MACROSS DYNAMITE
Six: Children of the Same Rhythm

Eden, Eden City, Hayase Intergalactic Spaceport

          "You don't have much luggage for a traveling reporter," the boy said, and Kanzaki Hibiki shrugged, picked up his lone bag from the baggage claim.
          "I travel light," he said. "You never know when you'll get called out on assignment, so-" he patted the bag, "I'm like you soldiers. I always have my mobility bag packed, ready to go at a moment's notice."
          The boy staring back at him, dressed in a crisp, starched UN Spacy uniform, couldn't have been more than sixteen. Hibiki grinned at him, remembering with a certain fondness when he had been no more than sixteen, just a junior reporter at the US Spacy news agency, brash and eager and charging into every assignment thinking that nothing at all could go wrong. It was the scoop that was important, and no one could deny that Kanzaki Hibiki was the kid to call when you needed sensation.
          Dennis had taught him that that wasn't always the way of things – that reporting the news was about searching for the truth, and sometimes the truth could get someone killed. It hadn't been much, he'd thought, when he'd taken the Valkyrie out with Dennis in the back. It was just a minor Zentradi riot in one of the outlying villages, and he'd get in, get the big scoop, and get out.
          But the Valkyrie had been caught in the crossfire and Dennis had been killed, and Hibiki had barely escaped with his own life, being rescued in the nick of time by one of the UN Spacy reinforcements from a huge Zentradi battle pod with its guns raised, about to fire.
          He'd come home with Dennis' footage, nightmares about being squashed flat by Zentradi battle pods, and a new respect for his profession. The tabloids were disappointed at first when he had started refusing to do anymore scoops for them, but he'd gained respect in a new league: the international news agencies and the Galactic Network, and in the long run, he didn't regret a thing.
          "This way, sir," the boy said, and Hibiki fell into step beside him, passing through the automatic doors of the airport and into the arid air of the planet Eden, wondering what on earth a boy so young was doing in the military.
          He'd never imagined he'd be here on Eden. He'd never really imagined he'd go further away from Earth than Mars, because he was only twenty and should have been a starting reporter at that age, tagging along after other, older reporters, flying their Valkyries like he had flown Dennis around. But for some reason, the rest of the galactic community didn't think so. Hibiki knew that many of the older reporters resented him somewhat, but the real ones, the ones that Dennis would have called "great," didn't mind in the least. It was the soul that made a reporter, not age.
          The call had come a week ago, and he'd been lounging in his chair in the office, alternately staring out the big glass windows at the bustling scenery outside and flipping news channels on the television. He thought it might be his secretary, or maybe the boss. Or maybe the cute girl he'd met in the grocery store the other day. But it was none of the above, and the harsh male voice that grated into his ear was unfamiliar to him.
          "This is Colonel Junichi Tousaku from the UN Judge Advocate General. You interested in going offplanet?"
          Hibiki had sat up, swung his legs off the desk, and switched the phone to his left hand so he could pick up a pen with the other. The UN JAG office? That was odd. "Good afternoon, sir," he said. "This is unexpected. Where exactly offplanet are we talking about?"
          The general made a noise that could be laughter, but Hibiki wasn't sure. "I am assuming this is a secure line."
          "All the lines in this building are secure, sir. The military installed them themselves."
          Tousaku harrumphed, and Hibiki envisioned a balding Japanese man in his late fifties, beady eyes twitching and a smoking cigar between two fingers. "Good. We've got a classified assignment for you on Eden. If you're interested, come down to the headquarters tomorrow and ask for me. We'll be expecting you."
          He hadn't accepted the assignment for the content, really, but it was really the chance to visit Eden that had swung him, and everyone knew it. Eden was the choice spot for vacationers and business moguls alike, and had been for several years now, ever since the Sharon Apple drama had unfolded there. No one begrudged him his luck; on the contrary, they pestered him with requests for souvenirs and food and trinkets when he came back, and he'd pacified them, telling them he'd bring back as much as he was able. He had no idea how long he would be gone, however, and friends waiting for souvenirs might have to wait a while.
          As far as Hibiki was concerned, this trial, the thing that had brought him here in the first place, was bound to turn into an internal soap opera, and he was not entirely thrilled about having to be part of it. But a good reporter put himself into situations that he might not necessarily like, because learning was more important than entertainment sometimes. At least the shopping and eating here was good, he consoled himself.
          "Here we are, sir," the boy said, opening the door of a camouflaged military jeep for him, and Hibiki grimaced.
          "Don't you have anything less…flashy?"
          "It's government transportation, sir," the boy said stiffly. "They're all painted like that."
          "Bah," Hibiki said, but climbed up into the passenger seat, throwing his bag and camera into the back. He watched as the boy jammed the keys into the ignition, and they were screeching out of the airport parking lot, cutting off three cars as they pulled onto the highway.
          "You always drive like this?"
          "We're in a hurry." The boy was a corporal, Hibiki noted, realizing that he'd been so engrossed in staring at everything else that he had even forgot to make introductions.
