Chapter 6

[Reality Check - Saturday Jun. 27 2009, 1855 hours, SDF-1 Pluto Orbit] 

Thallin turned around, his brow breaking into a sweat as he envisioned himself being dragged away in chains to be flogged, then spaced. The person who had called out to him was a young woman with fair Asian skin and largish eyes. Her red hair was short cropped, reminiscent of the 20th century military. She continued saying something which Thallin missed completely and extended her hand in greeting. Thallin nearly extended his own to shake it before catching himself and changing the gesture to a military salute. 

"I'm sorry," he stammered, "but who are you?" 

"Lieutenant Kay Landers." she answered, returning his salute. Was that a sly smile upon her lips? Thallin could not be certain of it. "Pilot of the VF-117." 

<Ah. The pilot!> Thallin relaxed slightly, realising she was looking for him and not for the contents of the gurney. "Ah yes! Thank you for saving my Veritech." Behind his back, his grip tightened upon the gurney's metallic handlebar. "But if you will excuse me, I'm in a bit of a hurry." 

"Sure thing," she replied, "but which Veritech? I mean, I saved a lot of people today." 

<Oh, great. I just had to get an ace, didn't I? Why couldn't it have been some wet-behind-the-ears pilot I could have thanked and then have him forget everything?> "The VX-001. We were in the re-entry pod when I shut... when I went unconscious." 

"Oh yes, that was it. You're in pretty good shape considering how badly beat up your mecha was." <Oh good,> thought Thallin, <she knows nothing.> "Besides, I kinda figured you were the guy sitting in bay 5B with that cockpit thing." <Oh bad, she knows too much.>"Ah... Oops... Er..." <Great elocution, Thallin. Get your mouth in gear, fast.> "Yes... That was me... But..." Thallin's mouth was still trying to reconcile the conflicting thoughts going through his mind when the elevator dinged and opened behind him. <Saved by the bell.> "I'm sorry, but I'm really in a hurry, and if you don't mind, I have to go now." he stammered, backing away from Lt Landers, pushing the gurney behind him into the elevator. For the first time since the conversation had started, Thallin believed he might actually get away. 

Lt Landers stepped forward and placed her hand upon the elevator's doorjamb, keeping it from closing, keeping Thallin from escaping. "Listen, I'm sorry if this sounds rude, but I don't like being kept in the dark about things." She pointed a finger at him playfully. "I'm not going to let you go until you either explain this to me or promise to explain it to me at dinn... No... lunch tomorrow in the primary officer's mess." 

Thallin's spirit dropped. He simply was not fated to get away from this one easily. "All right," he sighed. "I'll meet you there tomorrow." She looked almost surprised at his response. 

"You promise?". The elevator sounded an angry buzzer, reminding those in it its doors had been opened for longer than intended by it. 

"Yes, I promise," Thallin replied. She stepped back and let the doors close, cutting off the buzzer and allowing the elevator to start moving down into the bowels of the ship. 

Thallin looked at the bent handlebars on the gurney and sighed. 

The room was cold, freezing in fact. It was located against the hull of the SDF-1, which afforded it a temperature close to zero absolute should the small heaters around the room ever break down. This effect was only possible because of the distance the Macross was from the sun. As it got nearer to Earth, the hull would pick up more and more solar heat, causing the room to become a furnace unless it was refrigerated. Space only was cold in the darkness. One could virtually boil alive if left in the sunlight. 

Thallin bent over the large bath he had been converting according to the specifications from the console's printout. It reminded him of something he had once seen in the recently-crashed SDF-1, all these years ago. Except there had been parts of a Marine floating in it. 

The final connection in place, Thallin placed Christina's body into the tub and opened a valve. Green nutrient flowed through the piping and flooded the tub, covering the naked body it contained. Thallin shivered as he watched the liquid goo cover the face of the dead woman. 

"Okay. The body's soaking, the controls are set, all indicators are in the green." Thallin yawned as he stepped towards the electronic bench in one corner of the coldroom. "Now if I could only make sense of this circ<yawn>... circuit diagram I can start on the bio-electronic design for the... the... <yawn>... custommm...." Thallin slept. 

