Planet America s-2

by Mack Maloney

He rolled to the end of the makeshift runway and was relieved to see Zarex and Pater Tomm waiting for him. Gordon was on hand as well, along with a squad of CIA agents (all of whom were talking on their cell phones) and a small convoy of black vans. But some of the agents looked as if they'd just gone through a war. They were sporting bandages on various parts of their bodies. Gordon himself was dabbing a head wound with a piece of gauze.

  Hunter jumped from his plane and ran over to the group of walking wounded.

  "What happened down here?" he asked them.

  "Only a vision of doomsday," Tomm replied quickly. "Or about thirteen minutes of it, anyway."

  "It was like the whole planet did a jig," Zarex confirmed. "Everything just started rocking and rolling, and it wouldn't stop. I've been through a lot in the past two hundred years, but that might have been the longest thirteen minutes of my life."

  Gordon had it all written down in a hastily scrawled report, which was now getting smeared in the rain.

  "The power blackouts came first," he told Hunter. 'Two short ones, about a minute apart. Then a few more, longer in duration. Then it seemed like the whole planet just started to shake. Up and down, back and forth. We were lying flat on the ground, yet at times I swear I was upside down."

  The others nodded in painful agreement.

  "And it lasted such a long time," Gordon continued, dabbing his head wound. "Once it finally stopped, the reports of damage started coming in a minute later, and they haven't stopped since."

  He handed Hunter the written report. "It was just the damnedest thing, and it seemed to happen just a few seconds after you left."

  Hunter just stood there, stunned, not quite believing what he was hearing. Could he be responsible for this? He quickly read the report. The bad stuff began happening just about a half minute after he'd reached orbit. There was one blackout followed quickly by several others. And these outages did not just happen in the vicinity of Andrews Field. They had rippled right across the continent.

  The real shaking began about two minutes later and did not stop for thirteen long minutes. Again, the effect was felt right across the country. Not a quake, rather a gigantic disruption that, in Gordon's written words, felt "as if a giant's hand had picked us up and just started shaking." The worst of it came in the last three minutes.

  Hunter began matching up the times of these events with his own activity. The first series of blackouts coincided with his initial engagement of ultradrive in space. The planet started shaking just as he'd begun his tour of the half-dozen Home Planets and continued when he'd zoomed out to where the sentinel moons lay. Then the real disruption began at the precise moment he'd gone into his time-busting spy mode, which, in real time down here must have taken about thirteen minutes. The trembling continued until the moment he kicked out of full ultraoverdrive and returned to America's orbit.

  The numbers didn't lie. His takeoff had been okay. But every time he'd pushed his throttle into ultraspeed, the people back on Planet America had paid the price. Yet this didn't make any sense. Why would what he did out there affect what was happening back here, inside the planet's time bubble?

  The ink on Gordon's report began running off the wet pages. Hunter was now soaked to the bone. Bad things happen when the ground shakes. Fires break out. Water mains crack. Electrical wires fall. How many had been killed? How many injured? It was almost too terrible for him to contemplate.

  And most important, why did it happen?

  Hunter and the others were whisked back to Weather Mountain.

  For security reasons, they were put in three separate vans and driven by three different routes back to the CIA facility. Hunter surprised himself by falling asleep during his ride back. One moment they were pulling out of a muddy road near Andrews, the next, the van was flying through the front gate at Weather Mountain. The unexpected sleep had done him a favor. It had relieved him of thinking about the devastation he had just caused — at least for a little while.

  He was brought to the CIA "blue room" as they had taken to calling the huge conference room with all the blue lights. Two of Gordon's aides gave him a plate of hot food, which he wolfed down without even knowing what it was. When they inquired if he wanted coffee or a smoke, he asked for a bottle of Seagram's. After a hushed conversation, they brought him a glass of it instead.

  He then asked for permission to speak to his two colleagues alone. More discussion. Gordon was contacted in the first aid room, where he was getting his head wound attended to. He told his aides to grant Hunter's wish. It made no difference. The blue room was thick with eavesdropping devices, anyway.