          "Sorry," he said, sticking out his hand before realizing it would be difficult to shake hands while driving, removed it. "Kanzaki Hibiki. Nice to meet you."
          The boy bowed slightly. "Corporal Richard Jones."
          He felt slightly sorry for the kid, having a boring name like that, but of course did not say that out loud. Instead, he leaned against the seat and watched the flashing neon signs and all the sensory overload of Eden's downtown flash past the windows. It really was a neverending party down here, as the tourist brochures had described. It would be interesting to visit once in a while, but he decided he would not want to live here.
          Besides, it was so dry.
          He rubbed his nose and pinched it, and the kid said, "It's only dry in the capital city because we're close to the desert. Eden has temperate and arctic climates, just like most other planets." He sounded like he was reciting something, and Hibiki smiled slightly.
          "I'm guessing you get complaints from guests a lot."
          "A few, sir," the boy hedged, and Hibiki chuckled. The jeep rumbled through the city outskirts and the neon signs were left behind, replaced by what looked like homemade billboards standing in rickety queues in the sand and sparse grass on the highway shoulders. He could feel the heat of the sun through the windows, even though the air conditioning was on full blast, and the sweat trickling down his back and sticking to his knees and between his legs told him that it was going to be a long vacation.
          He did not attempt to talk to the boy for the rest of the trip, and the corporal didn't initiate conversation. If it had been a couple years ago, he would have persisted, tried to draw the other out into small talk, but through the years he'd realized that there were several types of people in the world: some liked to talk and some didn't, and a surefire way to alienate people was to try and make them talk when they didn't want to. It could be likened to torture, he supposed.
          The rickety billboards were few and far between now, and the highway a lone slab of gray concrete through brown and sickly yellow sand. Hibiki loosened his shirt collar, fanning himself with his hand. "Almost there," the boy said. "You can see the fence ahead."
          'Almost there' meant another fifteen minutes, three gate checks, and a vehicle inspection. The Flight Test Center was a large compound in the middle of nowhere, an enormous, flat mass of aircraft hangars, a few huge office-like buildings, and mostly made of concrete. He had a feeling he was going to get sick of concrete.
          "I don't have to live on base, do I?" he said, and the corporal shrugged.
          "I dunno, sir, you'll have to ask the colonel."
          The government vehicle parking garage was only slightly cooler than the desert air outside, and Hibiki was glad when the corporal beckoned him down an underground passageway leading to a sort of tram system which evidently connected the buildings together. There was a fair amount of traffic at this hour – mostly people in military uniforms talking on cell phones, bustling to and fro from terminal gates. It reminded him of the airport on a smaller scale. In uniform.
          "You'll have free use of the tram system," the boy informed him. "The colonel's office is probably where you'll be going the most, and of course the courtroom area. But the dining hall and other places like that are good places to know. I'll give you a tram map later."
          "That would be nice, thanks."
          He'd been expecting a slightly larger or more impressive tram stop at the headquarters entrance, but it was the same stark silver-gray-black with big, bold metal lettering that he had seen at the other tram entryways. UN SPACY EDEN HEADQUARTERS COMPLEX, the sign read, and he followed the silent boy up a sloping ramp, through two sets of double doors, and a moving walkway. He could tell that they were getting nearer the surface; it was getting hotter.
          Thankfully, they only had to go outside for just a brief moment, and then it was back to the blessed cool of the air conditioning, and the boy bowed again. Hibiki bowed back, wondering if the boy wasn't at least part Japanese, and decided that there was something at least faintly Asian in his face. "The colonel's secretary's expecting you," he said, and disappeared.
          Hibiki was left blinking in the large, cool space. The secretary was nowhere to be seen, and it was only after two slow glances around the room that he saw the big yellow button on the counter and the printed sign standing next to it: PLEASE RING FOR ASISTANCE. He wondered if he should notify someone that "assistance" was spelled wrong, then decided that his first task was to take in his surroundings.
          The entry foyer to the headquarters building had evidently been newly remodeled, because in contrast to the drab grey concrete elsewhere around the base, this building was all white, airy and floating with a feel that only modernist architecture could create. The front side of the room was entirely transparent glass set between white aluminum squares, and the floor was white as well, white tile with an off-white carpeted area on which stood several large, white leather armchairs and a glass coffee table with the latest copy of Airman's Magazine thrown carelessly against a stiff centerpiece of what looked like tufts of spray-painted hair. Strains of jazz music drifted from unseen speakers.
          He had raised his head to stare at the metal mobile swinging slowly from the vaulted ceiling next to the glass and metal spiral staircase, when someone cleared his throat.
          Hibiki jumped.
          "I'm glad you like my foyer architecture, Mr. Kanzaki," Colonel Millard Johnson said, standing with his hands on his hips in the shadow of the far doorway, "but time is pressing, and we have things to discuss."

