Chapter 4

Deep inside the SDF-1, David Marshall lay stretched out on a gurney, oblivious to all the commotion around him. Thousands of wounded survivors from Macross Island, military and civilian both, were crammed into cubicles and curtained areas as overworked medical personnel worked feverishly to save their lives. 

A doctor snatched up the folder that lay on David's chest. He quickly scanned the information scibbled within and turned to the group of nurses and aides that were accompanying him. "First and second degree burns to the hands and neck, deep laceration to the left thigh, laceration to forehead, broken nose, probable concussion." He lifted the edge of the bandage that was wrapped around David's leg. "Hmmm.... he'll need stitches and a unit of plasma, as well as some sterile dressings for those burns, but he'll live. Place him in the non-life-threatening injuries category." The doctor nodded to one of the nurses. "See to his injuries." 

"Who do we have here?" the doctor murmured as he read the folder for the next patient. "Lieutenant Christina Leeds." He checked for a pulse, sighed, and signed one of the papers inside the folder. "This one's had it. Wheel he over to the temporary morgue and find out if she has any next of kin." 

He straightened as the dead woman was wheeled away. "A pity. We're going to need all the pilots we can get our hands on." 

"David! Hey, David! Wake up, you lazy-ass!" David groaned and tried to push away the hands that were shaking him out of his peaceful slumber. Blinking wearily against the light, he turned to see his roommate standing over him, grinning. "Whazzup, John?" David mumbled, rubbing his eyes. Then he noticed that John was already in his cadet's uniform. "What time is it?" 

"It's oh-six-thirty, David. If you don't get a move-on, you'll be late for you solo at oh-eight-hundred." John poked him savagely in the ribs. "And you know how Captain Yonchak gets if you don't show up at least thirty minutes early." 

Slapping John's hand away, David pulled himself to a sitting position and stretched. "Six thirty? God, I still have an hour to go yet." 

John snorted. "Yeah, right. Just like you have two hours to get ready for inspection last week." He made a show of examining the buttons on the front of his uniform. "You got there ten minutes late, if I remember correctly." 

David opened his mouth, paused, then closed it with a sigh. "I suppose you're right. But this is different - this is flying, not some stupid classroom garbage that we'll never use in real life." 

"Whatever you say, buddy." John picked up his dress cap. "Just make sure you get there on time. I'm scheduled to go up right after you, and if you don't show up Yonchak will chew on my ass." 

Doctor Aman examined the sutures that had been used to close the ragged wound on David's leg. "Very nice job, very nice. He's gonna be in some pain after this, but he should heal nicely." He lifted up the corner of a dressing. "Take him to recovery area sixteen.." 

David held his head high as he walked into the training room. Many of the cadets in David's class were already present, and he spotted John sitting near the front, an empty seat beside him. Tucking his cap under his arm, David headed for a seat in the back. 

"Cadet Marshall, why this is a pleasant surprise." David snapped to attention at the sound of Captain Yonchak's southern drawl. He glanced over to where the captain was standing - standing nearly six feet tall and built like a tank, the captain was hard to miss. 

The captain glanced at his watch. "I AM impressed, Cadet Marshall. Nearly fifteen minutes early. I think this is a new record for you." 

"Sir, I know how much you hate it when I'm late, sir!" David barked. "So I'm turning over a new leaf, sir!" 

Captain Yonchak paused long enough to allow the snickers to die down before replying. "I'll believe that when I see it, Cadet. Now take a seat." 

"Yes, sir!" He headed for a seat in the back corner of the room. 

"Cadet Marshall?" 

David paused. "Sir?" 

The captain smirked at him. "Why don't you sit up front here, next to Cadet Phillips? If you wouldn't mind?" 

He sighed. <Of course I mind, you cocky...> "Yes, sir!" 

As he settled into the seat next to John, who was trying hard not to smile at him, David couldn't shake the feeling that it was going to be a long day. 

On the bridge of the SDF-1, Ensign Vanessa Leeds received word that her older sister, Christina, had been taken to sick bay after her Veritech crashed on approach. She resisted the urge to leave her post and informed the messenger that she would be down as soon as her shift was over. 

John caught up with him half-way across the tarmac. "You ready for this, buddy?" 

David grinned at him. "I've been ready for this all year." He gestured over to the row of T-15 training planes. "One of those babies has my name on it." 

"In pencil, maybe." 

Connected to an I.V. tube and various monitors, David's unconscious body was wheeled into an curtained-off area and left to finish the healing process on it's own. 

"Angel one to Angel flight. Set course two two zero and climb to angels fifteen. Let's head for home." 

David keyed the radio. "Angel two, roger." He waited until Peterson acknowledged the order as well before banking slowly to port, keeping in perfect formation behind Cadet Smith, who had been placed in charge of the solo flight. <Tomorrow...> David mused, bringing his plane's nose up slightly. <Tomorrow it'll be my turn to lead the flight. I'll show Yonchak that I've got what it takes then.> 

A slight change in engine pitch caught David's attention. A quick check showed that the starboard turbofan was losing power. "Angel Two to Angel one." He throttled back on the port engine. "I've got a small problem here." 

"What kind of problem, David?" Smith slowed his aircraft as well, sliding to port of dropping back so that he was alongside David's plane. 

"I'm losing power to the starboard fan, Jim. It's down ten percent and continuing to drop." David throttled back a bit more. "I'm throttling down on the port turbofan to compensate." 

"Roger that, David. I'll alert the base." 

