Poor kid's had to take on more than he could manage, Roy decided. Well, I can't just leave him back there.

He got back on the radio. "Skull Leader to Control. Lisa, I'm going back to pick up something I left down in Macross City. Captain Kramer can run the fighter group till I get back, over."

Lisa frowned out at him from a display screen. "Why are you turning back? Over."

"Rick Hunter in fighter VT one-zero-two is still back on the ground, and I have to get him out of there."

Lisa's expression showed her sense of outrage. "That pilot's an imposter! I've gone through all the rosters and I find no record of such a person."

Roy was bringing his ship through a wide bank. "Easy enough to explain. He's a civilian, so he isn't listed in the military registries."

Lisa's hand flew to her face. "A civilian? But I thought-ohhh…!" And I ordered him to get his fighter into the air! She could hear Sammie and the others whispering among themselves: "What?" "Did he say civilian?" "Who is he?"

Back in Macross, the firefights flared with even greater fury as more pods entered the battle in long, two-footed hops.

Two pods and a pair of Battloids were squared off at a range of one hundred yards-practically close quarters-the red tracer streams and the blue energy bolts crisscrossing over the devastated cityscape.

Rubble was tossed into the air and whole walls were blasted to bits as large chunks were gouged or vaporized from the pavement.

It was a nearly even match, but another pod arrived and opened up just as one of the first two went down in a hail of armor-piercing autocannon fire. Still another Zentraedi showed up, to concentrate its chest cannonfire along with the others'. A Battloid, blown in half at the waist and leaking fire and explosions, crumbled and disappeared in a detonation.

The second Battloid shifted to Guardian mode, skimming away at ground altitude, trying to get clear. The pods leapt after, closing in for the kill. All at once the two pods were split open like bursting fruit by direct hits from a pair of Stiletto missiles launched by a diving Veritech.

Roy did a tight bank and came in again. Another Stiletto tore the lead pod's leg in half, toppling it, and the pod blew open like an overtaxed boiler:

Seeing the Guardian was safely on its way home, Roy did a wingover and went down lower, searching through the drifting smoke, steam, and dust.

Rick was brought out of his shock and torpor by a sound. He discovered that he'd been slumped against the instrument panel, head resting on his arms.

He moaned a little, then realized what had snapped him out of it: The girl was coming around, making little groaning noises.

"Thank heaven she's alive," he said aloud to himself. Those endless moments of the midair rescue came back to him again-the look in her eyes and the thought of how important she'd become to him.

He shook off his grogginess and glanced around to take in his situation. The enormous corpse was the first thing he spotted.

"I've gotta get us away from here. She might panic if she sees that."

He reached for the instrument panel, trying to clear his head and recall how things worked. He punched up a takeoff sequence, muttering, "I hope this thing'll fly."

But instead of taking to the air, the Guardian lurched and slammed into the pavement, held down by the corpse's death grip, the ship's nose hitting the ground so hard that Rick was nearly jolted into unconsciousness.

He lay, pale and panting, feeling cold even though sweat poured from him. His eyes were glassy; he couldn't take them off the terrible sight of the dead alien.

"What happened?" Minmei asked, just having come to. "What's wrong? Why're you trembling like that?"

When Rick didn't answer, she leaned forward. "What are you looking at out there? What's there-"

The thought of how the sight might subject her to more pain brought him out of his paralysis. "No! You mustn't look out there!"

She resisted the temptation to do just that; she'd come to trust him. "Why, what's wrong?"

As she was saying it, the ground began to vibrate to colossal footsteps, the approach of another war machine. Rick, remembering his Veritech was immobilized and out of ammunition, gazed up in dread.

But the swirling clouds of the battle parted to reveal Roy's ship in Battloid mode, shouldering its autocannon. "I hate to interrupt you two, but you can't sit around here forever. C'mon; let's go!"

But he could see there was no question of repairing Rick's battered ship this time and saw that the dead alien's grip wouldn't be easy to release, short of blasting the hand of at the wrist. "That big palooka seems to have formed a permanent attachment to you guys."

Fortunately, there was a quicker and less messy way to handle things. Roy's Battloid extruded a long metal tentacle ending in a special waldo. With it, he opened a small access plate in one of the downed Guardian's nacelles, cutting in the rescue overrides manually.

In another moment Rick and Minmei felt themselves jostled around as the cockpit and nose separated entirely from the rest of the machine. Roy caught it up neatly and tucked it into a special fitting on the underside of his Battloid's right forearm.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Rick got out.

"It's-really incredible" was all Minmei could manage to say.

"How's that for convenience?" Roy asked. He never got their answer, because at that moment another alien war machine-a pod armed with heavy missiles-sprang from behind a gutted building and zeroed in on the Battloid.

"Hang on, you two!" Roy leapt his Battloid clear just as the pod fired a volley of energy shots. Bringing up his autocannon, the skull leader peppered the pod and sent it crashing backward, riddled and burning.

But more pods were rising from concealment or springing down from the roofs of adjacent buildings. Roy was already shifting to Guardian configuration and jetting away, the aliens galloping in pursuit, firing and firing.

One pod nearly caught him, the vast torso of it filling the sky to starboard. But Roy completed the mechamorphosis to fighter mode and shot away into the sky while salvos ranged around him, thrusters going full-bore.

Two pods stationed on the cliffs at the edge of town poured intense fire at the Veritech as it climbed directly at them. Rick heard Minmei echo his own moan of fear.

Roy stayed dead on course, releasing more missiles when the time was exactly right. The pods went up like a pair of Roman candles, and Roy zoomed into the clear, headed for SDF-1.

The dimensional fortress, its protecting fighters deployed all around it, had achieved a low orbit.

"Shifting to horizontal propulsion," Lisa's voice rang through the fleet, and the enigmatic main engines sent a river of force through the primary thrusters at the ship's stern. Blue infernos raved, and the SDF-1 gathered speed, moving for a higher orbit.

"Stand by for fighter retrieval," Lisa went on. "All planes return to carrier bays. Over."

"This is Sepia Three. Roger, Control, returning for retrieval."

On the flight decks, the crews prepared for the feverish, dangerous work ahead. The fleet was still on combat alert, subject to attack at any time. Every attempted landing must be a "trap"-successful-because there was no time to waste on «bolters» that would have to be repeated.

The teams swarmed to their mother ship; everyone from Gloval on down sweated each second of the retrieval. "Lisa, please report whether we have all fighters safely aboard," Gloval said after an eternity.

"Yes, sir." The answer came quickly. "Those were the last two, sir. All others are accounted for except for Commander Fokker and VT one-zero-two."