The Sentinels had won a smashing victory on Karbarra! Edwards tried to suppress his fury, but wasn't having much luck. To make matters worse, when he had called Minmei, she wasn't at the club.
Nobody seemed to know where she was.
This, after he had been there at a ringside table every night to hear her sing, had wined and dined her, had made sure the council listened to her and that her service club was a success. Yet each time he was sure he was making her forget Wolff, she was sure to bring the halfwit's name up.
Edwards stopped in midstride. He suddenly knew just where she would be.
Sure enough, he found her there, looking at the posted casualty reports along with many others, searching the alphabetized lists of KIAs and WIAs. The names would go on the REF broadcast screens momentarily, but there were a lot of people who couldn't bear to wait. There was quite a press, and those at the back were calling out names for those in the front to check.
Just as the general came up behind her, Minmei turned with a thousand-watt smile on her face.
"Oh, General! He's not on it! Jonathan's not on the lists, so he's all right!"
Edwards forced a smile. Yes, Wolff had survived Karbarra, but the Sentinels would be headed for Praxis soon, and the Regent was aware of it.
"Yes; he's a lucky man." He showed her what he had brought for her.
"Oh, they're beautiful!" Minmei took the bouquet and held it to her face, inhaling the sweet, exotic alien scents. She was delighted, and pleased with the good news about Jonathan; even though he could be cold, almost cruel at times, Edwards had been such a help, had been there whenever she needed someone to listen to her or reassure her…
Without pausing to reconsider, Minmei put her free arm around his neck and kissed him once, quickly, on the lips. Then she was racing off for a rehearsal.
Edwards watched her go, thinking of the day when he would comfort her in her grief over the death of Jonathan Wolff.
When Edwards got back to his HQ he was in visibly better spirits, but not for long. Adams entered, looking grim, and cued up a recording. "The internal-security people monitored this with the bug we put on Lang's private commo rig," Edwards's aide told him. "It went out earlier today, before Tirol Base lost contact with Karbarra."
Lang was saying, "General Hunter, I'm not opposed to the building of more starships per se; SDF-3 will not be ready for a return voyage to Earth for a prolonged period, and we might very well need this armada that General Edwards keeps pushing for."
"But I must tell you in confidence that I have my doubts about Edwards's motives."
Rick's face, on the other half of the split screen, looked drawn and tired. "Just what are you saying, Doctor?"
"That Edwards may very well be furthering his own ends. I think a coup attempt is a quite plausible danger at such time as this armada is ready."
Rick considered that. "If the other Sentinels' worlds can be liberated as quickly as Karbarra, we'll be back long before the armada is finished, Doctor. And we'll have plenty of Sentinel allies to help us make sure Edwards is checkmated. But after what we've seen-I'm more convinced than ever that the Invid have to be rooted out of these planets they're occupying."
Lang nodded. "I agree, Admiral, but I wanted you to be aware of the gravity of the situation here."
Adams stopped the recording. "What are we going to do, sir?"
Edwards leaned back. "For the time being, nothing. We need Lang to build that fleet and get SDF-3 fully operational. And once the Sentinels show up at Praxis…"
He allowed himself a thin smile. "Once they're out of the way, the REF belongs to me completely."
When he returned to Tracialle, Rem was surprised to find Janice Em waiting for him.
They hadn't spent much time together in the rush of the Karbarran campaign. Now, she took his hand and said, "I thought we were friends, Rem. Have I done something to offend you?"
His brows knit. It was sometimes hard to understand what Humans were getting at. "Of course not! What makes you say that?"
She showed a slight pout. "I was beginning to think a gal's got to be a butch weightlifter to get any attention from you."
He realized that she was talking about Gnea. "Hmm? Gnea and I are friends, of course-we went through a lot on that scouting mission." He had been spending considerable time talking to the young amazon, learning about her life and her world.
Jan had both his hands in hers now. "If you want me to step aside, just come out and say so!"
He shook his head in confusion. "What? No, no I-"
Janice was suddenly in his arms with a happy laugh. "Oh, I'm so glad! You-you've become kind of important to me, you know."
It felt very good to have her embracing him, brushing her lips against his cheek, his neck, his lips. Very unsettling, but simply wonderful. "Let's go somewhere and be alone," she said.
He yielded as she drew him away. "And you can tell me all about this expedition you took to the Haydon monument," Janice added. "What did Lron and Crysta have to say about this Haydon, anyway? And Cabell; what was his reaction?"
Why was she nattering away about Haydon, of all things, when she was back with Rem at last? But Janice felt something puzzling, something that made her curious about the subject, and about Cabell and the Sentinels' plans too. And there was something about Rem that excited her and made her want to be with him and know everything about him.
Maybe that's what love is, she shrugged to herself.
On Praxis, the Regis flung her hands high, throwing her head back crying, "Hear me, O my Children!"
Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, her half of her species paused to listen to her.
Just as no subject of her husband's could eavesdrop on her mental link, so none of the Regis's children bore any further allegiance to him.
She looked more Human than a Haydonite, though she was fully as tall as her mate-some twenty feet. And yet there was something ethereal about her, an alienness that showed in her cobalt eyes.
Slender and hairless, she wore a full-length robe and curious, tasseled five-fingered gloves. Four emerald-green sensor scarabs, like beautiful brooches or oriental masks, decorated her robe's collar and neck closure.
"Hear me!" she cried again. 'My investigations here tell me that the answer I seek is to be found on Haydon IV! There at last I will learn where the Robotech Masters have gone, and what has happened to the last Protoculture matrix, the treasure that we must have in order to carry out my Great Work!"
And an age of deprivation and conflict would be brought to a close. Still shielded in her thoughts, like a hot cinder, was that night so long ago in the Flower gardens of the paradise that had been Optera.
There she had surrendered at last to the emotional enticements and seductive intellect and form of Zor-had surrendered herself to him and surrendered the secrets of the Flower as well.
And was discovered in the act by the Regent, who flung himself off on the descending spiral of devolution. But soon, all those torturous memories and misdeeds would be behind her, and her Children.
"Therefore, prepare yourselves, my Children! Gather and make ready, for we abandon this planet at once, for Haydon IV!"
In the Genesis Pits abandoned on Optera by his wife, the Regent peered into a cloning vat.
Work on his project had not been without its problems; his biogenetic workers were less adept than the Regis's, and had been forced to start from scratch after the first abortive attempt.
But now things were going well. The workers had used the most perfect egg available, an unquickened one from the clutch that had spawned the Regent, feeling it was the ultimate perfection of Invid plasm.