  Tomm and Zarex were brought in, and a pot of coffee and a pack of Marlboros appeared soon after. Then the aides left them alone in the cavernous conference room. They sat huddled at the far end of the oval table, Tomm with his coffee, Zarex with his smokes, Hunter with his drink.

  "Brothers, I felt we three should talk first," Hunter told them. "With what I have to report from my mission, I'm not sure our hosts can absorb it all at once."

  "Bingo that," both men replied.

  Hunter sipped his drink.

  "But before we get into it," he went on, "I have something else I must reveal to you."

  Tomm and Zarex looked back at him strangely. His voice was dead serious.

  "I've been keeping something from you, brothers," Hunter began. "A deep secret that is crumbling just as fast as all the other secrets around us. I feel it is time for me to come clean."

  He took a deep breath.

  "Brothers, the Fourth Empire exists," he told them bluntly. "I know because I was once an officer in its exploratory corps."

  Tomm and Zarex just stared back at him. Essentially, Hunter was telling them that one of the greatest myths of the Five-Arm — indeed of the entire Fringe itself — was in fact true. That a huge empire controlled most of the Milky Way and was expanding its realm by gobbling up more planets with each passing day. Tomm and Zarex had speculated about this before, of course, and about Hunter's mysterious nature as well. But never had they expected him to just come out and tell them.

  "Are you sure about this, my son?" Tomm asked him. "And that you just didn't hit your head on reentry?"

  Hunter smiled. "Sometimes, Padre, 1 wish that was the case."

  He explained that he'd been reluctant to tell them of his origins before, because knowledge of the vast Fourth Empire had to be absorbed gradually, just as the people on this planet had to absorb that fact that die three of them had come from someplace else. But now that they knew, there was no sense holding anything back. So Hunter told them about the Fourth Empire itself. About Time Shifters and Kaon Bombardment ships, and how he wasn't exactly sure why his flying machine moved the way it did. He described the omnipotent power of the Big Generator and the fleets of Empire Starcrashers that traveled in the mysterious dimension called Supertime, and were many times faster than ion-ballast starships. He told them about his amnesiac origins, his home on Fools 6, his time as an Empire officer, his less-than-coincidental arrival on Zazu-Zazu.

  When it was over, Hunter felt like a huge burden had been lifted from his shoulders.

  His two colleagues were quiet for a long time. Then Zarex reached across the table and shook his hand, nearly crushing Hunter's fingers in the process.

  "Thank you, brother, for telling me," the muscle man said. "It makes my life so much more interesting to know that the entire galactic swirl is ringing with life."

  Tomm leaned over as well, but instead of shaking Hunter's hand, he slapped his cheek none too lightly but in a priestly sort of way.

  "I knew it all along, of course," he told Hunter dryly. "But thank you for confirming my suspicions."

  Hunter took another drink of his Seagram's. He had about a half glass left and was already aching for more.

  "So tell us, brother," Zarex urged him. "We can't take the suspense. What did you see up there?"

  Hunter just shook his head. "What I found up there is the reason that I re
vealed to you what I know about the Fourth Empire. The empire is controlled from a planet called Earth. I've been there. It's out on the One-Arm, and a more magical and intriguing place does not exist. But I found evidence, up there, that the original peoples of Earth were taken off their planet and brought here. To the Home Planets. It's the missing clue to all the artifacts the CIA has found. It also means whoever was controlling Earth four thousand years ago created this place out here, and they are still maintaining it.

  Tomm and Zarex were visibly shocked.

  "Are you saying," Tomm asked him, "that this place, this mighty Earth, center of a huge empire, actually belongs to^"

  "The people here," Hunter finished the sentence for him. "Here, and on the other planets I found up there."

  Hunter quickly told them about his mission: Finding the Home Planets, weirdly uniform in their orbital proclivities. The heavily engineered local moon. The string of empty sentinels. Then his discovery of Moon 39 and what he'd found while on the ground, especially his viewing of the space launch event detector and the experience inside the mind ring — all except Ashley. And the mysterious blue screen.