UN Spacy High Command Fleet Satellite, Earth Orbit

          The latest report showed anomalies.
          There had always been anomalies, and the very essence of Project M revolved around these sound wave anomalies coming from deep space, but these particular ones were not good anomalies, and Konda was worried.
          They'd been monitoring these waves for the past year when they had started appearing from the direction of Quadrant 5, and he hadn't thought anything about it at first. Space was full of uncharted territories and strange happenings, and odd things did show up on the charts from time to time. But this was a regular occurrence, and had been for almost a year.
          He sat now at his desk, staring alternately at the computer screen and at the darkness of space outside, which seemed far more appealing than the brightly glowing blue plasma window in front of him. The cup of coffee that he'd poured himself two hours ago was now cold and lonely, because he had decided only after he'd gotten back to the office that he didn't want coffee after all, but was not inspired enough to get up and go pour it down the sink. So it sat.
          The Project M team seemed very much that way most of the time. They were, Konda reflected, one of those cold cups of coffee, something that people thought was a good idea at the time, something they drank with relish when things required it. But in the end, they were just another forgotten trifle, a luxury item to the UN Spacy.
          Britai didn't like that, but Britai had to do what the Defense Counsel told him to do, and that was that.
          Sir, he wrote, fingers tapping lightly on the keyboard over the worn keys. Attached is a report of several space sound wave anomalies that the Project M team has been observing over the past year. This may seem sudden and serious to you, but be assured that we would have let you know sooner if the situation had turned critical. I did not want to report it to you for several reasons.
          Konda stopped, chewed on his lip, started to delete the last sentence and then decided that what the hell, it could stay. Life wasn't going to get easier for him no matter how he worded it. He started typing again.

First was the fact that I did not want to worry you. You had the budget and the VF production and the Macross 7 fleet on your hands. Even if we had reported it, reports of unconfirmed sound wave anomalies would have been equivalent to saying that that there had been an explosion, but where, when, and what was involved was unknown. It did not help us, and would not have helped you.

Second was the fact that these sound waves move. For the most part they originate somewhere near Quadrant 5, near the Core. But every so often they move out, and the computer printouts will pick them up again near Quadrant 6, or Quadrant 4. And then a few weeks later they will be back in Quadrant 5 again. It's a very frustrating process to track these things, and it has taken us at least two months to perfect this technique.

