by Mack Maloney
More thunder rumbled through the valley. The sky overhead became even darker, if that was possible. The countdown got down to ten seconds. Another clap of thunder, this one so powerful, High Hill itself actually began shaking.
" Someone does not want this to happen!" Xara yelled to Hunter, though he could barely hear her over the booming thunder.
The countdown reached five seconds… another tremendous clap of thunder.
Four… three… two… one… zero!
Now came two tremendous explosions. One was from the most powerful clap of thunder yet, the other from the Resonance 133 as it instantly accelerated to top ion-ballast speed and disappeared through the Vanex Door. It was gone in a blink, leaving only a greenish mist in its wake.
The thunder continued, and the sky grew absolutely pitch black after the ship had departed. Those up on High Hill could hear the wails of the permanent souls throughout the valley. Xara was clutching Hunter so tightly now, her fingernails were digging into his skin. Several terrifying moments passed.
But then, gradually, the thunder abated, and the clouds drifted away. The sunlight returned, and wailing throughout the valley ceased. But it was obvious that the act of pushing the ship back through the Vanex Door had upset the very pristine order of things. They had angered the Creator Himself with their act of boldness, and it had been frightening to experience the reaction from on high.
But normalcy soon returned. Those watching over the controls for a subatomic Sweeper that had been attached to the Resonance reported that all indications were that the ship had at least made it into the twenty-sixth dimension.
Upon hearing this, everyone in the UPF contingent relaxed a little. Hunter and Xara sat down on the edge of High Hill and just held on to each other. Vanex walked down to the river and drank his fill of the sweet, intoxicating nectar. The formations dispersed, and many of the UPF troopers went for a swim.
It was only later that they discovered the soul of Gym Bonz was not among them.
Apples.
Hunter had picked thirteen of them, and now they were stuffed into the pockets of his combat suit, making him look a little too round in the rump.
He was down on the beach, at the exact spot where he'd faded in so long ago. He had his helmet on, and his boots were stitched up tight. He had a container of river nectar and a blaster rifle borrowed from one of the UPF troopers. These were the things he might need if things went wrong once he got back to the other side.
He knew there was a good chance he would wind up back inside the jail cell at the bottom of the ShadoVox on his return, and that the cell door would still be locked. There was also a chance no one aboard the ship would know he returned, so the apples would sustain him for a while, he hoped. If he was unable to blast the lock off the cell door with the borrowed ray gun, that is.
He'd had one last conversation with Vanex before leaving High Hill. It was mostly to thank the old guy for all that he'd done under the most unusual circumstances. The Imperial Janitor was still a bit of an enigma. Had he come around to their point of view, agreeing that the Empire had to be toppled? Or had he been helpful simply because he was very loyal to Xara? If Hunter had to bet on it, he would have guessed the old guy had done it for Xara alone.
Hunter took one long, last look at his surroundings. The sweet water, the hillside of bright flowers, the bejeweled sands. He knew the chances of him ever coming back here — at least by these means — were nil. The Echo 999.9 was a onetime device. The capsule Hunter had used to get here would be depleted as soon as he returned. The same was true for the first Echo, which had been disassembled to build the Vanex Door. Once the last UPF ship passed through it — if indeed the passing through was successful — it, too, would be depleted. So the ships could never return, either.
No, if he was ever to see Paradise again, Hunter knew he would have to get here the old-fashioned way.
That's what was going to make the next few moments on the beach so difficult. Because he knew there was a very good chance he would never see Xara again, either. She couldn't come with him, of course. And she couldn't have gone back on the Resonance 133, as the same thing that they feared would happen to him — that nasty atoms-turned-inside-out thing — would happen to her (and Vanex, too).
They were stranded here. In Paradise.
There was no way Hunter could leave with out saying good-bye to Xara — although he'd considered this. It would have avoided the painful moment they both knew had to come sooner or later. So he told her to give him a while to prepare, and then meet him down by the shore.
She arrived, cheeks still wet with tears, still looking beautiful but at the same time very sad. Her emotions had been running high since the departure of the Resonance 133.
Hunter took her hands and looked deep into those gigantic blue eyes. For the first time, he realized they were the same color as both the sky here and the cobalt blue ocean.
"So how long has it been?" he asked her. "One month… or ten years?"
She squeezed his hands in return. "Either way, it wasn't long enough, Hawk," she said, almost embarrassed. "That's the tragedy in all this. We could stay here for eternity. Instead, I'm losing you, probably forever. And if you succeed in your quest, then I lose my family."
She looked up, and Hunter could see the tears had started again. He tried to wipe them away.
"I'll come back," Hunter suddenly heard himself say, even as his heart was breaking inside. They both looked at each other, eyes misty. She knew better than to ask how. There was really only one other way to get to Heaven.
"I'll wait for you," she said, repeating a line from a poem she had written for him when he first left Earth on his quest to find the Lost Americans. "A million years, if I have to."
Hunter was trying his best to control his emotions, but it was a losing battle. His brain suddenly became saturated with the idea that he probably would never see her again, no matter what the cosmos had in store for him. One month or ten years? She was right; it hadn't nearly been long enough. And now, at this good-bye, he realized he didn't even have a holo-picture of her, nothing at all to remember her by.
