Macross Fan Fiction ❯ After Relfex Point: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit- ❯ Ceremony ( Chapter 2 )

After Reflex Point: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit-

Chapter II

Scott glided his Veritech through the perimeter line of Alphas the Earth Defense Force had set up on the outskirts of Reflex Point to screen airborne entrants to the ceremony grounds. The flight leader, Captain Harrington, had recognized Scott and gave him the honor of an escort to the landing pad. Scott was surprised to see any Alphas left in EDF service and told Harrington as much.

"They were in mothballs," the captain admitted. He wore the same set of CVR-4 armor (customized with dark black trim matching his hair and eyes) as the day he'd led the REF ground forces against Reflex Point. "The higher ups thought it would make for a more authentic atmosphere. Most of my boys are veterans anyway, so it suits us just fine. They're scheduled to make a fly-by of the orator's platform latter on…I'm sure they'd be honored if you'd them. You came prepared, after all."

"Maybe next year," Scott replied, cracking a genuine smile. Beneath them rolled a discreet verdant hill that a decade before had overlooked Reflex Point's central hive dome. Scott could almost picture the hundreds of Cyclones and Alpha Veritechs massing behind its slopes for a charge the likes of which the world had never seen before. The central dome itself had been immolated during the Regis's departure from Earth; at that location was erected a temporary dais along with various light and broadcasting towers. A pair of enormous vid screens behind the platform were displaying some kind of documentary clip.

Scott configured the Alpha into Guardian mode and descended on the landing pad, a fenced off, rectangular field patrolled at each of its corners by an Alpha representing one of four common color schemes. A black and yellow checkered Cyclone rider sporting a pair of flags waved him in to a landing. Scott shut down the Veritech and popped the canopy while the rider politely boosted up to the rear compartment to give Marlene a helping hand.

"These replicas certainly are marvelous," the man commented cheerfully, setting Marlene down and raising his faceplate. "You know, with the extra seat and all. You gave it an officer's paint job, I see." He noticed the "21" painted on the wing and added, "Scott Bernard's, if I recall correctly. You look like him, too!"

"You wouldn't believe how many people tell him that," Marlene responded jovially.

Scott grinned. "A bit overdressed, aren't you?" he remarked, gesturing to the Cyclone.

"Oh, this?" the rider chuckled, flexing the Cyclone's servos. "Just wait until some punk decides to 'jack your Alpha. When I tackle him with this rig…Wham!"

"So, is there anything in particular we should check out today?" Scott asked, a little confused by the attendant's colloquial language.

"You'll want to pick up a program, of course," answered the man. "But if I recall, Admiral Hunter himself is scheduled to give a speech in about an hour. Until then, they're playing a selection of surviving footage from the Robotech Wars on those big screens over to your left."

Scott paused for a moment to autograph the a holographic likeness of himself for a youngster who had recognized him.

"Nice hair," he observed as he handed the kid back his picture. From the looks of it, the boy had dyed his hair bright blue, sprayed it half a bottle of hairspray, and then covered it with a mixing bowl until it dried.

"Oh," the boy replied sheepishly. "I was trying to make it like yours and I guess I went a little too far. You're my favorite Robotech pilot, you know!"

"I have to admit, fame does have its high points," Scott said bemusedly, turning to Marlene as the youngster scampered off. She was studying with fascination a cloud of fuchsia colored cotton candy that matched her hair. "It's not for decoration, Marlene," Scott added. He was watching her tentatively pull off a strand when his ears caught the sound of his own voice over the loudspeakers.

"Rand, prepare for Beta-Alpha separation."

A fierce battle was raging in the vid screen's simulated night sky as the Veritech combination the camera was following threw itself into a series of complex evasive maneuvers. Scott did a double take.

"Preparations complete," Rand's voice answered a moment later.

Of course! Scott thought. It was Sue Graham's film footage, shot during his team's engagement on the very doorstep of Reflex Point. Scott had buried the footage along with the ill-fated photojournalist's body; however, it had probably been located by post battle recovery teams.

If the crowd was impressed by the sight of a single Robotech fighter splitting into two, they positively cheered as Scott and Rand switched to Battloid and went head-to-head with the command ship piloted by an Invid similagent. Scott's Alpha and the Invid exchanged missile fire. Scott corkscrewed the Battloid around and propelled it backwards in a desperate evasive action as he strained to destroy the projectiles tracking him with his hand cannon. The crowd watched in horror as Scott nearly collided with Rand's Beta. At the last moment though, he boosted up and over the other fighter as a half dozen of the Invid missiles splashed ineffectually against the Beta.

