"J. Austin Wilde" Robotech: Snipes In Wonderland By J. Austin Wilde Fission Park Press J. Austin Wilde, K.B.C.S. Minister of Propaganda and Super Critical Reactor Axe Man Fission Park Press wildeman@flash.net Many thanks to all the snipes who crawled out of the bilge to C&C this work. I dedicate this `fic to you! For those of you who follow such things, I'm using the Jack McKinney continuity for a timeline of major events. The characters in Snipes will probably never meet the established characters of Robotech except in passing. This story isn't about mecha pilots, or idol singers, or Bridge Bunnies. It is about the men and women who fought the hardest battles of all -the battle to keep the SDF-1 in fighting order. If you're wondering about the title of this `fic, a `snipe' is a nautical term for an engineering type; one who usually works below decks in the fire rooms and engine rooms of ships. The `In Wonderland' part comes from the nickname of the A1W prototype training reactor plant at the Naval Reactors Facility, Idaho National Engineering Laboratories; outside of Idaho Falls, Idaho. A1W was the USS ENTERPRISE prototype reactor plant. A1W was known to staff and students alike as "Alice In Wonderland," and if you were ever to tour the plant for the first time you would feel a little like Alice through the looking glass. Alas, like Snipe's Castle, A1W is no more. The situations, mecha, and some of the characters portrayed in this work of fanfiction are the property of Harmony Gold USA. So there. <> _______________________________________________________________________ Prologue "Standing by for Test Series 336 Alfa, all watchstanders make reports to Central," the Engineering announcing circuit 2MC cried. The voice of Commander Giles Lochland echoed throughout the cavernous Engineering Spaces of the SDF-1. Men and women scurried about the decks and catwalks as the exotic systemry hummed at a higher pitch. No one really pretended to understand what half of the systems did, but if they were ever going to learn they would have to try them out. "Commence Data Run 336A, time 13:06, mark!" Lochland announced on the 2MC; the Public Address type loudspeaker network that allowed him to communicate with the crew in the engineering spaces. Power Systems Technician First Class Milo Wasserman noted the rising power levels in Number Four Reflex Furnace, his primary responsibility. His panel was of human manufacture, rigged by bundles of armored cable runs into the alien technosystems he monitored. All of the original displays were in the glyphic language of the people who had built this ship. His panel was an attempt to convert that language and number system (the aliens used a base 27 system to the humans' base 10) into something the human crew could use. "Are these tests ever gonna be done?" Power Systems Tech 3rd Class Jimmy "Stick" Stave asked. Milo regarded the skinny eighteen year old with a tired look. "Kid, just wait until we get this pig into space. You think we're busy now, just you wait." "Chief said things would get better after the launch." "And you believed him?" Milo retorted. Milo returned to his panel. He felt old having a watch section of eighteen and nineteen year olds to look after. He was twenty-five himself. Stick was probably the youngest looking of the entire Engineering Department, and Milo suspected that he had lied about his age to get in. The Global Civil War had taken care of most of the paper trail that could prove Stick's age to contrary. Stick just wasn't going away. Milo craned his head over his shoulder to regard the diminutive petty officer. "You still here?" "Hey Milo, you want some more coffee?" Stick asked. "Are you trying to stay out of Central or something?" Milo returned. Stick was the Engineer's Messenger in this watch section, and was supposed to be in Central to run errands and such. "Yeah. All the big wigs are in there right now, including Lang. That guy really freaks me out." Milo shrugged. "Well I might understand how you could feel that way about Lang. You aren't alone in that respect." He finished his data run and sent his logs to the controlling area for the SDF-1's engineering spaces, known as Central, via optic tie bus. "What kind of coffee are we talking about?" Milo asked, holding his black mug emblazoned with the RDF fighting kite in his hand. "Thomas made some Kona Cinnamon Vanilla," Stick replied. "You can smell it all the way to Fold System Forward." Milo winced. "Anything else besides that foo-foo coffee?" "There's always Standard Robotech Joe," Stick offered warily. Standard Robotech Joe was the name given to the military coffee that came in ten kilo steel cans. Most of the stuff was held over from World War Two. "Gimme some SRJ, black and sweet." "Aye!" Stick cried at having a mission. He took Milo's mug and ducked under a run of twenty centimeter diameter piping that made up the Reflex Furnace's Tier Three Cooling System. "Completed Test Three Three Six Alfa, time 13:11," the 2MC crackled. Milo got back to work. It was only two days to Launch Day, and they had a long way to go. _______________________________________________________________________ Episode One: Launch Day. "Commencing power ramp to ten percent. All Section Leaders make reports to Central." Milo looked up from his mug of SRJ to hear the 2MC over the steady thrum of power from the titanic Reflex Furnaces of the SDF-1. Auxiliary systems chimed musically and the lights flickered as the Furnaces took up the load from External Power. Several members of the Damage Control Party stood by in silvered proximity suits. The alien furnaces had never been taken above ten percent power, and no one was sure what would happen if they did. Of course Lang and the others had sworn up and down to the politicians that everything would be fine. "That explains why we're ready for the damn things to explode," Milo concluded to himself. Today was Launch Day. God willing, at 15:00 the SDF-1 would rise above Macross Island on it's way into Low Earth Orbit. They'd perform some engine trials (the main reaction mass drives had never been above .005 percent thrust on the island), make a quick jaunt to the moon and back. On the dark side of the moon they would test fire the Main Reflex Battery, known as the Main Gun to the crew. Once again, no one was entirely sure what would happen when they fired it. Milo didn't even want to think about what was sitting in the compartment forward of Reflex Four; the Fold Generators. Those mammoth machines were locomotive sized testament to the ten-dimensional universe predicted by physicists and cosmologists alike. In theory they could transport the SDF-1 through time and space to any point in the universe. The orbit of Mars would do for now, but _that_ test wasn't for another two full weeks of space trials. Outside the battlefortress the big air show and Launch Day festivities were in full swing. The Veritech Fighters, and the Destroids, and the other fantastical machines Robotechnology had made possible were all going through their paces. Meanwhile, deep in the bowels of the ship the crew was in the middle of the final countdown to launch. Doctor Emil Lang and his staff were making a tour of the spaces. Milo set down his mug to make way for them. "Gutenmorgen Vasserman. How is everyzing?" Lang asked. His odd all-pupil eyes absorbed the light of the compartment. Milo gestured to his watch section. "We're standing by sir, just give the word." Lang nodded. "Zo... Do you zink ve'll get her off ze ground?" Milo laughed. "If I have to get out and push her, sir." "Good! I haf every confidence in your abilities Vasserman. You're vun of ze most experienced operators in ze Department. I'm zure ze Western Alliance Navy regrets losing you." Milo shrugged. "If you say so, sir." Lang continued on through the spaces with his entourage. Lochland's voice issued over the 2MC. "Doctor Lang sir, contact Central." Milo went back to supervising his Section. Stick was there, having been exiled to the spaces to serve as an operator after annoying Commander Lochland continuously in Central. Milo Wasserman wondered how he been stuck baby-sitting him. "What's going on, Milo?" Stick asked. "They're getting ready to take us up to 20 percent. They need to get Lang's concurrence first, and then call the Captain for permission." "I thought the skipper was at the Launch Day party." Stick replied. "He is. So siddown and shut up, 'cause we're gonna be waiting for awhile." One of the other watchstanders, a Fusion Maintenance Tech 2nd Class named Rod Fowler sat down on the deck with his logs across his lap. He had a look of mischief on his face, and the numerous practical jokes unleashed in the SDF-1's Engineering Spaces most often sprang from his fevered brain. "Hey Wasserman, we gonna get this pig off the ground?" He asked idly. "So they tell me," Milo answered. "Aren't you supposed to be the CMO4 right now?" Stick asked Fowler. CMO4 stood for Chief Mechanical Operator, a roving supervisory mechanic in the Number Four Reflex Furnace Compartment. The CMO4 answered directly to Wasserman, who was the Number Four Top Watch, or '4Top'. "If so, why aren't ya rovin'?" Stick continued. Fowler threw his logs at Stick. "Shut yer ass, nub!" "Stick's right, Rod." Milo said. He then scowled at the skinny enlisted rating. "For once," he added. "If ever there was a time to be keeping an eye on things, it's now." "Aye," Fowler grumbled. He retrieved his logs from the deck plates and shot a death look at Stick, who wisely retreated around a huge magnetic blocking valve. "As for you, Stick, get me some coffee and quit fucking with my watchstanders!" Milo yelled. "I'll wait for Fowler to go down to Middle Level first," Stick said from behind the safety of the blocking valve. There were pros and cons to being the smallest guy in the department, and for the moment being able to go where no one could reach you was a boon. "Hurry your ass Stick, or you'll wish it was Fowler who was after you," Milo growled. Stick climbed out from behind the valve. "I'm goin', I'm goin'!" Milo looked back to his panel. Everything seemed normal, power levels were steady at ten percent. The enormous energy produced by the enigmatic Reflex Furnace was being channeled through the ship's electrical power distribution system. The electrical operators had reversed External Power, and in effect, the SDF-1 was now lighting Macross Island. Not that the energy produced by the Reflex Furnace was