Jack Baker found himself pressed into his seat, eyeballs in, slipping into and out of a red-out.
He just hoped Lron had a greater tolerance of g-forces, because this felt like it might be an embarrassing moment to have the pilot take a snooze.
Karbarra was a barren, windswept place, pockmarked and wormholed as a result of their generations of intensive mining. Lron pulled out of his bone-jarring entry and gave the ship some thrust, leveling off at virtual landing altitude, searching. He quickly had his bearings, and closed in on the landing site he had selected.
All the Sentinels were alert, manning weapons stations and ready to open fire. But the spot selected by Lron, an abandoned operation where a major vein of iron ore had given out, was deserted.
The Sentinels had been counting on decreased surveillance and patrolling, what with the Invid occupation forces presumably cut to minimal strength. It seemed they had won the bet-so far-but that still left an awful lot of the enemy.
Lron set the shuttle down gently through a huge gaping hole in an enormous cracked dome at the center of the processing area. It was a location already noted by the Karbarran resistance, he explained. It was as safe a base of operations as the team was likely to find, at least for now.
Rick began getting things organized even before they unbelted. Bela was anxious to get Halidarre up for a look around and to feel the freedom of the sky; it took some strong talk to make her see that a ground sweep and sensor scan of the immediate area would be necessary first, to make sure the Sentinels weren't spotted by somebody before they could do the spotting themselves.
Karen Penn felt some foreboding, seeing the young admiral standing up to the imposing amazon and calmly telling her it was about time she started learning to take orders. Her hand went to her sword again. "Orders? You dare tell me I lack discipline? And who are you to give me orders?"
His mouth had become a flat line. "I'm one of the people you Sentinels came to for help, remember? I'm part of the force that's giving you a fighting chance at winning back your planet. Now, when our joint council makes a decision, we stick by it; that was the bargain. And the decision in this case was for a recon mission with me in command and Lron in second place. So let's see if you can take orders as well as you give them."
Bela suddenly grinned, throwing her head back. "I keep forgetting that you males can be just as hard-nosed as a woman! All right, Admiral, we'll do it your way-but, mind: when I'm put in charge of an operation, I'll expect the same from you."
"Fair enough." Privately, Rick decided that he didn't want anything to do with an operation run by the impulsive warrior-woman.
His every footfall in the vast, echoing halls of the Invid Home Hive seemed to be mocking the Regent.
There was still no word of the task force he had sent to Tirol, no answer from the Regis. It was all too troubling for him to even take pleasure in punishing subordinates. He paced along now with his elite bodyguard marching a discreet distance behind, their armored steps resounding.
And he cursed again the tactical misfortunes that had made it necessary to abandon the Living Computer, the newest and by far the best of the giant Invid vat-grown brains, under the Royal Hall. It was inactive, and could fall prey to harm, could atrophy-could even be damaged by the upstart mongrel species who had somehow routed his legions.
He had been obliged to recall more troops from the outer marches of his crumbling realm to insure that nearby worlds under his dominion remained that way. The Regent rasped angrily at the thought that perhaps his task force had met with some reversal. At the worst possible time!
And then there was the thought that chilled him as much as any. What if the Robotech Masters should return to wage bloody war, and catch him in this disorganized state? He rumbled with displeasure, kicking out at a pillar that resembled a neural axon.
He cursed his mate again, for taking half his race from him. What could she need them for?
She wasn't even engaged in conquest! Wasn't even pretending to help him maintain sway over the realm.
It wasn't fair; this was all her fault.
Something had to be done.
The Regent paused, turned, started off in another direction. When he got to the vast egg chamber, he was pleased to find that nothing was amiss, and the Special Children of the Regis were all there, unmoving and unaware in then-gelatinous suspension. Row by row, rank on rank.
"Special Children." Typical of her, she hadn't even deigned to tell him what the phrase meant.
The Regis had merely made it clear that these were to be some ultimate manifestation of the Invid genetic heritage, and that theirs would be some higher destiny.
"Indeed?" the Regent snorted to himself. When the empire was crumbling and the enemies of the Invid might be at the very Home Hive soon? What higher destiny could such Special Children have than to defend their Regent and conquer, conquer for the glory of the Invid?
Yet-he must proceed carefully. He wasn't even sure what he was dealing with. It wouldn't do to unleash some new and even worse danger-perhaps a generation of Invid who would know no loyalty to him, or even be infected with aspirations of their own.
No, best to go cautiously. In the interim, he could reassign his forces, maintain the status quo for the time being. He had already managed to scrape up some frontier troops and dispatch them to reinforce the depleted Karbarran garrison. Perhaps he could even use the Special Children as a bargaining chip-get the Regis to trade him the loyal fighters he required in return for these quiescent eggs.
And Tesla! With his mystical talk about the Fruit of the Rower and his promises to bring a menagerie of defeated enemies for the Regent's entertainment! What of him?
Seething, the Regent went off to dispatch another message to Haydon IV and demand immediate word of Tesla, on pain of horrible punishment to those all along the line who might fail to provide it.
"I simply have a feeling she'll listen to you," Vince Grant told his wife. "You just have that way with people, darling."
She put down the medical report she had been filling out, preliminary evaluations of the vast array of salves, preparations, pills, and powders from every Sentinel's homeworld; she was trying to understand them and the physiologies of the patients she would be expected to minister to.
"Vince, why don't you talk to Crysta. I mean, you're more her size."
That got a grudging chuckle out of him. "I don't think this has anything to do with size. I'm just a jumped-up engineer who got a commission 'cause he knows what makes the GMU tick. But you understand people, and Crysta's just big furry people. Besides, you're a mother."
Jean looked him over. "What's that got to do with it?"
"I'm not sure. I was showing her around the GMU and, you know, there's that picture of Bowie on my desk. When I explained about him, it made her clam up, and she cut the tour short."
Jean felt a mixture of curiosity and professional obligation now; he had seen her get interested in a case, just like this, so many times before. "We really don't know much about the Karabarran children, do we? Oh, the reproductive cycle's right there in the data banks, nothing unusual-especially when you compare them to those Spherians! But I mean, what's happening to them right this second?"
"That occurred to me, too," Vince said soberly.
She rose and kissed her husband, standing on tiptoe to do it. "You're pretty smart for a jumped-up engineer, y'know that?"
He gave her a half smile. "Smart enough to come to you when I run into a real problem."