But the VTs were there first, two Alphas and a scratch element made up of a Beta and a Logan. The Alphas went to Guardian mode, in that process unique to Robotechnology that Lang had dubbed mechamorphosis.
The Beta reconfigured like some ultratech origami, thinning and extending as components flowed until it was in Battloid mode, a gleaming Herculean-looking Robotech body.
The Logan went to Battloid, too, mechamorphosing in response to its pilot's imaging. Where Alphas looked more Humaniform in Battloid, the Logan's boatlike radome made it seem like the upper half of a Robotech torso had been lifted away and some Egyptian icon-mask, the Spirit of the Twin-Thrustered Rocketcraft, had been lowered into its place.
But all the VTs were swinging and angling to confront the Invid. The Battloids clutched the repositioned cannon that had been integral weapons systems to the Beta and Logan but were now handheld infantry weapons, with barrels as wide as water mains, for the Robotech knights.
The attackers came in, and crewbeings on the bridge ducked involuntarily, as the darkness lit with crisscrossed beams of pure destruction and streams of annihilation disks.
The Shock Troopers looked like bipedal battleships, their clawed forearms bulging like ladybug carapaces. Their single sensor-eye clusters betrayed no emotion, and the twin cannon mounding at either shoulder made them appear invincible. But then the Battloids were there, and the mecha darted in and out of one another's line of fire; the enormous energy discharges lit the bridge crew below.
The hulking Logan stood in the teeth of withering fire from a Shock Trooper, the gun duel a simple question of who could get a telling hit first. In the meantime, a second Trooper was looping around for a pass from six o'clock, and nothing Rick could do in the bridge could get him a clear connection to that doomed pilot. Just about the time the oncoming Trooper broke up into fragments before the monstrous outpouring of the Beta-Battloid's gun, torso missile-rack covers flew back and a host of Swordfish air-to-airs corkscrewed at the Invid.
The armored Shock Trooper disappeared in a cloud of detonating warheads. The Beta changed its attitude of flight with a complex firing of its many steering thrusters, and opened up again with its handheld artillery in support of the Logan.
On the bridge, Lisa looked at Rick. No one could fault the job he was doing; despite the disadvantages of the Sentinels' slapdash organization and communications systems, he was keeping things sorted out-was, perhaps, an even more pivotal part of the battle than she. And yet she could see, in the moment's glance she could spare her husband, that he couldn't cope with the frustration of his job much longer; that he was actually in pain because he wasn't out there in the rat race.
Another concussion shook the flagship and a beam leapt out from the muzzle of the GMU's main gun. It was set for wider dispersal this time, since the clamshell troopships weren't a worthwhile target anymore. The stupendous cannonshot took out a few of the enemy mecha, like killing several flies with a howitzer. But this was no artillery duel; the mecha would decide the day.
The Alphas sent by Max Sterling mopped up the enemy machines that the Battloids hadn't stopped. The very last armored Shock Trooper tried a headfirst dive at the very bridge canopy, and most of the beings there dove for the deck, useless as that was, by sheer reflex.
The Beta got in its way, backpack thrusters flaring so hard that the wash of flame blew across the adamantine bridge canopy. Some systems overloaded and areas of the shields failed. There were explosions, sending flame and shrapnel flying, and everybody's ears popped as the ship began to lose atmosphere.
There were only a few Sentinels on their feet. Lron, at the wheel, held his place and let forth a challenging rumble. From where she stood, hands at the small of her back, Lisa looked every inch the captain-near the helm. She saw Rick still at his place; he turned, with a frantic look on his face, a look that was haunted and bereft-yet it held so much fear, wildness…
But at that moment, he saw that Lisa was all right, and he burst into a grin and gave her the thumbs-up, then turned back to his coordinating duties. Lisa understood that the panic in his eyes was that she might have been hurt, or killed. It had been a sudden vacancy-an immobility, really. True fear, and Lisa recognized it because she had seen it before, and felt it herself. Terror that he had lost her; it had debilitated him for a moment.
She thrust the thought aside. A few hundred yards above the long blister of the bridge, the damaged Logan had actually bulldogged an incoming armored Shock Trooper, interposing itself and going hand-to-hand with one of the enemy's most feared mecha.
The bridge crew couldn't hear the creaking of metal, the hiss of compromised seals, the parting of welds and seams. They watched the silent wrestling match as the bigger, stronger Beta rushed in to lend support. But the Beta was too far away.
The armored Shock Trooper grappled the Logan around into a certain mecha-infighting position, spread-eagling it, and bent it backward across one knee. There were the puffs of escaping atmosphere and the electrical arcing of destroyed systemry.
The Beta blindsided the Shock Trooper, rebounding to hit thrusters again and lock with it in mortal combat. Despite everything the Shock Trooper could do, the Beta Battloid forced its arms back and back-and worked a wholly Human wrestling hold, freeing one arm to grip the monolithic turret-head, seize, strain, apply torque with everything it had.
Rick was ordering the Beta clear; the flagship had been maneuvered so that the GMU's cannon had been brought to bear. But the Beta wouldn't relinquish its death grip on its foe. The Shock Troopers' pincers scraped deep furrows in the Beta's armor; its oval forearms levered in moves conceived to let it break free.
To no avail. The Beta bent the Shock Trooper's arm up around behind it, and Rick understood in that moment that where matters of Robotechnology stood even, a deciding factor emerged. That factor had to do with things that were the exact opposite of mechanical processes.
Emotion and belief, a passion for victory that was fueled by hatred of the outrages the Invid had perpetrated; in place of the unquestioned instructions the Invid got from their Hive, the Beta was animated by a reasoned mind's drive to win.
The Beta got its free elbow under the Shock Trooper's chin and pressed up and back, and back. All this, while VTs and enemy mecha swirled and fought, while the kill scores climbed, while Farrago's gun emplacements hammered.
There was a slight outventing, then seals gave and atmosphere rushed from the Invid, along with what appeared to be a green liquid that became weightless beads and globules and vapor as soon as it hit vacuum. The Invid came apart with explosive separations of its joints. The Beta braced one bulky foot against the dead carcass of it, and pushed free.
The Beta sailed like some lumpy puppet toward the dead Logan. "No life readings,"
somebody relayed the readout to Lisa; the Logan was so mangled that it came as no surprise.
Rick looked up from his apparently primitive but surprisingly sophisticated scopes. His features were closed of expression; self-contained. "Those are the Valdezes."
Everyone knew them, brother and sister VT hotdoggers, top-of-the-roster aces. Henry had flown the Logan; his sister had just avenged his death in the mighty Beta.
The repeated attacks of the Invid had only turned the battle into a turkey shoot; what the REF
mecha didn't bag, the Sentinels' guns had managed to find. Lisa heard from her commo analysts that the instant destruction of the task force's command ship had kept word from going out to Optera, or even Karbarra, of the presence of the Sentinels. Something groundside might have detected the weapons discharges in space, but the Invid garrison must have been at a loss as to what they meant. Karbarra had a thick planetary ring, and the Invid below might think that was the cause of the commo breakdown. It didn't make much difference to the Sentinels now; Human and XT alike, they had gone to war-and in this Robotech era that meant something they were all used to: win or die.