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                FROM THE FILES OF TEAM M.E.C.H.A.
            Sarah Conner's Adventures in Terrania, #1

                       By Robotech_Master


    The Main Library of Castle Conner in Terrania was essentially
a  large,  stone  room,  with high, vaulted ceilings.  There were
tapestries hanging all over the place, tables  and  uncomfortable
chairs  scattered here and there for the ease of those who wished
to read, and great wooden shelves on which  resided  hundreds  of
thick,  weighty  tomes.   Tomes  that  told  of many things.  The
history of Terrania.  Legends of heroes past and  heroes  yet  to
come.  Words of great magic, and long-lost secrets to powers that
could shake the earth.  The precise manner in  which  to  make  a
souffle.
    Sarah Conner sighed, for the fortieth time that morning,  and
put  down  the thick, weighty tome she'd been pondering.  She was
alone.
    It hadn't been supposed to be like  this,  back  when  they'd
first  decided  to  come  here.   Just  the three of them--Sarah,
Ariella, and Robert. The three Terranians.  Just like  the  Three
Musketeers.  "Hmph.  More like the Three Stooges."
    They'd been supposed to spend time together, do  things.   Go
on  long  horseback  rides,  study  spell magic--even just go for
walks and talk with each other.  But that wasn't the way  it  had
turned  out.   Almost as soon as they'd arrived, Ariella had been
all but swept away into the duties of her office.  With a  regent
in  place,  of course, there weren't all that many, but Ari still
had to plan her wedding, and settle various  disputes  that  came
up,  and  go  to ceremonial events, and things like that.  Robert
was never around either--either  he  was  with  Ariella  planning
things,  or he was in the Thieves' Guild (which Sarah never could
discover the location of, no matter how hard she tried, something
that annoyed her a good deal).
    And now, all that was really left for Sarah to do was  wander
around the castle by herself.  That or study these thick, weighty
tomes in the library.  And without Ariella to help her and  judge
her progress, it didn't really seem like it was worth it.
    Sarah Conner pushed her chair back from the table  and  stood
up.   She  picked  up  the book and walked over to the shelf from
which it had been taken.
    "You don't have to do that," the librarian said,  getting  up
from behind her desk.  "I can put that back--it's my job."
    "No, that's okay, Maeve.  I got it down...I'll put it  back."
She  shoved  the  big  book  into place, then nodded to the other
girl.
    Maeve was actually a bit young to be a librarian, being  only
in  her mid-twenties or so, but her mother had died unexpectedly,
and she'd insisted on taking the duty on herself.  She  had  hair
that  was  kind  of  a  dirty  blonde color, and wore wire-rimmed
glasses that had been ground by hand by  one  of  Terrania's  few
lensgrinders,  in  addition  to  other standard native garb.  She
could probably be rather pretty, if she paid  much  attention  to
it,  but  she  was  more  interested  in  books  than  in  social
interaction.
    "Are you going out again?" Maeve asked.
    "Yeah...I think I'll head on up to the  aerie  and  check  my
email.   Why don't you come along with me?  I really ought to get
you an account set up."  The "aerie" was the unofficial name  for
the  tower which contained Terrania's most advanced communication
equipment.  It had previously been used by Baron de Hevilode, but
now Sarah was putting it to much better use.
    "No, thank you.  Another time, perhaps."  Maeve was  slightly
technophobic,  which  wasn't  unusual  for  a  Terranian.   Sarah
nodded, but vowed that one  day  Maeve  WOULD  have  an  Internet
account,  if  she  had to drag her kicking and screaming into the
aerie in her Cyclone armor.  It  was  too  much  of  a  wonderful
resource to do without.
    "See you later, then."  Sarah headed out the door, toward the
corridor that would eventually take her to the aerie.
    A few minutes later, Sarah Conner emerged, panting, into  the
top room of the tallest tower in the castle.  The only tower with
solar panels and a satellite dish mounted somewhat  incongruously
