Long seconds passed. The communications officer worked at her station. Only low static continued to flow from the bridge speakers.
“It was a mistake to send only one man.” Eagle half-turned and his piercing gaze fell upon Falcon.
The other man said nothing, instead blankly returning the look.
“I believe we should redress that mistake,” the commander added.
Falcon moved to stand next to him in front of the viewport. The mottled planet surface appeared to unfold beneath their feet, leaving them towering over it like gods.
“Who should go, then?” Falcon asked.
Approximately two minutes later, a small, cloaked shuttle dropped out of the Talon’s landing bay and accelerated toward the planet at high speed.
Round and round and down in the dark went Hawk, his pistol in hand, his eye implants on night-vision mode still struggling to cope with the utter darkness in which he found himself. The stairway spiraled deeper and deeper into the bowels of the palace—perhaps, Hawk began to suspect, below that now and into the planet’s surface itself.
At last a bit of light appeared below him and he began to reduce the night-vision effect. Moments later the stairs ended and he emerged into a long and broad chamber that seemed to have been carved out of sheer rock. The smooth, dark walls, streaked with veins of white and red, curved upwards and became the ceiling, some fifty feet above his head. Two rows of flickering lights were suspended from above, filling the entire room in a pale yellow glow.
The buzzing and crackling across the Aether had grown quite noticeable now.
Hawk moved into the chamber and took in what little there was to see.
About halfway across the room stood a bank of equipment: control panels and computer units arranged in a horseshoe shape, with massive cables leading along the wall in the opposite direction from Hawk.
Puzzled, he approached and studied the equipment but couldn’t determine the use of any of it.
As he circled around it and reached the far side, the buzzing in his senses grew louder still. He continued on to the opposite end of the chamber and passed through an open doorway that led into a similar but smaller room. Entering, he gasped.
This room was circular rather than oblong, with a high, domed ceiling far above. The blank walls shimmered with red and purple light that washed over them in waves. The source of that light was what took Hawk so aback.
Floating in the center of the room was a sphere some twenty meters in diameter, seemingly composed entirely of reddish light, its surface mottled and rippling. It hovered in the air, its lower curving surface just above Hawk’s outstretched hand.
Staring up at it, looking through the surface at what was inside, Hawk gasped.
The sphere of light was filled with heads.
“No,” he muttered, gazing up in horror at the grim tableau. “Why—why would—?” He moved slowly around the sphere, taking it in from every angle. “What could this possibly be for?”
The heads floated upright, drifting slowly about one another in no discernible pattern. Male and female, of various ethnicities, they stared out through blank eyes. Blank, Hawk realized then—but not dead.
“By the Machine...”
The heads were still alive. The eyes were open and staring, the mouths working soundlessly. Blazing, eldritch energies coruscated around each of them.
Tearing his eyes away from the macabre vision, Hawk quickly examined the rest of the room. On the far side of the sphere, covering part of the floor, he found an array of what looked like antennas. The shimmering energy from the sphere—from the heads inside the sphere, apparently—flowed visibly down into the antennas. From there it followed cables that led through holes cut into the wall. No other openings or doorways were visible.
Hawk frowned. There had to be more here. What was this all for? Who was responsible?
A sudden, sharp cry from behind him caused Hawk to whirl about. A man was standing there, about twenty meters away, clad in a khaki-and-green uniform that Hawk recognized from pre-mission briefings as the official livery of the soldiers of the planetary governor’s royal house.
“Who are you?” the man demanded—and then, an instant later, he clearly must have recognized the blue and red color scheme of a Hawk, or at least a Hand of the Machine, because his eyes widened and he called behind him for help.
“Just a minute—” Hawk began, trying to end a bad situation before it could even begin. He allowed his pistol’s aim to move off to the side, bringing his left hand up in an open gesture. “I’m here on official business. There’s no need to—”
It was too late. Even as several more identically-clad troopers rushed in through the doorway Hawk himself had used moments earlier, the first man drew his gun to fire.
Hawk leapt to one side, executing a remarkably athletic maneuver that involved a flying handstand with his free hand even as the other aimed the pistol and fired. By the time he was back upright on his feet, the guard’s three blasts had all missed while the man himself lay dead, a victim of Hawk’s one shot, which had struck him above the left eyebrow.
Six more troopers had rushed into the room in the time since the first man’s cry. Now they all opened fire at once, from a variety of weapons including everything from slug-throwers to particle-beam guns to plasma-blasters. Hawk back-flipped out of the way of the first barrage, the onslaught ripping through the equipment behind him. His pistol was up and firing then, crisp and precise shots clipping two more of his foes in their torsos and bringing them swiftly down. From the burn marks visible on their uniforms, Hawk could tell they were wearing thin but strong body armor underneath—but it was no match for the primary weapon of a Hawk. His gun could penetrate virtually any substance instantaneously and even the personal guardsmen of a planetary governor lacked the resources to create an adequate defense against it.
The other four troopers were scarcely giving up. They continued firing, and only his remarkable agility was sparing his life thus far. Managing to stay one step ahead of the bullets and blasts, Hawk worked his way closer and closer to his opponents, then somersaulted over them and fired again, taking down two more.