  "The holo-spy spoke too well," he concluded. "This system is a prison. What she didn't know was, it was built to imprison the people who rightfully own the Earth. And there is an entire space corps sitting out there, guarding it."

  "But who are these guards?" Tomm asked. "What is their business in this?"

  "That's another thing," Hunter replied. "Equally disturbing. It leads to a strange question."

  "Spill, please," Zarex said.

  "Brothers, earlier in our journey, you had spoken of the Bad Moon Knights," Hunter said. "How long have they been operating on the Fringe, do you think?"

  Both Tomm and Zarex shrugged.

  "My dealings with them go back a hundred eighty years," Zarex said. "I'm guessing they've been around at least twice as long. Do you agree, Padre?"

  "Three times as long probably," Tomm said. He turned back to Hunter. "Why do you ask, brother?"

  Hunter pulled the space knife from his boot pocket and showed it to his friends.

  "The Bad Moon Knights?" Tomm said, examining the blade's holo-inscription. "But where did you come upon this?"

  Hunter pointed his finger skyward. "Up there," he said. "On Moon 39. The prison garrison is made up of Bad Moon Knights — about a million of them."

  Zarex's face almost drained of color. "You mean they followed me all the way out here?"

  Hunter shook his head. "Fear not, brother. I think they're up to bigger things this time."

  Hunter told them how the BMK equipment on Moon 39, while highly polished and undeniably lethal, was also very, very old. At least by six or seven hundred years. As were the soldiers' uniforms, their base layout. Everything about them screamed mid-6500s.

  "That's very odd," Zarex said, settling back down. "As one who has dealt with people trying to resist these savages, I can tell you the BMK is usually very well equipped. Even their prot6g6s have the latest weapons."

  "They were known at their beginnings to take on the worst jobs of the Galaxy," Tomm said. "Hence their reputation for sheer brutality. They were also not very expensive in their younger days. They were in it for the cheap thrills, and they weren't too fussy about what mere contract to take. Now they're the biggest outlaw army on the Five-Arm — and probably other places as well."

  "Interesting," Zarex said, through a cloud of smoke. "Someone must have hired them to do this job and then stuck them way out here. But who? The villain in your mind ring trip— this Second Empire — are we to assume that it was a predecessor to the one in power now?"

  "In some shape or form," Hunter replied. "But my brothers, the Second Empire fell on Earth thousands of years ago. And we know the BMK has not been around for that long."

  "Someone must have renewed the contract," Tomm said, "and brought the BMK in. But when?"

  "And we have an even further problem," Hunter said. "These disruptions that occurred while I was away. I'm sure I was the cause of them, though I'm not sure I know why. My aircraft is based on Time Shifter technology. And I know that shifting time inside something whose time has already been shifted is not a smart thing to do. That's what happened with the missing two seconds Gordon spoke about. That's why I insisted on such an unusual takeoff. But even though I left this planet — and presumably pierced the time bubble — operating my machine still caused these disruptions. Ones much greater than simply losing two seconds of time."

  Zarex just shook his head.

  "This whole time-space thing confuses me," he confessed. 'Time Shifters. Frozen time. Time bubbles. I just don't understand it."

  "Not many people do," Hunter said. "But I think I have a theory about what happened."

  "Tell us," Tomm urged him.

  Hunter took a healthy slug of his drink now. "Could it be that not just the Home Planets are encased in time bubbles, but the whole system itself?"

  Tomm and Zarex considered this for a moment. "Including the sentinel moons?" the priest asked.

  "Yes, exactly," Hunter replied. "It's really the only thing that makes sense. I flew two times down here while we were on the lam. That resulted in two seconds of lost time, reversed time, frozen time, whatever you want to call it. But those flights were short, and I didn't come anywhere near full ultraoverdrive."

  "Go on," Tomm urged him.

  "But what if the entire system was locked in a time bubble? And anytime I go into overdrive, I disrupt it. Back here, out there. Everywhere. It's the only explanation. It also could explain why those BMK troops out there look like throwbacks to the last millennia."

