MACROSS DYNAMITE
Three: Fate's Arrow

Varauta System, Third Planet, Varauta City, General Hospital

          Isamu Alva Dyson did not pride himself on being an overly emotional man, but as he stood outside the blank white door of the hospital emergency operating room and stared down at the blank white tiles of the hospital floor, he could hardly stop himself from crying.
          He'd been at work when the call came, a man's voice informing him that there had been an accident, something gone terribly wrong at the Protoculture dig site, that his wife was in critical condition, and that he needed to come immediately. He'd jumped up, rushed out of his office, ignored the questions and stares in the hallway, jumped onto his motorcycle, and risked a speeding ticket and several wrecks to get to the emergency room. But all that wasn't anything that could save her. He couldn't even see her. She'd already been in surgery when he got there. Surgery for what? he'd asked, and the doctors had replied that they weren't sure.
          Isamu thought back to the reports that he had read a few years back after being promoted to squadron commander, classified reports regarding "vampire" attacks aboard the Macross 7. What if it was something like that? What if…what if it was worse? The people of the Macross 7 had been saved by music…but whatever this was, if they couldn't find a cure…
          He slumped against the wall, not even bothering to straighten when he heard footsteps coming down the hallway. If it was a doctor with bad news, so be it. If it was another visitor, he didn't care.
          "Isamu?"
          He blinked and turned around. It was a young man, in his early twenties by the looks of him, Asian, dressed in a dirty shirt and a pair of jeans so muddy that the knees and leg bottoms were black. He was breathing heavily, as if he'd been running.
          "Are you Commander Isamu Dyson?" the young man asked. He extended his hand.
          Isamu nodded uncertainly. He didn't reach out his own hand. "Who're you?"
          The man looked at his hand and removed it cautiously. Isamu half-expected him to remark on how terrible he looked, with unkempt hair and uniform rumpled from his hurry to get to the hospital, but the man didn't say anything about it. "I'm Ching Lian Lao. But people usually just call me Lao. I'm one of Professor Dyson's pupils on the dig."
          "Hi," Isamu said dully.
          There was a bench on the other side of the hall, and Lao jerked a hand towards it. "Want to sit down?"
          "No."
          Lao looked at him and shrugged, then walked over and sat. "I rushed here as soon as I could. They wouldn't let us off the job, even after the Professor and Ildik were taken in."
          "Who's Ildik?" Isamu said.
          "Ildik Frianjik. Her research assistant?" Myung had never mentioned a research assistant. "He's half Zentradi. They were both found in the lab."
          "Do you know what happened?" Isamu demanded, his hopes rising. Maybe this kid could tell him something.
          Lao shook his head. "No one knows what happened, actually. The two of them were the only people in the lab when it…happened. Whatever it was. Lucky a couple of our people just happened to be in the campsite staying late and cleaning up from lunch. Or else they might not have been found until four, five hours later."
          Isamu shivered, then caught Lao gazing at him sympathetically, and stopped, glaring. He didn't need sympathy.
          "Anyway," Lao continued. Isamu had the feeling that Lao was one sharp kid who missed nothing. If he had cared at the moment, he would have bothered to keep that in mind, but right now, nothing except Myung mattered. "What we do know is that they were studying some of the Protoculture data tapes found in the ruins. The tape reader machine arrived today and Ildik said they were going to try and read one of the tapes before lunch."
           "So the reader exploded and knocked them out?"
          Lao scrunched up his nose. "I don’t think so. The reader exploded, but…there wasn't a scratch on them. They were just lying on the floor, eyes open. It was really creepy actually, like they'd been paralyz-" He caught Isamu's glare. "Right. Sorry."
          Isamu considered telling Lao to go fuck himself, but the kid was trying to be good company, he supposed. It was a lousy situation. He should have appreciated him for trying, but all he really wanted to do was cry. And he wasn't about to do that with another human being around.
          He remembered when he'd come to find her after Sharon Apple's "death," how her song had saved him and thus the entire Macross City from destruction. Afterward, when they were safely back on Eden, she'd told him about what had happened during the concert – how Sharon had trapped her and left her to die, how Sharon had said that he, Isamu, was what she wanted, and how Myung was now useless. There was pain in her voice in the retelling, pain that Isamu had at the time attributed to the nearness of the incident, but now he wasn't so sure.
          Myung loved him, he was certain of that. But there was something she wasn't telling him. True, she had changed since high school, but even when he'd seen her on Eden before Sharon and Guld's death, she had retained that essence that made her uniquely Myung. But something was different now. She didn't have that essence anymore. That spark that he had loved about her was gone.