But the most pressing reason, sir, that we have not told you, is we did not want to give anyone false hope. Everyone's thoughts, whether they say it out loud of not, is of the missing Megaroad 01 fleet. It was one of the underlying reasons Project M was formed, and people are too quick to jump to conclusions. If news of this leaked, the Galaxy Network would be over it within hours, and that is press that Project M does not want.

I report this to you now, sir, because I believe the situation has turned critical. I do not know why I feel this way, but I think that the recent events at the Protoculture dig on Varauta and these mysterious sound waves form a pattern that cannot be ignored. Add in the discoveries on Planet Lux by the Macross 5 and Macross 7 during the Varautan war, and we have several disturbing pieces of a puzzle, something that I am sure is just the beginning of the story. There is so much we do not know about the Protoculture, and I think we have just stumbled across much more than we can hope to swallow.

I would implore you to increase our funding and our manning, but I know the UN council would never agree. We will do as best as we can with the resources we have. I stay in constant contact with Captain Jenius of the Macross 7, and he has assured me he will do everything in his power to aid our research.

Zola

          The forest was dense here, and quiet. Were all forests so quiet? Basara had only been in one or two forests in his lifetime, but something was weird here, and he didn't like it. Elma had switched off the car engine, and he felt strangely vulnerable, and his fingers itched to grab the keys, turn the engine back on, if only to verify that it would still work. He could hardly see the sunlight between the branches of the tangled tree canopy above.
          This wasn't a place he would want to get stuck in after dark.
          "Oi," he hissed. "Elma. We should go back."
          The little girl sat hunched over the wheel of the car, her eyes scanning the thick trunks of the trees as if looking for something. He frowned as he watched her, but she straightened suddenly. Evidently, whatever she was looking for wasn't there, and she turned anxious eyes on him.
          "You won't tell Father, right?" she whispered. The forest had that effect on him too – it was even hard to breathe, as if taking in air through his lungs was even a violation of the laws of this place. "You can't tell him…he'll never let me leave the house again…"
          Basara imagined Graham's angry face in his mind, imagined himself being picked up the the nape of the neck again, and decided that definitely wasn't worth it. "You don't have to worry about that. But…look, I don't know where this is, and I don’t know what you're thinking. But it's seriously creepy in here, ok. I don't think we should-"
          "Get out of the car."
          He paused in mid-sentence, gaping at her as she swung the car door open. It creaked on its hinges as she stepped gingerly down off the running board. Her shoes squished.
          "Look here-"
          Elma glared at him. "Come on! We don't have much time!"
          He grumbled under his breath, but even grumbling here seemed like something that shouldn't be done in the shadows of the trees, so he simply blew out a silent sigh and slid out of the car, slamming the door. It should have echoed, but instead made just a muted thump, quickly silenced in the dead air.
          "I don't like this at all," he said.
          "Stop complaining, ok?"
          "Look, it wasn't my idea to-"
          "We can go back," she said, and he came around the side of the car, was surprised to see her standing there looking down at the soggy ground, face desperately downcast, hands hanging loosely at her sides, defeated. He kept forgetting that she was so young, and he felt mean. Here he was, almost thirty years old, bullying a child.
          "I'm sorry," he said, holding out a hand. "Here. Let's go. Where are we headed?"
          "Meanie," she sniffled, and he crouched down, tilting her chin up.
          "I wasn't thinking," he said honestly. "You've gone to a lot of trouble to get here, right? You think there's something here that can help me, and I trust you."
          "Someone," she emphasized. "Not a thing."
          "Someone, then. Saa, let's go." Holding out his hand again, and she hesitated, then gripped it tightly with her tiny fingers. Her palm was wet with cold sweat, and he wished he could give her some strength to chase away whatever it was she was afraid of. He could sing, but it seemed somehow wrong here, in the still air. It wasn't that he was afraid to sing here, far from it; he'd sung in worse places than this – Gepernitch's cave on Varauta came to mind – but singing here would feel like invading someone's most private space.
          Maybe he had grown up, he mused, and Mylene's face flashed into his mind.
          Elma tugged at his hand and he let her lead him into the forest. The car was lost to view too quickly for him to even look back, and he hoped fervently that whatever had led her here would lead them back out again. He didn't feel like wandering forever in this swampland.
          The ground was softer in some spots than others, and Elma had obviously been this way before, because she would warn him whenever it grew too unstable to walk on, would tell him what spots to jump over and how to navigate the tricky boglike traps that dotted the area. But the trees were the same – tall, forbidding, black even in the daylight.
          "Whoever lives here must be either really brave, or really insane," he muttered after one harrowing episode, in which he almost slipped into a pit of quicksand and expended much scrabbling and scraping to claw himself back out.