The last two glanced nervously at one another and then rushed him. Hawk found that he was proud of them for not fleeing in terror, given that he had defeated and possibly killed five of their compatriots in only the short time the fight had raged. That did not, however, prevent him from blasting the one on the right at point blank range in the head, then delivering a stinging punch across the face to the other as the man moved in tight and sought to grapple.
Hawk’s second punch drove the last soldier back another step; the man looked up at Hawk afterward with a mixture of shock and anger masking his face. He roared wordlessly and charged again, blasting away with his heavy energy rifle as he moved. Hawk shot him square in the chest and he dropped.
There was no time to celebrate his victory. The next attack seemed to come out of nowhere, and it consisted of just one single word, spoken not out loud but booming through his brain:
“PAIN!”
Hawk cried out in agony and fell to his knees.
“PAIN!”
Hawk screamed. His head was throbbing. He dropped his pistol and clutched the sides of his skull with both hands. It did no good whatsoever.
“PAIN! LONLINESS! TORMENT! PAIN!!”
The waves of sheer agony battered into Hawk and sought to drive him down flat into the cold stone floor. Secondary blasts of excruciating torment, almost like echoes reflecting and deflecting back down upon him again as they bounced off the walls and ceiling, hammered away during the microscopic gaps between the larger doses.
The onslaught went on and on, for what had to have been hours or even days. Hawk’s personality retreated and hid in the depths of his brain, leaving only a pure animal persona to gasp desperately for air and clutch with clawlike hands at the emptiness around him.
Pain, pain, and pain. Pain without surcease, without ending.
He couldn’t say. He had no idea. But he knew that discovering an answer to that question was the first step to ending the attack.
After what seemed like five more years of being crushed down into the floor by a ten-ton column of unrelenting agony, Hawk managed to raise his eyes and then his head just a tad; just enough to see the room around him, and to see his enemies.
They were there. One was directly in front of him, the others arrayed all the way around him in a circle.
The heads. The disembodied heads from the big tank. The weapons fire must have shattered the tank and freed them, he guessed, and now they were loose and on the attack.
They were floating a meter or so above the ground; crimson energies coruscated across their faces and through their hair as they bobbed and spun slowly along. Their expressions were all twisted with rage, their mouths open, their eyes blazing.
Telepathy, he understood then. They were all psychics of some sort. Their telepathic power was holding them aloft, and they also were using it to beat him down into the floor—to deliver massive doses of pure, unadulterated pain to his mind.
Understanding this somehow reduced its effects ever so slightly. Just enough, at least, that he could think—that he could deduce these things. The pain was still mind-numbingly intense, but some small part of his brain was able to pull away from it, wall itself off, and bark out sharp orders to his body.
UP, he commanded himself. MOVE!
He lifted his head higher and saw his pistol lying where he had dropped it. He understood then that in no way did he retain the ability at the moment to actually pick it up and fire it. Instead, he surged upward and blindly ahead, arms waving before him, until he bumped into the floating head just in front of him. His fingers closed in its hair, securing a firm grasp. At the same moment, his actions caused the barrage against him to weaken, as the telepath he attacked and all the others reacted with surprise at his actions. Taking advantage of this brief opportunity, he whirled about and slung the head directly at one of its compatriots on the far side of the circle.
The two heads crunched together in midair and both caromed away like billiard balls.
“NO!” cried the others, aghast. “NO!”
Their resolve was faltering, their numbers reduced, and their potency much weaker. Hawk snapped up his pistol and aimed it, then hesitated.
The expressions on the faces had morphed from anger to confusion and even sorrow. The waves of pain lashing out at him ceased abruptly.
Puzzled, he looked back at the big sphere that had floated in the center of the room. It had fallen and rested now against one of the control consoles, itself riddled with holes from the firefight with the guards. The sphere was cracked and the crimson light that had filled it earlier was now dimmed almost to the point of invisibility.
Hawk was uncertain of what to make of it all, but somehow he suspected the heads had been used as a kind of psychic battery, their telepathic energies drained into the sphere and then channeled elsewhere via the banks of electronic equipment that filled much of the room.
But—a battery for what?
The nearest head darted into his field of vision then, bobbing like a loose helium balloon. Its expression was no longer angry or sad but merely a sort of dull blankness.
KILL US, the thing’s voice called in his mind. KILL US.
“What? No,” Hawk replied out loud. “Surely there’s something that—”
“NO,” the voices all boomed at once. “NOTHING BUT PAIN HERE. BODIES GONE. ONLY SLAVES—FOREVER.”
Hawk’s expression soured as he considered what he had found on this world so far.
“Who did this?” he demanded.
“KILL US,” the voices called.
Several more times he attempted to discover the identity of the person responsible, but the heads were beyond reason, beyond rationality. All they knew was pain—pain and anger. And the desire for release.
“PLEASE,” the silent voices all called within his mind, in unison. “NOW.”
Disgusted and filled with anger at the unknown perpetrator of this atrocity, Hawk raised his pistol.