          And now she might be gone.
          He didn't even notice that Lao had started babbling on about various aspects of the dig, simply stared at the wall and closed his eyes, seeing images of her against his closed eyelids. He remembered how he'd dragged her out of the hospital with him when he was supposed to be in treatment, to see the pterosaur. But this wasn't like that.
          She was always getting into trouble, and he couldn't save her. Guld had saved her that last time, from the fire…
          But Guld was dead.
          "Commander Dyson?"
          He pushed himself off the wall with lightning speed as the doctor approached, holding a folder in one hand and a pen in the other. "Is she ok? Is she out? Is she gonna be-"
          The doctor held up a hand and Isamu stopped, palms clammy and cold. The man's expression under the iron gray hair was haggard. "Commander Dyson, Doctor Ghose. Your wife is out of surgery and her vital signs are stable."
          "Oh, thank God," he breathed, resisting the urge to throw his arms around the doctor and squeeze him from pure joy. Myung had always said that he was too impulsive.
          The doctor held up one hand. "However."
          Isamu's stomach dropped to the floor. "However?" he said, a deadly note in his voice that his subordinates and squadron mates had learned to fear, the note that said if the news coming was bad, they would be on bed rest for at least the next month from broken bones. But this wasn't a fellow pilot. This was a doctor.
          "However," Ghose continued as if he hadn't interrupted. "She has not regained conscious. Neither has Mr. Frianjik. Their life signs are normal, and we can't find any trace of outside substances in their blood. Nevertheless, they seem to be in some sort of coma."
          "A coma," Isamu said flatly. "A coma?"
          "I'm extremely sorry, Commander-"
          "SHIT!" he cursed at the top of his lungs, slamming one fist into the white wall, not caring that his knuckles felt like they were on fire. "Dammit! Fuck…Myung…"
          If the doctor was offended by his use of expletives, he didn't show it, simply waited until Isamu had run out of curse words, and then picked up where he left off. "The interesting thing is, the monitors are showing increased brain activity."
          "Increased?" Lao said. Isamu jumped. He had forgotten the Chinese man was behind him.
          The doctor glanced at him as if seeing him for the first time. Lao nodded and held out his hand. "Ching Lian Lao. Archaeologist. Pupil of Professor Dyson's."
          The professor shook his hand. "Both of them are in the intensive care unit in the east wing. If you wish, I can take you there."
          "Hell yeah, I wish," Isamu snapped. "What the hell are we waiting for?"
          "Follow me then," the doctor said, and turned and started down the way he had come.
          It was four flights of stairs and a long ride on an elevator. Isamu hated hospitals. They were all the same – sterile and white, quiet like catacombs. The intensive care unit wasn't any better. If anything, it was worse, with the soft beeping of the machines, as if they were ticking, counting down till the final hour when everything would flatline to zero and that meant that it was over.
          No, he couldn't think like that.
          Myung was in the first bed in the room. A breathing apparatus was strapped to her face, and Isamu could see the monitors placed strategically around her bed. "The monitors look all right to me," he said. He didn't know anything about medicine, but he needed some reassurance. Anything. "The lines are jumpy and stuff."
          Ghose didn't laugh. "They are normal. That's the problem. With all the signs, there's no reason she should be unconscious. If anything, she should be showing at least some outside signs of all the increased brainwave activity. But there's nothing. If you'll look at the monitor on the very far right for both patients, you'll see what I mean."
          Isamu looked, saw the line jumping sharply up and down, sharp peaks and valleys almost vertical. The man in the second bed was the same way. He must be Ildik the half-Zentradi research assistant. Other than the blue hair, Isamu couldn't find anything even faintly Zentradi in Ildik's face. He looked very human.
          "This increased activity," Lao said. "What does it mean?"
          "It's-" Ghose paused. "Well," he said slowly after a minute, looking uncertain for the first time since they had met. "Think of it as REM activity. Such as when you sleep."
          Isamu thought. "You mean dreams? You mean they're dreaming?"
          "The scans would have us believe so," Ghose said. "But they're not asleep. They are simply not responding. Unconscious."
          "I don’t know much about medicine," Lao said, glancing at Isamu, "but that doesn't sound good at all."
          "Can't you…I remember reading something about music therapy. Can't you-"
          "We've sent in a request for a Fire Bomber CD," the doctor said. "Studies by Dr. Chiba of the Macross 7 have proven that music therapy, especially by that particular group, is very effective. However, this is a totally different circumstance than what was faced by the people of that fleet, so it remains to be seen what the music will do. I wouldn't get my hopes up."