David concentrated on balancing the output from his aircraft's engines as Jim informed the base of his predicament. Suddenly, a warning buzzer sounded. "What the...?" 

"David!" Peterson called out. "You're trailing smoke!" 

The trio of ensigns were strangely silent as they left the bridge at the end of their shift. They all were worn out from the day's events. First the alien attack, then the botched fold operation that stranded them near Pluto's orbit, the feverish attempts to save as many civilians as possible before the air in the shelters ran out, the unending series of problems that presented themselves as the crew of the SDF-1 took stock of the situation...it had been rough on all of them. One of them, however, had one last duty to take care of. Alone. 

Vanessa Leeds bade her friends goodbye and headed for the ship's hospital. 

"It's no good! My hydraulics are just about gone now, too!" David fought against the panic he felt threatening to engulf him. "Damn thing flies like a brick." 

"It'll be alright, David." Jim responded, trying to sound calm. "Can you adjust your course at all?" 

"Only in small increments. About a degree or two at a time. Any more than that and the plane begins to yaw." David looked over to where Jim's plane was parallelling the path of his own. "Can't adjust the altitude much, either." 

Jim's reply was cut off by another voice. "Angel two, this is Eagle one, over." 

<Yonchak.> David mused. <Just what I need.> "This is Angel two." 

"What's your status, David?" 

David blinked. "By the book" Yonchak had broken normal radio proceedures and called him by his first name. That indicated how bad the situation was. "Uh... I've lost the starboard turbofan altogether, sir. And my hydraulics are failing, too. I've got minimal control - I can keep this thing going in a straight line, but that's about it." 

There was a heavy sigh. "Alright, listen up. You've got two options now. You can either ride your aircraft to ground on the other side of the Lake, " meaning Lake Erie, which would also mean that he would be crash landing on Canadian soil "...or you can set your autopilot to bring the aircraft down in the Lake itself, and eject while you're still over US territorial waters. It's your call." 

David nodded slowly. HIS call. HIS responsibility. He shivered, knowing that there was really only one choice to make - relations between the US and Canada had deteriorated over the past few years, what with the repeal of the NAFTA treaty and the calls to to impose trade sanctions against Canada for their tacit support of the Anti-Unification Forces. The Canadian government would love the opportunity to get their hands on an American military trainee who had crashed his plane on Canadian soil - just the thing for a political incident. 

"Roger that, Eagle one. Setting autopilot now." 

Vanessa stood quietly in the make-shift mortuary, staring at the white-sheeted form that lay on the gurney before her. She fought hard to keep the tears that welled up in her eyes from cascading down her cheeks as she nodded slowly to the nurse that had escorted her. 

The sheet was pulled back, exposing the body beneath. Vanessa gazed down on the corpse's all-too-familiar features, the tears flowing freely now. "Oh, no..." she moaned. "Oh, Christina... no. NO!" 

Vanessa Leeds threw herself across the body of her older sister and wept. 

"Eject! Eject! Eject!" 

David pulled down hard on the ejection straps, bracing himself against the g-forces that slammed him down into the seat a moment later. The noise was undescribable, but thankfully extremely short. Before he knew it, he was jerked savagely as the parachute deployed. Then, silence. 

"Thank God that's over." David groaned, watching his crippled aircraft as it continued along it's shallow dive into a watery grave. "They're never gonna let me live this one down." He looked around for the other two members of his flight, spotting both of them flying around him in a wide circle. He waved his arms to indicate he was alright. His joy was short-lived, however. 

As he watched, horrified, the plane he had just ejected from began yawing slightly to the right. A barely noticeable twist at first, the aircraft began swinging in a broad arc. "What the...?" Immediately David realized his error. He had failed to compensate for the aircraft's own altered aerodynamics when he had programmed the autopilot. With one turbofan gone and the hydraulics all but inoperative, the aircraft would swing naturally into a circling pattern that would bring it back over US soil. "Oh, no!" 

The aircraft circled back towards the city he had just left behind. David knew that there was nothing he could do to avert the tragedy that would surely follow. 

"NO!" 

Vanessa stumbled awkwardly down the hospital corridor, her vision blurred by unshed tears. Her thoughts were jumbled, her entire body numbed from the shock of seeing her sister lying dead on that gurney. 

She pushed and shoved her way through the growing crowd of people - some injured, some looking for lost loved ones, some merely gawking at the death and suffering - until she felt another wave of tears and nausea welling up inside of her. She pulled aside a curtain and stepped behind it, to hide her tears from prying eyes. 

David swam in a sea of darkness. His head ached. His nose ached. His leg ached. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that his entire body ached. He could hear people talking, a myriad voices blending together into a wash of noise that made distinguishing individual conversations all but impossible. Nearby, he heard sobbing. He almost felt like sobbing himself, images of the dream that had haunted him for the past six years vivid in his mind's eye. It took tremendous effort on his part to fight down the emotions that swelled within him, but he succeeded. Only then did he try to open his eyes. 

Groaning softly, David blinked against the harsh white light that filled his curtained cubicle. He looked around for the sobbing woman, but there was no one in the room with him. <She must be in another room, or whatever these things are.> 

He listened to her for what seemed like an hour before she quieted. Sighing, he gazed up at the metal ceiling, pondering the mess he had gotten himself into. Slowly, effortlessly, he drifted back off to sleep. This time his dreams were populated by aliens and giant robots - and a young woman's face, so peaceful and serene, even in death. 

Forward to Chapter 5. 
Back to Chapter 3. 

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