by Mack Maloney
“I believe that is true as well,” Hunter said.
Multx dispatched the floating screen and turned back to Hunter. “I know you don’t know where you came from,” he said. “Unless something has come back to you in the past few days?”
Hunter just shook his head. “I’ve thought about it more times than I can count, and not just over the past few days. In fact, I never stop thinking about it. But other than my name and the fact that I apparently have some kind of flying ability — I simply cannot remember anything else.”
“And it’s the same reply as to where you learned to fly like that?”
Hunter just nodded. “It is.”
Multx fiddled with his extra-long goatee hair for a moment.
“I am not a man without ego, Mister Hunter,” he said. “Yet in this matter, I can only speak the truth. You saved this ship. You saved my crew. You saved my career. But again, this puzzles me: Whatever possessed you to do what you did? Only a fool would have taken on a Blackship with nothing more than a troop shuttle. Why did you do it?”
Hunter shrugged. He could feel the cloud wine taking effect.
“Something inside just told me to do it,” he replied. “I started running; the next thing I knew I was in the shuttle and going outside. It was almost as if someone else were doing it — or that I was watching someone else do it. Beyond that…”
He let his voice trail off.
“Are you saying that ‘instinct’ played a role in this?” Multx asked him.
Suddenly Erx and Berx were paying attention again.
“Now, that’s a word I have not heard spoken in at least a hundred years,” Berx said.
“If ‘instinct’ is the right term, I guess that would be correct,” Hunter replied. “Is that so unusual?”
Multx just shook his head. “You really are from someplace else,” he mumbled.
“What he’s trying to say is that ‘instinct’ is a very rare commodity these days,” Erx explained to him.
“Our social scientists claim it was bred out of the human race a long time ago. Even a touch of it should be considered a gift.”
“You, however, seem to possess it in spades,” Multx went on. “I have many soldiers under my command. I believe every one of them would gladly give his life if it meant saving one of his comrades or even an innocent civilian. But none of them would have done what you did today simply because… well, I just don’t think it would have dawned on them to do it.”
Hunter sipped from his goblet again. More clouds flowing down his gullet. He seemed to be getting both lighter and stronger by the moment.
“The Galaxy is actually a very small place, Mister Hunter,” Multx went on. “And any word of heroics spreads very fast. My report on this incident has already been flashed to Space Command headquarters.
Everything, including the fact that a Blackship somehow got into Supertime, is all regarded as top secret now. But I’m afraid it will be impossible to keep a lid on this thing forever. When word of what you did gets out, every one of my esteemed colleagues will inquire about your availability. I’m sure you would shoot right to the top of any admiral’s personal Air Guard squadron.”
“That would be quite a jump for someone who’s just been drafted,” Hunter told him.
“Well, yes,” Multx replied with a nervous grin. “But actually we think you have much more important things to do than that.”
“I do? Like what?”
Multx smiled for the first time in a long time.
“I’ve made arrangements for you to continue on to Earth as soon as we reach the Pluto Cloud,” he told Hunter. “I hope you don’t mind…”
Hunter nearly dropped his goblet. Earth? After what Erx and “Berx had told him about the exclusivity of the mother planet? Why would he be going there?
“I don’t understand,” he finally replied.
Multx checked to make sure the room’s hum beam was at full power. It was.
“Mister Hunter, you’ve never heard of the Earth Race, I suppose,” he asked.
Hunter could only shake his head no.
Multx glanced over at his coconspirators. Both Erx and Berx were trying very hard not to make eye contact with him now.
“Well, do either of you want to tell him?” Multx asked them wryly. “Or should I?”
9
Its official name was the Inner-System Defense Array.
It was made up of nearly one million man-made moons set in various configurations on the edges of the solar system. Most were orbiting the same distance out as the planet Pluto, thus the unofficial title of
“Pluto Cloud.”
Each moon served as a military garrison and a security checkpoint. The swarm enveloped the solar system within a perfect bubble, demarcating the inner sanctum of Earth, its planets, and the sun. In the days before the Ancients, the Pluto Cloud would have been considered the wall around the castle, the trench before the cave. No one got through without the proper connections.
Luckily, Zap Multx had connections.
This was how Hunter found himself on a hyper-shuttlecraft heading toward the holy inner planets.
No sooner had the BonoVox arrived here, at the gates of the stellar kingdom, than he’d been summoned from his old billet to the shuttle bay. Once there, he, Erx, and Berx were quietly put aboard Multx’s personal launch and sent on their way.
This region of space was literally jammed with starships. Most of them were military, but many cargo and scientific ships were on hand as well. One could hardly look in any direction without seeing several hundred spacecraft either docked or moving slowly about. All of them being scrutinized by security personnel. Yet the hyper-shuttle was allowed to pass through a gauntlet of robot guns and Z-beam platforms unencumbered.
Even the shuttle pilot was amazed. “I guess the magic word around here today is ‘Multx,’ ” he said.
“Bingo,” Erx and Berx agreed.