          "Fuck you," Isamu said. His fingers itched to grab the doctor by the collar and shake him till his teeth rattled. "That's my wife in there, and I'm losing her!"
          "I understand your concern, Commander," the doctor said softly. "However, this is entirely unlike anything we've ever seen before, and until we can investigate further, I will offer no words of hope. You can, however, be sure that they are in no immediate danger."
          "So they'll just lay there," Lao said. "Dreaming."
          Ghose tapped the glass with his fingers. "Dreaming," he echoed softly. "Endless dreams. Or maybe…the more appropriate term would be…nightmares."

Zola

          "ELMA!"
          She had been humming in the kitchen when the voice boomed out, and Basara had heard the strains of Planet Dance coming from the radio. Who would have thought they'd be so popular out here? Amazing.
          "ELMA!"
          The voice shook the house, and Basara grabbed on to his pillow, hoping that the walls wouldn't come crashing down. He expected Elma to be startled, but instead, he heard her call from the kitchen, "What is it, Father?"
          Father?
          "WHO IS THAT IN THE HOUSE, ELMA?"
          "It's a guest!" she called, her high-pitched voice sounding tinny by contrast. Basara glanced around warily as she came running into the doorway, eyes brightening when she saw him sitting up.
          "You're better!"
          "My entire right side is numb," he said. "Is that supposed to happen? And is that really your father?"
          "You'll be numb for a while," Elma said brightly. "And yes."
          "Hmm," he said, and then before she could stop him, he pushed himself off the bed and staggered to the door.
          "Where are you going?" she shrieked, but he paid no attention to her, turning the doorknob. His right leg gave up from under him and he crashed to the floor, bumping open the door and taking the guitar, which had been propped up by the door, down with him in the process. Could it possibly be-?
          The man looming over the house was huge – easily ten times the size of Basara, with heavy, dark eyebrows that looked like angry stormclouds, and a fierce expression. His eyes were not friendly, and as they fixed on Basara, he began to wonder if he shouldn't have stayed inside.
          "This is the guest?" he boomed, a little softer than before. Elma had run to the doorway and Basara saw her start towards him, but the giant fingers had bent down, squeezed themselves around him, and picked him up. He felt a whoosh of air past his face as he was lifted up, up, at eye level with the giant. He didn't dare look down. He'd never been scared of heights, but he suspected that in his present condition, it wouldn't do him any good.
          "Don't hurt him, Father! He's only a visitor!"
          The giant waggled his fingers this way and that and Basara felt his legs swing back and forth. He heard Elma pick up his guitar to put it back inside. Heard her stop in mid-motion.
          "Basara?" she said incredulously.
          He'd forgotten he had his name on the back of his guitar. The giant didn't look impressed.
          "That's me," he said, smiling weakly. Elma squeaked.
          "Father, put him down! He's NEKKI BASARA!"
          "Never heard of him," said the giant, sounding less than impressed and reaching out one giant finger. Basara felt the hair on his head smoothed down and then spiked up again by that huge ridge of flesh, and he fought the urge to try to wriggle out of the man's grasp, though he didn't know if he had the strength or not. Maybe this was how shrimp felt in the frying pan – too weak to move, too lifeless to escape from their certain doom, to be fried and devoured by giants.
          "He's a hero!" squeaked Elma from three stories below. "A galactic singer! From Fire Bomber! They defeated the Protodeviln!"
          Basara would have looked down at her and snorted if he could, but as it was, he could only manage a weak shake of his head. "We didn't defeat anyone," he told the giant eye staring at him. "We only made them understand the music."
          There was a silence as the giant considered this, and just as he was about to give up and consider himself lost, the giant gave a giant harrumph and lowered him back down to the ground, where Basara tried to stand and found himself on his back staring up at the stars. They were very pretty stars, stars which were probably laughing at him now because he couldn't seem to take care of himself on this strange planet.
          He wondered if the Macross 7 fleet was out there somewhere still.
          "Father, he's too weak to move – help me get him into the house? Please?"
          The giant made another noise which sounded like a noise Ray used to make when Basara had just made some unreasonable request, but then he felt something clamp on to his legs and then felt the sensation of flight as the giant picked him up and set him gently down just inside the door of the house.
          "You live here by yourself then, Elma?" he croaked as the little girl dragged him inside, making clucking noises. She was surprisingly strong for her size. Perhaps it came from her father being a giant?
          She looked surprised. "No, I live with my father."
          "Well obviously your father doesn't live in the house with you."
