The Fourth Empire s-3

by Mack Maloney

  "Are you suggesting that we should stay here and make battle, sir?" one blurted out. "One fought by us, alone?"

  Joxx pushed the hair from his eyes. "Do I have to remind you these marauders are on the threshold of the mid-Two

  Ann? And from all indications, they are moving so fast, they could be here in less than two days. History will show us at this time and at this place. We must insure that it will depict us in the best of light."

  His intelligence men were almost speechless.

  "But sir," one finally croaked, "we may be here at this time and place, but we are here by ourselves, against an oncoming tide of very organized barbarians, with the nearest help at least four days away."

  "Our vessel is the best in the universe, sir," a second officer said. "But against a hundred other ships? If we try to engage them, if we try to slug it out, blow by blow— especially now that we know their desire to capture one of our holy vessels — well, my fear is only the ion mover can predict that result."

  Joxx turned in his seat to look out the massive windows to the city and the green sea below. He was an arrogant bastard — he knew it himself. But he was also a realist. To his mind the circumstances were as plain as the hundreds of streaks crossing the sky, all heading for safety farther down the arm. It was a dire situation he'd found himself in. Their isolation couldn't have been more complete, stuck here at this lonely crossroads in the stars. Even sending a message back to Earth about all this would be a major risk at the moment. If word of an invasion of the Empire spread around the Galaxy, the results could be catastrophic.

  But if there was one thing Joxx was good at, it was keeping his cool.

  He snapped his fingers and brought Sheez out of the sixth dimension, where he'd been put for the time being. The president was furious upon his release.

  "I really must protest this treatment, Joxx!" were the first words out of his mouth. "May I remind you that I am an acquaintance of your father? And the leader of this planet? Throwing me into the sixth dimension — with all those creepy sentinels. It's so, so crude…."

  Sheez caught his breath, then looked out the tower's huge window. The skies above Needle City were even thicker with fleeing ships now.

  "But then again, no harm done," he said, quickly chang-ing his tune as he reached for his bags. "And if there is nothing else I can do for you, dear old friend, can I please resume the process of getting my ass out of here?"

  Joxx ignored his question. Instead, he asked, "Do you have a map of this place?"

  Sheez was near total exasperation now. He hastily snapped his fingers, and in a flash there was a large, three-dimensional globe of Megiddo spinning above his desk.

  "Highlight all your heavy industries," Joxx ordered Sheez. Another snap of the fingers, and the globe began blinking with tiny floating icons indicating the planet's top industrial sites. They were mostly ship repair yards.

  Joxx remained silent for a long time, studying the globe. He could almost feel the wheels turning in his head. He had to protect the Empire, and he had to protect his ship. He needed a plan to do both. And for that, he needed to improvise.

  Luckily, that was one of his talents, too.

  "Excuse me again, Joxx," Sheez said, gathering up his bags once more. "But if there isn't anything else…"

  Joxx calmly took out his ray gun and without even looking at them, blasted Sheez's valuables-laden baggage to smithereens.

  "Sorry Sheezie, old boy," he said. "But you're not going anywhere."

  10

  The Inmates heard the ShadoVax coming.

  The huge starship had slipped down through the atmosphere of Megiddo, appearing the next morning just off the coast of Needle City. Here, it picked up Joxx and his intelligence squad; they'd spent the night on the ground, deep in planning. With its captain back on board, the grand star-ship made the trip down to the south pole in less than a minute.

  This was done by running the ship's propulsion units at a setting called crank. Translation: as slow as slow can go. The low drive was used only when the huge ship was inside a planet's puff. It gave the vessel, normally a silent runner, great speed relative to the ground but also an ungodly noise to go with it. The racket was deep and rumbling, yet with the sonics of a screech. It could scramble internal organs if the exposure was too long.

  No surprise then that the ShadoVox's arrival shook the enormous prison down to its burned-ice foundation.

  The inmates were lined up in the gigantic prison yard, waiting for it.