on  top.   This was it--the aerie.  It wasn't really much to look
at, not at all like  the  control  center  in  Team  M.E.C.H.A.'s
secret  base.   THAT looked something like a miniature version of
NASA's centrol control room.  THIS  looked  more  like  someone's
cluttered office, with two or three TV sets and VCRs, a couple of
satellite transciever units, and a PC-clone computer.
    Sarah sat down in the desk chair  (one  of  the  most  modern
pieces  of  furniture  around  here,  she thought ironically) and
logged onto the computer.  It was a Pentium unit (However evil he
might  have  been,  at  least  de  Hevilode  had bought the best)
running Unix, and it  had  a  connection  to  the  Internet,  via
satellite,  as conner.tergov.ter, the .ter being the country code
suffix for Terrania.  Very few people had accounts on it so  far-
-in fact, only a handful of people besides Ariella and herself.
    Sarah  checked  her  email.   Not  much  of  interest--a  few
articles  from  the  Robotech  and Palladium listservs and a note
from Summer that said she'd settled in quite nicely at  the  Teen
Team's headquarters and was looking forward to fighting her first
crime with them.  Sarah smiled, and composed a brief  reply.   At
least   Summer   had  managed  to  salvage  something  from  this
catastrophe.
    But the email that Sarah had been half hoping for  and  half-
dreading was not there.  There was nothing from Adam Douglas.
    Not that she'd really expected there would be.  It  had  been
quite  a  while since they'd last seen each other, even some time
since the note left at the M.E.C.H.A. jet on  that  fateful  day.
If Adam had wanted to get in touch with her, he would surely have
found a way.  Did he still love her?  And, for that  matter,  did
SHE still love HIM?
    She was having a hard time sorting  out  her  feelings  about
Adam.  They'd been going together for a long time...three or four
years, at least, ever since they'd been freshmen in high  school.
They'd  been  through a lot of stuff together, and had fought for
the freedom of their town at Team M.E.C.H.A.'s  side,  back  when
Team  M.E.C.H.A.  had only consisted of two people.  They'd later
been part of Team M.E.C.H.A., part of a powerful force for  good.
Whatever that meant.
    So Adam had stripped a gear and started  blaming  magic-users
for the death of his mother.  So he'd fought on the wrong side in
the Industrial Revolution.  So he'd  run  off  rather  than  face
justice--rather  than  face  the rest of the team.  Did it really
mean anything, in the long run, between two people who cared  for
each other as much as they did, or thought they did?
    Sarah didn't know.  She didn't know where Adam  Douglas  was,
whether  he  had  found another girl, whether he even still loved
her at all.  She was, after all, becoming a user of magic, one of
the people who, he believed, was responsible for the death of his
mother.  The last time  she'd  seen  him  she'd  thrown  a  magic
missile in his face.
    But she had to believe that he still cared for her.  She  HAD
to. After all, he'd said in the note he'd left...
    Sarah sighed again.  Maybe it would be  best  if  she  didn't
think  about it.  But every time she saw Ari and Robert together,
she just felt so depressed.
    She pulled out her Team M.E.C.H.A. satellite comlink,  looked
at  it. It was so tempting to call in to TMHQ and see if Adam had
reported in. Or maybe Link could devise some kind of  method  for
tracking  him  by  the  battery  in  the  comlink  he said he was
carrying, or something.
    But in the end she had  to  put  it  away.   It  wouldn't  do
anybody  any  good,  this worrying.  She needed to find something
else to occupy her, something else she could do...
    And then, looking out the tower window, she found it.   Them,
rather.  Two  men  in  trenchcoats,  walking out of the courtyard
toward the drawbridge.  "Who  ARE  those  two?"  Sarah  wondered.
She'd  seen  them around, from time to time, but they were always
gone  before  she  could  confront  them.   And  they  seemed  so
FAMILIAR, somehow...
    THIS time, Sarah decided, they wouldn't get away.   She'd  be
certain of that.  It was time she used her ace in the hole.

