Chapter 3; Guilt
Roy Fokker flew back over the town, back toward the rest of Skull Squadron. Now that he had time to think about it, his sudden flight from the natives probably hadn't been the best option, but it had been somewhat shocking to find talking horses on this planet, and he hadn't wanted to take chances.
"Skull Leader is that you, over?"
"Skull Leader to Skull Squadron, yes, it's me."
"What did you find? You seem a bit excited, over."
Roy leaned back. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you..."
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Captain Gloval looked over the ship as repairs were made and the remaining civilians brought on board. The Daedalus and the Prometheus had been attached to the SDF-1, and could be used to launch fighters and as platforms for weapon systems.
Despite this success, Gloval was not feeling celebratory at all; quite the opposite, in fact. His mood had taken a turn for the worse as he kept thinking about the fold jump and the now vanished fold system. The more he thought about it, the more the realized that everything that had happened was his fault.
The fold system hadn't been tested before he had ordered the jump; if it had, he might have brought off the maneuver he had had in mind at the time. Now 70,000 civilians were stuck on the ship with no way home.
True, the planet below might have resources available that could be used to remake the fold system, but the SDF-1 was a battle-fortress, not a factory. It would be a slow and tedious process, and that was assuming that they could pull it off properly, which was unlikely; just as the crew hadn't known how to use the gravity pods, they hadn't known how to use the fold system with the skill and knowledge they should have had. The truth was, much of the ship's technology was alien, although human hands had remade the ship into a semi-operable military craft. The crew of the SDF-1 didn't have the blueprints for the fold system, and had little knowledge of how to recreate it.
In short, it was unlikely they would be going anywhere. 8,750 light-years was impossible to cross in their lifetimes with the engines they had to work with.
And Gloval had given the orders that had lead to this mess.
If the ship had come out of the jump, say, in Pluto's orbit, it would have been all too easy to go back to Earth, although it would have consumed a great amount of time, perhaps a year. That hadn't happened.
The Captain looked out at the planet. It almost inevitable that it would become their new home.
It certainly was beautiful. Green lands, blue seas, white clouds; it practically was Earth, with only the landmasses being all wrong.
"Captain, Skull Squadron has re-established radio contact," Lisa said from her station.
Gloval turned. "Good. Now maybe we can get some intelligence about the planet below us." And if we're luckier than we have any right to hope for, we'll find a way to replace the fold system, and maybe go back home.
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"Are you sure your eyes are working properly, Commander?"
"I'm telling you, captain, there really are horse-like aliens on the planet, and for whatever reason, they are able to speak our language. Furthermore, when I first tried to take off after landing, I was held back by something for a moment before being let go."
Gloval leaned back in his chair. "It doesn't seem possible."
Roy, on the monitor, lost his typical smile. ""One of my pilots got a couple good pictures to prove it." After he had nodded to something (or rather, someone) the bridge crew couldn't see, several pictures popped up on the screen.
One clearly showed a scared-looking, winged yellow horse with a pink mane flying by the cockpit of a Veritech; the picture had been taken from inside the plane. It looked as it if its head would come up to that of a human. Another showed a small town; although they appeared much smaller from the air, the inhabitants had near-identical frames to the yellow alien in the previous photo, though some differed; a number had horns on their heads, others had wings, and some had neither, and were busy on the ground, though most of them were looking up.
If Commander Fokker is putting me on, he's going all out. "Alright Commander, your point is taken. However, It gives us even more work to do. We'll have to contact them and their leader, and see if we can use or purchase some of their resources to repair the ship."
"Have you found Rick yet?"
"No, but we are looking for him now that most of the civilians are on board."
"Ohhhh." Roy was downcast. "Well, we're heading back to base, so I'll be able to look for him myself." His tone suggested he'd have something to say to Rick once all was said and done. His image - and the pictures that had been uploaded - faded from the monitor.
"Oh, they're so adorable!" Claudia exclaimed. "I want one!"