“I will find who did this, and they will pay,” he promised.
Then he fired, one shot after another. A few seconds later, it was done.
He stood there for almost a full minute, then checked his chronometer. Only something like ten minutes had passed since he had first entered the room. Shaking his head in wonder and in horror, he wiped at the sweat on his brow and considered what to do next.
That was when the hidden doorway opened.
“By the holy name,” a voice called out, coming from off to Hawk’s right. “What has happened here? What—”
He spun about, pistol at the ready, and saw the heretofore hidden doorway yawning open. A figure emerged through it.
They both gawked at one another. In the split second that neither was moving, Hawk saw that the other man wore a loose-fitting robe of black. His face was obscured in the shadows of a hood.
“What—?” Hawk began.
The other man whirled about and fled back through the doorway.
Hawk gave chase.
A metal door slid down between them, filling the opening.
Hawk leapt and struck the door with a flying kick. It did not yield.
Spinning about, he landed smoothly and aimed his pistol. He fired dead-center.
Nothing. The blast deflected harmlessly away.
Heart beating faster now that he felt he was on the verge of getting some answers to the insanity that had gripped the palace, he reached for a pouch at his belt. Opening it, he drew forth a small cylinder. Quickly he traced an oval on the face of the door, near the edges, all the way around. The line where he had drawn the oval flared brightly and sparks flew out.
Hawk lashed out with a powerful kick and the center of the door popped out, disappearing into the room beyond.
Hawk ducked through the hole he had created and found himself in another room, though this one was so dark, he couldn’t at first tell precisely how big it was, or even its shape. The only light came from two banks of madly-flickering candles some distance ahead of him. A short distance away, he could make out the vague form of a rectangle some four or five meters tall, wires and cables trailing from it.
A robed and hooded figure rushed towards him, screaming. Hawk’s night vision revealed a long, wicked-looking dagger held high in the man’s right hand, swinging forward. Hawk brought his pistol up and shot the man down. The figure crumpled at his feet, dagger tumbling away.
“Stop! Stop!!” came a desperate shout from somewhere in the darkness.
Hawk whirled, gun up and ready.
“Who’s there?” he called, rapidly readjusting his ocular implants. “I am a Hand of the Machine, here on official business. Show yourself!”
Another figure in blood-red robes moved slowly into the light. His hands were open and raised.
“Don’t shoot,” the man said, continuing towards Hawk.
“Stop. Stop right there.”
“Yes—yes, of course.”
Hawk watched for a moment as the figure halted, hands still up.
“Who are you?”
“I—I’m Governor Kail,” the shaky voice replied.
Hawk hadn’t expected that answer. “You’re the governor?”
“If I may—?” The man reached up slowly and pulled the hood back, exposing his face and head.
Hawk looked at him, meanwhile accessing the data file he had stored within his mind earlier. He compared the images. It did indeed appear to be the planetary governor who stood before him.
“Governor Kail,” Hawk said, frowning deeply, “just what in the name of sanity is goin
g on here? Were—were you responsible for the…the heads back there? For any of this?”
The governor stared back at him for several seconds, then abruptly he laughed.
Hawk frowned at this. He started to demand to know what was happening, but the governor cut him off.
“You may drop the pretense, Hawk,” he said. “We both know why you are here. And let me add that you have done a marvelous job.” He smiled broadly. “I doubt that anyone even suspects that you are the traitor in the ranks of the Hands.”
PART FIVE
After the Shattering:
The Nineteenth Millennium
1: HAWK
The holographic display faded and the courtroom’s lights came up again. The Inquisitor strode back out into the center of the circular space, a smug and self-satisfied look on his narrow face.
“What—that’s it?” Hawk demanded, incredulous, from where he was pinned by some sort of gravitic force to the smooth wall. “That’s all you have? From that you determined that I was guilty?”
“Not just from that,” the Inquisitor replied sharply. “From the testimony of Eagle as well. And none would dare gainsay him.” The man paused for a moment, then turned to the jury once again. “You will notice this man said the words, ‘that I was guilty.’ Still he maintains this pretense that he actually is a Hawk.”
“And what betrayal exactly is this evidence supposed to convict me of? Can you at least clarify that a bit?”
“This man’s gall is infuriating,” the Inquisitor almost shouted. “As if every child in the galaxy doesn’t know the answer to that.”
“Humor me,” Hawk said.
The judge interjected then: “For the sake of formalities, I will add that information to the official record.” He cleared his throat. “It was found that Hawk assisted the other great traitor, Merlion, in handing over secret defense and military data to the one known as the Adversary. That being then assaulted this galaxy with his vast army and fleet of starships, made up of the forces of many different alien races, nearly all of them unknown to this galaxy at the time. The defeat of the Adversary required the sacrifice of millions of lives, the utter elimination of several of the most powerful races in our galaxy, and the shattering of thousands of star systems.” The judge paused, then concluded, “For this, Hawk is considered one of the worst criminals and villains in history.”
Hawk: Hand of the Machine (Shattered Galaxy Book 1) Page 16