  "My God," Tomm whispered. "We know the people down here are stuck in a piece of near-frozen time. But could it be that those dopes up on Moon 39 are, too? And is it possible that they don't know it either?"

  Hunter shook his head. "Could it be that they took a contract for this, what? Some nine hundred years ago? And have been living up there ever since, causing havoc when needed, but at the same time unaware that so much time has gone by?"

  "It's certainly a clever ploy if you are paying them by the hour," Zarex said.

  "But even still," Hunter said. "We know they haven't been out there for the entire four thousand years of this. Someone hired them, and took advantage of them, within this last thousand years. Perhaps just as they'd taken advantage of other earlier armies. That to me means this whole thing is an ongoing enterprise. The BMK are just the lackeys. Whoever wanted to keep the people of this place, America, and all the other planets behind bars is still out there. Or at least they were a thousand years ago."

  Hunter needed his drink refilled. He felt like his head was about to pop.

  "But, whatever their situation," he began again. "There is one thing we can be sure of. The BMK is just sitting out there, waiting for something to do. And now we know what spurs them into action: spaceflight. So if there is only one way we can help our hosts here, it will be by warning them off any ideas of space travel, lest catastrophe hit this place yet another time."

  "Yes, an important point," Tomm said after a long pause. "But a question for you, brother Hunter — possibly unimportant in light of everything else. But I'm a curious man and I've never asked you before: Where did you go in those first two flights after we had split up?"

  "Yes, brother," Zarex added. "Why did you feel it was so important that you take to the air, especially since at that time, we had agreed to keep a low profile?"

  Hunter felt his heart twist a little more inside his chest.

  "Well," he began uneasily, "there was this girl, and—"

  But before he could say another word, the doors to the conference room flew open and Gordon hurried in. He was followed by the other six senior agents. They all looked very worried.

  "Please don't ask us how," Gordon told them. "But we've heard everything you've been saying. And I'm afraid we have some very disturbing news."

  They all gathered in front of the huge scr
een that dominated one of the blue room's walls.

  Gordon pushed a button, and the screen came to life. Suddenly they were looking at a location somewhere out in the American Southwest desert. It seemed to be a base of some sort, extremely isolated and surrounded on all sides by high mountains. It was early morning out there, not yet sunrise. Still in the waning darkness, an unmistakable silhouette could be seen: a rocket standing attached to a launch platform.

  Hunter groaned. This vehicle looked older than the tub of bolts he'd seen lift off from Tonk. It was also bigger, fatter, and had the same blunt nose and four fins to stand on. Steam was venting from several places along its fuselage. Technicians could be seen moving like ghosts around the launch pad.

  "Next to your presence here, this is one of the best kept secrets on the planet," Gordon told them. "Not even our Vice President knows about it. It's a black program we've been working on for almost fifty years now. It was due for launch within days."

  "You mean that thing is operational?" Hunter asked.

  Gordon nodded. "We'd hoped for an orbital flight. But there was also a secret option for a lunar mission."

  This was not good. If the rocket was allowed to launch, it could trigger an invasion of the Planet America. One that the tiny world couldn't possibly resist for very long.

  "You simply can't launch that vehicle," Hunter said finally. "It would have catastrophic consequences."

  "I don't need further convincing of that," Gordon said. "After what happened earlier today, I'd just as soon go along with whatever you guys have to say. But, correct me if I'm wrong: If we have been constantly striving for spaceflight, only to be smitten down every time it's in our grasp, wouldn't this also be true for the rest of the planets in this system?"

  The spacemen looked on the CIA man with newborn respect. Even though he'd obviously listened in on their private conversation, he was picking up on this new game pretty well.

  "Other planets might be close to the level of development you've reached again here," Hunter said. "For all we know, your cultures might all be on a similar track, just as your planets all follow the same orbital plane. There's a chance that one of the other planets is on the verge of spaceflight, just days away as well. Maybe more than one. They aren't aware of all this. They are wide open to being slaughtered."