  An immense snowstorm was in progress, but none of the inmates complained. They were all condemned men. They never saw beyond the four bare walls of their cells. Being out in the air now, despite the blizzard, was nirvana to them.

  The ShadoVox had ground to a halt at a point just above the north wall of the monstrous prison. It was hovering silently now, at exactly 1,000 feet, its pearl-white fuselage unbroken and gleaming like a sun. It hung like this for many minutes, to give the inmates shivering below enough time to be sufficiently awed by the starship's size and magnificence. It worked. There were a half million men jammed into the prison yard. Between the cold and the intimidating presence of the two-mile-long vessel, few of them could speak.

  Finally, a shower of green beams cascaded down from the ship, burning their way through the pesky snowstorm. Suddenly, there was a large protective bubble hovering fifty feet above the prison yard. A gaggle of SG officers was standing within, illuminated by unseen lights. Joxx, of course, was front and center.

  Most of the inmates recognized him. Cape flowing, wild haircut, amazing good looks, larger than life, he was gazing out over the vast prison courtyard, chin raised in his best imperious pose. Many of the inmates had fought against him over the last ten years; after all, they were criminals, and the Solar Guards were the police force of the Galaxy. The inmates here today were the lucky ones. They'd done battle against Joxx and had somehow come away with their lives.

  Joxx opened up a subatomic broadcast link and began speaking. His words were suddenly all around them. "Anyone who has ever seen combat on a starship should raise his hand," he said.

  Roughly half the inmates raised their hands.

  "How many have ever worked the mechanics of a star-ship before?"

  The other half raised their hands.

  Now, of those holding their hands aloft, how many were due to be executed within the next month? Four in every five hands went down. There were roughly 100,000 left. These inmates were told to step forward, hands still raised.

  Of this number, how many wanted a chance to be released from prison altogether, along with a full pardon?

  Not one hand came down.

  Joxx smiled; the snowstorm increased. He knew many of the 100,000 inmates were lying, but that didn't matter.

  He immediately conscripted them all.

  The ShadoVox's next stop was the city of Brakes.

  Located on the west coast of the landmass shared with Needle City, Brakes was an enormous spaceship repair facility, one of the largest in the Moraz Star Cloud. It did major business and had dozens of gigantic repair bays; they stretched for miles in all directions. The facility was deserted now, though. Everyone had bugged out two days ago.

  Left behind in its work yards were 120 ion-ballast star-ships, all in various stages of reconstruction, all of which had seen some sort of military service in the past. By Joxx's orders, the ships had been scanned from orbit during the night by the ShadoVox's universal quadtrols. Everything that needed to be done to make each ship spaceworthy again had been identified and documented. Then Joxx decreed that a small ocean of thought drops be manufactured, with his own voice injected, each one containing a tiny piece of the knowledge gained from the massive ship analysis.

  With the crew of the ShadoVox acting as prison guards, those inmates who'd claimed experience in starship mechanics were airlifted to Brakes. Each inmate took his thought drop and heard Joxx's voice tell him what job he should do and how he should do it. Joxx had already
programmed the ShadoVox's replication devices to create thousands of electron torches. These were distributed to the inmates along with clear-cut orders to get the abandoned ships back in working order — quickly.

  And for anyone found to have been lying about his ability to fix starships?

  They would be executed on the spot.

  The conscripted shipbuilders went to work. Joxx's vision was to turn the broken-down vessels into a fleet of ships, each one equivalent to a midlevel space cruiser. This meant a 2,500-foot-long, wedge-shaped vessel with fast engines and many, many weapons. The ships were refitted with new ion-ballast propulsion units. On their best day, these engines could go only a fraction of the speed of an Empire Starcrasher, but that didn't matter. The invaders were flying ion-ballast ships, too. The builders installed hundreds of Z-gun batteries and multiple space-torpedo launchers as well, utilizing just about any point on a ship's fuselage that could bear an extra load.

