MACROSS DYNAMITE
Two: Information High

Unexplored Territories, Quadrant 9, Macross 7 Fleet, City 7

          "Major Gamlin Kizaki," the voice over the comm said pleasantly. "Please report to the Mayor's office at your earliest convenience. Major Gamlin Kizaki. Please report to the Mayor's office."
          Major Gamlin Kizaki, commander of the City 7 Defense Forces, took a sip of his coffee, flipped through the reports he was holding, then threw them in the trash. He swore that headquarters on Battle 7 didn't know what they'd already sent him and what they hadn't – he'd gotten five copies of the same report today. Yesterday it had been six copies of transfer orders for some brand-new second lieutenant who he'd never heard of.
          "Sorry sir," the nervous sergeant who had delivered the reports had stammered. "I thought you were Captain Morry."
          Gamlin had simply tried not to roll his eyes, and then had gone home early and taken a nice, long bath. Milia had said they were supposed to be good for stress.
          "Major Gamlin Kizaki. Please report to the Ma-"
          Trying very hard to stay calm, he reached over and slapped the button on the comm. "Understood. I'll be right over."
          The thing went silent and he slumped back in his chair, massaging his temples. Last night, he'd been on a date with one of the girls Dick had introduced him to from his squadron, and she'd leaned over and said, sounding amazed, "Major, is that a patch of gray hair?"
          The date ended very quickly after that.
          He was inclined to think that the average intelligence of most every single female on the Macross 7 was going down the longer the fleet stayed in space. Akiko was the only exception to this rule, but Akiko was very nearly dating Ray, anyway, so she didn't count. Gamlin himself wasn't getting any younger, but it didn't help to know that his prospective choices for a wife weren't getting any smarter, either.
          He refused to think about Mylene.
          She'd been a year at school, and had popped in once or twice to say hello, but it wasn't nearly the same, and they both knew it. The Mylene he knew now was completely different from the Mylene he'd known even a year ago. Going to school had changed her – she was serious, studious, almost dreamy. He remembered when she'd been a hyper fourteen year old, and then would start wishing for those times again before he would realize what he was doing, and then would stop himself. Mylene was Mylene, he would remind himself, and that meant that she had to grow up, just like everyone else. For some reason, though, that didn't make him feel any better.
          Then there was Basara. He could see it in her eyes, though she hadn't said anything to him. He wasn't jealous, exactly – the man was one of his best friends, and he wanted the best for all of his friends. There needed to be a limit, though, on the number of times the singer was allowed to leave the ship and strike out on his own. Every time he did so, something disastrous seemed to happen. And Mylene missed him. Gamlin missed him. They all did. It had been a year, and no one had heard from him.
          The mayor was waiting, so he finished his coffee and his musings quickly, straightened the papers on his desk, and left his office, locking the door behind him. One of the perks of being the commander was a nice, new office adjacent to the Defense Force hangar, also new. The Defense Force wasn't just Diamond Force anymore. So many new recruits had rushed to join the Macross 7 army after the Protodeviln War that Max and Milia had decided to make the City 7 Defense Force its own entity, so now there was a new office and a new hangar and three new squadrons of new VF-19s, and Gamlin was the commander. Dick and Morry, his old Diamond Force squadmates during the war, were now team leaders of their own.
          He missed flying.
          The mayor's office was five minutes away by monorail, and it took very little time for him to exit the tram, straighten his uniform, and politely inform the secretary at the desk that Major Kizaki was here to see the Mayor.
          The office was the same as ever, and it wasn't surprising that Milia had won reelection yet again after the war. This would be her last term in office, and she seemed to be making the most of it with newer, more radical policies, but the people loved her. He knocked on the door, feeling the sense of déjà vu that hit him every time he was here now.
          "Come in," she called, and he entered.
          She was typing something on the computer, but looked up as he entered and smiled pleasantly. "How are you, Gamlin?" she said. He was struck again by how young she looked. Even micronized, she was still Zentradi, and she would probably outlive them all by many years. He wondered how Max felt about that.
