Second Chances

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters that I am about to mangle around for my own amusement all Robotech characters remain the property of Harmony Gold and I make no profit from their use.

Authors Notes: Story events begin during the events of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles right after the Icarus commanded by Vincent Grant is forced to fold out of the omicron sector without the SDF-3. Updates for this story will be slow but before anyone complains I haven't forgotten about any of my fics and indeed I have plans in place to update one of my older fics soon assuming my muse continues to cooperate.

Prologue

SDF-3 Pioneer

Admiral Richard 'Rick' Hunter had mixed feelings as he watched the Icarus disappear into hyperspace with the powerless hulk of the Deucalion attached to her belly. On one hand he was relieved that Vince Grant hadn't given in to sentimentality and aborted his ships space fold after the unknown alien vessel that the Icarus had been engaged with collided with the SDF-3 and exploded – the force of impact and the concussive force of the close range detonation of the aliens reflex furnaces knocking them out of range of the Icarus' fold sphere. With the Icarus gone the fleet liberating – or attempting to anyway – Earth from the Invid hoard that had occupied their homeworld for nearly twenty years would get the warning about the neutron-s missiles and his amended orders that they were not to – under any circumstances – be fired at Earth lest they turn humanities long suffering homeworld into a black hole.

But on the other hand there was another part of him – a selfish part – that wished that Vince had stayed and tried again to rescue them. As it was Vince was doing his duty – as much as Rick knew it would pain his old friend to leave him behind knowing he was probably leaving him and everyone else on the SDF-3 to die – just as he would have done had their positions been reversed as it was imperative that the warning about the problem with the missiles be known. If we get out of this I'm so going to have words with Ambassador Veidt about those missiles, he thought thinking about the Haydonite representative to the Sentinels Alliance, and find out why the hell he didn't tell us that those missiles can create black holes. Though if they didn't tell us about that then what else haven't the Haydonites told us about the Shadow technology they've given us to fight the Invid? Is all of it flawed in some way? If it is why haven't the Haydonites said anything we are supposed to be allies after all? Aren't we?

A familiar hand touching his shoulder brought him out of his thoughts and he looked over to see his wife former admiral turned ambassador to the Sentinels Lisa Hunter nee Hayes standing next to him. "What is it Rick," Lisa asked her husband softly having seen the look on his face, a look that screamed that Rick was disturbed by something at least to someone who knew what they were looking for.

"Just a thought," Rick admitted knowing better than to try hiding anything from Lisa. In the nearly forty years that he'd known her first as his superior officer and then as his fiancée and finally his wife he'd never been able to successfully keep anything from her so he wasn't about to try now. "The Haydonites didn't tell us that the neutron-s missiles can create black holes when detonated. If Emil hadn't noticed that the math wasn't quite adding up then we would never have done this field test and found out. If they didn't tell us about that then what else haven't they told us? Is there similar hidden flaws in all the technology they've given us over the last few years?"

Lisa frowned worriedly. "That's a nasty thought," she mused aloud though she could well see where Rick was coming from and truth be told now that she thought about it it made an uncomfortable amount of sense. "But what would the Haydonites gain by lying to us? We are supposed to be allies."

"Are we," wondered Rick aloud, "or are the Haydonites simply using us. With the Regent dead and his forces defeated the Regis and the other Invid on Earth are the last of their kind. Maybe the Haydonites are using us to eliminate them for them after all Ambassador Veidt indicated his kind have suffered heavily at the hands of the Invid in the past."

Lisa's frown deepened and she started to open her mouth to speak again. But before any sound could emerge there came a deep rumbling boom as if a million base drums were being struck at once and the SDF-3 shook violently as though gripped by an earthquake. Caught by surprise Lisa stumbled in the sudden loss of gravitational stability, only quickly grabbing the edge of Rick's command chair preventing her from tumbling to the deck as klaxons began wailing with an urgent clamour.

"Report," Rick ordered as gravitational stability returned though the command was largely unnecessary as they all knew depressingly well the feel of weapons fire striking the side of the ship.

"Admiral we're under attack," Lieutenant Ashley Price reported grimly from tactical. "I show nothing on my scopes but visual scan has picked up two alien vessels on approach bearing two, two, seven mark one, nine, three inclination point six five degrees. Configuration is identical to the alien vessel that fired upon the Icarus."