Lisa turned to her, still all business-like regardless of how cute the aliens looked like. "You'd probably start another war if you tried to make one into a pet; it looks like they're the dominant lifeforms on this planet, and I don't want any more trouble than we've already got."
"I know but still, that flying one looked so cute, I could just cuddle it all day."
Sammy, Vanessa, and Kim started chuckling, though they tried to hide it.
"Also, are you sure we should contact them, Captain?" Lisa asked, even more serious than before. "From the details of the first contact, not that there was much of one, they aliens twice engaged in hostile activity; one almost crashed into the Veritech outright, and if Commander Fokker is right, they tried to stop him from leaving, though I have no idea how they managed to accomplish that."
"We need food and materials. The only way we can obtain them is by either hunting for them ourselves, or trading for them with natives who already have them in their possession and can supply us much more than we could hunt for on our own."
"Even so, what could we trade with? We're stuck in orbit with barely enough food for ourselves, and we'll have to feed seventy thousand people in addition to that."
"We have to try something, Lisa. We can't just sit in orbit, hoping that our problems will go away. And, with us and all the ships we accidentally took with us gone, Earth is fighting the aliens without our help. Anything that we can use to get back, however distant the prospect, is better than sitting on our hands doing nothing."
After Gloval mentioned Earth, no one bothered arguing anymore.
"Meanwhile," Gloval continued, his voice much quieter now, "there is something I must do."
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The civilian population had proved to be surprisingly resourceful; using recycled materials, they had started to rebuild their town. Macross City was being reborn inside the SDF-1, and it seemed to be promising, however temporary it might be.
It was doing well enough, in fact, for Captain Gloval to make an announcement. He hoped it would help to make things right.
His image appeared on monitors all throughout Macross City as the broadcast started;
"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of Macross city. As you know, the crew of the SDF-1 initiated a fold jump some time ago that brought the ship into the orbit of a new-found planet, along with" - here he sounded downcast and bowed his head - "Macross island and Macross City itself."
"What you may not know is that... after the fold was executed... we could find no trace of the fold system. We... cannot make the jump back to Earth in our current state."
The people watching the broadcast began to panic; some got angry and began cursing at the image of the captain, while a few started to weep.
"It was I who gave the order, and I alone am responsible for the predicament we find ourselves in today. I regret it with my entire being." The Captain was so miserable as he said this that much of the crowd calmed down, and began to feel pity for him.
"Our one hope for returning to Earth is the planet we now orbit. We may be able to find the resources necessary to repair the fold system and make the jump back to Earth."
"However, along with the planet, we have found a sentient race of horse-aliens that appear to be the dominant life on the planet, and are capable of speech. We intend to begin negotiations as soon as we can. Hopefully they will let us purchase some of their resources so that we can refine them into the parts we need."
Captain Gloval looked sadder than ever as he added, "If... it we can't repair the fold system, we will have to settle on the planet. We cannot travel back without a fold system; our computers estimate we are 8,750 light years from Earth."
He began to cry in earnest as he added, "I only hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me." The monitors went back to whatever they had been doing before.
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Roy Fokker dodged a missile, and fired his own guns at the enemy plane; his rounds connected, and the opposing aircraft spiraled out of control; Roy couldn't see a chute.
"Skull Leader, there are too many of them, what do we do?" The pilot that showed up on Roy's screen was anything but calm.
"We hold out as long as we can, our boys on the ground need the cover fire!"
"Yeah, but if we stay here too long, we'll be..." His transmission was cut off forever as his plane took a direct hit and exploded.
"NOOOOOOOOO!"
Roy jinked left, avoiding another missile, and fired one of his own. It hit the target, which then transformed... into a giant humanoid, streaked with blood and filled with holes.
What? Before his tired and stressed mind could come up with an explanation, several green fighter pods appeared, hovering in front of his aircraft, and fired. Roy's fighter was hit several times, and lost altitude.