    The CVR-3F body armor made little clicking  sounds  as  Sarah
Conner  pulled  it on over her jeans and sweatshirt.  It was kind
of funny...the last time she'd put this armor on had been  during
the  Industrial  Revolution,  the  final  battle.   And now there
wasn't even anything to fight.
    Tucking her hair in under  the  collar  and  pulling  on  the
helmet,  Sarah stepped over to the three Cyclones leaning against
the wall.  She straddled her red  38-Lite  and  hit  the  starter
switch.   The  motor  responded with a satisfying whir.  And then
she hit another switch, and the Cyclone  cycle  split  apart  and
attached itself to her CVR armor.
    "Yeah, there we go!"  Sarah walked over to a  nearby  window,
the  Cyclone armor's feet making hollow thudding sounds with each
impact on the stone floor.  As she looked  down,  she  could  see
that  the  two  trenchcoated  men  were almost to the drawbridge.
They seemed to be conversing with each other, and one of them was
gesturing  animatedly.  Sarah grinned, getting a good grip on her
RL-6 rocket cannon, and then jumped through the window.
    Sarah  touched  down  on  the  drawbridge  just  as  the  two
trenchcoated  men  reached  its  midpoint.   The two trenchcoated
figures took one look at her, and more specifically at the rather
large  bazooka  she was carrying, and dived off the bridge.  ker-
SPLASH!!!
    As the two men swam for the outer shore,  Sarah  jumped  over
and  touched  down  in  front  of  them.   Shouldering the rocket
launcher, she remarked, "And who are you guys supposed to be, the
Wet  Trenchcoat  Brigade?"  She shoved back her visor just as the
two men clambered ashore.  Then,  with  sudden  recognition,  all
three of them gasped, "YOU!"
    "You're the two guys who kidnapped me back  in  Springfield!"
Sarah  realized.   "You  were  in the movie theater, and on those
pursuit bikes!"
    "Um, yes, that's right, we were," one of the two trenchcoated
men said.  "But we were only following orders.  Can we go now?"
    Sarah briefly considered calling the guard to arrest the  men
as  being  lackeys  of  the traitorous Baron de Hevilode, but her
curiosity got the better of her.  "Who are you guys?" she  asked.
"What are you still doing hanging around Terrania?"
    "We're from CovertCorp," the  other  person  explained.   "De
Hevilode  hired  us,  along  with  equipment  and  transportation
services from our firm."
    "De Hevilode's dead!" Sarah Conner replied.  "Why haven't you
gone home?"
    "We, um, can't," the first one said.  "We'd get fired."
    "Yeah.  We'd lose our jobs."
    "Why?" Sarah asked.
    "Well, the Baron paid us for a permanent  contract  not  with
himself  but  with  the  nation of Terrania," the first one said.
"Only a  member  of  the  Terranian  royal  family  can  end  the
contract."
    "If we leave now, it would be a breach of contract, and  we'd
lose our positions."
    "A member of the Terranian royal family, eh...?" Sarah asked,
considering.   "And  I take it that a member of that family could
also issue you orders?"
    "Ummm...yes," the second man said, pulling a  somewhat  soggy
handbook  out  of  his pocket and paging through it.  "It says so
right here..."
    "Good."  Sarah pulled off her Cyclone gauntlet  to  show  the
royal  signet  ring  that  Ariella had given her.  "In that case,
Princess Sarah Conner has some business with you.  I want you  to
help me find the Thieves' Guild."
    The two CovertCorp agents looked at each other and sighed.


           WILL SARAH CONNER FIND THE THIEVES' GUILD?

                  WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF SHE DOES?

                  WILL THERE BE REPERCUSSIONS?

               WHAT WILL THE COVERTCORP AGENTS DO?

WILL THIS STORY GO ANYWHERE, OR WILL ROBOTECH_MASTER FIND SOMETHING ELSE
                      TO TAKE UP HIS TIME?

                       FIND OUT EVENTUALLY

                           ON SUPERGUY

--
Chris Meadows/Robotech_Master // chm173s@nic.smsu.edu // GEEK CODE V2.0:
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