Starhawk s-1

by Mack Maloney

  As soon as he touched the frame he knew there was something different about it. It was definitely metal, but it also gave way to the slightest pressure from his fingers. It was malleable, rubberlike — yet some kind of metal all the same.

  He was amazed when he touched the bottom of the door with his boot that it partially swung open. He hesitated a moment, trying to estimate exactly where he was inside the gigantic xarcus. He retraced his route to get here; he’d walked a hell of a long way, but he stayed on the upper levels. Then it hit him. If his calculations were right, he was in the vicinity of the smaller, tinted control bubble he’d spotted when he first arrived.

  Interesting…

  The pliable material actually made it easy for him to fully push open the hatch door. Inside he was faced with another passageway, but instead of the straight hallways he’d been walking, this one curved to the left. It was very dark inside, and the predominant color was an odd coral blue. Even the smell inside here was different.

  He raised his blaster rifle, an odd gesture for one reason. If he was in fact stuck in time a few seconds behind everyone else, did that mean his blaster wouldn’t work? He’d yet to try out that little experiment, to his regret now.

  Still, pulling his weapon up to the fore gave him a shot of confidence. He walked slowly down the curving passageway. Its ceiling was a lot shorter than the rest of the tank. There were no doors or windows in here. Every once in a while he would stop and push his hand against the wall. It responded with the same rubbery sensation. He discovered some hieroglyphics written haphazardly along the wall. They seemed to be made up mostly of geometric shapes, possibly a code of some kind, though he couldn’t imagine anyone actually being able to understand it.

  He kept walking, slowly, silently, his ears open for even the smallest sound.

  Then, suddenly, the floor beneath his feet start to move. An immense vibration began shaking the rubbery walls of the dark passageway. At the same instant, noise began to grow from somewhere down below. It got louder and louder and the vibrations became more intense until they joined into one loud wave of ear-piercing noise and bone-rattling motion. It became so acute, Hunter had to throw himself against the soft metal wall just to stay on his feet.

  What the hell is happening now? he thought.

  Then it hit him.

  The xarcus was moving again.

  The Nakkz commenced their attack just as the first rays of the sun lit up the horizon.

  During the night, the enemy’s equivalent to a sapper unit had managed to infiltrate all the way up to the outskirts of Qez and install several combat field replicators. When first light broke, these devices were activated, producing hundreds of climbing tubes through which the Nakkz were able to reach the parapets on the north wall.

  Within seconds the enemy soldiers began shooting up to the top of the wall and flooding over the battlements. Just about every man who could hold a weapon met them here, including Erx and Berx.

  They were front and center on the parapet, firing their ray guns point blank in the face of every enemy soldier who tried to get over the wall in their sector.

  The remaining Home Guards — about three thousand or so — plus militiamen and armed civilians were doing the same thing along the entire quarter-mile stretch of the north-side fortification. The Nakkz seemed to be startled by the size of the makeshift garrison and the ferocity of their defense. And while the climbing tubes essentially shot the attackers straight up to the thousand-foot height of the immense wall, they did need to use their hands to exit the transparent tube — and that’s when they proved most vulnerable. A direct ray blast to the head or shoulders of an attacker would usually disintegrate his entire body, letting the subatomic remains be carried away by the fierce morning wind. However effective this tactic was for the defenders, it also cleared the top of the tube and allowed the next Nakkz soldier to pop up.

  It was Berx who realized that by doing this, the defenders were playing right into the enemy’s hands. The first wave was just to wear them down and deplete their ray gun power supplies.

  “We’ve got to start stickin’ ‘em!” he began screaming. “Stick ‘em! Stick ‘ em.”

  The trouble was, there was so much noise and commotion going on, few of the nearby defenders could hear him bellowing, and those who could, didn’t know what he was talking about.

  So he showed them by example. Transferring his ray gun to his left hand, he drew his electric sword and began skewering the Nakkz soldiers appearing at the top of the tubes closest to him. By running these soldiers through with his blade, he left a gruesome, bloody body, which in turn blocked access to the next soldier coming up.

  It was probably the screams of dying Nakkz that brought attention to Berx’s idea, for within seconds defenders up and down the ramparts were stabbing the attackers just as quickly as they were shooting them. Soon there were massive amounts of blood flowing down the outside face of the wall.

  But still the Nakkz kept coming.

  This went on for what seemed like forever. Berx and Erx were leading the charge in slicing every other Nakkz soldier who appeared at the top of the tube, but the sheer number of attackers was beginning to grind the defenders down. Throughout all this, the ghostly image of Hunter’s flying machine, its nose pointing away from the battle, hovered not more than fifty feet above them.

  More time passed. The bloody battle continued, and the defenders’ strength began to ebb. Soon Erx was running out of power in both his ray gun and his electric sword. Berx and many others in their vicinity were as well. And while a run-down electric sword still could be used to kill and maim with some effectiveness, a ray gun without power was useless. Erx had already thrown his away and was now using just his sword and his fists against the attackers. This, too, became extremely draining very quickly. And still the attackers kept coming.