Someone in the crowd nearby was laughing rambunctiously. "What a jerk! Did you see how he used his own friend as a shield to brush those missiles off?" Scott's eyes flashed with a look of fury that anyone who'd ever known him realized was best received only after one's will was written out and notarized.

"Oh, knock it off," another voice responded. "A few of those little things wouldn't put a dent in that Beta."

"You traitor, I'm going to blow you apart!" Rand's voice boomed from the loudspeakers. The crowd laughed, but not loudly enough to drown out the running commentary.

"Do you suppose he's talking to Bernard or that similagent?"

"Quiet, I'm trying to listen!"

Rand's Beta charged the Invid Command Battloid, its triple hand cannons spewing blue lightning.

"No, Rand! Not until we know for sure," Scott cautioned him. There were still Invid fighters buzzing around, and Rand could be flying headlong into a trap.

Yet pundit was immediately indignant. "Hey! Whose side is he on?"

"Shut up already, Dan!" replied the other voice.

In a moment, the Beta's slugs tore through the Invid commander's ship, sending it literally into a headlong dive. The crowd roared with applause to see vengeance done to that defilement of the human form. Scott willed himself to walk away before he could hear the heckler's next jeer. But there was a part of Scott inside him wanted to listen; wanted to believe anything but the tripe about heroism everyone he'd spoken to insisted on heaping onto him.

"I tell you- That Bernard guy is way overrated! I mean, seriously- throwing your wingman between you and the enemy? No wonder he lost his entire squadron when Mars Division arrived!"

Suddenly, Scott realized that somebody else had been listening intently to what the critic had to say. Specifically, a someone wearing an REF veteran's vest. He spun the critic around by the collar and glared into the face of a youth's instantly contorted by fear and embarrassment.

"You dirty swine!" the veteran spat. "Without that man, you wouldn't even be alive today! Who do you think you are? What do you think you are?"

The cheers went silent as the vid image of a mortally wounded Invid similagent staggered across the screen a moment before the entire scene was stitched with annihilation disks. Gasps and murmurs rolled through the audience as the vid image went dark. The whine of descending Veritech engines over the loudspeakers, however, revealed that one segment of Graham's machine was still recording.

After an eternal moment of silence, Scott's urgent voice echoed over the speakers: "Graham. Sue. A-Are you all right?"

Scott would never forget the smug satisfaction on the photojournalist's pale face that nobody around him could possibly imagine now. "Seems I've got pictures of an Invid with the body of a human."

He turned away.

"Were they worth dying for?"

The assembled men and women were frozen in their places as though in awe. Marlene waited uneasily, aware that in the moments which followed were recorded the traumatic revelation of her Invid identity. But as the silence continued and the multitudes began to stir again, she remembered the imminent violence about to occur before her between the grizzled Robby and the impudent young man.

Marlene had ended many disagreements among her friends with a quiet word or even an unintentional scream. But before she could open her mouth, she found herself interrupted by the sense of a presence that had already effected looks of amazement across everyone within view of the scuffle. An older man- one with more than his share of subdermal scars- stepped between two combatants.

Only the veteran could speak. "Admiral Hunter, I-I…" he stammered, all his anger drained away.

Rick Hunter nodded. He looked at the people around him and waited a long minute before speaking. "Since I uh, retired, one of the things I've tried to do was read up on history," Hunter said to nobody in particular. "There was an interesting debate in the old United States before the Robotech Wars. There were some leaders who wanted to make it a crime to burn an American flag. They believed anyone who disagreed was unpatriotic."

Hunter turned and looked straight into the vet's eyes. "The irony is that allowing the flag to be burned without criminal charge in itself was something of a higher form of respect for the freedoms that flag represented. No matter what your strength, you'll never force respect on this boy. Please let our war be over."

Belatedly Marlene realized that Scott was nowhere around her. She spun around in time to see his retreating form vanish over a rise behind the throngs of visitors. She realized then that called his name could make no more difference now than all the than all the times the lonely cry of "Marlene!" had echoed over the barren land and into the angry skies so many years before. From the pit of her stomach radiated the shadowy hold of helplessness with a potency she had prayed was banished forever. She slowly turned back around, her mouth dried beyond words and her eyes anguished beyond tears.

Rick Hunter met her gaze and held out a steadying hand.

Scott ran his hand along the crumbling scarlet tube emanating out from the heart of Reflex Point. He knelt in a sea of knee high wildflowers which grew at the base of the tube, nourished by the green fluid that had seeped from the segments holed by cannon or plasma fire.