actually electricity. Whatever the animating energies were that gave way to Robotechnology, they were not actually coursing through the ship's External Power cables and into the island's grid. They were however driving conventional 3 Phase AC generators at 60 and 400 Hertz. Lang and many other scientists had scribbled across endless dry erase whiteboards about whatever it was the Reflex Furnaces were producing. Milo and the numerous others who attended the Robotech Engineering School in 2007 had scratched their heads and moved on. Robotechnology was perhaps the only discipline (outside of religion) in history where you had to accept just about everything on faith. He was about to make his hourly tour and check on the other watchstanders in his section when his indicators all jumped into the red. An alarm klaxon blared and red revolving lights began flashing. He scanned his panel, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Power levels were climbing rapidly, systems only half understood came on line without any outside prompting. The Reflex Furnace began to rumble in the near subsonics as it jumped to 70 percent output in under two seconds. Fowler appeared at the top of the ladder from Middle Level. "What the fuck's going on?" Milo stabbed at the overrides. There was no response. "The thing's freaking out!" He answered. He continued stabbing at the touch sensitive display. "I think Central has locked me out!" The deck plates began to shake as an ominous sound rolled up from the depths of the battlefortress. Massive servos whined and multiton disconnects engaged somewhere forward of Reflex Four. "Quench all Furnaces locally!" Lochland cried over the 2MC. "Central ain't doin' shit!" Fowler cried. "Nobody's got control of this fucker!" Milo stabbed at the Quench switch again and again. There was no response, and the Furnace output climbed to 90 percent. "It's not working!" "Now what?!" "I think we can do this manually!" Milo cried. "Come on!" He dashed past Fowler and down the ladder into Middle Level. An operator named Lopez was trying to engage the manual trips the Restoration Crews had installed for just such an emergency. The trips were manually operated magnetic blocking valves that would secure plasma flow through the Furnace and interrupt power distribution, known as a `Quench'. They also wouldn't budge. "Can't trip `em!" Lopez gasped. "They're locked open!" "They've got Closing Power available!" Fowler yelled back, looking at the series of white lights on a nearby display. "What the fuck?!" "Line up to hand pump them shut!" Milo ordered. It was possible to use hydraulic pressure through an emergency hand pump station to position the magnets manually in order to secure plasma flow. Lopez grabbed a laminated copy of the hand pump procedure that hung by a lanyard at the hand pump station. They had walked through the procedure a few times in training, but he had never performed the evolution for real. Another operator known as Doomsday scrambled up from Lower Level to assist. Lopez finished lining up the valves and set a huge orange breaker bar into the hand pump well. He and Doomsday began to work at the pump. Some of the Damage Control party jumped to lend a hand. "What's power at!?" Milo gasped. "96 percent and ramping up!" Fowler cried. "Where's the power going?" Milo gasped again. Six men were straining against the trips to no effect. "No idea, man!" The howl of the Reflex Furnaces became deafening. Harmonics and resonances that rattled their teeth and made their eyes swim in their heads coursed through the deck plates at their feet. The massive meter thick bulkheads seemed to warp and close in on them. The air pressure changed dramatically in the compartment, and for a moment Milo thought something had just ruptured. A sudden heat washed over them. Without further warning, Number Four Reflex Furnace powered down to ten percent. Alarms ceased wailing, to be replaced by curses of surprise and amazement by watchstanders on all three levels. The universe returned to normal. "What the fuck was that...?" Fowler asked in the relative quiet. "Beats the shit out of me," Milo replied. The 2MC crackled for attention. "All hands check spaces for damage and injured personnel. Repair Bravo lay to Main Reflex Battery Controls. All Section Leaders lay to Central immediately." Milo looked to Fowler. "You're in charge, Rod. Make sure everything's squared away." "Sure man, as soon as I change my shorts," Fowler replied. Milo climbed back up to Upper Level and across a catwalk to balcony ledge that circled the huge compartment. He stepped through an airtight door and into a man-sized passageway. Most of the Engineering spaces were scaled to accommodate the giant aliens that once crewed this ship. When he reached Central, it was pandemonium. All of the Top Watches were there, the Furnace Supervisor (Milo's immediate superior), the Fold Supervisor, the various Division Officers and Chiefs, and Lochland, who was the Assistant Engineer and second only to Lang in the department. They were arguing back and forth as to what had happened. Lochland kept yelling for quiet, but didn't get it until a crusty old Master Chief named Felder bellowed that he was going to rip the balls off the next guy who piped up. Felder may have been an old cuss, but he was a _well built_ old cuss. The guy could practically bench press a Buick. Lochland continued from some point before Wasserman had arrived. "All we know for certain is that certain automated routines within the ship's primary AIs superseded control authority from the Engineering AI systems and activated the Main Reflex Battery." "Damn straight they did!" Someone called. Felder looked around with narrowed eyes for the offender. "The Main Reflex Battery fired what we believe was a full strength salvo across Macross Island. There are no casualties as of yet, but it's too soon to tell for certain. We have suffered no immediate damage and no casualties... I'm going to recommend to Lang that we interrupt control and indication feeds with the Command Tower in order to preclude another event." "In other words, no adult supervision," the Main Propulsion Assistant observed. Lochland nodded. "More or less, but until we discover exactly what happened and take steps to isolate this rogue command authority override its the best we can do. Truth be known I don't like the idea of those `Bridge Bunnies' looking over our shoulders anyway." The assembled engineers laughed heartily in agreement. The Engineering Department was one of the few on board dominated by men, and the testosterone flowed freely. "Everyone back to your stations except Mister Donovan and Chief Takeda," Lochland ordered. "No one's canceled the Launch and we still have a job to do." Everyone mumbled in agreement and filed back to their posts. Milo wondered why he even bothered to show up. If Lochland and the others really didn't understand what had happened, what did they expect to be able to inform the rest of the Department? "GENERAL QUARTERS, GENERAL QUARTERS! ALL HANDS MAN BATTLESTATIONS! SET CONDITION ALPHA THROUGHOUT THE SHIP! NOW GENERAL QUARTERS!" The voice of Lieutenant Commander Lisa Hayes, the Ship's First Officer, rang over the ship's general announcing circuit intercom, or 1MC. Following her announcement came the strident warble of the ship's General Alarm. **Battlestations?!** By reflex he ran to his Battlestation, which fortunately was as Number Four Top Watch. At least he wouldn't have to worry about a rushed turn-over with someone on the questionable status of the space. Upon his return to Reflex Four he was handed a pressure suit by Fowler. He took the suit and began putting it on. They had run drills in pressure suits before, but that was always with the comforting thought that there was a nice safe atmosphere available in case anything went wrong with the suit. Now... "What the hell's going on?" Fowler asked. He had his faceplate visor up so as not to clutter the commo channels. "I guess we're under attack," Milo replied, he was getting status reports from the rest of his section as he dressed out. "Who? Anti-Unification terrorists?" The Anti-Unification movement was a well armed and fanatical group of malcontents who couldn't see the SDF-1's arrival for what it was: A reminder that the petty conflicts of Earth were insignificant when compared to the great wars in deep space that the ship had escaped. A war that could easily come to Earth. The rebels had already destroyed Mars Base Sara and massacred the colonists. Who knew what they had planned for the Inaugural launch of the SDF-1, the UEG's crown jewel and symbol of its authority. Another possibility entered Milo's mind. **What if those aliens really have come to Earth?** "Could be anything, but I don't think it's a drill. Just keep your eyes open and your people ready for anything," Milo admonished. End of Episode One. _______________________________________________________________________ Robotech: Snipes In Wonderland By J. Austin Wilde Fission Park Press J. Austin Wilde, K.B.C.S. Minister of Propaganda and Super Critical Reactor Axe Man Fission Park Press wildeman@flash.net Many thanks to all the snipes who crawled out of the bilge to C&C this work. I dedicate this `fic to you! For those of you who follow such things, I'm using the Jack McKinney continuity for a timeline of major events. The characters in Snipes will probably never meet the established characters of Robotech except in passing. This story isn't about mecha pilots, or idol singers, or Bridge Bunnies. It is about the men and women who fought the hardest battles of all -the battle to keep the SDF-1 in fighting order. If you're wondering about the title of this `fic, a `snipe' is a nautical term for an engineering type; one who usually works below decks in the fire rooms and engine rooms of ships. The `In Wonderland' part comes from the nickname of the A1W prototype training reactor plant at the Naval Reactors Facility, Idaho National Engineering Laboratories; outside of Idaho Falls, Idaho. A1W was the USS ENTERPRISE prototype reactor plant. A1W was known to staff and students alike as "Alice In Wonderland," and if you were ever to tour the plant for the first time you would feel a little like Alice through the looking glass. Alas, like Snipe's Castle, A1W is no more. The situations, mecha, and some of the characters portrayed in this work of fanfiction are the property of Harmony Gold USA. So