As luck would have it, an alignment of sorts was in the offing. The shuttle pilot was able to buzz all of the outer planets, a diversion that added only minutes to the length of their trip inward.
Pluto was burning bright green these days. The gas giants Neptune and Uranus were violet and cobalt blue. Jupiter and Saturn were like minisuns, fantastically multicolored, with hundreds of moons, most of them man-made, spinning around them. The asteroid belt had long ago been cleared away. Mars was now on its own, glowing like a neon-red sapphire, the warmth of the sun obvious on its face.
Then came Earth.
It was a diamond floating among brilliant stones. An enormous blue, shimmering jewel, outstanding against the blackness of space. Mouth agape, his nose nearly pressing against the shuttle’s main window, Hunter imagined he could see a white-hot glaze surrounding the planet, almost like a halo. There was no mistaking that one was in the presence of something great here. This place looked like the center of the Galaxy.
“The first spaceship left it five thousand, two hundred thirty-nine years ago,” Erx told him. “And that was only to orbit. A lot has happened since then. The first outward expansion. Puffing the planets. Three empires rise, three empires fall. Countless wars, civil conflicts, rebellions… you name it. And that’s just from the history we know about.”
Much of Earth’s surface was now covered with huge triangular sections known as triads; they were what made the home planet shine. Some of these massive sections measured more than one hundred miles in length. They were made of a superhard material known as terranium. Similar to electron steel, terranium was also able to feed an earthy crust and was thus amenable to growing flora.
The triads had been built more than two millennia before by the mysterious people known as the Ancient Engineers. Just why they chose to lay down these huge sections was lost in the haze of time. An attempt to reclaim surface area lost due to rising ocean levels was one guess. The triads covered more than half the planet and were arranged so that Earth now supported just two enormous continents — one in the east, the oth
er in the west.
What remained of the oceans was in between. Water drained off from the poles traveled along huge canals that separated the triads in some places. Besides feeding the terranium, these artificial waterways also provided landing areas for some of the Empire’s largest starships. Another result of this massive engineering project was that every coastline on Earth was now uniform, every river and lake drawn perfectly straight.
The triads were connected by more than five thousand bridges. Some were thousands of miles long and linked the two continents at their closest points. But these spans were never used — at least not anymore.
They, too, were ancient, but unlike the triads, no one was quite sure who built them. All that was known was they’d appeared after the triads had been put in place and before the rise of the Third Empire. In any case, they were considered sacred and therefore off-limits to all.
Earth’s Moon still hung in the sky, bright as ever, a pearl orbiting a diamond. But it, too, was considered sacred and thus wisely avoided.
In fact, no one had set foot on the lunar satellite in more than three thousand years.
The hyper-shuttle spiraled down through Earth’s atmosphere now, heading toward an enormous city on the northeastern edge of the western continent.
A layer of perfectly shaped clouds seemed to be hovering above the center of this metropolis. On closer inspection, however, Hunter realized these really weren’t clouds at all.
They were floating cities.
“That’s where the Specials live,” Erx explained, sensing Hunter’s curiosity. “The Emperor and his immediate family live on that one right there — the one that’s so big, it’s hard to miss…”
The largest of the floating cities was about twenty miles below them. It looked like a huge castle in the sky. It had multiple spires, many glowing in very odd iridescent colors. Long, sloping passageways crisscrossed these spires like spiderwork. The airborne city was at least ten square miles in size. Other cities floating close to it were almost as large.
Because the floating cities were so big, and because they were more than a mile above Earth’s surface, condensation tended to gather underneath them, forming… clouds. This created the illusion that the cities were floating on the cumulus.
Beneath the floating palaces was Big Bright City. It went on forever. Tens of millions of structures, from superskyscrapers to shacks, hovering roadways, air-car tubes, water canals, flags, banners, arenas, thousands of monuments to the Emperor, enormous, skyward-pointing power grids — and lights. Lights everywhere! Burning brightly, day and night. All colors, all shades, all tones. Everything bathed in a muted neon glow to ensure than no one ever went to sleep. The city was so large, it took up nearly one tenth of the entire upper western continent.
On its very eastern edge, right before its last triad met the sea, was Effkay-Jack. It was a sprawling spaceport facility, boasting hundreds of launch and receiving stations, huge housing units for the Empire’s largest starships, its own weather control, and its own separate army. It was the largest spaceport in the Galaxy. On any given day more than fifty million people would pass through its portals.
The hyper-shuttle swooped down into one of them now and finally halted. Once the tiny vessel was recognized as the property of one of the most famous starship commanders in the Galaxy, it was surrounded by a small army of ground support personnel. One of them opened the main hatch, and Erx scrambled out; Berx followed close behind.
Now it was Hunter’s turn.
Yet he hesitated. This could be a special moment, he thought. It would be wise to remember it.
Finally he touched his boot heel to Earth. A jolt of electricity ran right through his body.
“What do you know about that?” he murmured.