  Those inmates who'd claimed space combat experience were then brought to Brakes. They'd been given Joxx's thought drops, too. Each contained a mission to be fulfilled once the ships were spacebound. This second wave of inmates familiarized themselves with their new weapons, their living quarters, and the nascent ships in general. Thus the vessels were crewed with both the builders — who'd now become ships' engineers — and those inmates who'd fought in space. There were about eight hundred men assigned to each ship, a very skeleton crew.

  The combined fleet numbered ten dozen ships. By Joxx's word, it was christened Irregular Space Wing #1. The crews were dubbed FSH — for future space heroes—and given stylish, self-replicating black uniforms. Joxx named each ship after a member of his extended Imperial Family. Each vessel was also emblazoned with the traditional war colors of red and green.

  In ancient times, such a massive project would have taken weeks, months, even years. But combined with the unlimited power of the ShadoVox, the sheer force of Joxx's personality, and brute manpower — lying or not, every inmate did his duty, preservation of life being the best motivation — all this took less than twenty hours, the length of one Megiddo day.

  It was a grand achievement, done in Joxx's grandiose style, but he had no illusions about the abilities of his new fleet.

  He knew most of the fighting men aboard the ships weren't seasoned space warriors. Many had simply survived battles. In his plan, though, none of that mattered. For this strange campaign, all the future space heroes needed to be were warm bodies with brains attached.

  The flight plan for every ship was already set in an unbreakable string program, locked in sequence with its control bubbler. The firing sequences for all the weaponry was carved in strings, too. The ships were so loaded with weapons, they were little more than firing platforms with people inside. All that would be needed from the crews would be to fire the right weapons at the right place and at the right time. How hard was that? Even a robot could do it.

  Irregular Space Wing #1 arrived above Needle City at dawn the next day.

  Joxx gave a brief speech, this time broadcast directly through the ships' intercom systems. By Joxx's estimate, the invaders' ships would be heading down Thirty Star Pass within hours. The orders to the new space wing then were simple: You have the advantage in numbers. Lay in wait within the Pass, spot the enemy first, and then fire on him immediately. One hundred twenty ships launching all their weapons at once would create a wall of fire that no fleet could get through. The odds of victory would be overwhelmingly in their favor.

  Standing in the huge window atop the big needle, Joxx dramatically saluted each starship as it floated by. Once past his imperial review, the ships formed into ten squadrons of twelve and ascended into the thin clouds. There came a burst of enthusiastic communications between the ships and Joxx's new command center, formerly Sheez's lofty suite. Martial music and preimplanted thought-drop messages with Joxx offering encouragement popped into the minds of the wing's crewmen.

  Only freedom awaited them once the fleet defeated the marauders, Joxx said in whispers that would follow the crewmen up to space. Indeed, his voice would be in their heads for the entire voyage. By midmorning, the fleet hi left orbit and was on its way to Thirty Star Pass.

  The ShadoVox's official historian would later descril their departure as being "a proper send-off."

  11

  The vessel Saint Double-X Valdez was known as a bum runner.

  It was considered a starship, but just barely. It hauled cargo that few other craft on the Two Arm would carry. Used weapons, escaped criminals, the illegal drug known as jam, just about anything that wasn't ion waste. Its crew was just one step up from being escaped criminals themselves. The captain never distributed their pay without a loaded ray gun at his side. During sleep periods, he sealed his cabin with no less than six atomic locks. The other crew members did as well.

  The SDXV was about a quarter mile long, wedge-shape, and rusting heavily at the seams. It carried no weapons. In centuries past, it had relied on its small size and quick speed to get out of any tight spots. But it had slowed down considerably over the last hundred years — and this was not good, because the SDXV was in a very tight spot now.

  Its crew had found themselves on the tail end of the massive bug-out from the upper half of the mid-Two Arm, A bad propulsion spike had grounded them on a hellhole of a planet called Thumbs for nearly two weeks. It seemed more like two years. The bum runner's crew of six could only watch as the mad dash of starships and refugees passed overhead. Long streaks of lights, tearing across the sky, night and day, clogging up the well-worn star lanes. From the ground up, the exodus looked nonstop.

