Macross Fan Fiction ❯ Legend of Megaroad -- Book One ❯ Introduction ( Prologue )

--INTRODUCTION--

In mankind's exploration of space he has discovered many obstacles and many unpleasant surprises, as a man in my position can more than attest to. The first space voyagers often fought battles against their own ship, struggling to survive in conditions totally alien to human existence in space craft built by inventive cavemen. The age of exploration had proceeded at a snails pace until July 17 of 1999, the day space station New Frontier detected a strange energy from a point Lunar orbit on a collision course with Earth.

Falling from the sky at incredible speed was the great hull of that grand battleship we now call Macross, the same vessel that even today stands in the center of Macross City as a monument to human achievement. With the crash of the alien starship on South Ataria Island, a new age was born in space travel. Humanity began to reverse engineer what was left of the great warship and study what they could salvage while at the same time rebuilding the ship for their own use. Reflex weapons, nuclear devices more powerful than the largest atomic bombs, now filled our stockpiles and all were aimed at the stars in preparation for the invasion we all foolishly assumed would be right behind this vessel. Mankind's first space warship, the Oberth, rolled off the assembly line some years later, a mobile missile platform with enough firepower to blast an entire continent flat. Others like it were soon to follow, as well as the ARMD space carriers and the blueprints of the overtechnology Spruance class destroyers, and before long the alien technology even gave us the ability to fold space between interstellar distances, traveling distances in minutes what would normally take centuries for a single space craft. All of these achievements paled in comparison to the Macross itself, the ship that was to be the flagship of the United Nations Space forces and the most powerful battleship the world had ever known.

On February 7 of 2009, space carrier ARMD-01 detected another defold in our system. An advanced fleet of Zentradi warships, 100 in all, entered the solar system in pursuit of a Supervision Army gunboat, later learned to be the ship we now call the Macross. The Zentradi are a puzzle that has only recently been solved, a race of clones in the image of their creators standing on average 55.4 feet tall. In the traditional Zentradi fleet, most men have never seen a woman, as most women have never seen a man. They function in separate vessels and fleets, not daring to come in contact with each other for some consequence no one is exactly sure. Commander Britai Kidronak, at that time a loyal officer of the Zentradi space forces, tracked the vessel to Earth and sent a scout team to determine its whereabouts. In this way did mankind learn... the hard way... an interesting fact about the Zentradi's nemesis the Supervision Army: they like to booby trap their ships before they abandon them. Acting on an automatic sensor system that had remained dormant for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, the main cannon of SDF-1 Macross opened fire from South Ataria island. Two Zentradi vessels were struck dead center by the beam, both were destroyed instantly. The Zentradi saw this as an act of aggression by their ancient enemies, and according to standard procedure they advanced on Earth.

So began the first battle of Space War I. SDF-1 Macross powered up its newly restored systems and launched into space to join the fleet. UN Spacey forces, 2 ARMD carriers and 3 Oberth class destroyers counter attacked the Zentradi as they came into range. That first battle was heated but severely one sided; both of the carriers were blasted to stardust, and the destroyers Miranda and Akishima were lost with all hands. SDF-1 managed to escape the battle by folding space still within the planet's gravity well, a maneuver which we now know produces a very random exit vector when one comes out of hyperspace. The Macross, several naval vessels and the population centers on South Ataria Island ended up in space beyond the orbit of Pluto with their fold system very much inoperable. (Inoperable being technicians jargon for "vanished without a trace.") The Zentradi forces were not far behind them, and the ship fell under almost constant attack as it took in survivors from the ill fated island.

A running battle ensued across millions of kilomters. The Zentradi fleet chased the Macross halfway across the Solar System on its journey back to Earth, attacking at every opportunity with hopes of capturing the vessel and some of its advanced technology for their own war against the Supervision Army. As a veteran of the war, and as a former crewmen of the Macross, I myself must say the ship fought splendidly under the circumstances. The entire Zentradi fleet spent almost a year pursuing this ship across space on the way back to Earth, ignoring the UN Spacey fleets completely, focusing all of their attention on that one solitary battleship. In that time, through the need to gather intelligence about their enemies, the Zentradi came in contact with human culture, at the same time we began learning more about them. The Zentradi became utterly confused by even the most basic concepts of our society, barely even grasping concepts as basic as entertainment or love. The reason for this is simple: the Zentradi are a race of clones, genetically engineered for nothing else but warfare and kept in stasis until needed for duty. I have met Zentradi warriors almost 400 years old who have accumulated a total of 8 years life experience, and a few noted individuals aside, most in the Zentradi fleet rarely surpassed the intelligence... or psychological maturity... of elementary school children, though their militaristic discipline and supurb battle record would seem to suggest otherwise. Even the song stylings of the (now infamous) Lynn Minmei left them shaking their heads in wonder, and it wasn't long before they began to grow accustomed to the new culture of the tiny humans. In fact, some of them even began to like it.

This came to our credit on February 11 of 2010, when news of "contamination" by micronian culture reached the ears of Gorg Bodolza, supreme commander of the Zentradi for this region. Not wanting to repeat past mistakes with the Shiar-zentran and a few others, Bodolza gave the order to remove humanity from the universe. What happened next went down in history as the greatest battle mankind had ever known; the Bodolza main fleet, a fleet of almost 5 million warships folded into Earth orbit. Hundreds of thousands of gunships powered up and prepared to fire, and alarm bells rang all over the UN Spacey as missile silos opened their doors and pointed at the now starless sky. UN Spacey fired the first shots of that fateful battle as the ground defenses, 8 ARMD carriers and 130 Oberth class destroyers filled the skies with reflex missiles. 2,000 Zentradi vessels were destroyed and thousands more were damaged, and then the Zentradi returned fire.

