by Mack Maloney
He keyed his scanners to look only for the elusive REF ships. The numbers on his viz screen started whizzing by. But to his dismay, they wouldn't stay constant. They kept changing. One moment, his readout said there were fifteen REF ships in the immediate area of Doomsday 212. Then suddenly that number dropped to twelve, then to nine. Then it zoomed back up to fifteen, then seventeen.
This made no sense, of course, but it almost seemed as if the huge ships had the ability to appear and then disappear off his screen at will. If they would only stand and fight, he and the Star Legion could give them a stiff battle. But just as they'd been doing since appearing on the scene, the REF was being very sneaky. They were almost refusing to duke it out, head to head, toe to toe. It was just another part of their insidious strategy.
Hunter had to do some math then. There were thirty-six ships in the original REF. Two were shot down, right here, on this woeful planet, in the opening moments of the war between the SF and the SG.
At least four had been shot down and destroyed in the opening stages of this current battle. That left thirty.
The highest reading Hunter got on the REF number was seventeen. Did that mean thirteen others were still waiting on their side of the crossover point? Still lurking in Hell?
There was no way of knowing. And without an accurate reading of how many ships they were dealing with, it would be almost impossible to defend the area around Zero Point when the heavenly fleet crossed over.
Not good, he thought. Knowing the strength of your enemy was rule number one in any battle.
He checked his timepiece.
The time of crossover was now less than fifty minutes away.
Hunter climbed to midorbit, still looking for REF Starcrashers. With so little time left, this was the only thing he could think to do: find as many of the enemy ships as possible, and shoot them down.
He found one lurking over an evacuation site close to the planet's equator. He didn't hesitate. Coming out of the weak sun, he sent a stream of Z beams right into its control bubble. The devils within never knew what hit them. The huge ship turned over and began going down on its back.
Hunter followed it all the way to the ground, firing blast after blast into its midsection, and the vital compartments in its enormous caboose. It exploded just a few hundred feet above the surface, breaking up in an incredible ball of fire and light that quickly transformed into a horrific-looking mushroom cloud.
It actually made Hunter nauseous to look at it; he'd seen such a thing only a few times before and really never wanted to see one again. But because this had been his handiwork, he was compelled to watch.
The mushroom cloud attained an altitude of about two miles, when it started falling back on itself, finally shrinking into a self-made singularity, which exploded again, on cue, taking three-quarters of the massive ship's wreckage along with it. And slamming the rest to the ground. But incredibly, among those pieces of flaming debris left behind Hunter could see tiny black figures moving amid the smoke and flames. How could anyone — or anything— survive a crash like that?
He didn't know. But very quickly, he was down on the deck, his six-gun Z-beam package firing at full power, strafing the shadowy images as they staggered about the smoldering, wreck. He hit targets; he could tell by the flare of green flame on the ground whenever his blasters found something with a pulse, but even though he made more than a dozen strafing runs, there was no way he was sure that he had eliminated every living devil inside the kill zone.
He checked his timepiece. Five minutes gone. Less than forty-five minutes to go. He couldn't waste any more time.
He and his machine would be of more use elsewhere.
He screamed back up to orbit.
Approaching the planet's southern pole, his comm set suddenly exploded with excited chatter. He could tell by the pitch that the noise was coming from one of the Sky Chiefs.
He turned over, amazed that even large portions of the planet's subarctic region below him seemed to be engulfed in flames. He hit the power bar and told his flight computer to get him to where the radio buzz was coming from.
He soon came upon an astonishing sight. It was happening about 120 miles directly above Doomsday 212's south pole. One of the Sky Chiefs had cornered an REF Starcrasher coming off the planet before it could kick into Supertime.
The two ships were riding side by side, not more than a mile separating them, firing massive fusillades at each other. This was crazy. Starcrashers were designed to fight at very long distances in space, not this close in. The Sky Chiefs, grand and flowing, and about half the size, had been originally built to do the same thing. For both ships to use their incredibly powerful weapons at such short range was almost incomprehensible.
But something else was going on here. In the chaos of the battle, hundreds of beams were being shot out of both ships, but they were not of the same type. The REF ship was firing X beams — green and deadly. The Sky Chief was firing something else — thick and deep, deep blue. These two different beams were meeting each other, perfectly, about halfway between the Starcrasher and the Sky Chief. In the collision that followed, space was being lit up with an incredibly bright light, like that a thousand suns.
Counterpower was the word that came to Hunter's mind, though it might have been whispered in his ear by the invisible voice that seemed to be following everywhere during this incredible adventure. In the confusion of the moment, it was hard to tell. The Sky Chiefs did not carry offensive weapons. They couldn't; it was against the very foundations of the Third Empire. But the Sky Chiefs did have the ability to hit incoming beams with something strong enough to neutralize them. They were called negative-energy weapons — a very Third Empire concept. When used properly, they were the perfect defense against just about any other weapon in the Galaxy.