She read his mind. She pointed to her heart. "In here, Hawk," she said. "No one leaves you if they live in your heart and mind. And no one dies; they move to the other side. I'll be here."
She leaned over and kissed him.
Then the Echo 999.9's time element finally ran out, and Hunter faded away.
Part Three
The Messengers
9
Solar Guards Sublieutenant Cronx had just gone off duty when the nightmare began.
He was a crew member of the SG Starcrasher StratoVox II. His position was second forward weapons officer, one of dozens aboard the ship. The StratoVox was a capital battle cruiser, and at 2.5 miles long, one of the largest space vessels in existence. It served as the flagship for Space Marshal Finn-Cool McLyx, a top Solar Guards commander, and a man known throughout the Empire for his heroism or his ruthlessness, depending on one's point of view Lieutenant Cronx had not been to sleep in one hundred hours. He'd been pulling triple shifts without the benefit of a wake-up drop or any other kind of metabolic inducer while filling in for other lowly officers in such diverse parts of the ship as the auxiliary power room, the master bilge compartment, and even the communications bubbler. The StratoVox had been running at battle stations for more than three weeks now, ever since it left its patrol on the Six Arm. The nonstop high alert had been an intense, tiring process for the entire crew.
Finally one of the snip's doctors encountered Cronx staggering down a passageway and ordered him to take some time off. Cronx was happy to comply. At the age of 201, he was getting too old for these things. He dragged himself to his quarters and was about to collapse on top his hovering bunk when a duty captain appeared at his billet door.
"Get to your primary battle station immediately!" this officer barked at him. "We are about to go into action…"
As he was saying this, batt
le-imminent sirens started up all over the immense ship. Cronx felt his stomach turn to stone. It was the moment he had been dreading since the ship left the Six Arm.
"Who is the enemy?" he half gasped,
The duty captain's face turned dark. "The Space Forces, of course!" he screamed. Then he disappeared.
Cronx stayed frozen to his spot. Circumstances had been building to this for three weeks, but it was no less distressing now to finally hear the words. Just about everyone aboard the StratoVox believed that their commanding officer, Finn-Cool McLyx, had gone mad a long time ago. Now they feared he was dragging them all down into his madness widi him.
McLyx was a tall, heavy, blustery man with a scar that ran from his right ear down to the center of his neck. His size alone was intimidating to friend and foe alike, and he was known to bully and even physically attack his superior officers. Past commanders had been booted out of the SG for lesser transgressions, but McLyx was a favorite of the Emperor. He was also in line to take over one of the top positions in Solar Guard Command someday. Not shy about anything, McLyx bragged endlessly that his was the biggest ship in the SG's fleet inventory.
He was also a master at invading unsuspecting backwater planets out on the Fringe and bringing them back into the Empire, whether they liked it or not. It was his jonzz, as the saying went, and he took perverted pleasure in swooping down upon these peaceful worlds, usually under the false pretense that outlaws were hiding among the population, and blasting anyone who stood in his way. In his long career, McLyx had reclaimed thousands of wayward planets in this manner, brutally suppressing any resistance to his ship and soldiers and reaping vast rewards of plunder that always accompanied the storm.
But McLyx reserved his special venom for the Space Forces. He absolutely detested the SF, from its top generals down to its lowliest privates. He hated everything the senior service stood for, especially the slower — some said more compassionate — way it went about reclaiming planets for the Empire. SG officers like McLyx had no time for the diplomacy-first methods used by the SF. Doing it his way was so much faster, not to mention more personally rewarding.
No surprise, McLyx was also a very wealthy man.
The StratoVox had been on patrol in the upper Six Arm when word of hostilities between the Space Forces and the Solar Guards reached the ship. Bits and pieces of news concerning the clash on Doomsday 212 trickled through first. But within hours, reports of all-out fighting between the two services were pouring into the StratoVox's communications center. Though the SF and SG had started fighting each other in many locations around the Galaxy, the communiques left no doubt that the heaviest combat was going on within the Two Arm's now-infamous No-Fly Zone.
The thought of the SF spilling SG blood made many hearts aboard the StratoVox race with both excitement and rage, especially among the battle staff. Adding fuel to the fire, the most outrageous reports — all unofficial — said the SF had somehow destroyed the SG's entire Rapid Engagement Fleet.
This rumor had started only because no one knew where the REF was at the moment. Originally comprising thirty-six ships and nearly a quarter million men, they had all but vanished shortly after the supposed battle against the Two Arm invaders, only to reappear and men vanish again immediately after the first shots had been fired on Doomsday 212. The subatomic wreckage of two REF ships was strewn across that depressing planet. But everyone was now asking: Where were the other thirty-four?
This was all too much for the highly aggressive McLyx to take. Just hours after the first report came in, he'd ordered his ship and its fleet of six attending battle cruisers to turn about and head for the Two Arm. Ignoring pleas from the Imperial Court on Earth to stay on station, the StratoVox and its sister ships rocketed toward the combat zone at all-out full Super-time speed.