          Elma seemed to consider that. "He's not either, really," she said at last. "He just doesn't like people much. And he's been here for so long, you know, it's his home and he likes it."
          "Whatever makes this person happy," he said dubiously, and she stopped suddenly. He stopped with her, watching her as she turned her head this way and that, her eyes wide and almost feral, like a wild animal's. As much strangeness as he had seen in the galaxy thus far, he still felt his hair stand on end.
          "He knows we're here," she announced at last, and to his surprise, there was relief in her voice. The man they were going to see, then, was a friend? He hadn't seemed like one from the hints Elma had given earlier. He opened his mouth to ask, then decided that he'd better shut up for once and let her lead the way.
          It was not very far until the trees and the bog opened up into a sort of clearing area. It was obviously not a natural clearing, and stumps of trees and traces of draining and several ditches were visible. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to clear this land, and from the looks of it, it had been a while ago. Years, Basara was willing to guess, from the way it had been maintained. There was a small house in the middle of the clearing, and when he looked towards it he had to blink a few times to make sure he was seeing correctly, because the structure was almost an exact mirror of the Hoilie's house, from sturdy walls to stout roof, to smoking chimney to the designs on the door.
          "Father built our house modeled after this one," Elma explained softly, tugging at his hand. "That was a long time ago, before…"
          "Before?" he murmured, but she shook her head. He accepted the explanation and took two steps toward the dwelling, and stopped.
          In the doorway of the house, there stood a man.
          He wasn't anything Basara had imagined from Elma's brief hints. He'd been expecting someone like Graham, maybe, or at least a Zola native. Maybe a medicine man of sorts, or a fortune teller, or a magician, or whatever passed for mystical men around these parts. From the sound of her voice when Elma had spoken of him, Basara had at least expected someone who would look like he could find a lost red Fire Valkyrie and take it out of the hands of the troublesome poachers who had stolen it.
          But instead, the man who stood in the doorway was ordinary-looking, dressed in traditional Zolan garb, but unremarkable besides that. He had thinning black hair, tanned, weathered skin that had obviously seen much of the Zolan sun, a slightly lined face. His bearing and posture reminded Basara of someone very familiar, someone who was just on the edge of memory, but he couldn't place it. Annoyed, he scrabbled at his brain, which refused to yield him any information, and he searched the man's face as they drew closer, hoping to find some clue as to why Elma thought he was so important.
          And then it struck him. There was nothing at all remarkable about this man, and that was exactly why it was so strange.
          The man was human.
          "Hello Elma," the man called, and his voice was surprisingly strong, higher-pitched with a musical quality, not the sort of voice Basara had imagined coming from an older man's throat. They were close enough to see that the man was indeed human, and his facial features were very Asian. Japanese? Basara couldn't tell.
          "I brought him," Elma said, a little defensively as they stopped in front of the house, and the man smiled.
          "I can see. Welcome," he said, holding out his hand a little awkwardly, like a gesture long unused, and Basara stuck his own hand out, shook it warily, studying the stranger.
          "Nekki Basara," he said, and the man nodded pleasantly.
          "Pleased to meet you," he said. He did not give his name. Basara had learned enough from traipsing around the galaxy that people who did not give their names were either enemies or people who had something to hide, but the man didn't seem like an enemy, so whatever he had to hide was probably of no concern to a lone guitarist out in the middle of nowhere on a strange planet. He let it go, nodded at the man's silent invitation into the house, and stepped inside.
          As he expected, the interior was similar to the inside of Elma's house, though not quite as startlingly exact as the outside was. The living room in the front seemed a bit smaller, and from what he could see of the rest of the inside, the kitchen was longer and the back rooms were walled off differently.
          "Looks cozy," he said noncommittally, and the man smiled again politely.
          "Please," he said. "Sit. Would you like something to eat? Drink?"
          Basara shook his head. "No thanks," he said, but Elma brightened.
          "Juice!" she squeaked, and the man laughed.
          "Are you sure you want nothing?" he said to Basara, and Basara nodded. The man moved off into the kitchen. He was radiating…something. It wasn't dislike, but Basara instinctively could feel the wariness coming from him. Was he wary because Basara was a stranger? Why then, would Elma have said that she had brought him, as if it had been a request from the man himself? So many questions he wanted to ask, but instead, he simply sat and looked around at the sparse decorations adorning the walls, all of Zolan origin, it looked like, and the man returned with Elma's juice.
          "Now," he said, drawing up another chair and seating himself on the other side of the table, "I have an inkling of why you might have come to see me today of all days."
          "And what might that be?" Basara challenged. Elma sipped at her juice, seemingly unaware of the tone of Basara's voice, though he didn't put it past her to catch everything. She was a smart kid.