          "Major Gamlin Kizaki, reporting as ordered, Mayor!" he barked, coming to attention and snapping a salute, and she laughed.
          "I swear, Gamlin, you become more anal with that military stuff every time I see you. Stand at ease. I have something to tell you."
          "Yes, ma'am?" he said, shifting uncomfortably. He suspected she got a kick out of his ultra-correct reporting procedures, but he liked doing things by the book.
          Milia looked at him and he could see an impish gleam in her eye. "Do I make you nervous, Gamlin Kizaki? Every time you come in here, you squirm like Mylene used to when she was little and had to take a bath."
          "I…hadn't noticed, ma'am," he said, trying not to blush, abashed and a little taken by surprise at the mention of Mylene, especially little Mylene. Naturally, she picked up on that as well.
          "Sorry," she said apologetically. "I hadn't meant to bring her up."
          He shook his head. "She is your daughter."
          Milia didn't reply to that, but instead glanced at the computer screen, then folded her hands in front of her on the desk and looked very serious. "Gamlin, I'm promoting you."
          He blinked. "Ah…what?"
          She looked devilish. "I knew you would say that. I'm promoting you. More correctly, Max is promoting you. You're getting transferred to Battle 7. Colonel Barton is retiring, and they picked you to take his place."
          "You're joking," he said, in shock. "I'm not a strategist! I'm a pilot! I can't be commander of the army!"
          "You underestimate yourself too much," Milia said, standing, and he knew there would be no debate tolerated today. Not that there was any other day, either. "Your orders are in process. You'll be pinning on Lieutenant Colonel next week and transferring over to Battle 7. If you have any questions, Max will be happy to answer them."
          Gamlin gaped at her, and she put her hands on her hips. "What, not even a thank you? You're the best of the best, Gamlin, and neither Max nor I are willing to waste the best of the best. You deserve this."
          "I don't-"
          "Don't argue with me, Gamlin. You always do."
          "Because I don't want to be a commander!" he blurted, frustrated. "Please…ma'am, you were a pilot. You loved flying just as much as I did, and you know how much it hurts for me to be stuck in here, in an office. Please, if you really think I'm the best of the best…put me back in a Valkyrie!"
          She was silent for a long time, and he was afraid he'd offended her by his outburst. His heart was pounding and he felt like he'd just punched Colonel Barton again, exhilarated but knowing that he'd been wrong at the same time.
          "I'm sorry," he said at length, when she still didn't look like she was going to say anything, her eyes fixed on some point behind his head. "I don't know…I don't know what came over me. I'll just leave…"
          She fixed one bright eye on him and he squirmed. "Are you implying that my job is less important now because I'm not a pilot anymore, Major Kizaki?"
          "No, ma'am, I'm just-"
          "You know, Gamlin," Milia said conversationally. "You're a wonderful soldier, and you're not afraid to say what you think. I like that in a commander."
          "Mayor Milia, I-"
          "However," Milia continued, cutting him off with one swift gesture, "sometimes you need to learn that what is good for you in the long run isn't necessarily fun in the short run."
          He hung his head. "I was out of line. I apologize."
          "You need to stop apologizing so often, though," she said. He gaped at her again, and she smiled. "Gamlin, I understand how you feel. However, I must weigh your feelings against the good of the fleet. Which do you think is more important?"
          "The good of the fleet, of course," Gamlin said quickly. "I promise to be less selfish in the future."
          Milia shook her head. "We're all selfish. That's what makes us human. But that doesn't mean that we can afford to lose sight of the big picture, does it?"
          "No, ma'am."
          She sat down again. "Captain Morry will be promoted as the next Defense Force commander. You may brief him at length. That is all."
          He snapped to attention again, saluted. "Thank you, ma'am!"
          She returned his salute. "Don't let me down, Gamlin."
          He'd about-faced and left that room hundreds of times since Diamond Force had been appointed to the defense of City 7, and it had become so familiar to him that he couldn't imagine not continuing to do that for a few years to come. But that was to be the last time, he realized. He would report to Maximillian Jenius now.
          He never seemed to be able to escape the Jenius family.
