Rick found that he was still thumbing the trigger on his control stick-to no avail; the Gatling's magazine was empty. He took his hand away, breathing a sigh of relief or despair-he wasn't sure which.
And then he heard a sound of metal creaking and shifting.
In the back of the downed pod, a hatch was thrown open. A hatch three yards across.
A figure emerged, helmeted and armored. It was on the scale of the pods-taller than most of the buildings around it. Its helmet's faceplate was a cold and untelling fish eye of green.
It was human-shaped, and it came Rick's way. And for the first time in his life, he froze. Couldn't leave Minmei, had no ammo left, and besides-the sight of the thing had him completely rattled. It was as big as a Battloid.
The ground reverberated under its feet; just as Rick thought things couldn't get any worse, its arms reached up and wrenched off a helmet the size of the Veritech's cockpit, dropping it tiredly.
The face might have been the face of anybody on the streets of Macross City. The monster made bass-register rumbling noises, unintelligible-not surprising in view of how long and muscled its vocal cords must have been if they followed human form.
It staggered and teetered toward the grounded Veritech. Rick froze in his seat-nothing to fire and unwilling to eject or otherwise abandon Minmei. A terrible basso growling shook the air; one metalshod foot of the giant alien warrior squashed a car.
The titan reached toward the Veritech; he quite clearly knew who his enemy was and what Rick had done to him. Dying, he would still have his revenge. Rick sat frozen.
There was a burst of high-decibel, buzz saw sound from somewhere. The alien, fingers not far from Rick's canopy, suddenly looked blank and vulnerable. He toppled to the ground and didn't move again, his weight bending and collapsing his body armor.
The alien pitched onto his face, his back showing the deep penetrations of Veritech Gatling rounds. He'd nearly made it to his objective; his right hand clutched the Guardian's immobilized left foot. The ground shook at Roy Fokker's approach, his Battloid shouldering its weapon.
Rick couldn't shake off his terror. "What was it? What was that thing, Roy?"
Roy's reply sounded flat, tight. "That's the enemy. Now you know why we built the Battloids, Rick. To fight these giant aliens." Roy's Battloid toed the corpse with an armored foot.
Rick felt like he was losing his grip. Maybe it was a good time to, but he didn't have much experience in the practice. "But-that guy looks just like a human being!"
Roy snorted, "Yeah. If you ever saw a human fifty feet tall.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lisa turned to me and yelled, "I am getting sick of that name!"
And I thought, Mr. Rick Hunter, whoever you are, if you know what's good for you, you'll start thinking along the lines of an alias.
She had no idea what you'd brought us, Roy!
None of us did.
Roy and Rick looked down at the dead goliath who still had one hand clasped around the Guardian's ankle in final rigor. Rick was just starting to get over the shakes but was still numb with the idea that beautiful, innocent Minmei, so full of life, had had that life taken from her in such a meaningless and appalling way.
His panic reassailed him as he realized that there were more aliens like this one-that the pods and the ships beyond the atmosphere were crowded with them-that a plague of them had come to obliterate the Earth.
"I guess you understand now why we kept this secret," Roy said.
"Engineering reports backup rockets are fueled and ready for firing," Claudia said. "How's the evacuation progressing, Lisa?"
Lisa was still watching Gloval worriedly. "All civilians have been safely transported to shelters. Macross City is deserted except for combat units."
Gloval squared his shoulders. "Very well. Bring up the booster rockets. We'll be blasting off immediately."
Lisa blurted, "I hope the standby boosters work," before she could think better of it.
Gloval gripped her shoulder, calm in the eye of the storm, hiding the fact that he harbored the same misgivings. "They'll work, Lisa; they were designed and built on Earth."
But they'd never been tested under full power.
Gloval glanced around. "All right? Blast off!"
Tight-lipped, Lisa responded by manning her station; the rest of the bridge crew chimed in, "Yes, sir!"
The boosters rained blue-white fire, then flared to full life like chained supernovas, their fury backwashing against the hardtop, raising mist and debris, setting blazes, raising steam clouds from the leaking water that flowed through the streets, melting nearby metal. SDF-1 rose slowly, for the first time in a decade, sustained on fusion-flame.
"Attention Skull Leader." Lisa's voice came over the tac net. "SDF-1 is taking off. Request air cover."
Roy's Veritech mechamorphosed from Battloid to Guardian mode. "We're on our way. Over."
Roy's ship rose on its foot thrusters, hovering when Roy realized that there was no sign of life in Rick's fighter.
"C'mon, Rick; let's go! Get the lead out! What's the matter with you?" He went ballistic, climbing.
Rick reached out and shut off his commo, blanking Roy's image. He hadn't led a sheltered life, but nothing had prepared him for the kind of carnage he'd seen in the last half hour or the fear and hatred he'd known. Or for the dismay and grief he felt over the lifelessness of the beautiful young girl slumped in the seat behind him.
SDF-1 rose on its thrusters. Rick sat, prepared to see it go without him, unable to touch the controls of an aircraft.
He leaned back, lowering his head, catatonic and lost.
Roy, off to rejoin the other Veritechs and provide cover for the dimensional fortress's withdrawal, suddenly realized that Rick hadn't followed along behind.
"Rick! Come in, Rick!" No use; he couldn't raise his young friend.
Poor kid's had to take on more than he could manage, Roy decided. Well, I can't just leave him back there.
He got back on the radio. "Skull Leader to Control. Lisa, I'm going back to pick up something I left down in Macross City. Captain Kramer can run the fighter group till I get back, over."
Lisa frowned out at him from a display screen. "Why are you turning back? Over."
"Rick Hunter in fighter VT one-zero-two is still back on the ground, and I have to get him out of there."
Lisa's expression showed her sense of outrage. "That pilot's an imposter! I've gone through all the rosters and I find no record of such a person."
Roy was bringing his ship through a wide bank. "Easy enough to explain. He's a civilian, so he isn't listed in the military registries."
Lisa's hand flew to her face. "A civilian? But I thought-ohhh…!" And I ordered him to get his fighter into the air! She could hear Sammie and the others whispering among themselves: "What?" "Did he say civilian?" "Who is he?"
Back in Macross, the firefights flared with even greater fury as more pods entered the battle in long, two-footed hops.
Two pods and a pair of Battloids were squared off at a range of one hundred yards-practically close quarters-the red tracer streams and the blue energy bolts crisscrossing over the devastated cityscape.
Rubble was tossed into the air and whole walls were blasted to bits as large chunks were gouged or vaporized from the pavement.
It was a nearly even match, but another pod arrived and opened up just as one of the first two went down in a hail of armor-piercing autocannon fire. Still another Zentraedi showed up, to concentrate its chest cannonfire along with the others'. A Battloid, blown in half at the waist and leaking fire and explosions, crumbled and disappeared in a detonation.