It had been six months since the transports took them to the secret RDF military installation in Geneva.
Six months of near constant defeat at every turn in their insurrection, six months of stress and anxiety beyond the limits of human endurance. Lisa Hayes had had nearly enough. They needed a victory; needed it badly, and soon.
She stormed angrily out of her meeting with Colonel O'Grady, of the RDF Special Operations Service. O'Grady was jealous that Lisa had gotten promoted the way she had; his career went back over twenty years, dating from before the GCW. He resented her fast promotion, and, therefore, her authority. He said that her plans for the upcoming liberation of Marseilles were “uneducated, incorrect, and potentially destructive towards our own forces.”
She stormed down a blind corridor towards the firing range. When her anger would get the better of her, which seemed to be happening more and more often of late, she'd hit the firing range to take out her aggression. The range officer had been noticing her, and how her shooting had progressed, and was suitably impressed. She could place her shots within a half-inch of the intended target at 100 yards, and was able to put two shots in the same place at up to 75 yards.
Her anger hadn't cooled by the time she got to the range, so she paced and thought a bit, trying to calm down. The city was heavily garrisoned, with at least two full divisions of Zentraedi occupation troops, as well as air support in the form of space battlepods. The experimental VT's that they discovered at Geneva Base had been untested so far, and she was reluctant to use untested technology in the face of an overwhelming foe. Her pilots were green, and rookies weren't going to be able to turn back the tide of the onslaught that the Zentraedi forces could unleash.
Their target in the city was the command bunker, and the Governor-General, Zeraal. It was, quite simply, an assassination attempt, but a necessary one; Zeraal was the most brutal of all of Khyron's lieutenants, and his methods were harsh; for every Zentraedi soldier killed, they killed 50 humans. Besides that, the city, itself, was very strategic; free Marseilles and you gain a toehold in the Mediterranean.
Lisa's plan was to send Destroid units marching towards the Zentraedi left flank and send an amphibious infantry assault in from the riverbed to infiltrate the city and take Zeraal out. O'Grady laughed, saying she was too simplistic and could potentially cost the resistance a lot of equipment and men in the long run. He even said, in the presence of other officers, that a woman with a drinking problem like hers shouldn't have been promoted the way she was. She was too shocked to reply when he stumbled, laughing in her face, out of the conference room.
She decided, to hell with it. They would move in on Marseilles in two days.
It was 0100 in Marseilles, darkness was upon the land, and the wind blew a chilly breeze off the Rhone. Admiral Lisa Hayes was leading a detachment of naval infantry into the city. Their job was to assassinate Zeraal, and they didn't have much time. She took her rifle and checked the magazine; the ammo load for this was specifically designed to burrow through a Zentraedi males' head, a diamond-bore projectile with a tip from some Zen material that Miriya had introduced from her world. Lisa could only hope that it would do the damage needed to stop Zeraal.
Dressed all in black, from her boots to her neck, she tugged at her collar to make sure her flesh wasn't exposed and would not show up cleanly under the glare of a flashlight. She hated the black face paint she had to wear, but that reduced the chance of being spotted, as well. Her green eyes burned with an inner fire, a commitment she hadn't felt before. Her every step could be a step towards the liberation of humanity from the yoke of alien oppression, or towards her own funeral pyre. She calmed her breathing and took careful steps toward the building she had to climb.
The brownstone, or, rather, what was left of it, was between two and three stories high, and offered terrific cover for a sniper. Lisa crawled in beside a crumbled wall and took her position. The general's office was just across the alleyway, and the night's lack of moonlight offered her the perfect opportunity for the strike. Her companions took point guard around the building, looking for sentries and reinforcements. The normal squad leader, Lt. Greg Lee, took on the role as Lisa's spotter for her shot. “That's it. He's there. Don't get tense, Admiral. Take your time and line it up; make it count. You'll only have one good chance.”
Lisa took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and lined up the crosshairs gradually, gently. She found the nape of his neck, held the shot, and whispered to her spotter, “Call in the cavalry.”
At that signal, two divisions of Destroids slammed into the eastern city, along the riverfront, and headed towards the governor's palace. Sirens went off, diverting the enemy infantry, and Zeraal's head turned just slightly, intrigued at the notion that the Humans would dare mount an attack on his city. Lisa sighted in again and fired, holding in place after the bullet left the barrel, and watched as the Zentraedi general moved just enough for the shot to miss. “Oh, shit,” she hissed, as Lt. Lee whispered, “Get out. Move it.”