          Please, if you really think I'm the best of the best…put me back in a Valkyrie!
          It wasn't that he wasn't grateful that they thought so highly of him. It was just that he would rather be flying. He was good at flying. But apparently now that the war had been over for some time, flying was just another stepping stone in the military corporate ladder, and he'd done his time. It really wasn't right.
          Still, he shouldn't have said that to Milia. It had made him sound like he was ungrateful. He wished he wasn't so impulsive at times. And she was right, he couldn't afford to lose sight of the bigger picture. Not if he wanted to keep his position as commander, not if he wanted to do what was best for his troops.
          That was always the hard part. Duty. Service before self.
          A sigh escaped his lips as he watched the city flash past outside the monorail car window on the way back to the Defense Forces office. It really was a beautiful place, City 7. He didn't mind much that they hadn't been able to find a habitable planet yet. For him, City 7, Macross 7, was home, and he couldn't imagine living anywhere different.
          Morry would be a good commander. He had a natural way with people, a natural charm that he could flick on and off like a switch, something Gamlin didn't have. He found himself having more in common with Dick – they were both serious, quiet, idealistic, soldiers to the core. Morry might quit the army someday – he would have a bright future in any profession he chose, but Dick, like Gamlin, would never leave the military. It was unthinkable.
          The monorail stopped and he got off, in a thoughtful mood all the way back up to his office. For the good of the people, Milia had said. He had been working for the good of the people his whole career, and it was not that he didn't enjoy his job just because it was, in his opinion, the best career that anyone could have. But he would enjoy it a bit more if those people would show more appreciation to the military once in a while.
          But he supposed that was just something else he had to learn to deal with. Unlocking his door, he crossed to his desk and picked up his coffee cup. There was still a little left in the bottom, but it was already cold.

Varauta System, Third Planet, Protoculture Ruins

          The new tape reader had arrived yesterday, a day ahead of schedule, and Myung made a note to recommend that company to the University for future technological projects. The dig had worked through the outer caves now, and was moving inward. No one knew exactly how far this facility extended. They had sent robotic cameras through, trying to take pictures and footage before the diggers actually went inside, but for some reason the footage hadn't come out and the pictures were all blank. The result of a magnetic disruption, the people at the lab had said. The younger members of the team had looked at each other and whispered, Protoculture.
          Myung wasn't so sure which she believed. True, it was hard to believe that the Protoculture were beings who possessed powers that could be called "magical," but they had created the Zentradi. And if things like the Protodeviln could exist, who knew what was possible and what was not?
          Ildik had finished cataloguing all of the tapes in cave C1, and they had been stacked in neat, coded piles in the lab building next to the office. The lab building wasn't much more than a trailer with an electric generator attached, though it did have some sophisticated equipment inside. Myung wasn't interested in the sophisticated equipment at the moment. All she was interested in was that tape reader.
          She'd been sitting at the work desk inside the lab for a good two hours now, sorting through the stacks of tapes and trying to figure out which ones were too cracked or scratched to be read, and which ones seemed like likely candidates. She hadn't exactly tried the tape reader yet, except for sticking a tape in to see if it actually fit. Besides being extremely ancient, the Protoculture tapes didn't exactly look like data tapes. They looked more like strange, flat oyster shells, and the only thing betraying their true purpose was the tiny microchip located inside each one, like a pearl within the shell. It had taken days of scanning for them to figure that out, and then days more of scanning to come up with the design for a machine that might possibly read the tapes.
          Myung didn't want to test the system until she absolutely had to. Just in case all their hard work had amounted to nothing. She hated being disappointed.
          Turning over the tape in her hands, she traced her hand along the narrow ridged material that made up the shell. Further scanning had revealed that the material was in fact organic, a mix of calcium and polymer – in other words, an actual seashell. Why the Protoculture had chosen to house their date in seashells, she didn't know, but she'd slept over at the lab that night, jotting down notes and printing her test results. Isamu had called at 2 AM, frantic, wondering if she was all right, and it was only then she realized it was 2 AM and that she had been there all night.
          He told her sometimes that she loved her work too much, and sometimes she thought he was right.
