lr.13
MEGAZONE 23
"Take it, to the limit, one more time..."
--Eagles
UTOPIA PLANITIA
18 MARCH 1992 TERRAN SYNCHRONIZED
A docking bay in Section Seven of the shipyard complex
swung open to the vacuum of space. Within, MegaZone sat at
the controls of the Daytona from Hell, getting ready to test
out his new snap-on warpshuttle. The entire craft was a
resplendent fire red, and painted on the flank of the "beta"
in midnight black was one word: "WarpZone". Upon receiving
the green light from Control, he hit the launch boosters and
was slammed back into his seat by the g-forces of his
takeoff. As he cleared the bay, he saw a Valkyrie Veritech
fighter clearing a catapult on each side.
To port was Gryphon's white, black and blue VF-1S Super
fully fitted with pods and ordnance and the whole nine yards.
A big eight-ball was painted on each armor plate over the
leg/engines; on the booster pods and nose were painted the
Wedge Defense Force logo (which, noncoincidentally, was the
same as the Robotech Defense Force logo). Gryphon had taken
to Veritech piloting like a fish to water, and had shown a
special fondness for the big Valkyries.
To starboard was a VT-1D Super, the two-seat variety
that was classified as a trainer-fighter, but was no less
capable than the single-seat models. It was painted bright
red and no doubt carried Kei and Yuri (the "Lovely Angel"
painted on the nose was a good clue).
"Eight-Ball One to Daytona from Hell," his comm system
said, the spectrum analyzer bouncing with Gryphon's voice.
"Zoner, you read me?"
"Loud and clear, Gryph--this is great! You'd hardly
even know you were hauling around twenty extra tons the way
she handles. You guys flying escort or what? Kei, Yuri, is
that you?"
"Two points for Zoner," Yuri replied with a laugh.
"We're just messing around, and we wanted to see you test
your `Beta'."
"Beta testing...arrrrrr, someone hit me for that when we
get back..."
"Watch yourself, Ben, I have proton torpedoes at my
fingertips here," Kei said darkly.
"Speaking of torpedoes...let's go for a gunnery run on
the asteroid field...I feel like blowing things up today.
Whatcha say, Zoner?" Gryphon asked.
"Sounds like fun to me--I want to try out the plasma
banks anyway."
Gryphon banked hard to the left, heading for the
asteroid field near Planitia, as the Daytona and the Lovely
Angel followed.
Gryphon opened his fighter up, diving into the asteroid
field at full booster. He ducked, dodged, dipped, and banked
around rock after rock, laughing wildly, before opening up
with his GU-11 and nose lasers to rake three or four of them;
then he did a quick 90 degree spin and blasted one or two out
of existence with a couple of his underwing Reflex missiles.
Then he kicked it in the ass again and boosted out of
the field as Zoner dove in, the "beta"'s Avenger and
automatic plasma banks on the Daytona's own nose opening up.
Bolt after bolt of blue energy blasted into the rocks,
blowing them to bitty pieces. Laughing his own head off as
well, Zoner tried something stylish; he boosted out of the
field, disengaged the Daytona at full speed, flipped it over,
dove back in, chopped an asteroid to bits with his nose
plasma dischargers and blew two more up with the missile
launchers embedded in his rear bumper, flipped it over again,
performed a nifty spiral, and docked with the "Beta" as the
latter faithfully returned.
"I LOVE THIS THING!" he cried into his mike.
"Looks good, my friend, looks real good," Gryphon
agreed. "Watch this," he said as the red VT-1D streaked into
the field. "Oughtta be good."
Yuri, at the pilot's controls in front, kept one eye on
her scope and one on the forward view as she kept tight to
the flying rocks, flying NOE on some of them to keep her
radar profile down as she navigated in the field. Done
right, the maneuver made her nearly invisible. On her
signal, Kei, in the gunner's seat behind, opened fire.
Lasers, 30mm autocannon ammunition, and missile after
missile after missile poured from the Lovely Angel, raking
and destroying a b'zillion asteroids. Only when the top-
mounted missile pods were empty did Kei signal for Yuri to
pull the nose up and pop out of the field to form up with
Gryphon and MegaZone again. The whole time they had been
cool and professional; but once they cleared the field, Kei
and Yuri both started laughing like schoolgirls on nitrous.
"Damn," said Gryphon, "this is fun."
"Sure is," Zoner replied. Suddenly, he realized
something. "Hey, Gryphon--you never used your pod missiles."
"Nope," Gryphon replied.
"Why not?"
"It's a surprise. You gonna try the warp drive now?"