there. <> _______________________________________________________________________ Robotech: Snipes in Wonderland Episode Two: Murphy Stows Away The SDF-1 stood at Battlestations. The men and women of the Engineering Department waited in hushed stillness for their orders. The subtle vibrations of the machinery failed to leave them with the comfortable feelings they once did. The Rumormill was in overdrive. Stories and speculation that started in one compartment were blown a hundred times out of proportion by the time they drifted to the other side of the ship. -Thanks to roving watchstanders who felt it was their duty to pass on such bits of information. As always, it was the biggest whoppers that were the first to be believed. It was First Officer Lisa Hayes' voice over the 1MC intercom that laid the rumors to rest. "We are under attack by alien forces in sector four-one-two. This is not a drill, I say again; this is not a drill!" Milo looked up to the cavernous overhead. Then he looked around him, and saw that everyone else in Reflex Four was doing the same thing. Somewhere high above them, outside the ship, was an enemy the whole world had hoped would never come. "All stations report status of rigging for General Emergency and Condition Alpha," Lochland called over his own intercom. Milo looked to Stick, who was busy sweating in his pressure suit. "Stick, go `round to all the stations and see what's up." He ordered the skinny eighteen year-old. There was no reason to have him go, he could call each station on the phones and ask, but it was something to keep the kid busy before he lost it. Stick aye-aye'd and hopped down the ladder to Middle Level. "Whaddya think?" Fowler asked him. "About?" Fowler shrugged. His pressure suit made a sighing sound as it moved against his body. "We just walked into an interstellar war. How's it feel?" Milo checked his suit's supply of oxygen from an indicator on his forearm. "I'm trying not to think about it." They waited. That was the worst part of it. Not knowing what was going on up there. Lochland made announcements and they performed their duties, but that cold lump in their stomachs from not knowing was growing, getting colder. They had just axed about three hundred pages of the countdown procedure, and any lingering rumors that this was a very sophisticated crew response exercise were immediately dispelled. The procedures were Gospel, and Lochland the kind of martinet that fell down on his face to worship them. "All stations prepare to engage Gravity Control System," Lochland announced. "Okay people, look sharp!" Milo called to his section. "This is it! I want you to keep an eye out on all systems, `cause I don't need to remind you that this has never been done before!" His boys checked their displays as the Number Four Reflex Furnace began to thrum with power. As long as another unexplainable power transient didn't occur, everything should work out fine. The Damage Control parties went on self seal and engaged their onboard air supplies as a precaution nonetheless. "Prepare to engage Gravity Control System on my mark!" Lieutenant Claudia Grant called from high above them in the Command Tower. The reflex furnaces, true to their name, began to hum even louder in preparation. "Ten...Niner...Eight...." The ship seemed to shift on it's mammoth keel blocks as the Gravity Control System (GCS) pods spun up. The GCS pods were scattered throughout the ship and were classified into two groups; Propulsion -or gravity drive, and Environmental -providing inertial dampening and artificial gravity when the ship was in space. "Seven...Six...Fiver..." The Reflex Furnace trembled as power ramped up to 60 percent in under a quarter second. The ship began to vibrate as forces of gravity tugged at it from many different vectors. Silent prayers mingled with appreciative curses as the crew waited at their stations. "Four...Three...Two...One...Mark! Full Thrust on Propulsion GCS!" Claudia cried. The SDF-1 gave a massive shudder, and then lurched into the air. Milo Wasserman held on as the battlefortress suddenly pitched up into the sky. His heart seemed ready to burst with pride. The ship, his ship, could fly! "Environmental GCS systems engaged," Lochland announced. The ride became a little smoother. "Hey it works man!" Fowler said with surprise. "I never thought we'd get off the ground." About that point is when the alarms began to wail. "What did I say!?" Fowler cried. Milo checked his displays. All conditions in the Reflex Furnace were normal, although power demands were fluctuating slightly. The ship began to vibrate badly. "FIRE IN GRAVITY NINE! CLASS CHARLIE FIRE IN GRAVITY NINE! REPAIR ONE-THREE LAY TO GRAVITY NINE! FIRE IN GRAVITY NINE!" The 2MC barked. It was an automated emergency response system whose voice was followed by more alarms. On instinct everyone in Reflex Four went on self seal and plugged umbilical hoses into manifold connections spaced throughout the compartment. Gravity Nine was a GCS compartment forward of them and six levels up. Because the ship was rigged for Condition Alpha -meaning maximum airtight integrity, there was no chance of smoke or poisonous gases reaching them in Reflex Four. That didn't stop anyone from sealing up and plugging in. "FIRE IN GRAVITY THREE! CLASS CHARLIE FIRE IN GRAVITY THREE! REPAIR ONE-SIX LAY TO GRAVITY THREE! FIRE IN GRAVITY THREE!" "FIRE IN GRAVITY FOUR! CLASS CHARLIE FIRE IN GRAVITY FOUR! REPAIR ONE-ZERO LAY TO GRAVITY FOUR! FIRE IN GRAVITY FOUR!" "FIRE IN GRAVITY ONE! CLASS CHARLIE FIRE IN GRAVITY ONE! REPAIR ONE-ONE LAY TO GRAVITY ONE! FIRE IN GRAVITY ONE!" There would have been more, but at that point someone in Central killed the automated response system and began directing the Damage Control parties over the phone circuits. "Jesus Christ! The whole ship's on fire!" A Fusion Maintenance Tech nicknamed Doomsday yelled. A terrible screaming sound tore through the ship. The sound of tons of superhard armor being torn asunder, and of dozens of mammoth support struts snapping like twigs deafened them and brought sharp pangs of panic to their hearts. The SDF-1 began to lurch sickeningly around them. Milo realized at that point that the ship's entire Gravity Control System had catastrophically failed. SDF-1 began it's long fall towards Macross Island. There was nothing to keep ten million tons of spacecraft airborne. "Brace for impact!" He yelled to his section over the suit intercom. He was barely heard over screams and cries of panic. He grabbed onto a large length of coolant piping and remembered to keep his knees bent. The indistinct roar of emergency fusion driven HEPLAR thrusters kicked in from somewhere below them. It wouldn't be enough to keep them aloft, but it might slow their descent. Maybe. SDF-1 came down hard on the keel blocks, which gave as much as their shock suppression systems could take before shattering like six hundred tons of glass. Reflex Four and the rest of the ship was engulfed in blackness as the lighting failed. Bodies flew across the compartment and the screams of men and women echoed in headsets. The ship settled in on the ruined tarmac of the airfield at a sickening fifteen degree list to port. The lights flicked back on, as well as battery powered emergency lamps, known as `battle lanterns.' Sparks erupted around them from tertiary systems that couldn't take the abuse. Milo picked himself up off the deck and made sure no one was seriously hurt. "Fire in Reflex Four Middle Level!" He heard someone, possibly Lopez, shout over the suit commo. Acrid smoke began welling up the ladder well. Milo grabbed a portable Halon extinguisher from a bulkhead mounted rack and made his way past a suited figure scrambling up from Middle Level. It was Stick. He was about to yell at him not to run when he saw that Stick was headed for another extinguisher. Milo ran down the steep ladder well facing outward away from the rungs as any dyed-in-the-wool snipe would. His left hand scrambled over pipes and stanchions for balance as his other hand held the sixty-five pound extinguisher in a death grip. Smoke and fumes filled Middle Level, making it impossible to see more than a foot in front of him. "Where's the fire!?" He called over the commo, his breaths hard and fast echoing in his pressure suit's helmet facebowl. He plugged in to a manifold connection close by. It wasn't entirely necessary, as his suit had an internal four hour air supply, but then he didn't know how long he was going to need to be on self-seal, either. Lopez appeared through the clouds of smoke. "Papa-Four-Twelve!" Lopez cried, referring to a power distribution panel along the aft bulkhead of Reflex Four Middle Level. "The auto-interrupt didn't cut the power!" Milo understood. "Fowler!" He called into the suit commo. "Cut the feeds to Papa-Four-Twelve!" "Four-Twelve, aye!" Fowler replied. From the sound of him in Milo's headset, he could have been standing next to him. Instead he was still in Upper Level. "I can't see shit so I'm cuttin' out all of them!" Milo acknowledged. As far as he could remember, nothing terribly important was powered from the main power feeds to Middle Level. He made his way through the smoke, homing on the bright pink sparks that burst through the gloom. He saw the panel bursting forth sparks and billowing clouds of poisonous smoke as he approached. It wasn't burning very hot, so he slammed the extinguisher on the deck to ground it and raised the horn to the panel. He pulled the safety pin, breaking the plastic tamper seal. "All feeds secured!" Fowler called over the commo. Stick appeared behind Milo, lugging the heavy extinguisher as best he could. The panel stopped sparking, but that was only because electricity had been secured to it. He squeezed down on the operating handle, and a gout of icy halon gas erupted from the horn and sprayed into the ruined electrical panel. He gave it a few good blasts, waited for a silvered DC man to approach with a thermal-imager known as a `Nifty,' and backed away to let the man have a look. The DC man nudged him forward and tapped on his right arm, the signal to use another blast. Milo discharged the rest of the extinguisher into the panel. He yelled through the mask for Stick to bring up the next extinguisher and stand by. The DC man with the Nifty checked the panel again. "Fire's out!" He called. "No hot spots!" "Fire's out, aye!" Milo repeated. "Stick, you're the reflash watch!" Stick acknowledged and took Milo's place kneeling on the deck next