          There was a bang and she looked up as the door to the lab opened and Ildik stepped through. "I got you lunch," he said, wiping his feet on the doormat and heading to the sink to wash his hands. "There's sandwiches in a bag in the office."
          She waved at him to acknowledge him, her eyes still fixed on the tape. "There's something very odd about this tape," she mused, "but I can't seem to figure out what."
          "You mean besides the fact that it's made out of a weird conglomeration of seashells and microchips and is millions of years old?"
          She quirked a smile at him. "Funny, Ildik."
          "Anytime." Pulling out the extra chair at the table, he sat down, looking at the object in her hands. "You haven't tested it, have you?"
          "What do you think?"
          "I didn't think so. Trying to stave off the inevitable. I feel the same way."
          Myung gave up, put the tape back down on the table. "Well, we might as well start, since you're here. Bring that tape reader over here and I'll clear some of this junk off so we can have a clean working surface."
          "If the reader actually reads the tape," Ildik said.
          "Stop raining on my picnic," Myung said. "If it reads, then it does what it's supposed to. If not, we send the damn thing back to the company and wait for a new one." Her palms were sweating and her heart was speeding up just thinking about the test, but there was no way she was going to tell him that. She was the calm, cool superior. "Just get it over here."
          "As you say," he said mildly, pushing back the chair and standing, and she went over to the trash can, swept all their unneeded documents into it, and stuffed the rest back into the file folders.
          "Turn off your phone, too," she said after a minute, reaching to switch hers off, as well as the comm system on the computer. "I don't want any signals interfering with this. It's quite delicate."
          Ildik wheeled the contraption over on its cart and carefully picked it up and placed it on the table. It was an odd-looking device – shaped rather like a large jewelry box with a computer viewscreen protruding out of the top like a periscope, and a digital touch keypad on one side. Myung reached behind and turned it on. The screen blinked, and then the machine started up with a buzzing noise.
          "Is it supposed to do that?" Ildik said worriedly.
          Myung shrugged. "Who knows? Which stack were we doing first?"
          "First one." He reached over and picked up a tape. "There were only two undamaged tapes from this cave out of seventy-five, remember. Too bad."
          She nodded. He handed her the tape, and she slid it carefully into the slot at the bottom of the machine. The thick case fit perfectly, and it disappeared with a little click. Myung swallowed. She could feel Ildik fidgeting next to her. For some reason, staring at the computer screen reminded her of Sharon Apple's control chamber, with the machines surrounding her, making odd whirring sounds, the connectors hooked up to her. She could almost feel their cold metal on her skin still, feel that strange sense of fear and yet exhilaration that signaled that she was no longer just Myung Fang Lone, but part of something larger, something vast and interconnected. It was like that every time Sharon had sung.
          That was why she had never forgiven Marje. Not because he'd almost destroyed everyone she loved with his schemes. Not because of the fact that he had killed Raymond, not because he had ousted her in order to fulfill his "dream." When he'd taken Sharon from her, he'd taken a part of her with him. It had been months before she had been able to admit it to herself – that she felt empty, broken, part of a human being missing a soul.
          It frightened her that Sharon had had so much power over her, even as an incomplete A.I. creation.
          She had never told Isamu.
          "Professor? Are you all right?"
          Ildik's hand on her arm. She shook herself, brought herself back to the glowing screen. "Yes, I'm…I’m fine. Just a little nervous."
          He smiled. "I know. Oh…well look, at least this part works."
          The screen brightened and a message popped up.
          SCANNING…
          Myung looked at him and nodded. "Here goes nothing," she said.

Zola

          He awoke to a fierce throbbing in his shoulder, and he tried to sit up, but the pain was too much and he fell back, groaning. He hadn't felt like this since….well, in a long time. His fuzzy brain wouldn't let him make the comparison, and even with his eyes open, it seemed like they were still closed. He couldn't see much – part of a ceiling, a rough wall on his right side. He was laying on what seemed like a bed. He hoped it was a bed.
          "You're awake!"