          Her face cleared. "Oh! Yes, Father has a separate house some ways off…where the Valkyrie is. He has to guard it day and night, you know. Sometimes my sister would come here to visit, but…" she trailed off and her face fell. Basara felt a pang of guilt.
          "Sorry…"
          "It's ok," she grunted, and he helped her hoist him back into bed. "Stay there. I'll make some soup."
          He watched as she moved into the kitchen, moving again to the big pot hanging over the hearth fire, except that the aroma that came out of it was decidedly more pleasant than the potion she'd been cooking up last time. The ceiling of the house was rustic – dark, unfinished wooden beams supporting the roof, and there was a small fire in the fireplace by the door, too. It felt very homey. He wondered how old Elma was, having to live here all alone in the house and care for herself, because evidently she had no mother and her father was little help.
          It really was none of his business.
          There were two pictures on the table to his right – one of Elma and another girl that was obviously the sister she was talking about earlier. The sister looked strangely familiar, but he couldn't place her. The other picture was of a man and a woman, both smiling against a backdrop of a waterfall and some green mountains in the distance. The man…
          He started. The man was the giant, Elma's father…
          "I see you noticed my pictures," the voice said next to his ear, and he jumped again. Elma was holding a tray, on which was placed a bowl full of delicious-smelling stew, and as he took the tray, she climbed up on the bed next to him. He didn't know why he felt like apologizing to her – he rarely ever apologized, but he seemed to have started out on quite the wrong foot on this planet, and that wasn't like him either. If Mylene could see him now, she'd be laughing herself silly.
          "That's-" he said instead, pointing to the picture of the man and the woman.
          "That's Mother and Father," she said, sounding dreamy. He stole a glance at her over the bowl, and she had a small, half-smile on her face. "That was before she died though…before Father became a giant." Her voice trailed off, and then she straightened and turned to look at him. "She was like you. A singer. She would go up into space and sing…I wanted to be like her."
          "She did?" Was that what Elma had meant by the Valkyrie? "When did she-?"
          "Oh, when I was five. Father was different back then, when she was here." She gestured around the house. "We all used to live here…together…"
          He finished the last of the stew and set the tray on the bed. "I'm sorry…look, you don't have to talk about this. We can talk about something else, or…" he stopped talking, feeling embarrassed. He had never been very good at all this emotional stuff.
          She smiled her sweet smile again, and her eyes lit up. She looked a bit like a puppy dog. "No, it's ok. Cause since you're here, you can help me!"
          "Help you?" he said warily.
          "You see," Elma said brightly, "I've always wanted to be a singer. Like my mother, you know? I can sing – I just don't really know how to get to where she was. But I know I can do it! I'm gonna be just like my mom…"
          "How did your mom die, Elma?"
          The spirit seemed to go out of her and she sat back, staring down at the quilted bedspread. "She went up in the Valkyrie, I guess. She loved the whales. It was the whale migration, and she wanted to fly with them. But instead…"
          The space whales. He felt his blood stir at her mention of them, the feeling that he was sure Elma's mother had had, the feeling that had led her to her death out there among the stars.
          He could have been killed too, during the war. He and Sound Force. And Gamlin Kizaki. And Max Jenius. And a thousand others that he could name, but weren't. What was it that had kept them alive and taken Elma's mother instead?
          "I've never seen the whales," she said. "I want to. I wish sometimes Father would take me up with him when he goes. But…" She stopped again, and when she continued, she sounded very small. "He doesn't go up to see the whales."
          "Your father-"
          "Father hates them," she whispered. "He wants them dead. Every single one."

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

          As he stared at the transmission printout in his hand, Max Jenius had to admit that the outlook for this dig was dim. But that wasn't what worried him.
          ARCHAEOLOGISTS UNCONSCIOUS FROM PROTOCULTURE BLAST, read the headline on the Galaxy Network. It wasn't front page news, and he'd had to search several pages back to find the article, but it was there. The report in his hand, much more detailed and extensive, told him that the Network news hadn't been lying. There had been some sort of explosion at the dig on Varauta, and the team was considering pulling everyone out.
          Myung Dyson. Myung Fang Lone Dyson…the name sounded vaguely familiar, and Max swore that he recognized her face somewhere from other than the Protoculture expedition, but in his years of traveling, he had met all sorts of people. Besides, his task right now was not to place her name in his memory, but to evaluate exactly how he felt about Mylene going to Varauta in the wake of this. All the talk of canceling the dig was just UN bigwigs talking. Everyone, including Max, knew that this dig was too important to pass up, and he would bet anything that the UN wouldn't rest till they'd gotten to the bottom of this. And that meant continuing the expedition.