to the panel. Milo looked around the compartment for Lopez. He found him checking his other power and control panels with the back of his gloved hand to see if they were burning inside. "Everything else is cool, Wasserman!" Lopez called loudly through the mask. The commo channel was too cluttered with emergency and damage control reports already to bother with less than vital messages. "Fire's out!" Milo yelled back. "Rig your space and see if you can find any other damage. I'll see about getting this smoke cleared." "Aye!" Milo clambered back up the ladder, sweating profusely inside his suit. He needed to get reports on the rest of his space and pass them on to the Furnace Supervisor and to Central. Doomsday was manning a sound-powered commo circuit while Fowler and the Frankensteinian Bolt-Neck scanned through a hand-held electrical schematic of Reflex Four Middle Level. "How's the panel look?" Fowler asked at a yell. The compartment was still filled with voluminous clouds of smoke. "Wasted," Milo replied curtly. "How bad do we need it?" "We can get by," Fowler said studying the schematic. "All the gear using that feeder panel is ABT protected. All we gotta do is isolate the burned out panel and cut the power back in to the ABT." Milo nodded. The ABT, or Automatic Bus Transfer, would automatically shift equipment connected to it to whatever source of power was still available. "Make it happen," he ordered. "Get someone to stand by the panel until we can get it properly tagged out, but I want power restored to Middle Level as soon as possible." "No problem boss," Fowler said. He felt his way through the smoke and shined a maglite onto the main feeder distribution panel. He found the appropriate breaker switches and reenergized every panel but P-4-12. Milo looked to Doomsday. "Any other casualties reported?" "Not in Reflex Four, Top." Doomsday answered quickly. "There's a couple fires burning in Three and in Atmosphere Machinery Aft, but nothing else close. All the GCS compartment fires went out when the automated systems cut out reflex power to them." "Good. Report to Central that our panel fire is out, a reflash watch is set, and there is no other damage or injured men to report in Reflex Four." Doomsday repeated back the order and sent it off to Central via his sound-powered circuit. The principles of sound-powered phones went back almost a century, but still proved viable. It was a simple, reliable communication system that required no external source of electrical power. Perfect for when All Hell was breaking loose. "Bolt-Neck, I want you and..." He gestured through the smoke to a man in a pressure suit. "Who's that standing over there?" The man in question piped up, "it's Elvis, Top!" "You and Bolt-Neck follow me and grab up a couple Halons apiece with you. Fowler, you've got the space until I get back." "Where're ya goin'?" Fowler asked. "To go put out that fire in AMA," Milo replied, referring to the Atmosphere Machinery Aft compartment. "We can't ventilate this compartment with a fire burning in there." "Hey Top, what about here?" Doomsday asked. "This whole goddamn compartment is fully automated," Milo shot back. "We're just a bunch of trained monkeys in here. All we're good for is fighting fires and fixing stuff." He grabbed the last halon extinguisher and led Bolt-Neck and Elvis through the airtight door. DC men of Repair Zero-Nine had set up a command post two intersections down for fighting the fires that raged in AMA. Expended halon extinguishers lay along the bulkheads and large pressurized foam hoses snaked in a nylon wrapped spaghetti on the decks. The eery glow of helmet lights sent beams of white light piercing through the haze of smoke and fire gases, and glittered off the swaths of reflective tape on pressure suits. "Need any help?" Milo asked the Man In Charge (MIC), a junior lieutenant who had just taken over the position in the last three days. He plugged into the officer's `buddy connection' on the air supply umbilical. Bolt-Neck plugged into Milo's buddy connection, and Elvis into Bolt-Neck's, making a nice daisy chain of shared air. "I see you have Halons," the officer observed. "I can't get any more goddamn extinguishers down here, and my foam pressure's erratic." "Where's the fire?" The officer gestured to a ghosty LCD display. "Right here, a bunch of volatiles came loose when we hit, and sprayed all over the scrubber heat exchangers. Can't get close to it without some halon to knock it down and cool off the men. Foam's too erratic to risk an approach." "No prob sir, lead the way!" Milo said. He gestured for Bolt-Neck and Elvis to step up. "We've got five Halons, think that'll be enough?" "I just need to get my hose teams in close enough to work the fire. Goddamn automatic Halon system didn't go off. They think a valve jammed against it's seat when we hit." "I understand sir!" "Nothing much works around here!" The officer observed. "Fifty trillion dollars for this piece of shit!" "Yeah, but it's _our_ piece of shit!" Milo cracked. He began to advance down the cramped passageway to AMA. He was sweating even more in his suit and realized that without the ventilation systems running there was no way to dissipate the heat of the fires. He passed a pressure suited corpsman tending to an injured man while two Life Support Machinery techs (their `recycle' triangle of arrows painted on their helmets was a dead giveaway of their rates) carried him on a fold-up stretcher. The man was missing part of his right arm at the elbow and had a breathing mask strapped to his face because his pressure suit's integrity was obviously breached. "Still with me Bolt-Neck? Elvis?" He called back to them. Bolt-Neck grunted a reply. Elvis managed a crooning namesake "Uh-huh." They crawled down one more length of passageway before they reached the AMA compartment. The glow of raging chemical fires suffused the smoky gloom with an orange light. Shadows of pressure suited men wielding blast shields, hooked pikes, and fire hoses drifted through the smoke and fire light. The deck plates were awash with water and Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF, or spoken A-Triple-F) that spilled down grated drainage gutters to holding tanks where the water could be recycled later. He could see the hose teams struggling to get past the air-tight doorsto fight the fire. The heat was so intense that the near bulkhead was starting to glow a dull red. A DC party tromped in from a passageway forward, their helmet lights bobbing through the gloom, and set up their fire hose to spray the bulkhead down and keep it cool. "Man In Charge!" Milo yelled through his mask. He was looking for a man with three wide strips of reflective tape running down the back of his helmet. A tall woman in a silvered-pressure suit turned around. She had the three stripes on her helmet. He could see her sweat matted bangs drifting over her face through her helmet facebowl. "Man In Charge!" Milo called again, waving an arm. "I brought you a few Halons." "Oh thank God!" The woman cried. "Get your people in there!" He could see that she was an ensign. "On it ma'am!" He told her. He turned around to Bolt-Neck and Elvis. "Come on, you slugs!" He trudged through the press of bodies and fire fighting gear to reach the two nozzlemen on the hose teams. The best they could do with their erratic foam pressure was keep the fire from spreading. A man with a blast shield came up to screen them. Milo tapped the lead nozzleman on the shoulder. The man saw that he and his companions were carrying halon fire extinguishers. "Fuckin' great!" He enthused. "Been waitin' for them!" "We're gonna leapfrog it!" Milo yelled to him over the roar of the blaze. "You're gonna spray us down until we can get close enough to hit it with the Halons, then you get your asses in here and kill this thing." "Gotcha!" The nozzleman affirmed. "Let's go!" He yelled to Bolt-Neck and Elvis. The man with the blast shield brought it up to cover them from the flaming bits that rained down from the overhead. The heat was incredible, more than the suit could hope to keep up with. He felt the blast of the fire hoses spray around him and things got a little cooler, but they were still literally wading through the flames to reach the volatile stowage racks. His facebowl polarized against the intense light and he had to call up the tiny imaging sonar suite in the crown of his helmet to see. Pulses of sound energy chirped into the fiery compartment and reflected back into a ghosty image projected on the facebowl. "This is really fucking hot!" Bolt-Neck cried. "How much further?!" "A few more meters!" Milo shot back. He could almost get a shot in with the Halons. The foam hoses lost pressure for a second, and the inferno exploded up around them. Milo felt his skin tingle with the sudden heat. "Jesus Christ!" Elvis screamed close to panic. "Go! Run right for it now!" Milo yelled back. If they didn't do this now they were going to die. Milo and the other three charged into the flames. Halons slammed on the deck with audible *clangs!* Milo ripped his pin out and clamped down on the operating handle. Halon gas belched forth all around him, and the flames shirked away from the deliriously cold flood. "GET THIS FUCKING HOSE IN NOW!" The nozzleman cried to his hose team. "NOW! MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!" The hose teams heaved with all their might against the straining pressurized hoses. They sprayed all around them, coating everything with AFFF. Steam spewed and metal shrieked in protest and the whole compartment seemed ready to explode. Milo and his men were doused in the watery foam and the fires died in steamy gasps. The compartment was now pitch black and quiet save for the hiss of water on hot metal. The chorus of high pitched chirps from the imaging sonars soon became a demented flock of birds. Milo stood up and felt his skin rub against the suit fabric painfully. He had a good all over first degree burn going, he was certain. "Fire's out!" A Nifty equipped man announced. "We have some hot spots though, so keep it up with the hoses!" He began directing the hose teams on where to spray. Milo asked how his guys were. No one was seriously hurt, although they shared his burns. He grabbed up his expended Halon and started for the air-tight door. "That's the last of the fires," he heard a phone talker declare to the Man (woman) In Charge. "Good job, man," the nozzleman said to him with a light clap of his hand on Milo's shoulder. "Saved our asses for sure." "Anytime," Milo said tiredly. The adrenaline was wearing off, and he was coming down hard. "Come on gents," he said to Bolt-Neck and Elvis. "Let's get back to Reflex Four before anyone misses us." They trudged back to Reflex Four through the slowly clearing smoke and the tangle of fire hoses. Repair teams darted to and fro, fighting their own battles to bring the vital atmosphere control machinery back on line. Lights flicked back on as the danger of more electrical fires passed. He almost forgot that somewhere above them, the human race was in a war for it's very survival. That without the GCS pods, the SDF-1 was a sitting duck on Macross Island. He almost forgot, except that Lisa Hayes made another announcement on the 1MC. "All Destroid combat units lay to topside defense stations to repel spaceborne assault." Oh no. It wasn't over yet. Not by a longshot. End of Episode Two. _______________________________________________________________________ Technical Notes: The widespread use of Halon 1301(tm) gas as a fire extinguishing agent (vice carbon-dioxide fire extinguishers) may seem pretty controversial to some of you snipes out there. My arguments for employing it aboard SDF-1 are these: 1) Halon is highly effective against all types of fires. (Particularly the high energy fires that would be encountered on a ship like SDF-1.) 