Macross Fan Fiction ❯ Underground Down Under ❯ Look Into the Flame of Truth, For It Is Your Doom That You See… ( Chapter 9 )

Robotech: Underground Down Under

Chapter IX: Look Into the Flame of Truth, For It Is Your Doom That You See…

As evening fell on the edge of the Gibson Desert, east of Lake Disappointment (a name which was something of an omen of doom such that the ACIF avoided referring to it in all navigational discussions), the freedom fighters settled in for the night.

Sabol, Radice, Owens, Pike, and Rodgers set up their tent in a scoop of land with a clear view of the surrounding countryside. As cheerful as Sabol had been earlier in the day, an icy chill gripped at his heart by day's end. The feeling was ambiguous, of course. There was a loneliness in the landscape which had begun to remind him of the Moon, and all the bitter memories that place had held. The others regarded him with curiosity when he rather senselessly decapitated a stand of nearby Flowers of Life with his entrenching tool, filling the air with swirling spores.

It would have been easy to blame the narcotic sniff of the spores for his inability to sleep that night but for the fact that he'd suffered bouts of insomnia ever Since the Second Robotech War. Certainly, given the preoccupation of his thoughts during the preceding day, it was not at all surprising that when Sabol finally did drowse off in the early morning hours, that he found himself in a vivid mental reconstruction of one ALUCE-1's hanger launch chutes. Yet regardless, the conceited voice which came from behind him caught Sabol's mind completely off guard.

"Hello, Gord."

"B-but, you're dead!" Sabol stammered weakly. Already, he sensed something strange and alien in the dream; there was a self-awareness and lucidity that was in sharp contrast to the stupor like interaction which characterized most subconscious experiences.

Lieutenant Driss answered crystal clearly regardless: "You always did think that way, Sabol. Don't you recognize a hallucination when you see one? Anyway, all of humanity is as good as dead, some just don't know it yet."

Sabol opened his mouth to protest, but Driss cut him off with a savage glare. He leaned against a nearby Gyro Coptor with a clank of TASC armor and folded his arms casually.

"Do yourself a favor and shut up for a bit. You can always listen to yourself talk some other time. Remember, I'm only a product of your mind, and if you hadn't already considered what I say as a possibility, you wouldn't be hearing it."

"I don't recall ever giving up on humanity's chances for survival. That's why I'm here." Sabol looked around, and began again. "Or at least where I really am."

"Then let me remind you of a few things," Driss snickered. "The UEG is gone, the UEF is crushed, Earth is a slave colony, and for all you know the REF doesn't have a clue what's going on. You're carrying out a mission for a burned out old ass to prepare for a hopeless strike on the Invid headquarters. ALUCE-2 was only equipped with a modicum of experienced combat pilots, and if Nobuto uses them for a strike on Reflex Point, they're be slaughtered. Neither Wolff nor Nobutu have the slightest idea how fortified the Invid are, and they've already rushing headlong into an attack.

"Have you forgotten," Sabol replied angrily "that I'm here precisely to learn what Reflex Point's strength is? Colonel Wolff might not be emotionally stable, but he's still the most talented ace on Earth. And if Nobutu is indeed planning a strike, he will have made certain that his pilots are well trained first."

"Get real. Wolff may have fooled that naïve dolt Carpenter with the bit about this mission to gain reconnaissance, but he couldn't fool you," Driss sneered, looking chillingly into Sabol's eyes. "We both know that Wolff sent you on a suicide mission because you constantly questioned his motives, like siphoning Protoculture off from the UEF even before the Invid invaded. One man, one Veritech, trying to contact a group he doesn't know the location, strength, or motivation of to activate a network that may not even function. The only reason you'd even consider going on such an idiotic crusade in the first place is that you'd never bring yourself to betray authority, right or wrong. Which is why you stayed at ALUCE-1 when the rest of us-"

"Enough!" Sabol cut him off in a fury.

Driss smirked. "One more thing I'd bet the Aussies would love to know, eh Gord? Oh, and I wouldn't want to forget your dear General Nobutu. Who has been promoted far beyond his experience by virtue of survival, such that he feels embarrassed if a member of his command refers to him as anything but 'Captain'. Which is why you asked for a transfer in the first place. And he's not the only one who's been given more responsibility than he deserves, is he, Gord?"

Sabol said nothing, fuming.

"Let's see…Did you give the Australians the same bit you gave Wolff about enlisting in the Southern Cross to secure a future for humanity? Or did you admit that you enlisted just because you were so afraid of being prostrate before a galaxy of invaders when the war came? I don't suppose you've bragged to your new friends about your actions at the end of the Masters' War either… but hey, you were 'only obeying orders'…"

Sabol finally broke contact with the wicked gleam in Driss's eyes and turned away.

"I'm only telling you've already contemplated but refused to accept, lest it compromise that pathetic optimism of yours," Driss continued to his back. "Ignore me at your own risk, Gord. Don't forget the last thing I said to you, that day back on the Moon. Because the universe is out to destroy you, Sabol and you've brought your death upon yourself by your refusal to believe it."

Sabol woke, his flight suit soaked with sweat. He checked his chronometer; of course it was about an hour after he'd finally succumbed to sleep. REM cycles wouldn't have allowed any less. The others in the tent were stirring as well; light sleepers all, asking him with concern what the matter was. It was a matter far deeper and traumatic than any of them could conceive or even understand. And so Gordon Sabol lied, if one could call the simplifying truth stretching process he so frequently engaged in "lying".

"Just woke up a little early to take watch. Go back to sleep," he said. There would be many dull hours ahead to brood over the renewed abyss of shame that was his heart.