Chapter 28

The alien pod remained motionless for what seemed like an eternity, staring down at David's meager hiding place. David felt not unlike a small mouse cornered by a cat - cold, alone, trembling in terror. As frightened as he was, he couldn't take his eyes away from the enormous pod that stood in front of him, not even as it sank slowly to a kneeling position. 

<What the hell?> David wondered as a large plate on the pod's back flipped upwards, accompanied by a puff of whitish vapor that disappeared almost immediately. Next came an enormous, gloved hand - and then the rest of the giant pilot followed. David held his breath in awe as the alien pilot pulled himself out of the pod's interior. David's fear faded somewhat as he gazed at the alien, taking in every detail of his suit, his movements, his actions. 

Everyone on the Macross was well aware that their enemy was a race of giants, but no one who hadn't seen the photographs of alien corpses really believed it. David himself had originally scoffed at the idea, until one of his instructors had shown him the frozen corpse of an alien which had been recovered from Macross Island after the fold accident. The sight had left him shaken... but not so much as seeing one of the aliens in person, alive, and very much in control of the situation. 

David's breath caught in his throat as the giant began walking straight at him, each step showing the gracefulness and fluid movements of someone used to operating in low gravity. For a brief moment, David wondered how a such a race could have evolved, but his train of thought was shattered - along with the walls of his hiding place - when the alien's left foot crashed down an arm's length in front of him. David fought the impulse to jump up and run as the enormous foot rose up again and disappeared from view. 

<Wha...?> David tried to shift himself in the hole, to get a better view of what the alien was doing, but found - much to his dismay - that he had slid further down into the hole and didn't have the leverage to get back up again. <Oh, for goodness' sake.... this is pitiful.> He tried to straighten his legs, but he had slid down until his knees were touching the chin of his helmet. <Damn. Stuck tight.> 

David stopped his struggles when the alien came back in sight, carrying a roughly triangular-shaped piece of metal. David puzzled over that until he noticed a skull-and-crossbones insignia on the metal - it was a tail aileron from one of Skull Squadron's Valkyries. "Damn..." David muttered. "They're collecting souvenirs." Any other time it might have been humorous, but David couldn't see the humor in it at the moment. Meanwhile, the enormous alien carefully placed the severed tail fin into his pod, then clambered into it himself. The pod rose back up to a standing position and thumped off, leaving a trail of reddish dust behind it. 

David waited several minutes before reaching up and pushing the oxygen cylinder off to the side. Craning his head around, he saw that the aliens were indeed gone. <Thank God for small favors. Now how the hell and I going to get out of this damned hole?> He reached out with his hands and tried to pull himself free, but all he managed to do was pull more red soil in on top of himself. 

"Well....." he sighed. "If I can't pull myself out, maybe I can dig myself out." He cupped his hands together and scooped up a small pile of Martian soil, which he promptly tossed back over his head. "God, this is gonna take a while." 

[Saturday 13 Feb 2010 - Somewhere north of Mars Base, 1350 hours] 

Getting out of the hole had taken much longer than David had anticipated, and he cursed his luck as he checked his oxygen gauge once again. He'd been walking northwards for the past hour, and he figured that he had approximately three hours worth of breathable oxygen left. Further, being stuck in that hole for so long had chilled his legs and feet considerably, and he was having trouble walking. He had hoped that the movement involved in getting back to the lab would restore circulation and some warmth to his feet, but it hadn't worked so far. 

The one thing that was going his way was the fact that he was finding it rather easy to retrace his steps - his footsteps were still visible in the Martian soil. Slightly wind-blown, to be sure, but still visible. The biggest concern he had was whether or not he would make it back to the lab before his oxygen ran out. 

So concerned was he about the oxygen situation - and trying to figure out the best way to conserve it - that he almost didn't notice the faint glimmer of light on metal off to his right. It wasn't until a rather bright flash danced across his face plate that he noticed it. Slowing his pace, David fumbled with the binoculars. Peering intently through them, he scanned the area. A familiar shape was outlined against the horizon. 

"A Valkyrie!" The light he had seen was sunlight streaming through the downed fighter's canopy. David's heartbeat increased slightly as he considered the possibilities. If he went out of his way to check out the wreck and there was nothing salvageable, then his chances of making it back to the lab were reduced. If, however, there was a functioning transmitter or beacon in the wreckage, then his troubles were over. After a brief moment of thought, David realized that there really wasn't much of a choice. 