2) Halon provides superior cooling effects over CO2. 3) The dangerous oxygen displacing characteristics of halon in a closed environment are neglible with the availability of self contained breathing apparatus. The use of fire hoses on a space ship may seem a little unlikely to non-snipes, but I offer you this: 1) Water is still the best extinguishing agent for a fire. 2) A fantastic spacecraft like the SDF-1 would have both the stowage capacity, and the recycling equipment, to support fire-fighting efforts using water and AFFF. 3) Water will provide cooling effects long after the halon is expended. The pressure suits are self contained units with rebreather systems rated for four hours of *strenuous* activity (damage control, fire fighting, combat, etc;) They have manifold connections much like submarine EABs (a demand regulator style forced air breathing mask) to allow the wearer to use the higher capacity breathing air system of the ship vice his own personal supply. You never know how long you might be forced to breathe canned air, and when your rebreather quits it's not the time to find there's no manifolds nearby! Robotech: Snipes In Wonderland By J. Austin Wilde Fission Park Press J. Austin Wilde, K.B.C.S. Minister of Propaganda and Super Critical Reactor Axe Man Fission Park Press wildeman@flash.net Many thanks to all the snipes who crawled out of the bilge to C&C this work. I dedicate this `fic to you! For those of you who follow such things, I'm using the Jack McKinney continuity for a timeline of major events. The characters in Snipes will probably never meet the established characters of Robotech except in passing. This story isn't about mecha pilots, or idol singers, or Bridge Bunnies. It is about the men and women who fought the hardest battles of all -the battle to keep the SDF-1 in fighting order. If you're wondering about the title of this `fic, a `snipe' is a nautical term for an engineering type; one who usually works below decks in the fire rooms and engine rooms of ships. The `In Wonderland' part comes from the nickname of the A1W prototype training reactor plant at the Naval Reactors Facility, Idaho National Engineering Laboratories; outside of Idaho Falls, Idaho. A1W was the USS ENTERPRISE prototype reactor plant. A1W was known to staff and students alike as "Alice In Wonderland," and if you were ever to tour the plant for the first time you would feel a little like Alice through the looking glass. Alas, like Snipe's Castle, A1W is no more. The situations, mecha, and some of the characters portrayed in this work of fanfiction are the property of Harmony Gold USA. So there. WARNING: <> _______________________________________________________________________ Robotech: Snipes in Wonderland Episode Three: Spacefold Milo Wassermann was barely back in the Reflex Four compartment when Lochland began issuing orders for all sections to prepare for conventional HEPLAR vertical drive launch. Like just about everything else on the SDF-1, the HEPLAR drives had never been fully tested. The only thing they had going for them was that the massive fusion driven magnetically accelerated plasma engines had been built using existing human reaction drive technology. He could still feel the burns on his skin. It wasn't bad, just painful enough to make him feel it every time he moved around in his suit. Elvis and Bolt-Neck had similar burns. If he could spare them, Milo would have sent them both to sick bay for treatment. At the moment they were busy with their own preparations for the second attempt at a launch. Reflex Four contained two of the twelve main compression turbines and four of the eight booster compressors for the HEPLAR drives. The massive turbines sat all the way aft and in the very bowels of the mammoth compartment. Rod was in charge while he was gone, so Milo went to him for a status report. If he had his suit's faceplate open, he would have smelled the tang of ozone and smoke that had not completely cleared from their electrical panel fire. Rod seemed to have things under control, having secured Doomsday from his job as phone-talker to prepare the turbine warm-up procedures. "How's the warm-up going, Rod?" Rod looked at him and wobbled his hand. "So so. I've got Doomsday and Genie working on that while Jefe and Bulkhead stand the watches. I've got Stick running around playing gofer." "How far into the procedure are we?" "Just the initial conditions," Rod admitted. "We're taking it slow right now, and by the way, that panel that burned up was actually a feeder for some of the booster unit control and indication power. For some dumb-assed reason that I can't imagine, it's the stuff that isn't ABT protected. I feel like a fuckin' idiot for missing it when I said we didn't lose anything vital." "That's okay Rod, I didn't think we'd actually be trying to use the HEPLAR engines in an atmosphere." "You're tellin' me." "So what are we doing about it?" Milo asked warily. "Ran some patch work busses to the panels from the ABT," Rod replied. "I snuck a peek, found a couple extra terminals inside, and said what the hell. Don't ask how we're securing the lugs." Milo knew better than to ask questions he didn't really want the answers to. "Fine, I won't. Just get those boosters up and running." Rod nodded. Milo could see the grin behind his faceplate visor. "No prob, Wassermann. Now that you're back from playin' hero I gladly turn responsibility for this nightmare back over to you." "I relieve you," Milo said formally. "Now get down in the hole and see what you can do about cutting a few corners in that warm-up procedure." Something distant but loud rocked the ship. The two men didn't think it was possible for anything external to make the ship shudder like that. It was another reminder to them that there was a war going on out there. Every minute SDF-1 was a sitting duck was a minute the aliens (whoever they were) could use to kill them right there on the ground. "Aye. But don't get yer panties in a bind, we still need to fuel the drives, and you know how long *that's* gonna take." Milo knew. Lochland issued an order to begin fueling procedures as Fowler spoke. The Launch Day plan called for a fueling to take place in lunar orbit above the ALUCE moon base after SDF-1's leisurely gravity drive transit from Earth orbit. This was a contingency plan that no one had expected to use. They had to take on several million tons of hydrogen (in the form of seawater) into their main reaction mass processing tanks. Even with the ridiculous capacities of the pumps, (almost a hundred thousand gallons per minute), it would take fifteen minutes to fill the tanks, trim the ship using the environmental GCS pods, another twenty to actually get the reactors fired up to the level of thermal output required to `crack' the water for its hydrogen and begin processing the fuel, plus the standard SNAFU delay times associated with any major evolution. Hopefully the Veritech jocks and their grounded Destroid cousins could keep the heat off long enough for SDF-1 to actually make orbit. There wasn't much Milo could do about it, as there were other sections in other compartments who had the machinery. All they needed to do was get those compression turbines ready when Old Man Gloval wanted to leave. He followed Fowler below into Middle Level, across a catwalk headed aft, and then down into Lower Level. He tried to ignore the jerry-rigged heavy power cables that snaked along the catwalk from the ABT to the control systems. Genie was at the control panel as Doomsday clambered over the massive heavy gauge titanium ductwork that fed the booster compression turbines from inlet scoops big enough to hold a modest sized office building within. The huge turbines rolled very slowly -a sedate six revolutions per hour. Dominating the aft end of the compartment were the locomotive sized drive motors -the mightiest 400Hz 3-Phase AC electric motors in human history. "Roll check sat on all turbines!" Doomsday called, `sat' being short for `satisfactory.' "Roll check sat, aye!" Genie confirmed. "Commencing 100 RPM ramp!" Genie checked his displays. The booster compression turbines had control power now thanks to Fowler's inventiveness, and he was ready to begin the formal warm-up. He saw Milo standing along the ladder watching, and pointed to the panel. "Hey Top," he said. "We're ready to roll `em." "Spin `em up Genie," Milo replied. "I don't think the aliens care if you get my permission first." "Aye," Genie answered. His fingers flew across the panels. Those incredible drive motors began to hum in a bass rumble as the starting current spiked across electrical distribution consoles in Central and on the Bridge. The turbines began to roll slightly faster. The deck plates began to vibrate. "What a racket!" Doomsday complained. He was standing between the two Main Compression turbines as they started to roll. They began to hear and feel the tons of air per second that were drawn through the compression turbines to feed the HEPLAR drives. Pressure began to build up within the SDF-1's Main