"Will do." Zoner lined the Daytona from Hell up so it
was heading out into random deep space, then fired all the
boosters, accelerating rapidly to full thrust. The two
Valkyries kept time with him, all the way out. He smiled an
evil smile.
"Bye, guys," he said, and rammed the warp-drive throttle
open. Panels slid aside on the sides of the "Beta" to reveal
glowing strips of blue material; the glow flared, covering
the entire spacecraft, and Zoner blasted away, leaving the
two sublight vehicles in the dust.
"It's not that easy, chummer!" Gryphon hollered after
him, and grabbed the two throttle controls mounted to the
right of the engine throttles. Punching the blue button in
the side with his thumb, he shoved them all the way open.
Slots where the missile pods should've been on his top
boosters opened up to reveal glowing blue stuff like that on
the Daytona. They flashed, the entire Valkyrie glowed, and
then Gryphon was streaking after the Daytona into warpspace.
"YEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!" Gryphon screamed. The
ultimate acceleration rush was his. Adrenaline was roaring
around something fierce in his system.
"What the fuck?!" Zoner shouted. "Gryphon--your
Veritech has warp drive?!"
"Yep," Gryphon replied. "There's a microwarp in each
booster pod. Takes up the place where the missiles should
be. I won't use it in combat--microwarp drives aren't the
kind of thing you go popping off and abandoning in deep
space, after all--but I figure it'll come in handy. I can
use my fighter as an executive transport and save on
expenses, or the pods can be fitted to Kei and Yuri's VT-1D.
They're the only two Valkyries yet that can handle the power
demands, though--the warp pods for the Angel aren't done yet,
but I thought I'd surprise you."
"Jesus...when you're not running the warp drives, you
must have a fuckload of extra power."
"Didn't you notice how fast and maneuverable my fighter
and the Lovely Angel are, even by Valkyrie standards? The
powerplant puts all the power it would be feeding the warp
drives into the turbines and myomers when the drives aren't
on. Since that's most of the time, the end result is a
faster, more maneuverable, and stronger fighter. And you
should see the bastards move without the snap-on armor on--
whoo! It's something to see. That's why we call this
variant the Hyper Valkyrie."
"Wow...we better head back, this was only supposed to be
a short test."
"Righto--how tight can you turn at warp speeds?" Gryphon
said with a grin, and snapped his Valkyrie 180 degrees,
vanishing from Zoner's portside window almost instantly.
Zoner grinned and pulled an Immelmann, since in space it
didn't really matter.
As they neared Planitia again, they dropped down out of
warp; the armored shields slid back over the warpfield
inducer coil sections. Gryphon tried to get his breathing
back to normal.
Suddenly, an alarm howled. Gryphon ducked the fighter,
opening up the boosters and doing a quick snaproll, by
instinct as three missiles homed in on him from somewhere in
the asteroid field; one missed, and two slammed into his
right-side leg armor, denting and burning it somewhat.
"Shit!" Gryphon hollered. "Somebody's shooting at me!"
He consulted his scope, trying to determine the launch point
of the missiles from their flight path; from other angles,
the Lovely Angel and Zoner's Daytona were closing in as the
culprit was highlighted in red on the screen. Gryphon
grinned and swung around, getting the target in his HUD; it
was a small spacecraft, a little smaller than the Daytona's
"Beta", with slender wings and a lot of missile pods on it.
It opened fire again; Gryphon dodged a missile and shot
another three down with his nose lasers as the HUD pulsed,
then lit. The tone of missile lock sang in his ears.
"C'iao, baby," said Gryphon. His thumb pressed down a
trigger. At the same time he opened fire on the craft with
his lasers, GU-11, and the three Reflex missiles he had left,
Kei opened up on it from another angle with all her remaining
weapons, and Zoner neatly bisected the angle created by their
firestreams with a boiling swarm of missiles from his
"Beta"'s VLS. The small black craft gave a decent
pyrotechnic rendition of "Oop, I died," and exploded in a
very pretty manner.
"It was a probe of some sort, and definitely hostile,"
Yuri said, once they were all back inside the shipyard. "It
tried to blow Gryphon right out of the sky."
"I think it's safe to say that someone...or something...
unfriendly knows we're here...we'd better get ready to move
out. Our training is done, our organization is complete--
there's no reason to linger here anyway," Zoner stated.
"Your captain is right, my children," said Lord
Fahrvergnugen. "It is time for you to leave me. But
first...I have a small birthday gift for Yuri--but she has to
promise to share it with Kei before she can have it," the
baron said, with an almost grandfatherly twinkle in his eye.
"Of course," said Yuri. "Kei and I are best friends; we
share almost everything."
"Almost," said Fahrvergnugen with a small grin.