Lisa refused to move, so deep was she absorbed in the depth of her failure. “Admiral, ma'am, with all due respect, you have to get out of here.”
Lisa still didn't budge, so Lee threw her over his shoulder like a wounded comrade and extracted them both from the building. It was a dark night, and there was a lot of noise, due to the battle raging on the eastern portion of the city. They evaded the pickets and made their way to the river once again, then, inflating a raft, crossed the Rhone and hid on the opposite bank.
It was 0430, but Admiral Lisa Hayes couldn't sleep. She snuck to the edge of the trees, sat down, and stared out across the river. The moonlight danced across her hair as she thought. She couldn't believe she had missed. Her anger and eagerness had gotten the better of her, she knew. Even though she knew it was luck that had made the general move in his chair, she knew that, if she only had a little more patience, she could have gotten him that time. Combined with the futility of the Destroid assault on the city, in which they were badly mauled, they lost any attempt at following up on her miscue.
She was beginning to lose herself in the motion of the waves coming up on the shore when an aide came slowly up to her side. “Um, excuse me, Admiral, but the scouts came across something they think you'd like to see.”
“What is it, Major Sheridan?”
“Ma'am, they've found the SDF-1's protoculture matrix. It's showing up on our scanners back in the Alps, near what used to be the Italian border, and there's some unusual readings at the site. We figured you may wish to check them out yourself, once you got some rest.”
“How did we fail to detect that before we left?”
“My assumption is, Ma'am, that because it was dormant, it was invisible to our scanners.”
“Okay. Let's grab some coffee and get a pilot to take us back in a chopper. I don't want to tell the army that we came all this way for nothing; I'll have Major Chamberlain assume command, in our absence.”
“Are you sure you don't need any rest, Admiral?”
“No, I'm fine, Major; I'll go look now.”
Her aide shrugged uncertainly, and helped Lisa stand up. “Thanks, Erin.”
Erin Sheridan tugged at her fiery red ponytail and smiled. “I used to work on the SDF-1, myself, Admiral. I know how important you considered this matrix is to our cause.”
Lisa grinned; that was an understatement. “Major, radio the troops. We're heading back to the Alps again, and tracking down that signal.”
“Just what is protoculture, anyway, Admiral?”
Lisa stopped in her tracks. “Major, that information is strictly need-to-know only.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
Lisa offered her young aide a sly grin; Erin Sheridan couldn't be more than 25, and already a commander of such rank. Then again, Lisa, herself, was barely older than that, and already an Admiral. Such was life in the shrinking military. “But, that never stopped me before, as I'm sure you must be aware.”
Her aide simply smirked and chuckled lightly. Lisa gave it no notice and continued anyway. “I guess the best way to describe protoculture is to ask you to define yourself.”
“I'm Major Erin Sheridan, Robotech Defense Force, Serial Number…”
“I know that, but that's a label you are given. Beyond that, what are you?”
“A twenty-five year old woman.”
“Again, an artificial label. What are you?”
“A human?” By now, her aide was very confused.
“No, no. These labels we give ourselves, and others give us, are like boxes. Open all the boxes up, one inside the other, on down, and what is left inside them?”
“I don't quite get what you're saying, Admiral.”
“Nothing is left when we open that last box, Erin,” Lisa said as they started hiking towards the chopper's landing pad. “Except the empty space, which is an energy all its own. And what that energy is, is called protoculture. It is the energy, the matter, which makes up all things in the universe. The matrix that we had on the SDF-1 was the last known conversion generator, which could transform protoculture into pure energy. If the Zentraedi get their hands on the matrix again, and return it to the hands of the Robotech Masters, the two of them together could form a scourge that will make Dolza's fleet pale by comparison.”
“And what is their ultimate goal, Admiral,” Erin asked.
“That, I don't know,” Lisa admitted frankly. “But the mere thought of it scares me senseless.”
“We'll find it and defend it, Admiral. We'll do it,” Major Sheridan said reassuringly.
“I hope so; we don't have nearly the necessary amount of forces to do it with, and we're stretched thin as it is,” she replied, climbing into the chopper.
Erin didn't have a reply for her as they flew off in silence, with the dawn breaking slowly all around them.
(AN: sorry for the delay in posting; ff.net wasn't letting me cut directly to the RT/Macross page anymore (apparently, they upgraded or revamped their listing procedures) but I finished this chapter a week or two ago, and the next one just last weekend. So, please, review and enjoy!)