Crumbling was perhaps the wrong word to describe the residual presence of the Invid. The structure was decaying, slowly eaten away by clumps of lichen and the roots of tiny plants studding the jagged scars of battle. The material flexed organically under his fingers and retained an oily print long after he withdrew his touch. Scott regarded them with curiosity. The dark brown gloves he wore during the Invid War had long been a barrier to such marvelous little interaction with his environment. But Scott was also coming to realize that over time they had come to insulate more than just his hands.

"Hi, Scott. How's it going?"

Scott looked up with surprise at the sight of Rick Hunter standing nearby, the dark cape he wore quivering in the breeze. "Admiral, uh, sir-" he managed.

"I'm just Rick these days," Hunter responded with an easy smile as he stepped closer. "I'm glad you decided to come to the ceremony. If it weren't for you efforts, there wouldn't even be one, you know."

Scott's look of astonishment was immediately replaced with one of suspicion. "So everyone keeps telling me," he said dryly. "Marlene asked you to talk to me." It was not a question.

"She's very worried about you," Hunter replied, his cheerful expression waning somewhat. "I'm no psychiatrist, Scott, but believe me, I understand the uncertainty, the guilt a leader feels when looking back on his decisions-"

"I've already had this conversation with Marlene… Rick," Scott interrupted, his eyes burning with anger. "From day one, when I arrived with Mars Division- that one wasn't one of your better decisions, was it Rick…?…It was reach Reflex Point by any means necessary! Destroy the Regis! No questioning it. Ever."

"From what I'm told, you didn't unload your missile supply at the Regis when you had your chance in the central hive."

Scott was quiet for a long moment. "Facing the Regis in person was something of a shock," he said haltingly. "I mean, their drones are barely even alive, let alone sentient. And Marlene brought us there to talk to the Regis, to reason with her. To betray that-"

Hunter was nodding. "Marlene gave a face to the enemies on both sides. But Scott, by negotiating with the Regis, you achieved what no other leader before you managed to do: You came to terms with the enemy before it came to catastrophe."

"It was Marlene and Sera and Lancer who convinced the Invid to leave," Scott replied, shaking his head, "not me. I was out exercising my talent for killing Invid."

"Scott," Hunter said softly. "I can't expect you to let go of this, but what the war did to you isn't your fault…"

"Humph," Scott snorted, looking away.

"…It's mine," Hunter finished.

Scott gave him a quizzical look as Hunter leaned back against the Invid architecture, resting his chin on the back of his hand. "We- the REF leadership I mean- We'd been away from Earth for so long, fighting the Invid for so long, that we lost sight of the fact that the very reason the Expeditionary Force was created was to secure the safety of the Earth and the survival of humanity."

"Like when you decided to use the Neutron 'S' missiles against Reflex Point?" Scott asked, with a hint of remaining anger.

Hunter nodded uncomfortably. "One of the reasons the REF made its decision to abandon the safety of Tirol and begin a campaign against the Regis was the conviction that the people of Earth deserved just the same opportunity as we had to choose their own destiny. But when Mars Division and Point K were wiped out, the Council decided that victory had to be ensured regardless of the cost, even the annihilation of our ground forces and half the planet."

Scott regarded with ambivalence the man who had been something of an idol during his youth. "And yes, Scott," Hunter went on, "although I argued against developing the missiles from the outset, I willingly agreed to obey the Council's decision to deploy them if it were determined the battle could not be won. The alternative was to wait for the day when the Regis had harvested enough Protoculture to become unstoppable and crush the entire galaxy at whim. And from the moment we realized that the Regis would probably exterminate every man, woman, and child once she no longer needed them, believe me, all of us began to see that it was worth sacrificing even half the Earth to end the threat."

"You don't need to explain yourself to me, Admiral Hunter," Scott said through clenched teeth.

"But you must understand what happened," Hunter said beseechingly. "I know now that we made a mistake…That we betrayed all your and everyone else's trust. But it wasn't just the Neutron missiles! When we trained the next generation of soldiers like yourself, we turned the mission into a holy grail that mattered above all else."

Scott did not respond.

"I can't help but wonder if we were unconsciously emulating the Robotech Masters in creating an entire generation hardwired into the imperative of a mission," Hunter mused, unable to look Scott in the eye any longer. "It wasn't just you, but also people like-"

"Sue Graham," Scott interrupted, her voice ringing clearly through his head. My motto is to worry only about the assignment I've been given. For me, that's the bottom line…

"Yes," Hunter agreed. "But give yourself credit when it's due, Scott. You led your band overland to Reflex Point without losing mecha or man. You did not sacrifice their lives recklessly to your mission."

…And for me it's the survival of the people of Earth! Scott remembered telling Graham.

"As for your leaving the negotiations with the Regis-" Hunter went on. "-Your motive to defend your team and the rest of the REF pilots from Corg's depredations was the right one."