"Decker! Bring out the special project."
"Yessir," said Decker, and opened the opposite door.
With a feline sound, a huge mountain of redblack fur bounded
into the room, almost tackling Yuri.
"I present to you Military Utility Genetic Higher
Intelligence," said Lord Fahrvergnugen.
"Mughi!" cried Yuri.
"Too cool," said Gryphon. "Hey, Yuri...the gang's all
here now, huh?"
"Thank you, Lord Fahrvergnugen!" said Yuri.
"No need, my child," replied Fahrvergnugen. "Now you
all must leave me, sad as that thought makes me. Go. Be
strong. Defend the universe! Make me proud!"
"Will do, Wolfgang," Zoner said. "I promise."
He put on his Rho Alpha Tau hat, saluted Fahrvergnugen, and
then, his crew behind him, ran for the vessel Vaughn had
dubbed SDF-17 and Gryphon and ReRob had further named Wayward
Son after an old song.
The bridge of the new ship was impressive, to say the
least; gone were the uncomfortable Wedgebooths and the
17th-century Concrete Provincial decor. In its place was a
neat-looking and fully functional bridge, complete with a
Godzillion screens and displays, a big main viewer projector
that could superimpose on the huge front window, several
comfortable seats for observers, and a big captain's chair
with a lot of important-looking controls on the arms.
It was this chair that Zoner settled comfortably into as
he and the rest of the command crew strode onto the bridge.
Gryphon took his place at his captain's right, at the large
and impressive control station from where the Exec oversaw
the ship. q took the comm station, which doubled as the
airboss's station now that there was a full contingent of
mecha on board. At the operations control station, Yuri
cleared her panel and reported to the computer that she was
ready; beside her at Tactical, Kei did the same. All was
ready in less than twenty seconds.
"All decks like report ready to go," said q.
"Good. Planitia Control, this is Wayward Son. Do we
have permission to depart?"
"Wayward Son, this is Control," replied the voice of
Lord Wolfgang Amadeus Fahrvergnugen. "You are cleared to
depart. Clear skies."
"We read, Control. And pleasant weather. Wayward Son
out." Zoner closed the connection and smiled. "Well, we're
off. Helm, maneuvering thrusters. All ahead full."
"You're reeeeally enjoying this, aren't you, MegaZone?"
Gryphon asked with a grin. "Just a word of warning...so help
me, the first time we fold, if you point at that viewscreen
and say `engage', I'll rip off all your fingers."
The SDF-17 moved majestically forward as Yuri applied
full power to the maneuvering thrusters, clearing her docking
bay. For the first time, she was in free and open space.
"We have cleared docking bay," Gryphon reported.
"Good. Helm, engage impulse drive. All ahead
standard." The huge drive throats behind the bridge flared
blue, and the Wayward Son began to truly move, making time
away from the bluewhite planet and that had borne it.
"Calculations for spacefold complete," said Gryphon.
"All systems read ready for spacefold maneuver."
Before Zoner could point at the viewscreen and say
"engage", which he had every intention of doing just because
he knew it would annoy Gryphon, the bridge was flooded with
white light.
"SHIT!" shouted Zoner. "What is that?!"
"It's--a spacefold?!" Gryphon replied, checking his
panel and shading his eyes. "Yes! It's a ship coming out of
spacefold, 1.3 AU at bearing zero zero three mark two."
Almost directly in front of them, the glow was
lessening; sure enough, there was a vessel materializing.
Zoner's jaw dropped, and Gryphon's followed soon enough.
It was an Ikazuchi class spacefold command cruiser. And
emblazoned on its flanks was the symbol of GENOM Corporation.
"Greetings, Wedge Rats," said a voice no one recognized.
"You do not know me. I made certain of that when I contended
with you before." Suddenly, the viewer projector sprang to
life and Largo's face filled it. "I am Largo. Captain of
the vessel you face and master of GENOM Corporation. You
have proven a thorn in my side in the past; you destroyed my
Worcester operation, set my plan to dominate Earth back by at
least three years, and cost me a great deal of money and
time, as well as a capable slave. I have decided to
eliminate you before you become a further threat."
"Capable slave? Worcester operation?! What the fuck?"
"Uh, Zoner...could he mean John Coyle, d'you think?
Coyle did have a lot of Buma technology in him," offered
ReRob.
"Deductive, Mandeville. Keen mind. A pity I must kill
you. You would make an excellent development researcher in
my mecha division."
"I'd rather die than be a wageslave," Rob replied.
"So be it. Die, Wedge Rats!" The transmission cut out;
outside, the Ikazuchi was maneuvering to face them directly.
From its sides came thousands of points of light.