Engines. "That's just a harmonic," Genie supplied. "It's gonna go like that until the turbines spin up past the resonance frequency region." "Just wait till they actually light the Mains," Milo replied with a yell. He didn't want to use the commo circuit, as channels were still very active with all of the launch preparations and ongoing damage control throughout the Engineering spaces. "Then you'll hear some noise!" Fowler noted Genie logging the time for warm-up on a whiteboard next to the repeater console. He also noted Genie cheating by a few minutes. No one had to tell him that they didn't have the time for a full blown warm-up. They turned over control of the turbines to the Main Engine AI, affectionately known as `Mother' through some obscure reference to a science fiction horror movie from the 20th. Mother would run the HEPLAR engines and the related Reaction Control System thrusters as necessary to propel the ship as directed by the Bridge. Milo was hoping Mother wouldn't take after another certain science fiction movie computer named HAL... The way things were going, he wouldn't have been surprised to have Mother start calling him `Dave'. As it stood, Mother's calm, almost sexy voice reminded him that the full warm up time for the compression turbines had not been met. Milo gave her orders to continue anyway. Mother clucked once in a tone of disappointment Milo was sure some Robotech engineering clown had likely programmed to make the operator feel guilty about violating operating procedures. As the Top Watch in the middle of an emergency, Milo had the authority to do so -he would have to answer for it later, but he had the authority. Lochland might chew his ass but that would be the worst of it -provided nothing broke... * * * SDF-1 shook as another volley of something rocked the ship. The last twenty minutes had been a frenzy of activity, but through it all the blasts and the shakes had been reminder that the other battle was still joined somewhere outside the ship. "T-Minus two minutes to lift-off!" Lochland announced over the 2MC. "All Top Watches and Section Leaders report status of Main and Auxiliary propulsion systems!" Milo gave the nod to Stick, who had picked the wrong time to show his face and was gigged for phone-talker duty. Stick relayed Reflex Four's readiness to Central. The Main and Booster Compression turbines rumbled in the near subsonic as they rolled at their warm-up speed of 1200 RPM. The sound drowned out even the bass drone of the alien Reflex Furnace just forward of them. If you strayed too close to the drive motors, you would find that any ferrous metal on your person was now magnetized. "Stand by for priming burn!" Lochland announced. Milo looked to Stick and Fowler, who were waiting. They had never done anything more than a priming burn on the engines. Genie gave them a `thumbs up' from his console. Indicators jumped and shifted as the turbines ramped up to 4500 RPM. Outside the SDF-1, massive louvers yawned fully open. The engines began to howl as thousands of tons of air per second began to rush through the three inch thick titanium ducting that spanned fifty feet in diameter. The ship shifted slightly on the ruined keel blocks as the very force of exhaust air beneath the ship began to exert itself. "Priming burn in five... four... three... two... one... mark! Commence priming burn!" Louvers internal to the ship flung wide with massive thuds, directing a portion of the air over the heat exchangers for the conventional 1000 MW fusion reactors that made up SDF-1's High Energy PLAsma Rockets. A sharp *crack* echoed throughout the space as helium plasma belched forth from the containment vessel and into the engine chambers. A geyser of steam and blinding motes of plasma wreathed the ship as the priming burn seared the interior of the engines with million degree heat. SDF-1 shifted once again on the keel blocks. "Stand by all sections to raise ship!" This time it was Claudia Grant's voice over the 1MC. Lochland repeated the order on the 2MC from central. "We're ready when you are, dear!" Fowler called to the cavernous ceiling. "Hang on, gents!" Milo added. "Lift off in ten seconds...niner...eight..." Claudia began counting down. Genie checked his panel once again, searching for the red alarm light or the amber warning indicator because the engine noise was getting too loud to hear the audible alarms. "Seven...six...fiver..." "Commencing final power ramp!" Genie announced. The Main Compression turbines spun up to full speed -7500 RPM. The deck plates thundered with the subsonics. Massive hydraulic suspension systems flexed and groaned as the turbines began to shift on their mounts. "Here's hopin' we don't blow up," Fowler toasted them with his coffee mug. "Three...two...one...Ignition! Full thrust!" Claudia cried. SDF-1's HEPLAR engines blowtorched a Niagara of incandescent blue-white flame. Helium plasma mixed with superheated air from the turbines and formed a column of lift that suspended the battlefortress a few meters off the ground. Environmental GCS took over from there, stabilizing the ship. Mother, linked to the Astrogation and Flight Control AIs, began sequencing burns to raise the ship. The noise was beyond deafening, it was numbing. What was thousands of tons per second became hundreds of thousands of tons of air per second howling through the ducting and into the turbines. Several decks below them were the actual HEPLAR drives. Their furious screams shrilled above the din and coupled with the occasional heavy sound as something big was caught in the FOD traps and blown out of the ship with some of the bypassed compression air. SDF-1 began to rise faster and faster above Macross Island. "This pig flies!" Fowler yelled. "We aren't in orbit yet!" Bolt-neck yelled back. "So shut the fuck up and stop jinxing us!" Genie watched with pride as the turbines lifted the ship. He had a cool hand on the console and an intuitive sense about the ship's systems. The ship seemed to speak to him, although not in the way it was rumored the ship talked to Doctor Lang. SDF-1 continued to accelerate, though with the environmental GCS system providing inertial dampening, the ride was much like a slow elevator that bumped occasionally. Engine noise began to die away as they rose out of the troposphere. At last Mother secured the intake louvers and the turbines began winding down. SDF-1 rose on pure plasma from the reactors now. "Commencing cool-down to 1200 RPM," Genie announced. "We in space yet?" Stick asked. "Not yet," Milo replied. "Just too high up for the atmosphere to do the engines much good. In the meantime you can secure the phones and start helping Jefe and Bulkhead look for air leaks." Stick looked downcast. "Aye." "And secure the attitude," Fowler snorted. "Nubs aren't authorized to have `em." Stick aye-aye'd again and went to find Jefe. "One of these days he'll start pullin' his own weight around here," Fowler remarked to Milo. "I hope so, Rod. Something tells me we're going to need every warm body we have to get through this." "At least the shooting stopped," Genie observed. "For as long as that lasts," Fowler shot back. "I don't think anyone who came God knows how many light years to fight us is going to just let us go after one battle." "Maybe we stomped the shit out of them out there," Genie returned. "What are the chances of *that* happening..." "We're doomed," Doomsday said then, true to form. "Okay, cut the shit," Milo interjected. "Talk like that isn't doing us any good. You know the drill: watch your spaces, keep on the lookout for anything abnormal, and sit tight. We're in space now, who knows what can happen." SDF-1 continued it's climb into Low Earth Orbit. * * * SDF-1 had secured it's vertical HEPLAR drives, and now used the Main Engines to push itself into a higher orbit to rendezvous with the surviving UEG Spacefleet. Rumors continued to drift through the spaces about what was going on. "How goes the chow chain?" Milo asked Genie. The blonde haired young man shrugged. "Okay I guess. Most of us have cycled through. I'm waiting for Jefe to get back and relieve me, then when I'm done I relieve Bulkhead." "As long as we get through the chow chain before the link up," Milo said grimly. "We're gonna be pretty busy for that." Genie nodded. SDF-1 was to rendezvous with the rest of the UEG spacefleet -whatever had survived anyway. They would transfer the wounded from the other ships to SDF-1, and the Supply Department would rearm the fleet's expendable munitions stores. Unbeknownst to the general populace, SDF-1 carried several thousand nuclear warheads and their necessary delivery systems on board. Despite the UEG's propaganda to the contrary, SDF-1 was meant to be a weapon against the Anti-Unification movement in the event that any more blatant acts of terrorism occurred (such as what destroyed the Mars Sara base.) Such acts would be dealt with using whatever force was deemed necessary. SDF-1 was the UEG's big stick, the thing that kept the ruling junta in power. "What do you think is going on out there?" Genie asked. There hadn't been much word through the rumormill, other than what had passed from the flight decks. Stories of mecha shaped like giant headless ostriches and street to street fighting in Macross City reminiscent of old war movies mostly. "Dunno. Maybe they're just sussing us out right now. Figuring out their next move." "Wish they'd get on with it. One way or another. The wait's driving me crazy." Rod Fowler's pressure-suited form appeared through the airtight door, faceplate up. He had his usual smart-ass grin on his face. "Cold cuts and instant soup," he informed them. "You wanna eat?" He asked Wassermann. "Not hungry," Milo replied. "What, the chow isn't good enough for your last meal? Does the condemned have any other requests?" "Knock it off, Rod. If we're so doomed we would have bought it on Macross Island." "Maybe they're just playing with us," Rod supposed. "When they get bored they'll take us out." Milo's return was cut off by LCDR Lisa Hayes' voice on the 1MC. "All sections stand by for Docking Operations. Report all exceptions to Condition Alfa to Damage Control Central. Medical Evacuation teams will remain in their primary staging areas until ordered otherwise." "While we sit tight down here and wait," Milo observed. * * * SDF-1 was beginning its final maneuver burns to position it with the rest of the UEG Spacefleet when the first salvos of laser and particle beam fire