He tried everything; nothing seemed to work, and the ground was coming up fast.
A flash of midnight blue; just before his plane hit the ground, he saw a blue horse with a horn on it's head and wings on it's back. It stared at him, as if curious...
The plane hit the ground...
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"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" Roy woke up in a cold sweat.
Come on, it was just a dream, just a nightmare... He got out of bed and went to get some milk from the refrigerator in his room.
He even recognized the situation he had been in in the dream, or at least the part before everything went all haywire; it was one of the missions he had flown during the war that had ravaged Earth in the period before the SDF-1 had crashed on Earth.
It all seemed familiar as he sat down. Everything except the horse-thing; that was what was bothering him. He had never seen it before.
The aliens on the planet; my mind just got a little carried away in the dream, that's all. At least, that what he told himself, but something deep inside, something older or more primitive than sight or hearing, told him that there had been more at work than just a simple dream.
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Princess Luna got up from her spot in Canterlot Castle. She stretched her legs and wings for a moment, then walked over to a nearby window.
Although not a goddess, as many of her subjects stubbornly continued to believe (of both her AND Celestia), she had the ability to see into other's dreams. As such, it was her responsibility to help and protect ponies in their dreams, as it was to protect them in real life.
However, tonight, she had found a dream unlike any other she had entered; one full of devastation and death, and of beings she had never encountered previously.
The dream's author had eventually caught her attention as his flying machine was hit and sent falling to the ground. His eyes had looked weary and tired of conflict as he looked her way at last.
Roy Fokker... That had been the name that streamed through her consciousness as she locked eyes with him, before the dream had cut off (i.e., when the dreamer woke up). To her surprise, a tear stood in her eye.
To have fought in such a terrible conflict, to have lost so many he considered friends... No wonder she felt like crying.
She looked up at the sky. Although it was still technically nighttime, specks of light graced the horizon; Celestia must have woken and begun her duty as the sun's custodian. Good. The matter at hoof was too important to keep inside her; it was clearly an alien, and, having seen the spaceship with her own eyes, she knew it was one of those aboard it.
She walked though the palace, trying to find her sister; by the time she did, the sun had risen, and the moon was in retreat.
"Good morning, sister," Celestia greeted her youthful sibling. "You seem troubled."
"Yes, I am." She proceeded to describe the dream in detail, along with the alien being in his craft.
"That matches the description of the alien Twilight and her friends saw yesterday." Celestia looked thoughtful.
"Roy Fokker..."
"What?"
"That was the name that went through my mind when I saw him. Roy Fokker." She remembered the look in his eyes, the weariness of war and destruction. "Sister, you should have seen him, he was so sad..." Luna felt like crying again.
"Ohhhhh." Celestia rested her head on Luna's shoulder.
After a few minutes, Luna lifted her head. "Wherefore now, Celestia?"
Celestia thought about the situation briefly. "They'll probably be coming down to greet us for some reason or another. Their intentions will dictate our response to them and our actions forthwith. She looked up, as though she could see through the ceiling.
"Until then, we can only wait."
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No one had filed a request for Captain Gloval to be court-martialed. None of the bridge crew seemed any less devoted to the orders he gave. As such, he was still in command. And the thing was, there was no one who could replace him; none of the bridge crew had his level of expertise to command the ship, and none of the Robotech Defense Force personnel had as much knowledge and experience being in command in a battle.
The Captain could only do one thing now; try to initiate first contact with the aliens on the planet below, and request their help in fixing the ship. That was their one and only slim chance to get back home, otherwise, they would have to settle on the planet.
That wasn't the worst thing in the universe, he supposed. The aliens would be hard-pressed to find them, even if (and here, he hoped and prayed that this hadn't happened) they had destroyed civilization on Earth as it was known. And a new history could begin, wiping the slate clear of the wars and disasters that had plagued Man throughout history.