  The reason for the rout, of course, was the rumor that mad invaders were charging headfirst down the Two Arm.

  They were supermen. They were cannibals. They were unstoppable and burning through anything that stood in their way. The SDXV was running empty, there was nothing aboard her that anyone would want. Still, from what the crew had heard about the marauders, they knew they would be shown no mercy. These invading monsters were both powerful and devious.

  They could sneak up on a starship and blast it to dust in a fraction of a second. They could invade and plunder a planet in less than a solar day. They had left so much destruction in their wake, if one looked hard enough into the ragged star clouds that made up the upper Two Arm, it seemed like that part of the sky was on fire.

  'They're coming on fast," the bum runner's crew had heard the refugees say. "If you want proof, just look up in the sky."

  The runner crew had finally replicated a workable prop-spike, and the vessel got spaceborne again.

  The problem was, they'd wasted so much time on Thumbs, the invaders were now right on their tails. They'd hit Thumbs just two days after the SDXV left — along with another hundred or so starships in the area, at least according to all the local jabber on the overcrowded ultrasonic radio waves. The captain of the SDXV had run the ship full throttle since leaving Thumbs, yet by his calculations, the spearhead of the invasion force was so close behind, they would overtake them in less than a day's time.

  Then, about fifteen hours out of Thumbs, the invaders' advance column showed up one thousand miles off the bum runner's port bow. And it was true, what everyone said. The invaders never appeared on the runner's rear scanners. The mystery fleet had somehow come from an entirely different direction and were just suddenly… there.

  The bum runner's crew said a quick good-bye prayer together, and then each man found his own little space and just hung on, waiting to be blasted to subatomic powder at any moment.

  But that didn't happen. Instead, the invaders went right by them, just like they were standing still. Flying in very close formation, their numbers impossible to count, they were going as fast as prop-core ion-ballast vessels could go. The invaders' ships left such a storm of turbulence in their wake, the SDXV was tossed around for several long, heart-stopping moments. It was all the crew could do to keep the ship in one piece.

  The invaders
were out of sight in an instant, roaring down the star lane toward a place the runner's crew knew led into Thirty Star Pass.

  The runner's crew still had a big problem. They were behind the invaders now, and there was no guarantee they'd be spared a second time if they met up with them again. Yet they didn't have enough fuel to take any other course than straight down the pike, through Thirty Star Pass. The bum runner would have to proceed very cautiously.

  About two hours later, the SDXV was shaken by a fierce ultrasonic radio storm. It skewed every piece of electronics aboard the vessel to within a hair's breath of inoperation. The interference was all around them, hitting them in endless waves. Space was suddenly thick with ion rays, string ruptures, and subatomic thunder.

  All indications were that a massive space battle was taking place close by, most likely somewhere up ahead.

  Another two hours passed.

  Finally the SDXV reached the upper approaches to Thirty Star Pass. Most of the ship's electronics had blinked back on by now. But the ship's comm room and its scanner screens were deathly quiet.

  The ship entered the pass, and that's where they discovered the reason for the silence. A space battle had been fought here — a huge one. The debris stretched for hundreds of miles in all directions. The runner crew counted dozens of burning starships, some still green from the afterglow of a direct Z-gun blast. The runner pilots had to use all of their accumulated know-how to carve a path through the debris field. It had come on them so quickly, they were in it before they'd had any chance to avoid it.

  The crew stared out their arched portholes, astonished at the destruction floating all around them. Whatever happened here had happened very quickly. And no doubt, the invaders' fleet had been one of the combatants. Yet the SDXV's quadtrols could not detect one atom of debris that belonged to the ships that had streamed by them two hours before.

  There was only one conclusion then: This had not only been a huge battle; it had been a very one-sided affair as well.