          A face slowly swam into view – green-blue hair, wide eyes, an excited expression. A child? "What – who – where – " he began. He coughed. A hand pushed him down.
          "Shh," the girl said calmly. "You've been shot. Lie still a bit, k? I gotta get your medicine ready. It's taking a bit longer than I thought. I haven't made it in a while."
          "Me-medicine?" A thought hit him and he sat up wildly, ignoring the fire that shot through his entire body and his skull at the movement. "My guitar! Where's my guitar?!"
          "Hey! Lie down!" With a speed that he never imagined she had in her, the little girl bounded across the room and pushed him down. "You're weak right now! You don't want the bacteria to spread, do you? Your guitar's over there, against the wall." He tried to sit up to see it, and she pushed him down again. "You just don't get it, do you?"
          "They do call me stubborn," Basara said with a weak grin, but she was already across the room again, stirring something vile-smelling in a big pot. He closed his eyes and hoped he didn't have to drink it.
          The little girl sniffed the potion, then with a satisfied noise, ladled a small amount into a shallow bowl. Basara watched her suspiciously. "What is that?"
          "Your medicine," she said, as if that explained everything, approaching him with the bowl and what looked like some sort of short, thick club. He winced.
          "Are you going to beat me unconscious and then drug me?"
          She looked at him like he was mad, and then started to giggle, a high-pitched child's laugh that was strangely pleasant. "No, silly, I'm putting this on your shoulder wound so it won't get infected. There are a lot of bacteria around, you know."
          "Bacteria?" he wondered, wincing as she pushed him upright, supporting his head against the wall and then dipping the stick into the bowl.
          "You know, the bacteria! From the migrating whales?"
          "Whales?"
          The stuff on the stick – whatever it was – stung like hell, but he bit his tongue and kept the expletives to himself. She frowned at him. "You don't know anything about Zola. You're not from around this part of the galaxy, are you?"
          "How'd you guess?" Basara said weakly, and she giggled again.
          "You're funny. I like you."
          "Gee," he mumbled. "Thanks for the compliment."
          She didn't seem to take offense at his disgruntlement, and he fell silent again, feeling the pain in his shoulder lessen as she dabbed the last of the medicine on. She was a curious little thing, dressed in some sort of smock-like clothing, a lone tuft of green hair standing atop her head amidst the fall of blue hair cascading down her back. There was some sort of tube? coiled around her neck. She was barely as tall as the bed, but what struck him most were her long pointed ears, longer than any Zentradi's ears he had ever seen.
          "You're not Zentradi, are you?" he wondered.
          She blinked big eyes at him. "Eh? No, not exactly."
          "Not exactly?" he said.
          "I'm Zolan!" she said proudly, pulling out a bandage and wrapping it around his shoulder and arm. "We're all Zolan." To his shock then, the tube-thing uncoiled and peeked curiously at him with one eye.
          "Ahh!" he screamed, trying to back up before he realized he was sitting against a wall and couldn't.
          She blinked at him, then looked down and started giggling. "This is Cappy. Did he scare you?"
          The thing blinked again, then decided that Basara was too boring for his attention and went back to sleep. He stared at it. What was it with girls and weird organic pets? "What-" he began, but she finished tying the bandage and scrambled down from the bed with the bowl and stick.
          "You should be all set now!"
          He touched the bandage over the wound, and to his surprise, it didn't hurt. It didn't even throb. His headache was gone also. "Well, thanks…I guess I'll be going now."
          She jumped around in alarm. The bowl clattered to the floor. "No! Wait, you can't leave yet!"
          "Why not?"
          "Because the medicine I've put on your wound is-"
          The dizziness hit him all of a sudden and his legs ceased supporting his weight and he collapsed to the ground, startled. His muscles seemed to have stopped working. That was rather odd. He'd never had that happen before.
          "See, I told you to stay in bed. Geez! The medicine relaxes your muscles and you won't be able to move for at least a few hours! What are you smiling at?"
          "You remind me of someone, that's all," he said. "Nothing."
          She put one of his arms around her shoulders and half dragged, half-carried him to the bed. He managed to climb back on by himself and collapsed in a heap and lay there, too numb to even move.
