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Robotech: Doomsday
Book Six of the Robotech Series
Copyright 1987 by Jack McKinney


CHAPTER ONE
Had the Robotech Masters the power to travel as freely through time as they did space, perhaps
they would have understood the inevitabilities they were up against: Zor's tampering with the
Invid Flower was a crime akin to Adam's acceptance of the apple. Once released, Protoculture had
its own destiny to fulfill. Protoculture was a different-and in some ways antithetical-order of
life.
Professor Lazlo Zand, as quoted in History of the Second Robotech War, Vol. CXXII

The dimension of mind...the rapture to be found at that singular interface between object and
essence...the power to reshape and reconfigure: to transform...
Six hands-the sensor extensions of slender atrophied arms-were pressed reverently to the
surface of the mushroomlike Protoculture cap, the Masters' material interface. Long slender
fingers with no nails to impede receptivity. Three minds...joined as one.
Until the terminator's entry disturbed their conversation.
Offering salute to the Masters, it announced:
-Our routine scan of the Fourth Quadrant indicates a large discharge of Protoculture mass
in the region where Zor's dimensional fortress defolded.
The three Masters broke off their contact with the Elders and turned to the source of the
intrusion, liquid eyes peering out from ancient, ax-keen faces. Continual contact with
Protoculture had eliminated physical differences, so all three appeared to have the same features:
the same hawkish nose, the flaring eyebrows, shoulder-length blue-gray hair, and muttonchop
sideburns.
-So!-responded the red-cowled Master, though his lips did not move-Two possibilities
present themselves: Either the Zentraedi have liberated the hidden Protoculture matrix from Zor's
disciples and commenced a new offensive against the Invid, or these Earthlings have beaten us to
the prize and now control the production of the Protoculture.
There was something monkish about them, an image enhanced by those long gray robes, the
cowls of which resembled nothing so much as outsize petals of the Invid Flower of Life. Each
monkish head seemed to have grown stamenlike from the Protoculture flower itself.
-I believe that is highly unlikely-the green-cowled Master countered telepathically-All
logic circuits based on available recon reports suggest that the Invid have no knowledge of the
whereabouts of Zor's dimensional fortress.
-So! Then we must assume that the Zentraedi have indeed found the Protoculture matrix,
ensuring a future for our Robotechnology.
-But only if they were able to capture the ship intact...
The organic systems of the Masters' deep-space fortress began to mirror their sudden
concern; energy fluctuations commenced within the Protoculture cap, throwing patterned colors
against all but breathing bulkheads and supports. What would have been the bridge of an ordinary
ship was here given over to the unharnessed urgings of Protoculture, so that it approximated a
living neural plexus of ganglia, axons, and dendrites.
Unlike the Zentraedi dreadnoughts, these spadelike Robotech fortresses the size of
planetoids were designed for a different campaign: the conquest of inner space, which, it was
revealed, had its own worlds and star systems, black holes and white light, beauty and terrors.