I’ve been here before…
PART TWO
The Earth Race
10
When night fell, Big Bright City got even brighter.
Lights that had been blazing all day had their luminescence turned up a few more notches once the sun had finally set. The streets, the buildings, the airwalks were all absolutely clean and sparkling, thanks to a huge army of robots. Because every exposed piece of ground reflected the cool, green hue of terranium, the overall effect was that of a gleaming, emerald city.
Only the Very Fortunates lived in this magnificent place. More than two billion in all, and every last one of them had a reason for being here. They were either somehow related to the Specials — and there were several million of them alone — or worked for someone who was. But in a place where the ground that the Emperor’s cloud city passed over was considered sacred — the “Holy Shadow,” it was called — even the hired help had to be at least a Fortunate. No one below that class even dared step within the city’s gates.
Unless you were in the high military, that is. Then you were treated almost like royalty, just a step down from the Specials themselves. There was no surprise in this. The Empire owed its existence to the military; its soldiers were considered celebrities, to be honored and respected, the higher the rank the better.
Anyone in a uniform who managed to get himself to Earth could find no better circumstance than walking among the people of Big Bright City — especially in the week before the Earth Race.
Once the first stars were in sight, thousands of narrow, extremely bright beams of white light went shooting up into the night sky. These were StarScrapers, the latest playthings of the Very Fortunates.
They were about the size of a quadtrol, handheld and tubular. They had unlimited power, thanks to the Big Generator. The device could shoot off into space, at Supertime speeds, and capture the light signature of a particular star. Because every star in the Galaxy was at least a little different from the next, each one produced its own unique blend of colors across the spectrum. These could be condensed and then be dragged back down to Earth, using the StarScraper’s shaft of super white light as the medium.
The Very Fortunates had chosen to call these captures “light songs.” Most of them were incredibly vivid to the eye.
Once the light particles were drawn down to Earth by the StarScraper, they could be used in a number of different ways. Some of the Very Fortunates illuminated their dwellings with their own brand of starlight. Others bathed themselves in the glow for hours, swearing by its youth-giving properties. Some tapped into the star’s audio frequencies to literally “hear the light” as well as see it. Some even would warm their cloud wine by starlight, claiming it increased the liquor’s opiate properties.
And just like crashing through stars, people who used StarScrapers always had a certain glow about them.
Even when the Holy Shadow passed above their heads.
In contrast to the metropolis below, the floating city known as Special Number One had shut down for the night.
Its labyrinths of bright floating lights were dulled, casting eerie red and yellow shadows across the Imperial grounds. Anyone in the Royal Family who craved the nightlife had headed below a long time ago. The main gates were now sealed and a squadron of air-chevys began doing slow orbits around the hovering palace. It was customary for Special Number One to go dark in the week before the Earth Race. It was said that the Emperor took this downtime to recapture memories of his previous life as a starfighter pilot during the Third Empire — or so he claimed. Most believed the Emperor simply used the time to catch up on his sleep.
Nevertheless, with the activation of an impenetrable force field around the entire floating city, another day in the life of the High Specials was coming to an end.
Or so it seemed.
No sooner had the lights been lowered than a small air-chevy rose from the surface and approached the main gate of the floating city. After a quick surveillance scan by one of the Imperial sentries, the air car was allowed to pass through. It puttered its way through the maze of streets inside the palace walls, finally stopping at an nondescript building about half a mile from the Imperial House.
Two g
uards materialized; one opened the door of the air car. A man dressed in a long black cloak emerged and glided into the building. His air car then moved into the shadows.
The figure in black floated up the stairs and down a long corridor, finally reaching a huge oak door. He rapped on it twice and felt its lock spring open. He glided in. Two more Imperial guards were waiting for him.
“I’m here,” the man simply told the guards. One disappeared behind another door, then reemerged. He motioned the man forward.
The dark figure lowered himself and walked into the room alone, closing the door behind him. Sitting on a couch next to a roaring fire was the person he’d come to meet. Long blond hair — at least today. Skin perfect. Eyes perfect. Mouth, nose, and cheeks, all perfect. It was Cyn-Nay, wife of O’Nay, First Empress and Queen of the Galaxy herself.
Or was it just the light?
The Empress waved the man in black toward a floating table containing a vast array of Venusian cloud wines. Then she activated a hum beam.
“You only ask to see me when something is wrong,” she said to the man as he helped himself to a large mug of super’rose. He was a spy. One of the best in the Empire.
“I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if that wasn’t so,” the man replied. “Secret as our talks have been.”
“And you do realize that no one of any consequence can ever know that we speak?” she told him. “And that you should never approach me in any other setting than the one before us now?”
The spy nodded. “I do, my lady.”
He sat down on the couch next to her. The Empress sipped her drink plaintively.
“So then? What is the problem?” she asked him, staring into the flames.
The spy shook his head.
“Well, that’s just it,” he began. “I’m not sure.”
The Empress looked over at him. “Not sure?”
“It’s just a feeling,” the spy confessed. “But it’s a deep one.”