from the alien guns came blistering in. Down in the bowels of the ship, the arrival was met with strident alarms and the vituperative oaths of the snipes as they went back on self-seal. The chorus of hisses from dozens of air supply umbilicals plugging into manifold connections filled the spaces. A deathbolt struck the ship somewhere forward and above Reflex Four. The actual sound of the beam spending itself against the superhard Robotech alloy was a torturous scream vibrating through the hull and structural members of the ship. Men and women cast furtive looks above themselves as the eery screams announced themselves without warning, faded, and died away as receding echoes. There were no physical shock to these blasts, which made them even more phantasmal and unsettling to listen to. "Must be a hell of a light show," Genie remarked through his faceplate mic. "That shit gives me the creeps," Bolt-Neck replied from across the catwalk. He pointed to the overhead as another beam splashed across the hull. He was lugging a depressurized foam hose, flaking it out for use if needed. "I keep waiting for one to breach the hull and suck us all out." "Cheery thoughts like that keep me warm at night," Rod said. Something solid struck the hull, like a great wave of force rolling over the ship from starboard to port. SDF-1 rumbled in protest and the lights flickered momentarily. Alarms chirped at indicator panels and then went silent. Men got back to their feet and searched for something solid to hold on to. "What the fuck was that?" Someone cursed. "Beats the hell out of me, but I hope it doesn't happen again," another replied. Another wave of force rolled over the ship. SDF-1 shook even more violently. Piping and cable runs jumped in their support hangers, knocking paint chips and dust free to float in the still air of the sealed compartment. Milo looked to Genie, who was monitoring the Reflex Furnace. Genie gave him a `thumbs up.' Apparently the designers of the ship had expected the components to suffer this kind of abuse and designed them with the appropriate durability. The human-made components were another case. Milo was waiting for another fire to break out at any second. "Keep a close look out, folks," he ordered. Claudia Grant's voice over the 1MC followed hot on his words. "Attention all hands. Priority! Fold System standby! Readying energy at maximum-green from all power sources!" Lochland repeated the announcement on the 2MC and added, "All Reflex Top Watches stand by for high level transients." "Jumping Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick!" Rod cried. "They're gonna fold this pig?!" "You heard the lady," Milo barked. "Prepare for Fold Operations!" Forward of Reflex Four lay the Fold System Compartment. The crew could already hear the enigmatic engines warming up with ominous whines and deep bass rumbles. "All hands to Fold Stations! All hands to Fold Stations! This is *not* a drill! I say again: this is *not* a drill! Prepare for Fold Operation in T-Minus five minutes and counting -mark!" Hayes added over the 1MC. "Like we'd be runnin' drills in the middle of a fuckin' war!" Rod groused. "We're doomed," Doomsday added thoughtfully. "More walk, less talk," Milo said tersely. They had to sweep the compartment for loose gear (which was everywhere and mostly damage control equipment no-one wanted to part with given the present circumstances.) The Reflex Furnaces began to ramp up to maximum power, feeding whatever animating energies they generated into the Fold Generators. Massive Robotech power conduits came alight in a wash of colors and sparkling motes over the heads of the crew. Reflex Four was bathed in a golden light. "Do you hear that?" Genie asked Milo in the midst of the chaos. "Hear what?" Milo replied, expecting the worst. "It's weird. It almost sounds like music." Milo looked around, straining his ears against the cacophony. "I don't hear anything." Genie shrugged. He could certainly hear something. "maybe it's just me." "Mind your panel, Genie." "Aye." Lochland ordered the HEPLAR compression turbines brought back up on line over the 2MC. In the middle of the fold preparations it was an order that drew shouts of frustration as crew dropped what they were doing to ready the vertical HEPLAR engines. SDF-1 began to vibrate as it fired braking thrust and descended into the atmosphere. "We're going *down* to fold?" Rod asked over the din. "Excuse me, but does this make sense to anyone?" "Gloval must have his reasons," Milo countered. He was busy supervising the Reflex Furnace, the fold preparations, and the readying of the HEPLAR engines. "Oh sure Wassermann, that kind of thinking will do us a lot of fucking good." "Rod, get below and help Doomsday and Bolt-Neck with the warmups." Fowler aye-aye'd and went below, grumbling about how Stick had conveniently disappeared when there was more work to be done. The Fold Generators added an octave of pitch to their growing shrill of activity. The fold had not technically begun, and already strange distortions of light and sound were flowing through the Engineering Spaces. It was another reminder that what they were attempting had never been done by the people of Earth. From the Bridge, Claudia Grant had been giving constant countdown updates and issuing orders over the 1MC. Now she came into the final phase of the count. "We will enter fold in ten seconds... niner... eight..." The crew counted down with her as the Fold Generators reached a crescendo of sound and light. The Reflex Furnaces were at full output, thrumming mightily in bass refrain. Columns of light and power coursed through the spaces. Crewmen with fillings in their teeth or pins in their bones could feel them vibrate and shrill with the Fold System. "Execute hyperspace fold-jump!" It was Captain Henri Gloval himself whose voice thundered over the 1MC. Lochland's repeat of the order on the 2MC went unheard as the SDF-1 lurched abruptly and the world went into blurry double-exposure. Shifting bands of reds, oranges, and yellows bled mirage-like off of equipment. Sounds and even what might have been voices echoed throughout the ship without any apparent sources. Elvis cried out in panic at something unseen by the rest of the crew of Reflex Four. Incandescent motes of light swirled around them as the Fold System's shrill dirge became overpowering. Milo found himself retching at his workstation from the sudden nausea that hit him without warning. Time and space ceased to have relative meaning as forces hitherto unknown by human beings twisted and, well, folded them into higher dimensional geometries of existence. More phantasmal images slipped around them. Rod Fowler and Elvis swore they saw a handsome red clad Welsh buccaneer step by them, cutlass in one hand, and tall bottle of rum in the other, searching for a JA-circuit telephone in response to the equally unlikely 2MC message "Captain Morgan, sir; JA..." Just as abruptly as the universe had been tipped on its side, it righted itself. The Reflex Furnaces stood down to their lowest idle settings. Lights went out, and the ship became deathly silent. "Is it over?" A voice asked. "Did we make it?" Someone else added. "I don't feel dead," Fowler cracked from below. Emergency lights flicked on. Milo weakly pulled himself up from the deck. He had dry heaved until he was trembling. Now the nausea was gone, replaced by the queasy stirrings of internal organs he'd thought were about to exit his body through his mouth. "Status of the Reflex Furnace?" He croaked to Genie. Genie pulled himself to his feet. He checked the displays. "Two percent power; currently in a `self-sustaining only' mode." "Get it back on line," Milo ordered weakly. "If you can." "Trying. The whole power system seems to be down, Robotech *and* conventional." "That means no MC announcements," Milo realized. "Where's Stick?" "Here," Stick yelped. He was cringing under a coolant pipe. "Man the phones with Central." For once Stick was glad to have a phone-talker job. It meant he wouldn't have to move around. "Okay," Milo began. "Let's check around for damage or injured personnel. After that we'll sit tight until we find out what happened and what's going on." The loud whoop of the Collision Alarm, of all things, sounded. It was followed by, "Emergency! Emergency! Prepare for impact! Prepare for impact!" "It can wait!" Milo cried, grabbing onto the speed-rail. SDF-1 plowed into the remains of Macross City, sloughing through buildings like paper mache. The unprepared were flung around like dolls. The ship heaved and shook as the underpowered inertial dampers tried to stabilize it. The lights went out yet again as the battlefortress heaved to a halt and was still yet again. Milo picked himself off the deck once more. "Okay, *now* go check for damage and injured personnel." Even as he said the words into his commo mic, the first cries were already pouring in. "Fire in Reflex Four Lower Level! Fire from the Auxiliary Compressor Control Panel!" "Fire in Reflex Four Switchgear! Fire in the switchgear!" "Coolant rupture in Reflex Four Middle Level! Coolant rupture in Middle Level!" "Injured man in Reflex Four Forward!" And the most chilling cry of all was heard over the all-stations channel... "The Fold System...! ...It's gone!!!" END OF EPISODE THREE ----------------------------SNIPE'S GLOSSARY--------------------------- The terms and acronyms found in Snipes may be alien and confusing for non-snipes. I hope this glossary helps clear things up a bit. If there are any other terms or expressions which you don't understand and that I have missed here, please email me so that I may include the term in the next glossary installment. 1MC- Ship's General Announcing circuit. A PA system that can be heard throughout the SDF-1. 1MC microphones can be found on the Bridge, in Central, and scattered throughout the ship at key control stations. 2MC- Engineering General Announcing circuit. A PA system that can be heard throughout the Engineering spaces, the Bridge, and other key controlling stations. Doctor Lang also has a speaker in his quarters. 