"Weapons status," Rick asked.

"Main weapons are still off line. We only have our anti-mecha turrets operational and the alien ships are out of their engagement range."

"Barriers?"

"Inoperative," Price replied grimly before her console came alive with a warning. "Incoming barrage."

Rick tapped a control on his command console. "All personnel brace for impact," he said the intercom relaying his voice throughout the whole seventeen hundred and twenty one meter length of the SDF-3 moments before another rumbling boom filled the air and the ship shook fiercely under the fire of their new and unknown enemy.

With searing white-hot force the salvo of brilliant red energy beams fired from the two warships – that unknown to the crew on the SDF-3 belonged to their erstwhile Haydonite allies – smashed into the thick armoured hull of the crippled battle-fortress. Immediately the blood coloured beams broke up, crackling along the hull like malignant lightning that aside from shaking the vessel fiercely didn't cause any damage.

Or so it seemed.

Carried by the particle beams a secondary energy pulse passed right through the hull of the SDF-3 and into the hundreds of miles worth of hyper-conductive conduits that transported massive quantities of power from the ships reflex furnaces to her many energy hungry systems. Automatic systems immediately began to react attempting to dissipate the excess charge as it shot through the system until it reached the reflex furnaces. Upon reaching the main power plant the charge immediately passed – as designed by its makers – through the Shadow dimensional shift field around the reflex furnaces and into the heart of the massive protoculture fuelled reactor cores. Once within the cores the charge of exotic energy fatally disrupted the systems that kept the reactions in the cores under control causing power levels to immediately shoot up into the red zone.

Klaxons wailed desperately in the ships engineering spaces as the reflex furnace control systems screamed there distress. But there was nothing anyone on board could have done to contain the massive power surge even if there had been time as the containment shells melted away allowing the internal fires of the cores to burst outward in a cataclysmic burst of heat and hard radiation that instantly vaporised the engineering spaces before any of the horrified engineering personnel could begin to react let alone attempt to flee.

Not that there would have been anywhere to flee to as the shockwave tore through the remaining portions of the SDF-3 shattering bulkheads, ripping decks and compartments apart. Stored fuel and munitions for destroids and all manner of veritechs began detonating as their own storage compartments shattered under the shockwaves assault the blasts merging together with the eruption of reflex furnaces.

Moments later the SDF-3 and the last protoculture matrix left in the universe blossomed briefly into a tremendous explosion that tore her completely apart.

Somewhere Outside Space/Time

Rick Hunter blinked and shivered as he suddenly found himself standing in nothingness. All around him was nothing but an endless white void. He looked around in confusion as the last thing he remembered was being hurled to the deck on the bridge as alarms screamed desperately a moment before everything turned to fire and pain then darkness. A sudden horrible thought gripped him as he began to get an inkling of where exactly he was.

"I'm dead aren't I," he said his voice echoing oddly in the void around him.

"I'm afraid so," an achingly familiar voice said from behind him, a voice that he hadn't heard in a very long time. Whirling around he found himself face to face with a tall blond haired man in a style of RDF flight suit that hadn't been used for nearly thirty years. A blond who was agonisingly familiar.

"Roy?"

"Hey little brother," Roy Fokker said with a grin before walking up and pulling him into a hug. Rick didn't resist instead he buried his head in Roy's shoulder and let himself be held.

"God Roy I've missed you," Rick said softly though he was proud that his voice didn't shake, didn't show any sign of the emotions welling up inside him. After a few moments he pulled back and gazed at his adoptive older brother.

"I've missed you to little brother," Roy replied smiling at the middle aged man his brother in everything but blood had become.

"So what now is this heaven," Rick asked. "And is Lisa here?"

"Yes she's here but someone else is talking to her," Roy answered. "And no this isn't heaven but more of a halfway house between life and death. As for why you're here well I've been asked to offer you a choice."

"A choice?"

"Yeah you see the manner of your death was a foreshadowing of the death of not just everyone else in the RDF but the entire human race," Roy explained. "And it won't stop there everyone who's ever used protoculture as an energy source will suffer the same fate. The Tirolians, the Karbarrans, the Invid the Haydonites will destroy them all. They'll have setbacks but with the protoculture matrix destroyed with your ship they're victory is now inevitable."