          To no one's surprise, Mylene had landed one of the spots on the student Varauta team. She'd called him up yesterday to tell him the good news, and he had been happy for her until this morning, when the news had been dumped in his lap. He'd called Milia, who had informed him that of course she knew Mylene had been going to make the team, and the university would have been insane to pick anyone else. He'd hung up, amused.
          But there was nothing amusing about this.
          He put the report down, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and turned the computer screen around to face him. The phone number he wanted was on direct dial from the station, and it took two seconds to punch in, another second before he heard the phone ringing, a bit apprehensive.
          "This is the mayor," the familiar voice said. "May I help you?"
          "Milia, put on the visual," he said with a sigh.
          There was a brief pause and then the television screen flickered on. Max could see his wife looked harried, and he almost regretted calling and interrupting her in the middle of her work. If it had been four years ago she'd have yelled at him, glared, and turned off the screen. He couldn’t decide whether he missed those days or were glad they were over. There had been advantages to both times.
          Not that he didn't love his wife, but Milia now, after the Varauta war, seemed a shadow of her former self sometimes.
          "I assume you're calling about the news," she said.
          It didn't surprise him that she'd heard, probably before he had. As the mayor, she did have certain priority access to all the galactic newsfeeds. "Yes, I am. You look tired. Shouldn't you be taking a break?"
          "I'm fine," Milia said. "You don't want her to go?"
          Max sighed. "It's not that. You're surprisingly calm about it. I'd have thought you would be more worried."
          If it had been a less serious situation, he knew she would be laughing. "I'm the woman who gave Mylene permission to chase after you on Operation Stargazer. And what was the percentage of survival on that? 0.0000001? Something like that?"
          "You have a point," he admitted grudgingly.
          Milia smiled, her face softening just a bit, making her look much more like the young Zentradi woman he'd fallen in love with more than fifty years ago. Sometimes it struck him just how young she really did look, even when so many years had passed, and he had to remind himself that she was Zentradi. That her lifespan was many times his, and that she would be here long after he was gone, and perhaps after Mylene and Emilia and Miracle and Miranda and all the rest of the children were gone too. He wasn't sure how lifespans worked for half-Zentradi.
          "Max? You're drifting."
          He struggled back to the present, back to her worried eyes, the inquiring look on her face. "I'm fine."
          "You should take a rest. You think I look tired? Go look at yourself in the mirror sometime."
          "I'm just worried," he said, with a sigh. "But when am I not worried about Mylene? And she's managed to take care of herself so far, so you'd think I would at least have the sense to know that she's going to be all right."
          "You wouldn't be a parent if you weren't worried," Milia said gently. "To tell the truth, I'm worried too. But Mylene is one of those children, I've learned, that you can't keep too close a leash on, or she'll snap it and run off."
          He quirked a smile. "You've got that right. We'll wait and see, I suppose."
          "There's something calling her back to that planet. And she's going to go, whether we let her or not."
          "I know," Max said softly. "I wish…it were otherwise. We won the war, but sometimes I wonder if it was really worth it."
          Milia leaned forward. "Every war gives warriors scars. I was raised in it. I should know. No matter how much we Zentradi tried to deny it, even if war was the only thing in our blood, we all carried scars. Without culture, we just didn't have the means to realize it."
          "It's a wonderful thing, culture," he said, and she cocked her head to the side, as if remembering something.
          "Say…Has Gamlin reported in yet?"
          "I got a transmission from him yesterday," Max said. "He said the transfer of command was taking longer than expected, but he should be here no later than next Monday. If it was anyone other than Gamlin, I'd be calling and demanding an explanation, but…"
          Milia nodded. "Gamlin always has a good explanation. I'm sure he'll give you the full story when you see him."
          There was a pause, and Max wondered if he couldn't secretly send Gamlin after Mylene and her Protoculture expedition. But no, that would be foolish. Gamlin was needed here, and times had changed from three years ago.
          If only Basara…
          But Basara was gone. He pushed that thought from his mind as well, wondering if he was getting senile already. Max Jenius, the genius, should know better than to nourish wistful thoughts.
          At least Milia was still with him. He raised one hand, as if by just lifting it to the screen, he could touch her face. "I'm glad you're here."
          She smiled again, raising a hand back, placing it over his on the screen. "Come over to the City sometime. We'll go on a date. Be young again. Quell some more divorce rumors."
          He laughed aloud. "That sounds nice. I'd like that."

 
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