"Don't presume to know my motivations, Rick."

Unexpectedly, Hunter leaped up as though renewed by his act of confession.

"Hey, Scott, what do you say we take a little flight? If I recall, today's parking permit manifest, so to speak, listed an Alpha registered to your name."

Scott was dumbfounded. "Aren't you scheduled to deliver a speech in 15 minutes?"

Rick put an arm around Scott's shoulder. "I asked Lisa to pinch hit for me just this once. I figure this is more important, right?"

Scott didn't look convinced.

"The people of Earth waited 25 years for Admiral Hunter's return," Rick replied. "They can wait a few more minutes."

Scott permitted himself a tiny smile. "Well, she's an Admiral Hunter too, isn't she?"

The Alpha that flew off ahead of Scott's right wingtip was a unique sight in Earth's skies. A VAF-6Z, Hunter's Veritech was a up-engined rarity like Rook's red. But it was the paint scheme really set it apart from any other, save one well-known museum piece. The painted all white, excepting the black and yellow tail emblazoned with twin skull and crossbones. Scott was surprised that Hunter didn't choose a Valkyrie Veritech instead; he supposed the Admiral had become more accustomed to flying an Alpha during the Sentinels campaign.

"Through it all, the only thing I ever wanted to do was fly…" Hunter was reminiscing over the communications line.

"…Which is why you resigned your commission and took carefreely to the air instead of voyaging to Tirol," Scott said cynically.

Rick ignored the jeer and threw the fighter into a lazy roll. Scott watched the showboating with irritation, holding his Alpha steady.

"Now that the Robotech Wars are over," Rick continued "of course I go flying every chance I get. I've even considered starting a Flying Circus like my father's."

"I already know who your clown is going to be," Scott replied.

Rick laughed, dropping back alongside him. "Fact is, I can tell by the way you're flying that you're selling yourself short."

"What exactly do you want from me, Admiral?" Scott asked angrily.

"Let me ask you something, Scott. Did you ever once have the urge during the Invid War to just say, 'Protoculture emissions be damned' and go tearing across the sky?"

"More than once," Scott had to admit.

"You're still flying like you half expect a patrol of Invid to jump you the moment you drop your guard," Rick continued.

"I appreciate your concern," Scott replied, without the edge that had returned more and more often to his voice. "But where's this conversation going, Rick?"

"I think your life is somewhat analogous to your flying, Scott. From what I understand, it took you a long time to open up to your teammates during the war. But now that you no longer have a mission, you've retreated within yourself again."

"As if I needed you to tell me that," Scott growled. "I would imagine that's pretty obvious by now."

"The country I was born in issued an declaration almost three centuries ago which still means a great deal to me these days," Rick went on, undeterred. "It read : 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--'"

"Unalienable," Scott mused.

"You and I both know that nothing can change the fact that it is only the rare individual throughout human history with the opportunity to experience these rights. That's just it, Scott. The opportunity. It is the opportunity that's yours," Rick pleaded. "Please Scott. All humanity has finally been granted the first two. But no person, no force in the universe, can confer happiness on you without your consent. I urge you not to turn your back on the pursuit of happiness just yet. You're not alone anymore."

At that, Rick Hunter throttled the Veritech up into a booster climb that gracefully swept aside the pallid bank of clouds before it.

"The very words 'Reflex Point' evoke a raw emotional power in most of us. It is a symbol no matter how you look at it… An objective, an abomination, even a home of sorts for a minority among us," Lisa Hayes Hunter said, glancing towards where Marlene was seated as she spoke the last words. It had taken some last minute haranguing of the organizers for the former SDF-3 captain to secure a pair of sears for the Bernards in the VIP section. They ultimately relented when Lisa observed just how much the existence of the ceremony itself relied on Scott and Marlene's actions a decade before.

"…and who among us is not thinking about the climatic battle which took place on this hollowed ground, as well as in the air and space above? A battle in which humanity looked into the dark heart of an alien race and saw its destiny more clearly than ever before."

At once Marlene felt an arm curving around her and the touch of Scott's lips on her cheek. Her heart swelled with exaltation as she gazed into blue eyes twinkling with long overdue laughter.

The roar of Veritech engines reverberating from horizon to horizon brought them back to the world they had lapsed away from. Thousands of solemn faces looked skyward as the silhouettes of a closely knit formation of Valkyries, then one of Logans and Alphas streaked through the thin veil of clouds above. Directly above what had been the center of Reflex Point, a single fighter from each flight lurched straight upward and away in a classic execution of the Missing Man formation. And Scott had a sense that more than one gentle soul was up there with them.