But this was war, and the counterweapons could do more than just negate what was being thrown at them. As Hunter streaked toward the scene, he saw something else take place. It happened in less than the blink of an eye, and he didn't know whether it was caused by an imbalance in the two competing bursts of energy or an anomaly in the flight path of the Starcrasher. But when the REF ship let go with an enormous fusillade, it was hit by the Sky Chief counterpunch and turned back on itself. The REF's own X beams crashed back on it like a wave, smashing against its midsection and instantly splitting it in two. The rear half of the Starcrasher made a vain attempt to accelerate, but it was much too late. The entire ship disappeared in a huge nuclear cloud, which went back down into itself almost instantaneously.
The big starship, in effect, had shot itself down. As a witness to it, Hunter had to laugh grimly.
He knew the feeling…
Forty minutes now to the crossover time.
Another burst of chatter from Hunter's comm set. Someone else was in trouble. This time not near the planet's surface or in orbit. This time there was trouble out among the planet's rings.
The last ring surrounding Doomsday 212 was its largest. It orbited the dismal planet some 40,000 miles out. Unlike the inner rings, which contained smaller pieces of space debris that eventually turned into fire rocks, the fragments making up the outer ring were huge, some of them twenty to thirty miles across. They were all irregular in shape, and many of them tumbled endlessly. They made for a very dangerous piece of space to navigate.
They also provided the perfect place to hide a warship or two. Or even six.
The pilots of those ships carrying refugees lucky enough to escape the horror of Doomsday 212 had only one kind of flight plan in mind. They wanted to put as many light-years behind them as quickly as possible. While many of the rescue ships were the same vessels that dropped the refugees onto the planet in the first place, their commanders were intent on delivering their battered passengers to worlds farther down the Arm, where they could at least be safe from the madness of the No-Fly Zone. How they would eventually return to their home worlds would have to be determined later.
Ten of these resc
ue ships had found each other rising up from the smoldering planet at about the same time. Their holds filled with the confused, former REF prisoners, it took just a few bounces between the string comms for the ship commanders to agree to form up in a column and leave the area together.
They did this not so much for safety, but in case any ship suffered mechanical failure, the others could help it out.
But what the ship commanders didn't count on was one distressing constant: evil did not rest. It couldn't. It had to exploit itself anywhere and everywhere it could, at any opportunity, whenever, wherever it was found.
So while the battle back on Doomsday 212 was still raging, its outcome still teetering and undetermined, six ships belonging to the insidious REF had drawn away from the fray and had hidden themselves here, among the tumbling rocks, looking for unsuspecting vessels, whose occupants believed that they were finally safe from harm.
The convoy's pilots successfully navigated the largest of the outer ring's fragment clouds and saw only clear sailing ahead. But then their forward scanners lit up. Their comm sets erupted in static. That's when the half-dozen REF ships suddenly swooped down on them and positioned themselves directly over the center of the convoy.
At first, the convoy's commanders thought their viz scanners were wrong. After escaping from hell, how could they possibly run into this? But then their true visuals — their own eyes— confirmed the awful truth. The REF Starcrashers had them trapped. There was no way they could outrun them, no way they could fight back. They were doomed.
Or so it seemed.
From the point of view of those aboard the convoy, what happened next happened in less than a split second.
One moment two of the Starcrashers were just a mile above the lead ships, their weapons about to fire, when suddenly there was a great rush of flame and light and then two huge explosions. Hunter's machine went flashing by an instant later. Two blasts from his Z-guns, and just like that, two REF ships were reduced to subatomic dust.
But there were four left. And they quickly scattered.
Hunter keyed in on the nearest enemy ship. But again, he was faced with a Hobson's choice. If he took on this singular ship, the remaining three REF vessels would be free to attack the defenseless convoy. But if he protected the convoy, all four ships might get away. Actually, it was no choice at all.
Killing the REF was what he was doing out here. He bore down on the REF ship closest to him and opened fire. Again, he hit the control bridge first and then went after the vulnerable underbelly. He was moving much too fast for any of the REF's weapons to hit him. That was the ironic thing. Once he had them in his sights, he could dispatch the devils in an instant. It was getting enough of them in his sights that was the hard part.
This one went down under a ten-second barrage of his Z guns. Explosion, nuclear cloud, violent singularity, and then a cloud of subatomic dust. But in those precious ten seconds, the convoy and its three remaining antagonists were nearly a light-year away.
It took just an eyeblink for Hunter to catch up with them, but that's when he came upon a truly incredible sight on this long day of incredible sights.
As he came up on the convoy again, the REF ships were repositioning themselves for their one-sided attack. Suddenly, twenty-four distinct Z-beam bolts went right by the convoy and impacted squarely on the trio of REF ships. Three more explosions, three inverted mushroom clouds, three singularities. Three more clouds of dust. The convoy just kept on going; they'd had enough of this sick game.
An instant later, twenty-four streaks of light, traveling at incredible speed, went by Hunter like some kind of titanic solar storm.
But then they slowed down, and Hunter met them seconds later. He clenched his fist in a small triumph. The forces of good needed all the help they could get. And here was more help.
The second wave of United Planets ships, those "aliens" from outside the Galaxy, given a great push by the Great Klaaz, had flown right by the Omega Force and had arrived to join the battle.
