"What in blazes is going on?" Gloval thundered, grasping the arms of his chair to keep from being thrown across the compartment. "Trim the pitch attitude immediately!"
"It must be the gyroscope," Claudia said, struggling to stay at her station.
"No, look!" Lisa was pointing out at the upper-hull/flight deck.
Bulges had appeared, like volcanic domes being thrust up against the hardest armor ever developed; the tearing of metal sounded through the SDF-1 like the death throes of dinosaurs.
The convexities of armor broke open like overripe fruit, yielding complex cylinders of advanced-design systemry. The cylinders, each the size of a railroad tank car, rose majestically into the air, trailing power leads and torn support frameworks.
"The gravity pods are breaking away!"
Gloval rushed up behind Lisa to see for himself. "What is it? Oh, no! They're tearing away from the ship instead of lifting it!"
Everywhere it was the same; the physics of the disaster was inflexible. Dozens of gravity pods tore lose, continuing their ascent as they'd been charged to do, breaking their way through any structure in their path (or, to put it another way, conventional gravity was dragging the SDF-1 down around them).
"This can't be happening!" Gloval breathed, not so much distraught by the probable outcome the disaster would mean for himself and his command as by the utter catastrophe it meant for Earth.
"The ship is losing altitude, Captain!" Lisa cried.
Gloval groaned. "Please! Tell me I'm dreaming this!"
"Pardon, sir?" Lisa said.
He hadn't realized he'd spoken aloud. "It's a nightmare."
SDF-1 fell faster, its few operating thrusters unequal to the task of easing it down. All through the ship, people knew that calamity had occurred and waited with varying attitudes to find out what their fate would be.
With alarms hooting and wailing, the ship crashed back onto its keel blocks. Under the velocity of even a cushioned fall, the titanic weight made the monolithic blocks crack, give way, and collapse or drive themselves down into the Earth.
But the impact-absorption systems built into them saved the ship from greater damage and spared lives, before the blocks were overloaded and defeated. SDF-1 settled down with its hull against the rubble and soil and hardtop, but the ship's back hadn't been broken or its hull breached.
The bridge wasn't so different from any other section: outcries and screams and incoherent yelling. In moments, the noise died away and military discipline reasserted itself. SDF-1 rested at a 15-degree list to port.
"Is anyone hurt?" Gloval's voice cut through the confusion. Everyone else chimed in that they were uninjured, then shut up; the captain's voice must be heard, uninterrupted, at a time like this; and though the bridge gang was untried in space, they knew their duty and they knew their orders.
Gloval strode back toward his seat. "I want a full damage report. Give me a computer readout on every system onboard!" The SDF-1 was a fish in a barrel for the time being; he had only minutes in which to act.
"Yessir!" the five voices responded as one, giving the words a choral sound.
Gloval looked infinitely tired. "They'll never let me forget this."
"You shouldn't blame yourself for this, sir," Lisa said softly.
Gloval lowered himself into his chair, shaking his head to contradict Lisa.
"I am the captain," he said simply.
In the street outside the White Dragon, a very peculiar salvage operation was in progress.
The Battloid had been rigged with cables attached to two seafood delivery trucks. The civilian populace had always been sympathetic to the military's mission, and by now news broadcasts had made it apparent to most people that a new and awful war had begun and that, like it or not, everyone was a part of that war for the time being. So the truckers and other bystanders were doing their best to get the Battloid righted.
The big box jobs gunned their engines, tires spinning and squealing, laying down large black patches of rubber and raising reeking clouds of smoke. The trucks backfired, and their engines labored.
Slowly, the armored mechamorph came away from its resting place, toward a vertical position. Rick, sweating over his controls, sat with hands hovering over them, hesitant to court further misfortune by interfering.
The Battloid was standing again-for the moment. It reached the vertical and slowly began to tilt the other way. Volunteer helpers and onlookers let out a wide assortment of exclamations and yowls and scurried for safety; the drivers leapt from the cabs of their trucks and hotfooted it.
Minmei and Jason hugged each other and shouted, "Oh, no!" at the same instant.
Rick grabbed for the controls desperately. At the very least, he had to try to keep this insane metal berserker from doing more damage to the restaurant.
The Battloid lurched, trying to find its balance. Rick tried his best but couldn't seem to do anything right. Again, it was as if the machine was waiting for him to do something more than merely manipulate controls.
The Battloid took a lurching step, and its legs became entangled in the cables; it twirled clumsily and fell backward toward the opposite side of the street, its back crashing against an empty building that had taken heavy damage from the enemy barrage.
It sank down, crunching the building, until it came to rest with its backside halfway to the street, heels dug into the pavement. When Rick was sure the machine was stable for the time being. He wiped his brow again. "Oh, why me? How come these things don't happen to other people?"
The triumphant Veritech squadron flew in tight formation, making its way back to the Prometheus and the dimensional fortress.
Roy was in the lead spot, of course. "This is Skull Leader, Veritech squadron, to SDF-1. Am returning to base. We have met the enemy and pretty much cleaned their clocks. They've withdrawn from Earth's atmosphere."
Lisa's face was on the display screen. "Commendable work, Commander Fokker, I'll-"
She was abruptly moved out of the way by Claudia, who said "Let me talk to him! Roy, how many of them did you shoot down?"
"Only ten this time," he said nonchalantly. But the dogfight would be a legend by that night, the hardest rat-racing he'd ever seen. Every millisecond was going to be analyzed and refought a hundred times among the flying officers.
"You're slipping, Roy," Claudia told him, but her tone wasn't critical at all.
"Well, don't worry, Claudia; I'll make it up." Something tells me I'm going to get plenty of opportunities! "Do you have any word on the VT one-zero-two?"
Lisa crowded back onto the screen. "That section-eight case! He landed in Macross City in a Battloid, and he's doing more damage than the invaders."
Roy laughed. "Thanks, Lisa."
"Who is he? He's not registered as a fighter pilot."
"Don't worry; I know him."
"Well, he sure needs help." Lisa scowled.
"I'd better go check on him." Roy switched to the tic net. "This is Skull Leader to group. You guys head on back to Prometheus. I've got some business to take care of in town. Captain Kramer, you take 'em home."
"Will do, boss."
Roy peeled off from the formation and, increasing his wings' sweep for higher speed, plummeted for Macross City. "I should've known better than to leave him alone," he muttered.
Even in a city that had known a peppering of energy bolts and alien rockets, it wasn't too hard to spot the mess made by an out-of-control Battloid. "Aha! That you, Rick, old son?"
The war machine was resting against a building. "Hi, Roy! It's me!"