  “Are you still sending out the call for help, my brother?” Erx yelled over to Berx as he dispatched a Nakkz soldier with a mighty slash to the man’s unprotected throat.

  “Loud and clear!” Berx yelled back. He had his quadtrol set on “all points/need help,” which sent out a coded SOS message to any Empire ships in the vicinity. The trouble was, they were so far out on the Fifth Arm, the chance of any friendly ship receiving such a message in time was practically nil.

  “We must hold them off just a bit longer!” Berx yelled — but the fire was gone from his voice. The Nakkz soldiers were gaining the wall not far down the battlement from them, overwhelming the defenders in that area with a combination of numbers and the failing power supply in the weapons of the Home Guards.

  Suddenly there was a huge explosion right below them. Then another off to the right. Somehow Erx and Berx were able to look back over the ramparts to see that Nakkz sappers had blown two huge holes at the base of the north wall. Streams of enemy soldiers were now pouring through the two openings.

  “Not good, brother!” Berx yelled to Erx.

  “Bingo that!” Erx yelled back.

  Another explosion. The wall shook beneath their feet. The Nakkz had now gained an opening in the east wall as well. They were being met there only by wounded Home Guards. The screams of these helpless men being slaughtered echoed throughout the ancient city square.

  In the midst of this chaos a young Home Guard soldier stumbled up to Erx and Berx. He was bleeding in too many places to count. His eyes already looked dead.

  His lips could barely move, but he mumbled something very chilling to the two explorers in the midst of the hand-to-hand fighting.

  “Is your friend ever coming back?” he asked.

  With that, both explorers looked up to see that the image of Hunter’s flying machine had finally disappeared.

  Another huge explosion — but this one came from several miles out on the battlefield, from the xarcus itself. The slumbering giant was suddenly moving again. And so was its enormous saw.

  Berx threw two enemy soldiers over the side of the wall and looked down at the battl
efield. The waves of Nakkz soldiers looked like a thick cloud of smoke again. Not only were they blanketing the battlefield, even more were pouring out of the rear of the xarcus even as the huge weapon began to creep forward again.

  Suddenly a barrage of ray gun fire exploded on the ramparts just behind Erx and Berx. The explorers turned to see that Nakkz soldiers were now climbing up to the top of the wall from the inside of the city just as thousands of their comrades were doing the same thing from without.

  Suddenly, just like that, the three thousand or so defenders still alive on the wall were surrounded.

  And the xarcus was getting closer.

  The first of the Nakkz to reach the wall from the inside were battling Home Guards not a hundred yards away from Erx and Berx now. The situation was so desperate, the defenders were using the butts of their blaster rifles against the X-beam weapons being fired by the enemy.

  The two explorers Erx and Berx just looked at each other — and then shook hands. It was the same ritual they had performed so long ago when their ship was in the process of crashing on Fools 6.

  “See you on the other side, my brother,” Erx told his longtime friend.

  “Bingo…” Berx replied.

  The Nakkz were now swarming up both sides of the wall. The explorers were scavenging among the dead Home Guards, looking for usable ray guns. A huge X-beam blast went off not ten feet away from them. It threw both men hard against the concrete battlement. Another barrage exploded just above them, showering them with nasty subatomic debris. Still another blast went off just on the other side of the parapet. This, too, covered them with subatomic shrapnel. Off in the distance, the xarcus was now just five miles away.

  “If there is another side…” Erx mumbled to himself.

  Then… suddenly, it seemed as if the sky itself exploded, it became very dark, almost pitch black. Both men were sure this was the end of the world — or at least their part in it. But then they looked up to see that a gigantic spaceship had appeared over the battlefield. It was an enormous vessel, at least two miles long.

  Before either man could say a word, another monstrous spaceship exploded upon the scene. It, too, was gigantic.

  Then at the same moment, a soldier in a very sinister all-black uniform was standing in front of them.

  He’d just popped in. He raised his visor and said: “Relax, you two. Help is on the way.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a sonic ripple went through everything and everybody within a five-mile radius of Qez.

  And then everything… just… stopped.

  The xarcus had ceased moving again.

  There was no screeching of brakes this time, no stink of metal-on-metal, no half mile of ground churning until its momentum finally eased up.

  No; this time it just… stopped. As had everything else.

  Hunter was still flat against the curving wall, trying to keep his balance when the vibrations that had been so acute suddenly disappeared. One second, everything was shaking so badly he thought the heels on his boots would come off; the next, everything became frighteningly still.

  What happened?

  He steeled himself and took a step out from the wall, surprised that he was able to maintain his footing.

  He stopped and listened — there was not a sound coming from anywhere.

  He began walking again. Farther down the hallway, he came upon another green door. He raised the barrel of his blaster rifle, then toed the door open… and that’s when the real trouble began.

  He was staring into a very strange, dark, and… well, creepy control room. It was cramped, oval-shaped, and stuffed with very odd, almost unrecognizable metallic gizmos that seemed to be alive as well. They were full of tubes and glands, and everything seemed to be pumping and spurting weird liquids. The smell was overwhelming and awful. Sections of the floor seemed to be covered with an equivalent of human vomit. Hunter felt his stomach turn upside down. In his worst nightmares, he’d never imagined a place as disturbing as this.