The gunboats released a surge of reflex energy unto the Earth, tearing through the UN Space fleet and sweeping away just over half of them in an instant. In what would some day be called the "Rain of Death" hundreds of thousands of beams from the gunboats smashed into the Earth, each turning matter into energy and producing an explosion equal to a thousand Hiroshimas with every blast that hit the ground. The bombing swept it all away, the cities of Europe, the golden fields of the Ozarks, vaporized the Florida Everglades. Tokyo vanished in the light of a fireball and seawater rushed into fill the huge crater... and the summit of Mount Everest was lowered by a thousand feet as energy beams scimmed the summit on the way to strike Hongkong. Even New York, and the newly rebuilt World Trade center after its destruction by anti-UN terrorist were scattered into dust. The Earth, scorched and cratered, was now dead.

As the remains of the UN Spacey battled for their very survival in space and on what was left of the Earth, the Zentradi forces of Britai's fleet and a few others who had been "contaminated" by humanities culture gathered for what what they called "Operation Minmei." The plan of attack was simple, broadcast songs and video images to the Bodolza fleet as a distraction while the Macross and its Zentradi allies attacked Bodolza's command fortress. Much to the amazement of everyone involved, (myself included) it worked. The Zentradi forces were greeted with the image of a 16 year old girl dancing on stage and the shock of hearing music for the first time, not even noticing the Britai fleet and the Macross opening their gunports. A barrage of reflex missiles from SDF-1, and the timely arrival of ARMD-3 and ARMD-6 to the battle gave Macross a clear path to attack Bodolza himself. Macross used a maneuver we now call "Nova Bursting" to destroy the command ship with one shot, along with a sizeable portion of the Zentradi fleet. In the panic that followed, and several hours of battle later, the now leaderless Bodolza fleet scattered in every direction in search of greener pastures. Space War I was over.

Earth had been bombed back into the stone age and the UN fleet was in ruins, with a single ARMD carrier and 4 Oberth space destroyers, but there were survivors. Some of the Zentradi fleet joined forces with the UN Government, and Commander Britai loaned us the cloning chambers the Zentradi used to reproduce themselves. Mankind began to rebuild, slowly at first, then in great leaps as new humans and Zentradi stepped out the cloning chambers and began to be integrated into society. Eventually, it was even learned that the Zentradi, despite being nearly ten times our size and many times stronger by proportion, were almost genetically identical to humans. Through use of the cloning chambers it became possible to reduce the giant's size to that of a human, and so the population of mankind suddenly doubled. But we all knew then that we'd been lucky, dodged the bullet of extinction by a narrow margin of 850,000 survivors out of a population of 6.3 billion. We knew mankind could not afford to remain grounded on Earth any longer, and it was time to move outwards and find our place in the universe.

SDF-2 Megaroad-01 was designed to do just that. The famous colony mission commanded by Misa Hayase Ichijo left Macross City in August of 2012 on a course that would take them in a loop around the galactic core in hopes of finding remains of the protoculture. 80,000 humans and Zentradi went with them along with a small escort fleet. We followed their progress with high hopes, even as the Megaroad-02 and 03 were under construction.

In 2016, shortly before the launch of Megaroad-05, the Megaroad-01 colony ship deviated from its planned course for reasons unknown and moved towards a location on the opposite side of the galactic core. Following the reports of this course correction, all transmissions abruptly ceased, and Megaroad-01 was never heard from again.

******

That was 35 years ago. It is the year 2051, a time when the UN Spacey is once again licking it's wounds after a conflict of truly epic proportions. It is only now, 6 months after the armistice of the Second Space War that I can put my thoughts into words that make sense. Unlike the previous war, the UN Government is intact, so is Earth, and so are the Zentradi. And so, it would seem, is the Stellar Republic of the protoculture. This comes as little consolation to many people on both sides who, like myself, have lost family in this conflict. 8 months ago I buried my two oldest daughters, since then millions have joined them in mass graves or floating in space among the wreckage of so many shattered space craft.

In the months and year during and after the war, I have seen wonders I can barely describe in writing; I have seen the moons of the protoculture's home planet, I journeyed to the new home world of the Stellar Republic. I have seen the remains of the Berren system, 11 planets shattered by fold weapons eons ago. I have seen Lynn Minmei dance in a beam of light as if it were a living thing. And I have seen SDF-2 Megaroad-01. After 35 years the story can finally be told, thanks in part to the testimony of those most directly involved, and recently declassified documents within the UN Spacey and my personal correspondence with Former Chairman Bruno J. Gloval. The time has finally come for mankind to know the truth.

The people of the Republic call this "Megaroad Elukesto'ru." The closest terran translation is "Documented History of the Megaroad." My wife however, informs me that the word "Elukesto'ru." is used in a different context than human words for "history," and as she explains it the most appropriate translation is "The Legend of the Megaroad." I tell this story this for one reason, as my friend Hikaru Ichijo said it best almost 3 three years ago to the day. "History is like a swinging pendulum; sometimes it hits you. But if you keep an eye on it, it'll only hit you once."

- Fleet Admiral Maximillian Jenius

37th Colonization fleet