Partial Truths
by Presley H. Cannady
ROBOTECH: SPECIAL I - FLIGHT OF THE LEOPARD
cannady@magiccarpet.com
_________________________________________
Copyright 1995 Presley H. Cannady
Copyright 1996 Anime/Manga Development Group
Copyright 1985 Harmony Gold
Copyright 1982 Tatsunoko Productions
Copyright 1982 Studio Nue
This story is not to be bought or sold, in whole or in part. The electronic
publication of this novel is intended for free access, and does not intend
to infringe on the rights of Harmony Gold USA. The author has not accepted
and will not accept any remuneration for this work. This book is a
combination of events from the series and source material, the RPG and
events of the McKinney Novels. Its canonical value is uncertain and is
completely of my universe design.
Thanks to John Tarnowski and Aubry Thonon, who've contributed to my writing
style...
Special thanks to Mad Mike Choi, whose callsign inspired me to design a
character around him.
Trivia: see if you can spot Patlabor references and then e-mail them to me
at the address below.
To comment on the content of the story, please write me at either the
Robotech or E-mail me at cannady@magiccarpet.com
__________________________________________
....dedicated to Pat Mataraza-1947-1995-the greatest principal any
middle-schooler could ever have
....and to Brian Daley, a loved part of the McKinney Family
_______________
* * *
Prologue- "...to whom do we ascribe this glorious honor?"
Loyalty is neither feasible to liege or ruler....
-Rathman, 2001
ATTACK VERITECH ARMORED CORPS: [2015- ] Incorporated
into the Robotech Defense Force in 2017 to coordinate and
formulate RDF Aerospace Force and Navy aerial TMU's. This
force was largely delegated responsibility in the field of covert
operations. With the formation of the REF in 2015, four
AVAC divisions were detached the Expeditionary mission-
the 15th, the 19th, the 21st and the 23rd. The remaining
AVAC divisions (up to the 22nd squad) were assigned to various
joint-TASC and Cosmic Unit operations, and saw very little
action until the Second Robotech War, save for small anti-
malcontent and later (following the REF's departure in
2022), anti-insurgency engagements and low-intensity fighting
such as the Rawlins-Delgado conflicts in the Southlands, the Ling
Chien War, and the Busan Manuever. The REF AVAC divisions,
on the other hand, were the secondary striking arm of the
Sentinels following the liberation of Karbarra from the Invid.
the 21st and the 23rd were immediately assigned high-key
special forces operations. Following the REF campaign
against the Invid, the 18th and the 21st, along with the recently
incorpoarated 24th, the 25th, and the 26th AVACs were reformed
to better handle the mop-up operations of outer-fringe
Invid bases.
-UN Spacy Technical Manual-Appendix E.: Military
Glossary, 2073
* * *
...2036
"LIEUTENANT!" A RATHER GAUNT REF MARINE LANCE CORPORAL RACED towards the
lieutentant, who had been patiently waiting for her escort for close to
fifteen minutes. The corporal's traditional early twentieth century buzz-cut
revealed his awkward set of ears, hinting at his Americana-Alabama ancestry.
Huffing alongside, a lovely cherry-blond private-first-class came to a halt
right behind her partner.
The lieutenant turned to face them. Her black version of the livery
donned by the Robotech Expeditionary Force's Naval Air Wing pilots absented
the winged-shouldered blue bussards and sported a comfortably-snug black
turtle-neck rising from between the stiffened collars. Her black-brown hair
was tied in a pony tail, falling just inside the exaggerated collar. Rachel
straightened her sleeves as she waited patiently for her escorts to catch
their breath.
"Begging the Lieutenants's pardon, sir! The corporal was never notified
of the Lieutenant's debarking plans, sir!," he apologize with detectable
sincerity.
"At ease, corporal," she glanced in the way of the private, whom the
corporal had picked up during the rush. Rachel honestly expected a naval
enlisted man, a spaceman-the space-theater equivalent of the late 20th
century wet-naval rank of "seaman"-traditionally on escort duty and armed
with a .22 caliber bolt action rifle. Under such short notice, however, a
Marine would have to do. The corporal led her down the corridor until they
happened upon a large and burly ebony-toned sergeant. Rachel nodded to her
escort, dismissing them, and turned to the tall and large Marine sergeant
guarding lift. He took over the escort duties with a firm glare and a hard
salute, and then repeated the ritual for the lieutenant. In the meantime,
Rachel's dark-blue eyes quickly darted about her.