Rick felt sick as Roy talked about genocide on a truly galactic scale. "But why," he asked after a moment.

"Because the artificial intelligence that controls Haydon Five and which created the Haydonites to be its eyes and arms, the Haydonites refer to it as the Awareness, regards protoculture as a threat."

"Why?"

"Do you know where protoculture comes from little brother?" Roy asked rather than directly answer the question.

"Yeah it's made from an oil found in the Flower of Life. But what does that have to do with protoculture being a threat to the Haydonites?"

"Because the Flower of Life is a very unique plant Rick," Roy explained, "in all the universe there is nothing else like it, it is a true wonder of the cosmos. The reason being it's tapped into the space-time continuum at a level that allows it to trap minute amounts of zero point energy in its cell structure. When Zor created the protoculture matrix what he really did was find a way to extract, focus and amplify that stored energy."

"Wow."

"Yeah wow."

"So how is it a threat to the Haydonites?"

"Because while the Awareness does have its own means of extracting zero point energy it's much more clunky and inefficient with a much lower energy yield than what protoculture would produce if the technology to manufacture it was taken to its ultimate progression as the abilities of protoculture matrix you knew barely even scratched the surface of what protoculture can be. This is not a threat that the Awareness can tolerate especially as it ultimately plans to take control of as much of the universe as its servants can get their metaphorical hands on."

"Okay why?"

"That's complicated but suffice to say that the Awareness sees organic races like humans as flawed, inferior life forms worthy of only either servitude or death."

"If the Haydonites see organic life as inferior then why ally with us against the Invid?" Rick asked.

"You already know the answer to that one little brother," Roy replied wryly. "Or you suspect it at least, the Haydonites were never truly interested in an alliance. They were merely using you to eliminate their enemies for them, specifically the Invid who have clashed with the Haydonites – or the Children of Shadow as they call them – on more than one occasion in the past. They were hoping you would use the neutron missiles they provided you to eliminate both the Invid and humanity. Something that has not happened as the Regis recognised the missiles for what they were and destroyed them as she left Earth with her people."

"So Earth is free now?"

"Yes but it will not stay that way for long as even as we speak the Haydonites are moving against humanity as while they hoped you would be destroyed with the Invid the Awareness always has a back-up plan. All the technology the Haydonites provided to the expeditionary forces has – as you suspected – a fatal flaw that the Haydonites will use against humanity. As we speak a fleet of Haydonite warships is engaging the remains of the RDF at Space Station Liberty. Observe."

Roy made a hand gesture and suddenly the place around them changed and they were standing in open space. Off to one side was the imposing shape of Space Station Liberty with a mixed formation of Garfish and Ikazuchi-class warships arrayed in defensive formation facing a fleet of vaguely cylindrical red and grey vessels. As they watched the human ships opened fire with a vicious volley of reflex missiles and heavy particle beams, power enough to tear a fully shielded Zentraedi Nupetiet Vergnitzs-class command dreadnought apart in seconds.

The Haydonite ships barely noticed as a faint silvery sheen conformal to their hulls flared into existence absorbing the shots with ease. Defensive barrier shields but way more advanced than what we have, Rick thought as he observed the tips of a number of the larger Haydonite ships open in a manner that reminded him somewhat of the firing booms of a reflex cannon opening. Only instead of unleashing a single massive blast of energy in the way of a reflex cannon each ship unleashed a hail of blood red energy beams. In moments they reached the Robotech warships and immediately ships began dying as struck vessels seemed to shudder momentarily then explode from within.

"My god," Rick breathed in horror wondering how on Earth the Haydonite weapons could do that as those warships had thick layers of refractive and ablative armour that should have blocked the beams not to mention the stealth field that should make targeting them impossible. Though since the dimensional field is Haydonite technology it shouldn't be surprising they can see through it, he thought observing as blue-white bubbles of energy gathered at the front of several ships as they powered up for a synchro cannon bombardment. But once again the Haydonites were ready as a pulse of energy burst forth from their larger ships and washed over the human fleet.