He turned and began moving towards the wreck. 

[Saturday 13 Feb 2010 - Somewhere north of Mars Base, 1430 hours] 

David stood quietly beside the wrecked fighter, shaking his head slowly. The fighter had been badly damaged - the port wing was completely sheared off, and the last two meters of the port engine was missing. Catastrophic damage, to be sure, but the pilot would have been able to eject from the Valkyrie had something not struck the canopy and literally taken the pilot's head off. What was worse was the fact that the plane was no stranger - the nose of the red-trimmed fighter clearly sported the name "Crimson Avenger", the Valkyrie flown by Sergeant Derek Capone of Black Squadon, Theta Wing. 

David fought the emotions that coursed through him. Just last week Derek's wife had given birth to twins, and Joseph had handed everyone in the squadron IOU's for the cigars that he couldn't obtain on the ship. He had gone so far as to post a notice of the birth on every squadron bulletin board on the ship, along with enough IOU's for all the pilots. 

"Another pilot cut down in the prime of his life." David whispered. "I'm sorry, Derek." 

Reminding himself that if he didn't get on with it he'd soon be joining the Sergeant on the other side, David cautiously approached the wreck. After a quick inspection revealed that the canopy was half-sprung, David braced his feet and pushed the broken canopy up and out of the way. Next he released the harness buckless and pulled Sergeant Capone's headless corpse from the cockpit, laying it gently beside the wrecked Valkyrie. 

Climbing into the cockpit himself, David was amazed to find that there was still power being supplied to the instruments. A quick check revealed that the starboard electrical generator was still functioning at a reduced rate. Heart thumping, David hooked his suit radio to the Valkyrie's transmitter. He tried to swallow, found that he couldn't, then spoke in a hoarse voice "Black 13 to SDF-1, do you read? Over." Nothing. He adjusted the settings and tried again. "Black 13 to SDF-1, do you read? Over." Still nothing. No static, nothing. 

<Damn... radio's out.> With a grunt, David heaved himself back out of the pilot's seat and reached down, searching for the emergency transmitter attached to the bottom of the seat. He pulled it free of it's mounting and performed a quick check - it seemed intact. Hands trembling, David thumbed the "Transmit" button. A small red LED lit up on the beacon's casing, indicating that the beacon was functioning. 

"It works. IT WORKS!" David literally jumped out of the cockpit, cheering at the top of his lungs. He ignored the sharp stabs of pain that the action elicitted from his injured chest and landed softly next to Derek's corpse. His elation faded. 

David turned away from the body and began pacing. He'd need to make sure that Lauren wasn't left behind, to be sure. He glanced up at the sky, wondering who was going to be coming down to investigate the signal. Perhaps someone from Black Squadron? 

David faced northward. "Hold on, Lauren. Hold on.... we're going home." 

[Saturday 13 Feb 2010 - Somewhere north of Mars Base, 1455 hours] 

David was sitting nervously on the Valkyrie's starboard engine, massaging his legs and feet in an attempt to warm them up, when something on the horizon caught his attention - six small black dots, slightly above the horizon itself, getting bigger by the second. 

"Is that..." David wondered aloud, climbing to his feet. He pulled out the binoculars with trembling hands and tried to focus on the objects. <Damn... I hope it's not more pods.> He couldn't maintain the focus, but he could make out enough of the general shape to identify them. "Valkyries! Hot damn!" 

David clambered down from his perch and pulled out the flare pistol he had brought along. Checking to make sure it was loaded, David prepared to fire it into the air. When he looked up again, the approaching fighters were almost on top of him, having converted to guardian mode. Three of them were flying directly at him, while the other three had turned and were flying in a wide circle around Derek's wrecked Valkyrie. Jumping up and down, David began waving his arms around to attract their attention. 

Suddenly, without warning, a volley of energy beams lanced out at the circling aircraft, causing two of them to burst into flame while the third tried to dodge. The last fighter was struck a moment later, exploding almost immediately. 

David reacted instantly, scrambling for safety under the "Crimson Avenger's" starboard wing. The three Valkyries that had been closing in on his position fired their afterburners and shot upwards and away from the wreck - followed by the corkscrew trails of enemy missiles. David turned and saw a small force of alien pods roughly fifty meters behind him. A dozen fighter pods shot past the ground force, angling upwards to intercept the remaining Valkyries. 