The debarking bay was a modest-sized, simplistic, and glassy
structure-virtually a shortened octagonal hallway. This intermediate stage
between the receiving terminal and the main quarter of the station itself
was diaphanous to the outside world. The lieutenant took a keen fascination
to the view. Looking back as soon as she stepped out of the transparent
corridor, Rachel could see her home vessel of a full year, the UES
Patterson, disembark from her holding position; her Horizont-like design
augmenting the illusion of a giant eagle releasing her perch and soaring out
into the vast unknowns.
The doors opened to reveal a small, step-like platform leveled out
inside a transparent tube, angling downward some forty-something degrees.
She and the staff sergeant carefully rooted their feet onto the matting,
special fields taking note of their presence and "inertial-izing" the
platform. As the doors hissed closed behind her, the transport-platform
began to move at a rather high speeds; she could detect not even so much as
a discernible jerk. The shadows concealed much beyond a few hundred feet of
the station's massive interior; however, a few dim lights in the distance
shown on the skeletal array of Karbarran and REF vessels. Rachel kept
largely quiet to herself for the first leg of the trip down. The receiving
terminal pod they were heading for drew closer and closer, mile after mile.
On occasion, the sergeant would glance in her direction, before he let loose
a deliberate ahem and attempted to spark some conversation.
"Name's Biggs, sir," the sergeant finally said, also a hint of a Terran
Southern American accent, with a dash of Creole. Rachel didn't acknowledge,
so the sergeant tried again.
"Cole Biggs, staff sergeant E-5, 5th/19th Marine Corps," the REFMC
escort decided to introduce himself somewhat more assertively. "I reckon
you were recently with the 1st Omega-Clear, Navy, right?"
"You know about us?" she asked with deceptive insouciance. "I was led
to believe it was classified information."
Biggs swallowed a bit, but continued in the same affable manner in which
he began the conversation.
"What you people do, I dunno. But the name ain't classified, just your
group and your ops. I do like to keep up to date on things."
True enough. Rachel nodded and turned back to the window. A few
seconds later, Biggs tried to spark up some conversation again. "So what do
you think of the place, considering its your first time onboard?"
"Hmm?"
"The factory-what do you think."
"Astonishing," she dryly replied after a moment of consideration. Of
course, that was a drastic understatement, she realized. Try as she might,
Rachel could not ignore the sheer gradiousity of her surroundings. As the
transparent corridor seemed to stretch on for infinity, the darker areas of
the station seemed to illuminate themselves.
The Karbarran Robotech Station, listed as a G-96-type in the RRG's
analysis records of Tirolian artifacts and technology, proved to be one of
Tirol's most magnificent pieces of engineering. Her power source,
centralized like an internal sun, seemed to capture the warm glow of
Karbarra's own sun, Yirrbisst. Stretching one-thousand-seven hundred
kilometers in radius, it was the same oblonged, alien shape as her sister in
Earth orbit-a somewhat smaller and older model. That power source also
generated the special low-level forcefield preventing the satellite from
rending apart or causing severe shifts in her geosynchronus orbit. The
interior was completely different from the one Rachel had known as a child,
growing up largely on backwater and/or relatively peaceful action zones on
Earth-her militaristically-disillusioned parents. Hundreds of smaller
vessels and tens of capital ships did not even fill her still starving
interior-even an entire fleet the size of Dolza's would leave plenty of room
to spare. Millions of lights stretched alongside the inner curves-twinkling
like artificial stars in the distance-as Rachel could clearly comprehend the
massiveness of this place even to the Zentraedi Giants who had onced manned
it. Despite the Tirolian influence this station embodied, it was the hands
of Karbarrans were clearly at work here. Most of the station had refitted
over the course of nearly a decade, since its discovery by Expeditionary
Force mod-up crews from the Sentinels campaign. Even as the Plenipotentiary
Council and the SDF-3, playing nurse for her various escorts, continued an
ever-growing power struggle between her opposing factions on Tirol, a
contingent of former Robotech Defense Force regulars established themselves
as powerful detachments to each of the liberated worlds. Naturally,
Karbarra had come first. Though the famed Sentinels were unable to wait for
the ursinoid planet to produce vessels that would have assuredly cut the
Sentinel's crusade for independence short by a great many years, the old RDF
apparat from the Robotech Expeditionary Force successfully began rearming
the planet, assisting in the reconstruction of its planetary government, and
initiating its own power base away from the Southern Cross influenced
council. Now, the Karbarran Robotech Factory served as the base of
Operations for the still under-construction Mars Fleet and as the sole
contact with the Relief Group. The small flottila of REF vessels had
returned six years ago to a planet nearly forgotten by Tirol's new
generation of Terran colonists.