The trip of nearly 80,000 light-years had taken three and a half weeks. In that time McLyx's renegade fleet had grown. By the time it left the Six Arm, his seven-ship squadron had been joined by three dozen more SG warships. Like McLyx, their commanders had chosen to ignore orders from Earth and had sought to join the fighting.
They picked up more and more SG ships as they skirted the edge of the Ball and dashed along the outskirts of the inner Fringe.
By the time it reached the Two Arm, the impromptu battle group had swelled to more than seventy ships.
Several times over the past three weeks, Sublieutenant Cronx had stolen a precious few moments to make private-string contact with colleagues on Earth. This was how he'd received news — both confirmed and rumor — about what was happening both on the Mother Planet and throughout the rest of the Empire. None of these reports were good.
Fighting between the two services was spreading all over the Galaxy. Clashes on every arm had been confirmed. There had even been a skirmish inside the Ball, the ridiculously peaceful center of the Milky Way. Forces on both sides were ignoring all desist orders from Earth. Very hardline SG individuals were even attacking isolated SF installations out on the Fringe. The SF was retaliating in kind.
Everyone knew fighting between the two services would not lead to anything positive. It further weakened an Empire that some believed was already reaching its breaking point. A too-hasty expansion policy, roughshod treatment of its newest citizens out on the Fringe areas, and an overall elitist attitude that was simply repulsive on many, many levels were bad enough. To have a war within its vast military was simply disastrous.
But why were the hostilities continuing? With all the command structures that lorded over both services, wasn't there any way to get the two rivals to stop? Cronx's friends on Earth said no — and the reason was simple: the only person whose words would be heeded by both sides, the Emperor O'Nay Himself, was unavailable. Where was he? In his tower, the soaring spiral that dominated the floating city of Special Number One, deep in his prayer mode. The perpetually detached O'Nay entered these meditative states quite often, or at least his Imperial Guards claimed he did. Once he was in such a trance, it could last for days or even weeks*. And there were standing orders that he was not to be disturbed for anything.
His imperial bodyguards were obeying that order to the letter these days. So the internecine war was allowed to rage on.
Even worse, the SG had unilaterally declared a state of emergency within the Solar System. They'd flooded each of the original planets, from Mercury out to Pluto, with millions of regular SG troops.
They'd stopped just about all flights around the Solar System and had sealed off the Pluto Cloud as well.
They were even close to shutting down the entire One Arm. Cronx's friends described the situation as being no different than if the SG had declared martial law.
In the entire 600-plus-year history of the Fourth Empire, nothing like this had ever happened before.
Lieutenant Cronx reached the StratoVox's flight deck to find the place in chaos: crewmen running everywhere, officers shouting orders above the wailing sirens, strobe lights flashing, bells ringing. Tension and anxiety were thick in the air.
The flight deck itself was supposed to be a monument to advanced Empire technology. It was contained within the ship's large, multitiered control bubble, which in turn was located near the forward point of the vessel's enormous wedge shape. The bubble was like a small city, large enough to hold 3,000 people. The bridge itself, it being on the highest level of this small metropolis, could hold more than 500 souls. It took all of these people, many serving in traditional if redundant capacities, to keep the ship running properly. Only this way could Starcrashers travel through space at speeds of one light-year every thirty seconds.
The situation up on the bridge was no better than the flight deck below. Cronx reached his station, an isolated seat located next to the lower echelon of pilots known as acolyte steering and directly behind the forward weapons array. A crew of sixteen was sitting in two semicircles around this array; their commanding officer was seated in an elaborate control chair hovering about eight feet above them. If anythi
ng happened to this primary weapons officer, it was Cronx's job to take his place.
Until then, Cronx would have a front-row seat for whatever was about to happen. His station was very close to the edge of the control room's immense bubble; it was barely an arm's length away. All Cronx had to do was turn to his right and look directly out into space.
The ship's enormous scanning screens were floating in front of him. These screens showed everyone what the "eyes" of the ship were seeing. And what they were seeing at the moment was very frightening.
The seventy-two SG ships, many of them two-mile-long battle cruisers, were running in their dark gray and black SG battle colors. The ships were spread out for as far as the long-range scanners could see. SG ships were so big, they rarely traveled in packs of more than a dozen or so. This, however, looked like a victory parade; they seemed to go on forever.
Trouble was, in (heir sights, dead ahead, was a fleet of SF ships that seemed to go on forever as well.
They were mostly battle cruisers, but several pocket cruisers, also known as culverins, were in evidence, too. There were six dozen SF ships in all, or exactly the same size as the SG fleet. And they were just 15,000 miles away.
This battle group had not been dispatched by Space Forces command. Instead, just like the SG force, it had collected itself over the past few weeks from disparate squadrons, called here at first upon hearing of the intense battles in and around the mid-Two Arm and then rushing to the aid of comrades asking for help. It had grown steadily over the turbulent weeks into the enormous numbers it boasted now.
Cronx had seen combat before. But like just about everyone else on board the StratoVox, his experiences had been against space pirates, mere armies, or other interstellar outlaws. Fights where the SG always came in with an overwhelming advantage in the number of ships, weapons, and of course, the ability to move in Supertime, which none of their opponents had.