          "You're heavy!" she groaned. "Just stay there this time, ok?"
          He resisted the urge to make a quip about how he was more than twice her size, and managed to nod. "I gotcha."
          Big eyes peered into his. "Good. I'll be in the kitchen. If you need anything, yell. I think your mouth still works, right?"
          He smiled. "Yeah. Thanks."
          She turned to go, and he reached out, grabbed the hem of her smock with limp fingers. "Hey…hold on, what's your name? I didn't catch it the first time."
          "I never gave it the first time." She gave him an infectious grin and pried his fingers off her smock. "But I'm Elma. Elma Hoilie."

Varauta System, Third Planet, Protoculture Ruins

          The machine had been humming for a good five minutes now, and Myung was ready to claw her eyes out from staring fixedly at the screen. Beside, her she heard Ildik swallow. The tension in the room was thick, like strands of rope coiled around them, squeezing.
          Like the ruined control room, with Sharon's electric wires coiled about her body.
          Myung shuddered, and Ildik stirred. "Professor-" he began in a hushed voice, and Myung held up a hand.
          "I'm fine."
          The machine gave a strange sort of clicking noise, like when they had first inserted the tape, and then it stopped humming. She blinked. It didn't begin again. The quiet burned at her ears. She almost stopped breathing as the silence stretched, praying to whatever god was out there, please don’t let it be broken, please don't let it be broken.
          Beside her, Ildik muttered, "If it's broken, I am going to go up to whoever built this thing and wring their neck with my bare hands."
          She grabbed his shoulder. "Ildik! Look!"
          The tape slot was glowing.
          She felt a shudder run down her body and backed away involuntarily from the machine. Ildik stayed where he was, transfixed. Across the computer screen, symbols started scrolling, moving faster and faster until they were a blur across the face of the glowing monitor, and there was a strange light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
          A quick snapping noise. The lights in the lab went out.
          "What – what's happening?" Ildik gasped, half-turning towards her, skin pale in the glow of the screen.
          There were words in the light, faint but growing stronger, clearer. Words in the air, appearing out of nowhere, unidentifiable symbols which she had never seen before but which seemed to pull her, capture her and suck her in. She took an involuntary step towards the rapidly forming words. Was this Protoculture script? She had never imagined that it would be so beautiful…nothing in all her studies, in all her research…nothing had ever mentioned something like this. It was so beautiful she could feel tears forming at the corners of her eyes, and she blinked rapidly to stop them from falling.
          "We should…call Advisor Stermno," Ildik said, sounding dazed.
          She opened her mouth to agree but found herself instead taking a step towards the symbols, arms outstretched. How had that happened?
          "Il…Ildik," she managed. Her breath rasped in her ears. "Ildik?"
          "De cultcha!" he whispered, frozen in a stance of horror, the Zentradi expletive sounding almost like a prayer. She glanced at his face and was shocked to see his lips bared in a snarl, his features ghostly white and almost unrecognizable, as if the man she knew had been suppressed and some other, foreign consciousness was rising out of the body that was Ildik Frianjik's. She had never seen him look so Zentradi. So alien.
          Myung.
          She took another step towards the words still being painted in the air as if by an invisible hand. There was something…something familiar. About those words. Something she should understand but that she didn't.
          Myung.
          "Who's there?" she gasped softly, but the words did not leave her lips. Her lungs felt empty and she was weightless, floating, floating towards the light.
          You know who I am.
          "Who are you?" Her lips shaped the soundless words and she shuddered, knowing that this was somehow wrong, but she couldn't stop it because at the same time it felt so right…there was something there for her, something she was missing. Something she had to get back.
          You know who I am. You've known all along.
          She gasped for air and the glow suddenly intensified a hundredfold, blinding her. She cried out, shielding her eyes with one arm, but it was no use. The words were everywhere now, surrounding her, piercing through her brain.
          I've been waiting for you.
          "Sharon?" she gasped, and then there was a brilliant flash of light and she smelled the faint acrid scent of smoke, and then the world disappeared.

 
back to part one | to part three