The Guardian's foot thrusters blared; Minmei howled, and they were airborne, zooming away from the attack.
Roy got a number of the missiles, detonating them, which in turn knocked out quite a few others- "fratricide," as the ordnance people called it-as they either veered into one another or detonated from the force of the first explosions. But survivors got through, beating down on Rick, who didn't dare go faster with Minmei in hand for fear that the air blast and maneuver forces would injure or kill her.
He could only duck and dodge, engaging his jamming and countermeasures gear as Roy had taught him, and hope for the best. Missiles sizzled by all around to impact far down the street.
Minmei hid her head in her hands, then looked up to see that Rick was yelling something at her, too distracted to remember the external speakers. "What're you saying? I can't hear you!"
Roy spotted a pod just as his radars and other instruments picked it up; it was making a stand on a ridgeline above the housing project which had been gouged into the side of a hill. The Zentraedi pod launched itself off the ridge at him; Roy brought his muzzle around and trap-shot it in midair. It rained down in fire and broken fragments.
His fields of fire were clear for the moment. He raised Rick on the tac net. "How's it goin'? Everything okay?"
"I'm all right now, Roy-"
"I don't care how you are; how's the girl?"
"Huh? Um, okay. So far." Rick began a steady, smooth ascent to get above the battle and out of the range of the pods in Macross City.
"She's a taxpayer. If anything happens to her, you answer to me."
Rick grinned at Roy's screen image. "Don't forget, Big Brother: I saw her first."
"That's how it is, huh? We'll discuss this later!"
Roy got back to business at hand, leaving Rick to ponder Minmei, whose hair was being whiplashed in her face by the ship's airspeed. They'd already gained enough altitude for it to be pretty cold out there; she couldn't take much of it, in addition to the strain it would put on her simply to breathe.
"Boy, I've gotta figure a way to get her into the cockpit," he whispered.
It was exactly then that his instruments beeped an urgent warning. "Uh oh…"
In Macross City, an alien pod fitted for heavy weapons stood up from its concealment behind a demolished mall. It was mounted with two large racks of rockets, like firebreathing Siamese twins. Missiles came spiking at him, superheating the air with their trails.
He cut in all countermeasures, going into a booster climb, going ballistic. He rammed the stick up for a pushover, losing a few of the seekers, unable to tell if the maneuver forces had simply knocked Minmei out or killed her.
Wishing he had Roy's skill at this sort of thing, Rick dodged, white-faced with the thought that he would fail, would let Minmei down and lose both their lives.
Miraculously, he avoided them all-almost.
A hit at the elbow joint of the arm holding Minmei blew the joint in half. Minmei fell away, screaming, as if in slow motion. It seemed to Rick that he could hear the scream echoing away.
He banked, diving after her, though all the books and experts would have said that there wasn't a thing in the world he could do to save her. He concentrated on those fingers-thought and thought hard.
The telephone pole fingers of the Robotech hand slowly opened in answer to his thinking-cap command, and Minmei found herself floating in midair. The ground, the sky, the wind-nothing seemed to be moving but she and the giant hand.
She realized she was still screaming, and stopped, pushing herself free for whatever good it would do. Then there was something next to her, matching speeds and distances. She seemed to be floating-swimming outside the canopy, some dream mermaid, kicking and struggling toward him, her eyes so big and terrified and pleading that the sight of them almost paralyzed him.
Earlier that same day, Rick would have said that no aircraft in existence could do what the Veritech was doing now. It drew close to Minmei, canopy easing open (he would have said that an aircraft canopy would be torn away like a piece of tinfoil if subjected to aerodynamic stresses like those), in close obedience to his commands and images.
Her black hair stood back, stark, around her face; the white legs kicked like a swimmer's. She glided toward him, arms outstretched. In that moment he knew that if he didn't save her, life would cease to have any meaning.
Still there was the buffeting of the air and the slipstreams created by the fighter itself; they tore at him as Rick rose up, safety harness released, to draw her into the fighter. No ship, not even a Robotech ship, had ever been subjected to such exacting demands.
Gripping the windshield frame, he grabbed for her hand, missed, grabbed, and missed again, the whole time imaging the Veritech's precise positioning at speeds approaching the blackout point. One-armed, its aerodynamics radically changed, the fighter struggled to comply.
They drifted like zero-gravity dancers; it seemed so silent and slow and yet so high-speed, with the air shrieking past them and death only an instant away.
Then, somehow, their fingers were together. Later, Rick never remembered shaping the image, but the Veritech altered its death dive to come around and catch them, Minmei drifting into the rear seat, Rick into the front.
A last ripping air current almost carried him away, but the descending canopy pressed him back in to safety, although he didn't recall giving the command for it to close.
Maybe if the pilot lives the ship, the ship lives the pilot? he speculated.
He grabbed the manual controls and got the Guardian stabilized again. Behind, there was a last grand explosion of several alien missiles committing fratricide. The Guardian's foot thrusters blowtorched; Rick trimmed his craft. He descended through debris and smoke for a shaky landing, trembling and wiping his brow while Minmei at last gave in to sobs in the rear seat.
"We're safe now. Please don't cry." Rick turned toward her.
The Guardian was in a slow, easing descent, its feet only inches above the streets of Macross City. Minmei wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
"I'm all right now. Oh, no!"
Her eyes were wide as saucers-such a strange blue, he thought again-focused over his shoulder.
Even as he whirled, an image of what the Guardian should do sprang to mind; its heels caught the pavement, digging in as the thrusters retrofired.
A Battlepod had backed around the comer of a building at an intersection dead ahead-damaged and covering its own retreat, later reports indicated. The Guardian took it from behind, wings hitting the backs of its knees, neatly upending it.
The Guardian slid for nearly a hundred yards, upside down, Rick and Minmei howling as the pavement tore at the canopy, until it came to a rest.
The Guardian got to its feet; so did the pod, which seemed rather unsteady and showed heavy damage.
"You okay? Oh, no! Minmei!" She was pale and unmoving, slumped in the rear seat.
And why? Because these creatures, or whatever they are, came across a billion light-years to invade us? For more war? FOR MORE WAR?
"Yahhhhhh!" Furiously Rick gripped the trigger on his control stick, the chain-gun pelting the pod with a hail of high-caliber, high-density slugs.
The invader's armored front disappeared in a welter of explosions, shrapnel, and smoke. There were secondary explosions, and the machine fell to the ground like a dying ostrich, strangely articulated legs rising up behind as the rest of it crashed down.
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.