Heart racing, David fought to catch his breath. "My God, what have I done?" He watched the fleeing Valkyries vainly attempt to escape the trap that hehad inadvertently led them into. The numerical disparity made itself readily apparent as two of the three retreating fighters were destroyed simultaneously. 

The third fighter pulled into an unbelievably tight turn and dove back through the formation of alien fighter pods that were in pursuit. <God,> David mused, <That pilot must have swallowed his teeth.> The tactic worked, however, and the pursuing pods were thrown into disarray by the unexpected act. The Valkyrie, temporarily free of pursuers, raced southwards. His appreciation of the maneuver died quickly when David realized that the alien ground pods were stomping towards him. "Damn, not again!" David growled, glancing around frantically for someplace to hide. There was nothing to be seen, so he inched himself further back into the shadows beneath the "Crimson Avenger's" wing. 

The alien pods kept on coming, seeming to home in on him by some unknown means. Or perhaps not so unknown, as David gasped in realization. <The bastards are tracking the beacon!> He pulled the beacon off of his belt and smashed it against the "Avenger's" fuselage. 

The unit was barely scratched. 

"Damned engineers!" David cursed, smashing the unit against the fuselage again. "Damned aliens! Damned beacon! Damned planet!" He was cursing in a rhythm, chanting in time with his attempts to smash the beacon, which was proving stubbornly resistant to damage. Glancing up, David was appalled to see that the aliens were nearly on top of him. A rush of adrenaline surged through him and David swung the beacon down again, focusing all of his strength into one last attempt. 

Instead of breaking into a hundred non-functioning pieces, as was the plan, the beacon popped free of David's grasp and skittered out from underneath the wing. David watched in stunned silence as the small yellow box tumbled along the ground, sending up small puffs of red Martian dust as it went. It came to a rest a meter or so away from Sergeant Capone's body. 

<This is pitiful.> David moaned. <What next?> 

He didn't have time to wonder. An alien pod advanced out in front of the group and stopped just short of the wreckage under which David was hiding. It paused, antennae swiveling, then took a single step forward. It's enormous metal foot crashed down upon Capone's body, crushing it - and the beacon - beneath its weight. The force of the impact shook the "Avenger" savagely, and David winced as the wreck settled slightly. "Please don't squash me," David prayed, more to the wrecked fighter than anything else. "Just hold together a little longer." 

The alien pod twisted its foot several times, grinding everything beneath it into the ground. David fought back the grisly images that popped up in his mind's eye, instead focusing his attention on his current predicament - the pod had turned to face the "Avenger"'s wreck. Before David could react, it took a step forward and lashed out with a foot. 

David gasped as the wreck was savagely kicked out from above him. Unidentifiable bits and pieces of metal rained down, pelting both him and the ground. Suddenly exposed, David felt an urgent need to run away, to escape, to flee from the danger that was looming over him. His body didn't agree, however, and he remained immobile, frozen in place, prone on the ground. 

A strange sense of calm coursed through him, and David remembered a passage from a book he had read long ago. It seemed appropriate. "And yea, tho I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil..." David stammered in mid-prayer as the shadow of the massive alien mecha blanketted him. Through the ground he heard a series of muffled thumps and mechanical clicks. He didn't need to look up to know what was happenning since he had heard it once before - the alien pilot was climbing out of his craft. 

David remained sprawled upon the ground, paralyzed by fear. He felt the ground shake underneath the massive footsteps of the alien pilot and once again had to fight down the near-overpowering urge to run away. <I'll play dead. Yeah, that'll work. Definitely work. Works with bears, doesn't it?> 

As much as he tried, he couldn't quite convince himself of that. 

Having accepted the fact that he was going to be stamped flat like an overgrown cockroach, David was caught completely unprepared as a giant alien hand swooped down and plucked him from the ground. Clenched firmly in the alien's grasp, David could do little but watch as the ground disappeared below him and wonder what the alien warrior had in mind for him. 

A low rumble that seemed to sound all around him baffled David for several moment until he realized that he was hearing the alien's voice, conducted through the arm and into David's own body. It was muted and indistinct, but David got the distinct impression that the alien wasn't happy. As if to reinforce that impression, the alien began waving David around like a rag doll, snapping his head back and forth so severely that he was sure it was going to pop off. 

The shaking stopped, and David became aware that another alien had climbed out of his assault mecha and was approaching David's captor. The second alien was making short, sharp gestures with his hands, and stabbed a finger at David several times during a tirade that seemed to last hours. David heard his captor speak several times, much quieter this time, and his posture drooped noticeably. 

