Chapter 1

"Enemy forces in Sector Four-One-Two. Repeat, Enemy forces in Sector Four-One-Two! All Valkyries on Stand-By Alert to launch immediately. Diamond and Spade wings to your Veritechs!" 

The voice on the comm-link sounded desperate, almost panicked. Christina look up from the book she had been reading and threw it over the side, somehow expecting to hear the announcement that this was yet another drill. Instead, her technicians prepped her plane for combat and motioned her towards the runway which ran down the right side of the massive SDF-1 Battle-Fortress. Running through the pre-flight checklist with one hand, Christina called up her sister on one of the comm-screens. 

"Vanessa," she asked the figure that appeared, "is this another of those surprise drills for the VIPs? If it is, I'm getting real tired of them real quick!" 

"Bad news," replied the young woman on the screen. "We lost contact with some of our orbital forces. Delta-One reports seeing gigantic explosions near the area of the ships we can't contact. The captain expects the worse." The figure looked over her shoulder guiltily. "Can't talk now. Just make it back safely, OK?" 

"No problem. I'll see you for dinner tonight." She pressed her finger on an area of the screen and the entire picture winked out, to be replaced by various electronic controls, dials and read-outs. Christina waited for final clearance from the tower, pushed her thrust to maximum and took to the sky. 

The battle in the air against the bottle-like enemy fighter-pods had quickly spilled to the streets of Macross City itself when an invading force of ground-based mecha swarmed from the other side of the island and fired a wave of missile at the buildings around the Fortress. The last pilot alive in her squadron, Christina fought back a trio of fighter-pods before swooping down into the streets of the city to try to buy the inhabitants enough time to reach the island's shelters. 

Several of the ostrich-like pods were already swarming from the outskirts of the city, reaching inwards into the heart of Macross City. Christina turned a corner and found one of the enemy's ground mecha chasing after a civilian. Thumbing a switch, she swung her wings open somewhat and fired four missiles into the pod, blowing it away into oblivion. 

The civilian staggered towards her, obviously dazed. She lowered her left hand to the ground to allow him to step on to it, which he did. Somehow, he fell asleep as soon as he had sat in the middle of the Battloid's palm. 

"Great." she muttered to herself. "Now I'm a baby-sitter as well." She motioned her Battloid around and proceeded cautiously towards the SDF-1. A few minutes later, still trying to use pieces of skyscrapers as partial shielding, she was jumped by a couple of pods. Again, she fired a few missiles to dispatch the enemy mecha. "I'd better make it back soon. Ammo's running out." 

She straightened her mecha up, taking care not to drop her human cargo, and stared down the street. "Yep, I was afraid of that." There, moving in what seemed to be a random formation towards her, were half-a-dozen enemy pods. Her radar bleeped at her, registering several more blips at her back. "Oh shit." 

Christina looked down at her hand and noticed that her cargo had awakened and was staring at the enemy pod in front and behind the Battloid. <Take a good look. It might be your last.> She flipped on her external speakers and spoke. "We're in trouble." The man in her hand looked up at the Battloid's face. "Hold on, we're getting out of here." She hoped she sounded more confident about her chances than she actually felt. 

She closed the hand holding him lightly into a fist, then triggered the mechamorphosys into Guardian. She checked on her ward, trying to ascertain if he was all right. "Comfortable?" He replied something, but her fried external microphones relayed nothing of his end of the conversation. Instead, she ducked the Guardian into a side street at the same time as she opened fire on one of the advancing pod, holing it with her GU-11. 

Two more pods were waiting for her down that side street. "Hey, no fair ganging up!" she screamed to no-one in particular. She dodged left past the rubble of a small shopping mall and started darting left and right in an attempt to evade pursuit. The pods behind her were opening fire with both laser and kinetic weaponry, causing her to slide the Guardian around 180 degrees. She opened fire with the gun-pod and destroyed the first one without a problem. As she holed the second one through-and-through, the GU-11 gave out. "DAMN!" The pods edged closer, like a pack of hyenas waiting for the pray to breathe its last. 

Before she could do anything about her situation, something rammed her from the right, pitched her into the ruins of a nearby building. She tried to shield her charge as much as she could from the falling debris, hoping the man would be all right. As she looked up to her right, she noticed that her attacker was not a pod but a ten-to-twelve meter tall humanoid figure. <An enemy Battloid?> The figure moved. <Oh God - a giant.> She lowered her left hand and opened it up, dropping the man into the wreckage. "Take cover!" she shouted over the external speakers. "I'll handle things, then we'll head back for the ship." She checked her registers before continuing. "I'm low on ammo and I've got a bad feeling the enemy will start moving towards the bomb shelters next... They haven't touched them or the ship." Something about that neatly filed itself into her memory for later retrieval. It would have to wait until after the attack was over - until then, she would not have the time to review today's events. 