Hunter escorted the two dozen gleaming spaceships down through the atmosphere of Doomsday 212.
* * *
He spoke to the fleet's commanders on the way and tried his best to explain the confusing situation below. There were still hundreds of thousands of innocents on the planet unaware that they had a chance to be rescued. At the moment, their safety had to be a top priority. With this knowledge, the Home Planets ships plunged right into the fray. They quickly added their substantial weaponry to protecting the six evacuation zones, helping the Sky Chiefs ward off the slippery REF ships, as well as attacking those REF troops on the ground trying to overrun the rescue sites.
Once the blue and chrome ships were in position, Hunter began climbing back toward orbit. He checked his timepiece. Thirty minutes to go.
Where was Zero Point?
It wasn't a coordinate exactly, so it couldn't be found on any star map. It had no aura. No identifying nebula to mark its location. It was simply a point, floating in space, with absolutely nothing special around it. The only reason the sad world of Doomsday 212 was even connected to it was that it happened to be the closest planet of any size near the place.
But where was that place now?
The REF knew where it was, of course; not only had they been using it regularly since the start of their galactic wave of terror, they had had a hand in creating it a month before, during the battle that never was. But Hunter and his friends were never too sure of its location. Why? Because everything in space moved. The stars moved around the center of the Galaxy. The Galaxy was speeding through space. The question was, had the location of this portal moved as well?
It was an important thing to know. If the UPF fleet's cross-over was to be successful, the anti-REF forces would have to defend this invisible yet magical place. That meant that Hunter had to do some detective work and find it.
"Quickly…"
Once in orbit, he activated his wide-screen scanner again. It told him that at the moment there were nine REF ships somewhere within a light-year of Doomsday 212. Of course, he blinked, and the number bumped up to a dozen, and then just as quickly, it fell back to nine.
That was the trouble with the wide-screen scan. It was good technology, but it was not perfect. While it was able read a wide area and locate subatomic wakes, the telltale sign of Star-crashing space vessels, tüese ships moved so fast, as soon as a blip was found, its owner could be a light-year or more away, in any direction, thirty seconds later. In other words, the wide-screen scan couldn't tell you where an enemy ship was exactly, only where it had been.
But Hunter believed the device could still help him determine where Zero Point was.
He did a smaller scan and saw that two REF ships had been at a location above the planet's north pole just a few minutes before. Their wakes were somewhat stagnant, indicating they were lingering there, possibly coming up with an attack strategy. Hunter plunged through the atmosphere once more, leveling off 1,000 feet directly above the pole. He did another narrow scan and was just able to pick up two subatomic wakes heading in the direction of the original evacuation site several hundred miles away.
These were the same two REF ships he'd detected from orbit. He began following them.
One of the scanner's other talents was its ability to pick up sonic vibrations. Hunter pushed his flight panel to call up this function, and seconds later he heard the noise. It was earsplitting, gut wrenching, and he recognized it immediately. It was the racket made by a Starcrasher at crank, the speed a prop-core ship could fly within the gravitational pull of a planet. It was quick but nowhere near Supertime quick. And these two were making a lot of noise, meaning they were going very, very slow.
Hunter caught up to the Starcrashers just as they reached the edge of the original evacuation site.
They were flying just 500 feet off the ground and moving disturbingly slow, not even 100 miles per hour.
Hunter kept his cool, fighting off the temptation to put a
couple Z-beam blasts into them and be done with it. At the moment, though, he was concerned about something other than greasing two more flying devils. Besides, he was hoping his friends on the ground were on their toes.
The first Starcrasher went over the chaotic rescue site and opened up with a fusillade of X-beam fire aimed at the soldiers and robots defending the site perimeter. A pang of horror caught in Hunter's throat.
Again, Starcrashers were designed to fight at very long distances in space, thus their incredibly powerful weapons. To fly so low over a target and use those same weapons on ground targets, at such close range, was almost incomprehensible.
But then something else happened. Not a split second after the Starcrasher had started its incredible gunship run, a storm of blue beams rose to meet it. There was a series of huge explosions, and in the next instant, the Starcrasher was gone.
But those on the ground beneath it were not immolated as they should have been.
Hunter breathed a sigh of relief. The Third Empire soldiers at the rescue site had set up a negative-energy weapon and, like the battle he'd just witnessed in space, they had countered what would have been a devastating pass by the first Star-crasher. By their actions, the Star Legionnaires had saved of thousands of lives on the ground — at least temporarily.
The second Starcrasher roared in, its weapons also blasting away. Again they were countered by the negative-energy weapons on the ground. The second REF streaked off, as unsuccessful as its dastardly comrade. But then the first Star-crasher showed up again, cranking in from another direction, its weapons in full roar. The first attack had been a feint. But somehow the counterweapons crews on the ground were able to wheel around in time to meet this new fusillade head-on. Again, whether it was an adjustment in power or a vagary of the wind, the red Starcrasher's broadside was hit by the counterpunch and turned back on itself, crashing into the nose of the attacking ship. The Starcrasher made a vain attempt to gain altitude, but it was too late. It came down, hard and violently, five miles away, disappearing in a huge nuclear cloud.