<They think I'm dead!> David realized. <This guy wants me as a souvenier. And the other one is telling him off. His C.O, maybe?> 

With a final gesture, the alien David assumed to be the leader of the ground returned to his mecha. 

David's captor sighed mightily, paused for one last look, and tossed him aside. 

Flying through the air, David decided that playing dead wouldn't do him any good if the faceplate of his helmet shattered, and clutched his arms protectively around his head. A teeth-shaking impact followed almost immediately, accompanied by a wash of fiery pain all along his left arm, from shoulder to elbow. 

All thoughts of subtlety cast aside, David writhed in pain, tears flowing from his eyes as he fought against the piercing ache that suffused his left side. Blinking back the tears that filled his eyes, he rolled to a sitting position and looked around. 

The aliens were gone. 

Acutely aware of how close he had come to becoming a prize decorating an alien's trophy collection, David climbed to his feet and looked around again to make sure that the aliens were indeed gone. Satisfied that they were, he gingerly set about examining his left arm and shoulder. 

To his relief there were no visible wounds or punctures in his suit. Unfortunately, every time he tried to move his arm he was wracked by a piercing jolt of pain. <Damn.> he muttered to himself, mentally recalling the first aid courses he had taken, <I think the damned thing's dislocated. Wonderful.> 

Disgusted, David checked the oxygen guage strapped to his wrist. <Hour and a half left. Double damn.> He doubted that he had enough breatheable air left to make it back to the building where Lauren was waiting for him. He frowned, letting that sink in for several moments before deciding that he had to at least try to make it back. 

With that decided, David turned and tried to figure out exactly which way he had to go. 

[Saturday 13 Feb 2010 - Somewhere north of Mars Base, 1552 hours] 

David's left shoulder was throbbing in a slow, pulsating ache that filled his head with thoughts of simply lopping the limb off because it would hurt less. He had tried to support the injured limb by strapping his belt around it at chest level, and while it did relieve some of the weight, it didn't do quite enough to satisfy him. 

A thin spire of smoke rising in the distance caught his eye. <What the.... what's that?> Luckily, the source of the smoke looked like it would be right along his path - he dreaded the thought of missing something as much as the thought of running out of air while roaming around the Martian countryside. 

As he got closer to the source of the smoke, he realized with a start that it was a Valkyrie. <That wasn't there before. So where did it come from?> He answered his own question a moment later. <Of course! The one that got away from that ambush!> The knowledge that one of his potential rescuers was now lying upon his path was sobering in the extreme, and David was afraid to wonder if the pilot was still alive. On the off chance that he was, David quickened his pace. 

[Saturday 13 Feb 2010 - Somewhere north of Mars Base, 1605 hours] 

David shook his head slowly as he circled the smoldering tangle of debris that was all that remained of the downed aircraft. The rear half of the fighter was all that remained, sticking up from the ground at an odd angle, wispy threads of smoke wafting up from the electrical generators and engines. Of the nose and cockpit there was nothing left but a field of debris, not a single piece of which was larger than David's fist. 

The tail markings identified the Valkyrie as a member of Green Squadron, one of the newer squadrons aboard the SDF-1, having been formed shortly after the battle at Saturn. David didn't know any of the pilots in Green Squadron, but he still wondered about the pilot - no, he corrected himself, pilots - who had died coming to his rescue. 

He picked his way carefully through the wreckage, looking for anything that might be of use, but there was nothing to be found. Cursing softly, David kicked at a chunk of twisted metal and watched as it bounced across the ground, coming to rest at the foot of an outcropping of rock. He stared at the lump of metal for several moments before working his way clear of the debris. 

It was then that he noticed the footprints. 

A clear set of footprints led away from the wrecked fighter, leading towards the outcropping of rock towards which David had kicked the small chunk of metal. Small, human-sized footprints. <What in the world? Don't tell me that someone survived this!> Shocked by the discovery, David quickly walked towards the outcropping, following the trail of the mysterious survivor. 

Reaching the outcropping, David leaned forward to peer around it and found the business end of a handgun staring him straight in the face, no more than a foot away. The weapon's owner - in an RDF space-suit - pulled back the hammer and spoke in a calm voice, "Don't move or I'll blow your damned head off." 

Forward to Chapter 29. 
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