the round-the-clock working shifts to get the Sentinels' mission ready.
But Minmei didn't feel like singing with Janice again. She refused to sing with the woman who had, in her opinion, betrayed her. For that matter, Minmei didn't feel like singing for the war effort. The whole Superstar-savior-voice-of-humanity act was behind her, couldn't they understand that? She was just another lowly recruit, and that was the way she wanted it.
"The voice that won the Robotech War," they had called her. But what had it ever brought her but a few glimmers of the spotlight, then pain and bitterness and loneliness? She considered the things she had been forced to endure in the wake of her triumphs, and decided that one more such victory would be her undoing.
The escort flotilla had fallen in around the Sentinels' flagship now, ready to guard it until it went superluminal. Then Farrago and the mismatched aliens and Earthers aboard would be on their own.
Minmei realized that she was hitting familiar keys, one at a time and very slowly. The tempo was different now, mournful, like some old torch song from one of the great blues singers.
She sang the words softly, letting her suffering come through, savoring the lyrics but filling them with irony.
Life is only what we choose to make it
Let us take it
Let us be free
Minmei chorded it unhurriedly, downbeat, so that the song sounded like it was time for the bartenders to be putting chairs upside down on the tables for closing. She felt her shoulders sag under a weight she simply wasn't strong enough to bear anymore.
There was a lamenting in each word. The famous voice caressed, rasped resentfully, then caressed again.
We can find the glory we all dream of
And with our love,
We can win…
But there was a strength in the melancholy, a strength the blues had owned from the beginning, something stronger than all the up-tempo marches put together.
The strength of survival-of going through the worst and coming out the other side saddened and chastened but alive and prepared to stay with the life that had done such unspeakable things to you, because there was no other life…
Her head was bent over the keyboard now, long raven wings of hair shrouding her face.
Perhaps a few, nearby, would hear, but she didn't care. She looked again, briefly, to where the Sentinels'
engines lit the night, and the conventional drives of its REF escorts grew brighter in anticipation of departure.
Minmei watched them as her fingers found unhurried chords that seemed predestined.
If we must fight or face defeat,
We must stand tall and not retreat
Unseen by anyone but their owner, hands manipulated the lounge sound system control paneclass="underline" turning down the gain; adjusting the very fine room directionals; punching a ship's-intercom code that only certain selected commo personnel were supposed to know. Adjusting this; amplifying that-and it was all very practiced, very expert.
Minmei's song, low and intimate, was playing through the lounge softly, as if it were something a loud sound would shatter, amplified so discreetly that Minmei herself didn't realize the sound system was on.
It was channeled into the ship's commo, and Lang's head raised from his lab researches; Exedore's eyes took on a faraway look; Captain Forsythe and the bridge gang stopped what they were doing and listened; many in SDF-3 fought the tide of emotion as the voice swept through them. Breetai, confronting bleak Fantoma, heard it through a commo patch-in over which he had just wished Rick and Lisa Hunter good fortune.
Rem and Cabell wondered if any perfection of the Muse Triumvirate of the Robotech Masters could surpass the aching beauty of this song; they doubted it. Exedore heard it and thought, This power she has-it's astonishing. No; it's humbling.
Thousands of people froze, hearing Minmei, knowing her and her song, but never having heard either sound like this.
It's love's battle we must win.
The line rose and lingered; losing in personal battle was the epitome of the blues. Minmei was pure and high and luminous with pain at one moment, breathy with a return to the call of life the next.
More in touch with her music than the gamine superstar version of herself had ever been.
We will win
We must win…
Minmei twisted the last note around with the wail of a suffering animal, then let it down gently with some chords that said it's all right; life goes on. Lived through everything else. Not gonna die from this.
She wavered a little on the piano bench, a bit dazed by the understated power of what she had just released-something that hadn't been there, in her, before. She was unaware that so many others had heard it, unaware that the lounge was now utterly quiet.