"Report," Lisa snapped. Subordinates reassured her that things were being seen to.
Damage-control parties were already at work, casualties being attended to by various Sentinel healers and the medical staff. Skull was refueling and rearming in case of another hot scramble, but that didn't seem likely for the moment; apparently the Karbarran garrison had been stripped of its spacecraft, or else didn't care to launch a counterstrike quite yet.
Not after the way we've bloodied their snouts twice running, she thought with a small glimmer of satisfaction. Lisa issued orders that the flagship be held in orbit, and added, "I'll be down in medical."
Her first thoughts upon entering the big compartment where Jean Grant's medical labs abutted the hole set aside for Cabell's equipment and research was, This must be a violation of the Geneva Accords!
Even though the Zentraedi had shown no impulse to obey the Rules of War, and the Robotech Masters and the Invid were no better, the Human race had made it a point of honor not to sink into unnecessary cruelty. And that was most definitely what this appeared to be.
How else could you explain Tesla's being suspended inside an enormous glass beaker of greenish fluid, only the end of his snout sticking up into the air, and all sorts of electrodes and sensor pads connected to various parts of him, particularly his head?
"Admiral, please do not jump to conclusions," Cabell hastened. "The Invid isn't being hurt, and what we're finding out here may change the course of the war." Veidt and Sarna, looking on, nodded agreement.
Tesla objected loudly, "Not hurt? They torment me with their probings! They strip me of my dignity and take the vilest liberties with my person! They seek to slay me through sheer fright, so that they may dissect me. Save me!"
He thrashed a little in the cylinder. Jean Grant looked up from reading her instruments and rapped, "Be still. Or do you want me to hand you over to the Karbarrans? I bet they could get some information out of you, if I told them you've been holding out on them all this time!"
The thought of that made Tesla suddenly quiet down and float, trembling. Jean turned to Lisa.
"I'm coming up with a sort of lie detector for Invid. At least I think I am. About all I can tell so far is that he's got high concentrations of Protoculture-active substances in various parts of his body, especially his skull. And their composition and signature varies quite profoundly. It's like some weird variation on a lymphatic system-and hormones, endocrines-but bizarre alien analogues, of course."
Lisa put aside the list of questions she'd like to put to Tesla. "But why are you doing this now, Doctor?"
Jean gestured to a corner, where Crysta slumped against a bulkhead. "I finally got Crysta to tell me why the Karbarrans have been acting so strangely. Lisa, the Invid have their children in a concentration camp. At the first wrong move from the populace down below, or in the event a defeat of the garrison becomes imminent, the Invid will kill every cub on the planet."
Lisa spun on Crysta. "Why didn't you tell us before?"
Crysta was actually wringing her pawlike hands. "The Invid had been an occupation force, had made us work for them, but they'd never forced us to fight for them, never made actual slaves of us. They knew we could not stand for that."
"But we didn't understand how truly evil they were. They'd been preparing their plan for a long time; in a single afternoon, they swooped down to take up thousands of our young, and that immobilized us. You don't know how precious our cubs are to us, now that our population has dwindled so!
"And so we were helpless, as the Hellcats and the Inorganics rooted out most of the rest of our children-only some few managed to remain in hiding. My people held a great Convocation, chanting and seeking a Unified glimpse of the Shaping…"
Lisa had been briefed on it, a sort of religious ceremony that could go on for days, as the Karbarrans sought contact with the Infinite. "The Shaping was that we must not defy the Invid, but that neither could we tell any outsider of our plight! That part of the Shaping was very clear."
No wonder the Karbarrans had been against the Sentinels' simply leaping into the attack with both feet and a roundhouse swing! Their children were hostage, and the big ursinoids had to simply let the crisis carry them along, with nothing but a forlorn hope that circumstances would change-or that they could be changed.
"That's why Lron wanted the recon party," Lisa suddenly saw. "That way, you wouldn't have told us; we'd've seen for ourselves."
Crysta nodded miserably. "But now I have transgressed."
Jean disagreed. "No, you didn't. I had a pretty fair idea what was wrong-it was Vince who gave me a clue-and I wormed the rest out of you, Crysta. But don't worry; the Sentinels didn't come all this way just to let a generation of children die."
She turned back to Tesla. "Okay now, Slimy: Cabell and Veidt are going to ask you one or two questions. If my instruments say you're lying, I'm gonna zap a coupla thousand volts through that bath you're in, get me?"
She turned a knob, and a nearby generator hummed louder. Tesla thrashed a bit. "I–I hear and will comply."
Veidt stepped closer to the vat. "There must be a Living Computer controlling the Inorganics below-coordinating and animating them. That much we know. But is it like the Great Brain that was sent on the expedition to Tirol, or is it one of the lesser sort?"
Tesla bobbed for a moment, studying Jean Grant's hand on the control. She looked straight back at him. "It is one of the first, one of the most primitive and smallest," Tesla said, "placed there when one of the earliest Inorganic garrison was assigned to duty on Karbarra."
Jean looked at her instruments and turned up the control knob, so that a hum filled the compartment. Tesla churned the green fluid around him and cried, "Stop, aii! I am slain!"
Jean turned off the apparatus. "Looks like he's telling the truth." To Tesla she added, "Oh, shut up! That was just some low-frequency sound and a volt or two."
Veidt told Lisa, "That being the case, my wife and I have a plan that may serve ideally."
Lisa was giving instructions at once. "Get the rest of the leadership together for a briefing, ASAP. And have the intel people get all the information they can from the Karbarrans aboard ship; now that the cat's out of the bag, they ought to be willing to talk. And somebody get that recon party on the horn and tell them what we're up against!"
In the abandoned mining camp, Rem frowned as he listened to the word from the Sentinels'
flagship. "But how can-I don't understand why-"
"You're not required to understand, soldier," a commo officer barked at him. "Just relay the message, word for word, exactly as I gave it to you. At once, do you understand?"
"I understand," Rem replied sullenly. "Ground-relay base, out."
He broke contact, grousing to himself about the highhanded tone these Human military types took with each other and everyone around them. As Cabell's pupil and companion and sometimes protector, he wasn't used to being treated like a lesser intellect or an unimportant cog.
He was switching over to the recon party's freq when he realized he felt a stirring of air, and it came to him that Gnea hadn't spoken or made a sound in some minutes. The shuttle hatch was open.
Stay buttoned up, had been Admiral Hunter's order, and no wandering around! Confinement and inactivity had chafed on the free-spirited amazon more than it had on Rem, who had been forced to sit out most of the terrible Invid onslaught on Tirol in a bunker.
He went to the hatch and peered around, then let out a yell. Overhead, Gnea guided Hiladarre through slow banks and turns, getting used to guiding her. "Is she not beautiful?" Gnea called down, plainly pleased with herself.