2MC microphones can be found throughout the engineering spaces, the Bridge, and Central. The Engineering Officer Of the Watch (EOOW) repeats all 1MC announcements over the 2MC. ABT- Automatic Bus Transfer. A mechanism which senses available power from several sources, and will shift equipment to be powered from whatever source is available if the primary source is lost. Depending on the ABT, there may be a brief interruption of power. Another technique used by DC power systems is called `auctioneering' which allows a constant source of DC power without interruption if one source is lost. AI- Artificial Intelligence. An electronic/photonic computer with logic circuits patterned after human neural systems that enable the computer to react, adapt, and learn like a living organism. ALUCE- Advanced LUnar Chemical Engineering. A moon base founded to tap the resources of the moon for human development into space. The SDF-1's reaction mass fuel was being prepared here for the ship's maiden voyage. Central- The central controlling station for Engineering aboard SDF-1. The EOOW stands his watch here. Think of Central as a separate `Bridge' for the Engineering spaces. Chow Chain- Battlestations or other evolutions which involve most of the crew can last for many hours. There are not enough free crewmen to relieve watchstanders or maintenance/repair techs, so in order to feed them, the `chow chain' is started. Whoever is free will go to the mess decks and eat (quickly), then return and relieve someone so they can eat. That person will return and relieve someone else until everyone has a chance to eat and everyone is back at their original posts. EOOW- (Spoken "EE-ow") Engineering Officer Of the Watch. The officer in charge of the engineering spaces. Supervises watchstanders and monitors evolutions in progress. Answers directly to the Officer Of the Deck. Typically a Senior Lieutenant or higher under normal circumstances. At Battlestations, Commander Lochland, who is the Assistant Engineer, will act as EOOW. FOD- Foreign Object Damage. Damage caused to turbine blading and other engine systems by introduction of foreign matter into the engine. Also the term for objects on a flight deck or runway which have the potential for getting sucked into an engine and causing damage. FUBAR- Fucked Up Beyond All Repair. A step beyond TARFU, now things are really ugly... GCS- Gravity Control System. Use of special gravitic field generators for the ship's propulsion and for `artificial gravity' and inertial dampening to protect ship and crew from high stress maneuvers. SDF-1's propulsion GCS system was crippled upon initial activation. The environmental GCS system continues to function normally. "Gigged"- `Volunteered' for some duty or chore. Typically a case of pissing someone off or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. HEPLAR- High Energy PLAsma Rocket. Magnetically accelerated plasma reaction mass propulsion system. SDF-1 has a `horizontal' drive for acceleration/deceleration in space or in an atmosphere, a `vertical' drive for take off/landings, and numerous smaller drives for maneuvering/attitude control. NUB (also `Nub')- Non Useful Body. A junior member of the crew who doesn't know anything and is not qualified to do anything. Nubs are usually given shit jobs or made gofers because they are incapable of doing anything useful like stand watches or perform the more involved maintenance jobs or repairs. A nub's primary duty aboard ship is to learn something and then get qualified to do it. Qualified- What all nubs aspire to be. In order to stand a watch or use a special piece of equipment, a crewman must demonstrate his knowledge and proficiency to perform that task. Nub engineering types receive a large book filled with blank spaces for signatures. Each signature blank is filled in by a qualified operator after giving the nub a knowledge check for the system or casualty procedure or whatever the nub is trying to prove he/she has learned. There are also signature blanks (often abbreviated to 'sigs' in the story) for practical factors such as performing an evolution or participating in a casualty drill. At the end of a nub's qualification process, he/she will take a written exam, then a series of interviews with his/her supervisors. The last interview will be with the Chief Engineer (or Lochland, as Lang is usually busy elsewhere.) The Chief Engineer decides if the operator is 'qualified' to stand the watch or operate the equipment, and logs him into a list of 'Qualified Watchstanders.' Watch sections are made up of people on the list to fill the various positions, with whatever nubs are available assigned as 'under-instruction' watches to learn their jobs and get qualified. SNAFU- Situation Normal, All Fucked Up. The typical condition describing the circumstances, equipment, material, and crew aboard ship. TARFU- Things Are Really Fucked Up. A step beyond SNAFU, the `normal' condition of the ship. TARFU means things are worse than usual. Top Watch- The senior enlisted supervisory watch in a compartment or series of compartments. Also known as `Top.' The Top Watch will usually answer to another supervisor in the spaces, and ultimately to the EOOW. UEG- United Earth Government. The UEG has nominal control over most of the planet following the SDF-1's arrival, and the subsequent end of the Global Civil War. It is little more than a self-serving junta of military leaders and powerful political figures who are using the threat of alien attack to stay in power and implement their policies on the world. ------------------------------RANK SYSTEM------------------------------ The crew of the SDF-1 use a naval ranking system. Mecha pilots may take a naval or army ranking system depending on what branch of the military they were in when the aliens arrived. Enlisted Ranks: (In ascending order) Recruit (R)-Lowest rank. A recruit either in or just out of boot camp. Recruits wear one narrow diagonal stripe on their left sleeve. Apprentice (A)- After six months as a recruit, he/she is advanced to this rank. Apprentices wear two narrow diagonal stripes on their left sleeve. Able Spaceman (AS)- After nine months as an apprentice, he/she is advanced to Able Spaceman. They wear three narrow diagonal stripes on their left sleeve. Petty Officer Third Class (PO3)- An Able Spaceman who is trained in a specific rating may take a test to advance to PO3 in his rating. PO3 marks the beginning of the non-commissioned officer ranks. Most junior enlisted are PO3s. Wears an RDF `fighting kite' with a rating specialty badge and one chevron underneath it on the sleeve or as a collar insignia. Stick is an example of a junior PO3; still inexperienced and non-qualified, Elvis and Bolt-Neck are examples of more experienced and qualified PO3s. Petty Officer Second Class (PO2)- PO2s are usually the backbone of a work center or watch section's technical base and workforce. PO2s and PO3s make things happen aboard the SDF-1. Wears two chevrons in addition to the `kite' and specialty badge. Guys like Rod, Genie, and Doomsday run the ship. Petty Officer First Class (PO1)- PO1s are usually the supervisors for a work detail or watch section. A senior PO1 in a work center is also known as the `Leading First'. The Leading First handles the day to day management of his work center. Wears three chevrons. Milo Wassermann is a good example of a Leading First. Chief Petty Officer (CPO)- Chief Petty Officers form the first of the senior enlisted management ranks. Chiefs usually handle the administrative duties of a work center and provide technical expertise for unusual maintenance or repairs. Chiefs also train the junior officers to be effective leaders and managers. Chiefs wear three chevrons and a `rocker' across the top chevron, or wear a fouled anchor emblazoned with `RDF' on the collars. Senior Chief Petty Officer (SCPO)- Basically a more experienced Chief Petty Officer. Usually referred to in conversation as "Senior" rather than "Senior Chief." Senior Chiefs sport a single silver star above their Chief's insignia. Master Chief Petty Officer (MCPO)- Highest ranking enlisted man. Master Chiefs assist Department Heads in running their departments, and one Master Chief (known as the Command Master Chief) will in fact act as a personal liaison to the Commanding Officer (through the Executive Officer) for the enlisted crew. Master Chiefs sport two silver stars above their Chief's insignia. ------------------Officer Ranks: (In ascending order)------------------ Midshipman (MID)- Lowest of the low. The naval equivalent of the Third Lieutenant rank found in Robotech. Midshipmen are fresh out of the academy or from a `ninety day wonder' Officer Candidate School. They are given no respect, not even from the enlisted ranks. Snipes eat these guys for lunch, as the Midshipmen must come to them for qualification checks and to learn about the engineering systems that they might one day qualify EOOW. Wears one silver ring on the collar or cuff of the sleeve. A long bar is worn across the right (or left) breast of the jacket. Ensign (ENS)- Midshipman who survive six months as middies are advanced to ensign. Other than that, there isn't much difference in knowledge, skill, or experience. Basically pond scum. Wears a gold ring on the collar or cuff of the sleeve. Junior Lieutenant (JLT)- Only slightly higher than pond scum. A JLT gets his pips by staying alive long enough to meet the one year requirement as an ensign. JLTs are put in charge of work centers. Usually this means the Chief runs things until the officer figures things out. Wears one silver pip on the collar or sleeve. Senior Lieutenant (SLT)- SLTs actually know something. This makes them dangerous. SLTs as a rule make good division officers because they have learned how a work center works and have a little more clout and experience in pushing the administrative issues of getting work done. Wears two silver pips on the collar or sleeve. Lieutenant Commander (LCDR)- Act as Department Heads or as assistants to Department Heads if the department is large. Wears one gold pip on the collar or sleeve. May command mecha squadrons. Commander (CDR)- Act as Department Heads aboard SDF-1. Wears two gold pips on the collar or sleeve. A commander's presence in a non-controlling space (i.e. not the Bridge or Central) requires that "attention on deck" be called and that all personnel stop what they are doing and snap to attention until told to "carry on" by the officer. A long bar and a short bar are worn across the jacket. Captain (CAPT)- Usually serves as a Department Head of a very large department, a staff aid, or as the Commanding Officer (In Gloval's case.) Like a commander, "attention on deck" must be called when a captain appears. Wears three gold pips on the collar or sleeve. Two bars across the chest of the jacket are also worn.