A to Z Challenge: Khyron the Backstabber

While the Zentraedi are the bad guys in the first series of Robotech, most of them like Breetai and Exedore were not really that evil.  The same cannot be said of Khyron.  Throughout the first series, he is the most brutal and most evil of all the Zentraedi.

How bad is he?  He gained the moniker "the Backstabber" for on more than one occasion killing someone under his own command he thought had failed him or under-performed.

He first appears when Breetai calls up his unit to lay the gravity mine trap for the SDF-1 on Mars.  The trap works, though Lisa Hayes thwarts it by blowing up the base.  After that, Khyron becomes obsessed with destroying the humans.

On a couple of occasions he was pretty close but his commanders stopped him because they wanted the SDF-1 intact, not destroyed as Khyron would have preferred it.  The first such occasion Breetai triggers a remote control that drags Khyron's units back to the fleet before they can rampage inside the SDF-1.  Later, on Earth, it's Azonia who calls him back before he can achieve victory.

During the big space battle between the humans/Zentraedi and Dolza's fleet, Khyron sits things out.  It's odd in the book and TV show they have him saying to target Breetai's flagship but there's no indication he does anything.

He winds up crashing on Earth in the Arctic Circle.  He brings Azonia on board his ship and they get a thing going.  But Khyron is not content to hang out in the wastelands with his chick.  Instead he plots revenge.

First he steals a "sizing chamber" used to make Zentraedi from human-sized to giants.  This allows him to "grow" an army.  Then he kidnaps Lynn-Minmei to do something Zentraedi normally don't do:  hold her hostage.  But Rick Hunter saves her and Khyron ends up in South America.

Santa Khyron

That doesn't mean he's done, though.  On Christmas he steals some fuel for his ship and as a "present" bombs the city.  The good guys hope he'll use the fuel to leave Earth, but that's not his style.  No, he takes his ship to Macross to attack the SDF-1 and SDF-2.  This time there's no Breetai or Azonia to order him to stop, so he destroys both ships by ramming his cruiser into them.  He and Azonia and the rest of his crew are killed.

In the books it's often mentioned that Khyron ingests Invid Flowers of Life in a dried form.  Basically meaning he takes drugs.  Which is perhaps why he doesn't fall prey to human emotions.  Or just that his hatred and need for revenge trump those.

While most Zentraedi warriors have ordinary Battlepods, Khyron got a special "Officer's Pod" that had arms with guns on the end and an extra weapons turret.  I still have a toy of it.