[Reality Check - Sunday Jun. 28 2009, 1000 hours, Storage Area 5d] 

The alarm woke Thallin with a start. He muttered something obscene about having to wake up at the ungodly hour of... 10 O'Clock in the morning. Now why did this ring a bell? Was he supposed to be somewhere? 

He stood up off the chair he had slumped into the night before and stretched as he walked around the room, taping this indicator, checking that valve, trying to remember. He finally let out a groan. <Oh yes, I almost forgot - Lieutenant Landers.> He left the coldroom and walked to the makeshift quarters he had established nearby. As he entered the room he noticed that the computer console on his desk was beeping softly, trying to attract his attention. He shuffled towards it and tapped a few keys, requesting the message stored in its memory to be played. 

"Dr. Lang has scheduled a meeting of all heads of department for 1500 hours today. Tabled for discussion will be the repercussions due to the disappearances of the Macross fold engines." The computerised voice of the data terminal almost managed to sound smug, although with the main computer core still in Luna, the Macross' computational power was well below par. The Bahamoud core had been scheduled to be remounted into the SDF-1 two weeks from now. But since Macross was in space and Bahamoud on the Moon, it was now an impossible task. This left the ship relying on an untrained crew rather than on the automation it had been capable of when originally built by its alien creators. 

Thallin groaned as he opened his closet and took out a fresh change of clothes. 

[Reality Check - Sunday Jun. 28 2009, 1210 hours, Officer's Mess Deck 2] 

The officer's mess was almost full by the time Thallin got to it. The pilots were telling each other's stories of daring rescues of civilians in distress. "...So he orders me to go and retrieve the shelter from all of the debris. So I tell him 'Excuse me Sir, but I ain't crazy...'" "...You should have seen what was left of the giant after two days hard vacuum..." Thallin moved on and scanned the crowd, looking for an empty table. He eventually spied Kay Landers sitting by herself, nursing a cola. 

"Is this seat taken?" he enquired. She raised her head and smiled at him, getting up to greet him with a handshake. He responded by giving her a small salute. 

"You're ten minutes late," she commented, smiling. 

"I'm sorry about that, the lifts were being used by the reconstruction crews - I had to use the stairs." They both sat back down at the table and Landers waved at a passing waiter. 

"It's okay," she said while the waiter made his way towards their table, "It gave me a chance to listen to the shipboard gossip." She looked up as the waiter approached and opened his pad. "Would it be possible to have a steak sandwich, please?" she asked of him. 

The waiter shook his head. "I'm afraid that with the restrictions it will not be poss..." 

Thallin flashed his ID badge in front of the standing man long enough for him to read it. "The lady asked for a steak sandwich. And I'll have my usual." 

"Yes Sir," the young man answered briskly, then disappeared back into the crowd as Thallin put his ID back into his pocket. As he did so he noticed that Lieutenant Landers was staring at him. 

"R.H.I.P." he said. 

"Rhip?" 

"Rank Hath Its Privileges." he answered. "And before you ask; No, I'm not that important, just important enough to get you that steak sandwich you wanted." 

"Sorry if it caused any trouble, but I just had to ask." A small pause which Thallin used to take a drink from his glass. "So tell me. What did you have on that gurney, a dead body?" Thallin nearly sprayed the contents of his drink in surprise and instead started to choke on it. "Are you okay," enquired Landers. "You look a little pale." 

Thallin waved her away until he had managed to get his coughing under control. "Do you always skip the small-talk and go straight into the matter of the subject like this?" 

"Why? Is there a problem?" she asked. 

"No, I guess not." 

"I suppose it was some sort of equipment for your plane. Weren't you the guy I saw sitting in bay 5B? And the pilot of VX-001?" 

"Yes, I was both. And the trick of it all is remote controls. It's a pet project of mine." 

"Well, that explains why the VX-001 was whisked away so fast. So how does it work? VR? Neural connection?" 

"Nothing that complex, I'm afraid. We're still working with a modified simulator control set coupled with a super-computer." 

"Super-computer?" She raised an eyebrow. "I thought these things were huge and required sub-zero temperatures to operate?" Thallin nodded. "But the thing you were using was nowhere near as big as it should have been then. Where'd you put the computer?" 