Still, it was heart-wrenching to know that it was almost inevitable that they would be stuck here, that Earth was almost certainly out of their grasp.
He shook himself out of those thoughts. Now was the time for action, not for brooding on misery as he had been doing. All the vessels, including the Daedalus and Prometheus, were in the process of being attached to the main body of the SDF-1. All military craft had been accounted for and those damaged, either in the fighting or the fold jump, were being repaired. Even those that had been destroyed were being recovered and stripped for whatever useful parts they still had, and the remaining components were being reworked to repair or rebuild more vehicles.
Now, it was time to begin ground operations.
He had thought about how to safely contact the horse-people. On the surface, it didn't seem particularly hard; by some amazing fate, they spoke English, after all. After reviewing the footage from Roy Rokker's flight, as well as his report, he wasn't so sure a direct approach would be practical; the sudden though brief arresting of the Veritech by unknown forces had thrown him for a loop, and the natives might not be so friendly as they appeared from other sources.
As a result, it was a good idea to recon the world, and gain some information before making a landing. Skull Squadron would be sent out again, with permission to contact the native peoples. They would be fully armed and equipped, as well as having strict orders to remain together at all costs.
It was time to meet the natives.
*I got the information about Captain Gloval's country of origin from the Robotech Saga Wiki. I've seen some comments on YouTube videos saying he's Serbian, which seems ridiculous given his name.
As for the remake...
I've added more dialog in this and the previous chapter, and have currently started on the fourth. I hope you guys enjoy 
I'm very excited. Since the restart, I've been feeling happier than I've been for a while. I guess that feeling of disappointing fans of this story is, if not gone, then going. 
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I think he is Russian in both Robotech and Macross. Good chapter, so next time First Contact?
Even Lisa sees how adorable Fluttershy is...
1772220
Yeah. I don't pick favorites in the show, I just note who does what and what their personality is.
Here's a thought: each of the ponies can befriend one of the Robotech characters. For some reason, I see the bridge bunnies - Sammie Porter, Vanessa Leeds, and Kim Young - befriending the Cutie Mark Crusaders - I can imagine the three trying to babysit them - only for the CMCs to cause them a whole mess of trouble just get their cutie marks!
Gloval is awesome, I'm firmly convinced that if he had been around during the Robotech Masters saga none of the stupid crap that happened in that would have happened. The General or whoever was in charge at that time was an absolute moron when it came to dealing with the Robotech Masters.
1775488
Lol I hesistated to call those three "the bridge bunnies" even though that was the fan name given to them. I must admit that wasn't an idea I had thought of, but I'll consider it.
1775488 I think that was Supreme Commander Leonard.
Althought not a goddess, as many of her subjects stubbornly continued to believe (of both her AND Celestia),
Say what say whaaaaat
Way too short, moar I say I'm enjoying this immensely!!!!!
From a species who is used to there being only one sapient lifeform on a planet, that makes sense. I wonder how they'll deal with there being many sapient species on that world. Besides, if you look at an official map of Equestria, you can see that their nation is extremely tiny.
Nothing in the show has ever implied that in the slightest.
You know, Luna, most humans would kill anything stupid enough to invade the sanctity of our minds. Though, this time it seemed to be an accident.
I liek your use of failrue....(snicker). Gloval would not "liek" me because I'm a grammar Nazi!
Still, it's a great story you've got going here.
do you ever plan to try to continue this?
9524846
Yes. I'm finding it hard to stop procrastinating and to find time between that and college to work on this, though. And I find it easier to work on other stuff; Robotech has a bunch of novels/comics that I've never read as content, whereas I've only watched the three Robotech Wars and the Shadow Chronicles, as well as Love, Live, Alive. As a result, I get nervous about writing about it. In addition, I'm not really interested in Robotech at the moment. I'm sorry its taking a while.
If you want to make your own Robotech story based on mine, I won't get upset.
9525301
i see well im not really a writer but take all the time you need... i know that sometimes these things happen...