Christina went to Battloid, holding her empty GU-11 out like a club, swinging it around towards the giant. The gun connected with the over- sized head and sent the enemy sprawling to the ground. Before it could get up again, Christina moved her mecha over to the prone body and kicked it several time in the guts. She then raised her gun-pod and brought it crashing down upon the figure's head, smashing its skull. 

Taking a moment to check the situation around the corner, Christina changed her mecha back to Guardian configuration and slid over to the man she had left behind, taking him again in her left hand. She rose the Veritech to slightly above roof-level and inspected the area. 

The launch field was not too far off to her left, but she wondered if there was any reason heading towards it; some hangars were still standing, but the majority had given way to the earlier missile bombardment and collapsed. Bodies lay here and there over the grounds, some of them still aflame. Deciding to risk it, she flew the Veritech down the length of the field to the SDF-1 and, finally, into one of its launch-bays. It felt good to be back inside the cavernous holds of the battle-fortress, almost safe. She lowered her hand and allowed the man to step to the flooring. Around the Valkyrie, ground crew swarmed with their reloading mechanism, replacing her empty missile pylons with full ones, her empty GU-11 with a freshly- loaded gun-pod. 

The SDF-1 shuddered and the doors to the hangar bay closed with a slam. Over the 'net, Christina could her the Techs discussion the Macross' gravitic engine and their performance. <Smooth ride so far.> she commented to herself. While the Techs were busy with her mecha, she busied herself with an internal check of its circuitry. Several of those laser shots had come real close to her and she wanted to make sure her electronics had not fried because of it. 

Eventually satisfied her Veritech would not die at an inopportune moment, she removed her helmet and sat back, trying to cool her head. Her hair, covered with sweat, clung to her hand in damp mats. The feeling was not comfortable, but she could endure it. The technician in front of her gave her the 'thumbs-up' signal. Christina re-started the Veritech's turbines and tested their reactions before looking left and right at the technicians there. Both gave her 'all OK' signal. She noticed the man whose life she had saved had not yet left the landing bay. He was waving his arms frantically, trying to tell her something. She smiled and gave him the 'thumbs-up' sign before gunning the engines and roaring out of the now-opened air-lock. 

Christina circled around the massive dimensional fortress in Fighter mode, taking in the scene. A call shook her to life. "All remaining units of yellow, green and red squadrons converge on the shelters -" She turned the radio off. She did not want to hear this any more - she had gotten sick of hearing the death cries of her wingmen and squad mates. 

The Valkyrie rattled as it was strafed by an alien fighter-craft passing overhead. Christina let it overshoot her and waited to get a missile lock on it before she fired a trio of high-explosive missiles towards the alien craft. The enemy fighter quickly picked up speed and managed to shake the missiles off. He - at least she assumed it was a he - circled around wide, trying to take her from the side. She veered towards him, in her more manoeuvrable Veritech, but almost did not make it; the alien's beam weapons missed by a matter of inches. She brought the GU-11 to bear on the fighter and opened up on it, unloading a few dozen rounds into the pilot's cockpit. He was dead. She was certain of that. 

The fighter-pod taken care of, Christina made visual contact with the alien ground forces. She circled the shelters, high above them in fighter mode, closing, in on them in the direction opposite the shelters. She targeted the ground pods for strafing. She acquired lock on one and released a volley of three missiles; they crashed into the pod, exploding it in a beautiful fireball. She targeted another and fired. And another. She was almost out of missiles, so numerous were the enemy pods. 

She switched to the gun pod. A burst from an anonymous autocannon hit the fighter's belly and 'walked' its way to the fuselage. Christina felt searing pain shoot through her back. Auto-cannon rounds pierced the fuselage; shrapnel was released into the cockpit. Christina's worse fears had come true - she was hit and she knew it. At least a dozen shards had entered her back, the exact number did not matter. Pain shot through her body. <I'm sorry Vanessa. I tried...>Christina lost control of her plane, feeling it go into a spiral. She clasped the transformation lever, bringing the plane into Guardian mode and slid the controls into retro-thrust. She did not want to plow into the shelters below her and explode amongst them. 

The engines slowed her descent and she eventually managed to get the Guardian level. By now, she had lost all feeling in her feet and her arms had become numb. The mecha hit the ground at a slight angle, actually gliding above it for a few seconds before it came to a halt, plowing into a cloud of battlepods dotting the ground, bowling many over. 

The ejector seat did not work when she tried to hit the button. It did not matter, she knew it was too late. She saw her life's story pass before her eyes - her friends, her family, her colleagues, the stranger she rescued... 

Christina looked at the sky as the life drained out of her... everything around her took on a surreal quality. The blue of the sky faded, all that was left was the sun; normally a glowing yellow ball it had become an angry white light, like that of a surgeon's lamp but more fatal. Her already labored breathing became more sparse. In her last moments, she saw a dot rising to the sky. <The battle fortress...? Going into space...?> 

Christina Leeds closed her eyes and died. 
 

Return to the Izabelle Fate contents page.