          The man steepled his fingers. "Two days ago, I seem to have heard something about some poachers. Poachers and a certain red Valkyrie that someone left parked and unsecure out by the docks." Brown eyes met Basara's in an easy stare. "That wouldn't have had to do with you, would it?"
          "I was going to go back to get it," Basara said through gritted teeth. "How should I have known I would be caught in some gunfight?"
          "That's one of the most important rules of piloting!" the man snapped. "Never leave your craft unsecure!"
          "Oh, since you know so damned much about-"
          "I thought you'd know something about how we can get Basara's ship back," Elma interrupted in her childish voice, and Basara broke off, scowling at the table.
          "The poacher's main headquarters is about three hours east of here," the man admitted. "But my intelligence network, broad though it is, can only do so much. As far as I know, they were taking the Valkyrie northwest. I don't know why they wouldn't bring it to headquarters, unless they were taking it to one of their smaller dockyards in the direction of Kashuchi."
          All the names meant nothing to Basara. "But can you get it back?" he demanded. "And how on earth are we going to catch these poacher people, if they keep running all over the place?"
          "I have ways," the man said, and his irritating calm was wearing at Basara's nerves. "I can't promise you immediate help. The poachers are sly people, as you know. They've been waiting for a Valkyrie for a long time, and since whale migration season is almost upon us, I don't want to know what they might do with an actual VF in their hands."
          "So you'll help us?" Elma said eagerly.
          "I'd be lying to say that I don't have personal interests in this as well," the man said, looking in Basara's direction. "However, the poachers aren't simply poachers anymore, no matter what people around here might think. They've grown into a much more intergalactic organization than that. It's organized crime at its worst. Basara, you need to know what you're getting yourself into."
          "As long as I get my Valkyrie back," he said, "I couldn't care less." The man's stare was wearing on him. He usually wasn't this short-tempered. At least, he didn't think so. "I gotta go to the bathroom."
          "Second door on your left," the man called after him and he stalked to the toilet, did his business, washed his hands in the stone sink with the small pitcher of water provided, and stared at himself in the mirror. It was too dark to make out anything except that he needed to shave, and he made a face at himself, closed the bathroom door behind him, and took a step back toward the kitchen.
          Stopped. Turned, walked through another doorway into another dark room.
          It was rude to wander through people's houses uninvited, but he knew that if he stepped back in there with the nameless man and the adoring look on Elma's face, he would probably end up storming out of there and getting lost in the forest somewhere. He wasn't sure exactly why he was so annoyed, but there was something about the man's attitude he didn't like. Maybe it was the way he talked, as if he knew so much more about Basara's Valkyrie and piloting than Basara himself. Maybe it was just that he didn't give his name.
          Maybe it was just that Basara hated meeting people who he had no reason to trust.
          For a brief moment, he wished he was back on the Macross 7 with his support network around him – Ray and Gamlin and Veffidas and Akiko and the Jeniuses. Only for a moment. He wasn't one for regretting the past, and he wasn't going to do that now. Instead, he concentrated on poking around the room, but there wasn't much – some old clothes, a dusty couch. It seemed like a storage room for discarded items.
          The only items of any interest were on the far side of the room, where a collection of small boxes and trinkets lay on a shelf, collecting dust. Strange, he mused, that a hermit like the man seemed to be would have all these old trinkets in his house.
          Wait.
          He reached forward slowly and picked one of the dusty pieces up. Blew on it. The bits of dust got in his eyes and he blinked rapidly, coughed under his breath, soft enough that the sound wouldn't reach outside into the kitchen. When his eyes had stopped watering and the thing he held in his hands looked the same as it did before, it was obvious that he was not seeing things.
          It was a VF-1 Valkyrie model. Very old, very rare, a definite collector's item. He'd seen one of these in a vintage store window once, the kind of store that only sold very old and very rare items taken from the exclusive collections of celebrities who had died or were giving up their things for "charity." It was the same model.
          What in the world? he thought, putting the plane down in a bit of a daze and picking up the next thing on the shelf. Blew on it. Dust flew off again, but this time he was prepared, closing his eyes and his mouth tightly, and the dust simply got into his nose instead.
          He sneezed.
          He heard footsteps in the hallway, but he couldn't turn around, couldn't look up, could simply stare at the thing in his hand. At the doll in his hand, because it was a doll – a very small, very old, very well-preserved, very rare collector's doll that some people back on Earth or even the Macross 7 would have killed to have their possession.
          The painted eyes and faded dyed hair of Lynn Minmay stared back at him, her sewed-on mouth fixed in a bright smile above her threadbare toy Chinese dress, her soft plush arms and legs limp. He wound the knob on the side, already knowing by heart the song that tinkled back out at him.