The reaction was instantaneous. The blue-white bubbles of particle fusion gathering at the bows of the synchro cannon armed ships turned blood red and began pulsing dangerously. A second later every ship with an armed synchro cannon exploded with incredible violence. Thousands of lives vanishing in an instant.

"Turn it off," Rick said balling his fists and looking down. He knew many of the people commanding those ships, hell he'd appointed a lot of them himself, to see them dying being effortlessly torn apart by their erstwhile allies was just too much. Space vanished and he was suddenly in the white void again before feeling Roy's hand touch his shoulder. "Is that really happening Roy," he asked softly his voice choked with emotion.

"I'm afraid so little brother," Roy replied his heart aching as he could see how much it was paining Rick to see that slaughter. "If it is any consolation the Haydonite fleet attacking Liberty will soon be defeated when Captain Grant detonates the stations stockpile of neutron missiles after evacuating everyone to a colony ship."

"But it's going to only be a short reprieve isn't it," Rick said, "without the protoculture matrix there will be no way to refuel ships long term."

"Unfortunately yes and it's worse than you know. When the Invid Regis left Earth to take all her people with her at once she consumed the planets entire supply of protoculture. Within a year the Haydonites will return and Earth will be the first Sentinel aligned world to be destroyed."

"No," Rick muttered before looking up determination in his blue eyes. "There has to be a way to stop them. You wouldn't be showing me this otherwise."

"Your right I wouldn't be," Roy admitted, "there is one way that the Haydonites might be stopped but it will not be easy and it has its own pitfalls to negotiate if you choose to pursue it."

"Whatever it is I have to try," Rick answered determined. "What do I have to do?"

Roy sighed. "I've been given permission by the big boss upstairs to send you back in time," he explained, "right back to the beginning of the Robotech Wars so you have a chance but only a chance to change the outcome you just saw. You, your memories and knowledge as they are now would be integrated into your past self just before your arrival on Macross Island."

Rick blinked. "Why so far back," he asked.

"It would be your best opportunity to change history for the better and thwart the plans of the Awareness. I will tell you this though some events are fixed points in time, they cannot be changed no matter how much you might want to change them. You will know in your gut when they are you must resist the temptation to change the outcome for if you do then the consequences would be unimaginable."

"I'll do it."

"This is a great responsibility, one that will make your previous command at its worst look like a walk in the park. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"From what you've said big brother this is the only way to stop the plans of the Awareness and prevent our species from being exterminated. I have worked too hard and for too long to ensure a future for our people to step aside now and allow them to be wiped out by genocidal robots."

"Alright if you're sure."

"I am."

"Very well," Roy said with a proud smile on his face before he again waved his hand. Only this time instead of changing the whole region around them the gesture made a section of the air glow and ripple before a glowing white-blue vortex burst into existence. "Step into the portal it will transport you into the past. Oh and Rick?"

"Yes?"

"Try not to give the younger me too many heart attacks this time around alright?" Despite the seriousness of the discussion they'd been having – or perhaps because of it – the simple request rich with all the long suffering stress of an older sibling made Rick laugh.

"No promises big brother," Rick replied, "no promises I have to keep you on your toes after all. Younger brother's prerogative."

Roy laughed back. "Go on get out of here," he said pointing at the portable. "Oh and good luck."

"Thanks," Rick replied. I think I'm going to need it, he thought before squaring his shoulders and walking resolutely into the portal which immediately snapped closed behind him leaving Roy standing alone in the white void.

But only for a few moments as Roy felt a familiar pair of arms come around him and a head come to rest on his shoulder. "Did she agree," he asked.

"When I showed her what was happening you bet she did," Claudia Grant said from where she was resting her head on his shoulder. "And I can see Rick agreed as well."

"You can bet he did," Roy replied them smiled. "I'm so proud of him Claudia."

"I know and so you should be," Claudia answered pulling back and turning him around to face her. "Now come on flyboy I believe you owe me dinner."

"Yes let's get out of here," Roy replied before pulling Claudia into an embrace before the two lovers turned angels faded out returning to their place in the heavens confident that whatever happened next, however the timeline changed it would be better than the one that currently existed.

It had to be.

Authors Note: Well that's all for now. There will be three more people going back in time besides Rick Hunter though not to spoil things I won't say exactly who they are though I am sure everyone here can guess who some of them are.