Rachel was literally looking inside the womb of one of the greatest
shipyards and manufacturing plants outside the Valivarre system. Massive
and self-contained, the Karbarran Factory had constructed some sixty-percent
of the Garfish vessels (Katana, Marathon and the experimental Callant
classes) that would return with the Mars Fleet. However, the crowning
achievement of the Robotech factory was the Xerxes-class Ikazuchi Command
Carrier The nearly completed refit of the De Ruyter took most of her view,
and she could barely see how the SDF-7 had evolved into the strangely
brick-like Zentraedi battlewagon basic design. The frame of the carrier
barely indicated its relation to the SDF-7 Ikazuchi carriers; a superclass
which included all the capital carrier designs of the REF: the Tokugawa, the
Xerxes, and the still-under-construction Thunderer classes.
Long-forgotten were the Ark Angel series of the SDF-7, a design which
had been scaled down to serve as mere assault carriers for the return fleet.
Three of the five vessels-the Ark Angel herself, the Amicable, and the
Patterson-remained. The Patrician and the Marcus Antonius had faded into
the past, reminders of treachery, valiance, and the general feeling of
weariness amongst the REF.
She closed her eyes, allowing memories to flood back into her
consciousness...
* * *
Two years ago...
"Oh shit!" It was the lethal dance imaginable. The Scout Invid mecha swung
around her gracefully, nearly tearing her Valkyrie's wing clear off. The
VF-1S seemed to tango dangerously with its sluglike opponent. "Fox Three
Charlie!"
Three missiles tore themselves out from their hardpoints and raced at
full speed towards the Scout; Rachel desperately veering away at the same
time. As the explosion cleared, she could see the Katana gunship and her
escort fleet of Horizont's descend into low-earth-orbit. The UES Hideyoshi
descended slowly, directing her Horizont's to place the Titan ground mobile
units. "Clean, clear and naked, boys!" she exclaimed into her radio.
Already, the thousands of Alpha Units from Cyphedia were moving into the
hive units of the uninhabitted planets. Next, relief shuttles departed from
the Hideyoshi, as the remainder of the fleet left the decimination of the
Tav'alea hive to Lieutenant Rachel DuBois' squadron. "All right, 45th, move
your asses!"
"Hey! Clear on this channel!" the lead Horizont, commanding a fleet of
four assault shuttle-carriers delivering the lead squads from the 45th,
67th, and 12th REF-ATACs, shouted back. "Get those damned Logans down here!
I read a thicket of these purple bastards at our landing coordinates!"
Already, a specially geared team of Cyclone and Logans were moving into
the West, as AJACs swept in from the East. It was a minor hive-everyone
knew that-so why sacrifice so many lives on a harmless raid when one could
nuke it? Politics, Rachel had already decided. Politicians trying to sway
the Plenipotentiary Council to their side, to do their bidding. The Super
Valkyrie raced toward the Logan-carrying Horizont shuttles.
"This is Bright Star, Green Noah Ark. Alpha and Beta units are in place."
"Roger, Bright Star," the pilot answered. "We've got Scrimm Inorganics
and Gurab Shock units ground based. Primarily Scrimms-that's what our
sensors say. Escort duty?"
"Just to deployment point. Let the rowboats take care of themselves."
"We hear ya' Bright Star," the Logan leader, a colonel, warned smuggly.
"You VT pilots always get so big in the head."
"Look whose talking, colonel," DuBois replied. "Good hunting."
"It's a small galaxy," the colonel replied. "What could go wrong? Over..."
A lot of things.
* * *
* * *
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/=<cannady@magiccarpet.com=================<Juu-nin to-iro>============\\
|=Author of The Robotech New Era Sagas, Crap Point, and Patlabor III ||
|=Founder and Chief Writer for the Anime Manga Development Group ||
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