          kyun kyun kyun kyun
          watashi no kare wa pairotto…

          "What are you doing in here?"
          The voice was sharp, accusatory, entirely unlike the calm tones of the man who had faced him across the table a few moments earlier. Basara turned, timing his movements with precision, feeling a chill down his spine.
          The man was shorter than he was, he realized, shorter and leaner, and even in the dim light Basara could see the change in that expression. There was fear in those eyes now, he realized with a start. Fear and something haunted, and yet a longing…longing for what? The eyes flicked to the doll Basara held in his hand, and he had a sudden urge to throw it into a dark corner, to hide it out of sight. Her blank face and plastic eyes seemed to turn up to his, to smirk at the secrets it held. His stomach turned.
          "Get out of here," the man said, but his voice quavered, and Basara did not move. He realized then who the man reminded him of. The way he stood, the way he had spoken earlier, the way he carried himself, just like a soldier.
          Just like Gamlin Kizaki.
          All the signs were there, but he still couldn't bring himself to believe it. That the one the UN Spacy and the entire galaxy had been searching for all these years was right here on Zola, hidden away in a little hut in the swamp, hoarding discarded trinkets of the past in a darkened back room.
          "Ichijo Hikaru?" he said softly, and was rewarded by the spasm of a muscle in the man's cheek. But that was enough. He felt a strange surge of pity for the other man, felt all his antipathy of the past hour melt away into nothing. Somehow, in all his wildest dreams, this was not how he imagined it would be. It was supposed to be some UN Spacy diplomat, some explorer, in this house. Not Nekki Basara. "You're Ichijo Hikaru, aren't you?" Oh my God, he wanted to say, what are you doing here on Zola? Where's your wife? Where's your crew? Where's your ship? Where is Lynn Minmay?
          What happened?
          "How did you know?" the man whispered brokenly, shoulders slumping, and Basara held out his hand as the strains of Watashi no Kare wa Pairotto stuttered, stopped.
          "I…found your doll," he said.

 
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