Thallin shook his head. "I'm afraid I'm not cleared to answer some of your questions." 

"Oh. I see." The waiter arrived with their respective lunches. Landers started eating her sandwich, then noticed the plate in front of Thallin. "What the hell is that?" 

Thallin pointed to a few things. "Pork, tomatoes, carrot, peas, mashed potatoes." 

"No, I mean these small cubes on the side." 

"Silicate, borate, lead crystal, kevlar...." 

"Kevlar? You chew on kevlar?" she asked incredulously. 

Thallin smiled. "Kevlar jelly, actually. I suffer from few deficiencies in my diet." He picked one of the cubes and swallowed it. "These make up for it. I assure you they taste as bad as you can imagine. Except the crystal; it tastes a little bit salty." 

"Jeez. I knew Doc Lang's crew was bizarre, but this takes the cake!" 

Thallin put his fork down and looked her straight in the eyes, his expression hardening. "How do you know about that?" he asked softly. 

"I scanned your service dossier." admitted Landers. 

"What else did it say?" 

"Only the usual drivel about your record. You had some flight training, only you had some sort of inner-ear imbalance which stopped you from graduating. So you switched to research. You were on the second team to enter the SDF-1 after it had crashed and you spent quite a bit of time in there examining it, during which you suffered some accident which had you laid up for almost a year." Her eyes opened wide. "This... deficiency... you're suffering from wouldn't have anything to do with the accident, would it?" 

Thallin smiled, his shoulders relaxing. "The accident kinda screwed-up my metabolism, permanently. I now have to chew on these cubes to try to keep the balance stable." 

"What about the VX-001? Would it be possible to see it?" 

"NO! I mean, it's currently being repaired and I'm afraid you do not have the security clearance to see it anyway. Sorry Lt Landers." 

Landers smiled as she swallowed the last of her sandwich. "Call me Kay. And that's okay. I'll just take a raincheck to be the first one to see it when it gets declassified, all right?" 

"That'll be acceptable, lieu... Kay. By the way, call me Thallin." 

Kay stood up. "Well, Thallin, thank you for the meal and the pleasant conversation but I have to get going. Keep in touch." She started to extend her hand, then thought better of it and saluted him before walking out the door into the corridor. 

Thallin sat there pensively for a few minutes, then finished his lunch. Kay Landers was a complication he simply did not need at this point in his life. 

The following weeks were a blur in Thallin's mind. Between the building of the electronic components and the supervising of the nutrient bath, he had very little time to devote to the rebuilding of the VX-001. To make matters worse, Lang had assigned him to the team looking into a way to make up for the missing conduits between the Macross' engines and the main gun's components. The problem had become apparent when a team noting the damage done by the disappearance of the fold engines noticed that several power conduits had vanished with it, including those of the main gun. To make matters worse, power conduits were one of the few things they could not fabricate on-board for lack of suitable materials. 

So far, no-one had found the body, though there had been a bit of a furore when it had been found missing from the morgue. Thallin wondered how long he could keep his little project a secret. Eventually someone was bound to notice his coming and going from this deserted part of the ship. 

The operations upon the dead Christina were not things he preferred to remember. It was lucky that thanks to the nutrient bath he did not have to worry about infections or being too accurate with closing up. Nonetheless he had soon learned not to eat prior to surgery. He still could not get used to the sight of human organs laid open for inspection. But soon the need for all this would be past. Even now, the tub was slowly being drained and sprayed with fresh water to remove the last of the nutrient. 

Thallin stepped up to the tub and watched as the seconds ticked away. Suddenly, the eyelids of the body opened and the eyes began a slow scan of the room before coming to rest on him. Thallin backed away, the eyes following him wherever he moved. Eventually, the body had to move to follow his movements and it proceeded to sit up, somewhat shakily. 

"Hey," cried out Thallin, "easy." 

The body turned and smiled at him. "Appellation received. This unit's call-sign now 'izi'." 

Thallin looked bewilderingly at the smiling body. "Oh boy." 

Forward to Chapter 7.
Back to Chapter 5. 

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