  The second he broke the threshold, he was hit by a bright yellow beam. It struck him with the force of a full-power Z-gun blast. He dropped to the floor — hard. His body began trembling uncontrollably. His bones felt as if they were about to burst right out of him. The screeching in his ears was deafening. He looked at his hands and was astonished to see his veins and muscles and bones clearly through his skin, which was suddenly transparent. He closed his eyes. The pain was unbearable; it felt like he was being ripped in two from the inside out.

  But then, not a moment later, everything returned to normal. Or somewhat normal. The intense pain was gone. The screeching in his ears disappeared. He looked at his hands and — thank God! — could not see his bones.

  But then he realized something. He was no longer in his one-second-ahead mode; he could tell because he could feel his heart beating again, a sure giveaway. Whatever the yellow ray was, it had not killed him; rather it had knocked him back into regular time. And that meant that anyone he could see on this ship, could see him.

  And at the moment, he was looking at about twenty individuals… and they were looking right back at him.

  They were all wearing black spacesuits, with visors pulled down so it was impossible to see their faces.

  They look familiar, Hawk?

  He had no idea who these characters were, but if they were inside the xarcus, they were the enemy. So he raised his blaster and sprayed the room with Z beams. He took out two of the black-suited spacemen before any of them had a chance to react. Another blast from his rifle — two more went down. Now the others began moving in many different directions at once. They didn’t seem to be running, exactly—scurrying would be a better word for it, their stubby arms flapping wildly. Hunter cut down three more.

  But then the two closest to him raised their hands and simply pointed at him. He hit the deck just an instant before a fusillade of X beams went over his head.

  What the hell was that? These guys didn’t need weapons to fire X beams?

  He popped up over a console and let loose another spray from his blaster. Four more of them went down — but another group pointed their fingers at him, and the X-beam barrage that came back at him was twice as powerful as the one before.

  Hunter rolled again, went to his knees, fired, rolled, fired, and rolled again. He did this several times, hitting targets while avoiding the vomitlike pools. The return fire gradually decreased until finally there was none at all. Everything became quiet again.

  Hunter slowly got to his feet, his blaster up and ready. Through the murk he discovered that, quite unexpectedly, he’d cornered what might have been the last four of the mysterious spacemen. They were frozen in place, obviously confused or frightened or both. Their hands were up, but were not pointing at him in a threatening manner.

  Hunter raised his weapon — and that’s when it hit him. He knew when he’d seen types similar to these characters before: flowing out of the Blackship… during the attack on the BonoVox.

  And, it seemed, no sooner did that thought come to his head than the four spacemen turned to each other, raised their hands — and blasted each other into oblivion…

  And suddenly Hunter was alone in the strange control room.

  Or at least he thought he was.

  A voice was suddenly in his ear: Get out, Hawk!

  He was so startled he spun around, thinking someone was standing behind him. But no one was. He was alone.

  Was it normal to be hearing voices in one’s head?

  He didn’t know, but this one sounded a lot like Xara…

  Get out Hawk… now!

  He needed no further prompting.

  He sprinted out of the smelly control room, back down the curved, soft-metal hallway and finally through the original green door. He hit this hatchway running, blaster rifle up, quite aware that if he was now back in his time, he would be very visible to anyone who would want to take a shot at him.

  But he could hear no soldiers ru
nning through passageways below. No footsteps, no noise at all. The big xarcus was still frozen in place. Hunter began moving faster — he felt like he was running through a ticking time bomb.

  Which was not too far from the truth.

  He finally reached the top of the turret.

  The wind was not howling anymore, and the morning sun was not blazing brilliantly over his shoulder. In fact, it was almost as dark as night, even though it was still early morning in the supershort day. That’s when Hunter realized that two enormous objects had appeared in the sky while he’d been inside the xarcus. They were two huge spaceships; their combined size was enough to block out the sun.

  He pulled out his long-range viz-scanner and swept the battlefield below him. That’s when he saw an unforgettable sight.

  It seemed unreal at first. Everything appeared frozen, as if all time had stopped, which it had in a sense.

  All of the Nakkz soldiers on the battlefield, in front of the north wall, and even atop the battlements, were not moving, as if they were stuck in place. Yet he could still hear these people screaming, shouting.

  Wailing.

  Then it got very strange, for this still life was not totally still. There was a legion of soldiers making their way through the paralyzed Nakkz troops, killing them wherever they stood, either by ray gun blast or electric sword. The enemy soldiers were completely defenseless against this army of newcomers — and these new soldiers were slaughtering the Nakkz with a kind of indifferent efficiency, which made it all the more gruesome.

  What was going on here? Who were these new soldiers, and how were they able to freeze the Nakkz in place so they could kill them all at leisure?

  Hunter turned his scanner skyward — and there he found his answer.

  The ship hanging in the air directly above Qez he recognized as a Series 7 war cruiser, a vessel roughly on par with a Space Forces M-Class ship. It was triangular in design, of course, but significantly different from the comparable SF ship.