Storm Over Saturn s-5

by Mack Maloney

  The spy reached into his pocket and numbly came out with a bag containing thirty pieces of aluminum-silver. It was the standard payment for Dazz's information.

  But the SG officer surprised the spy by pushing the bag back across the table.

  "No thanks," he said, putting his skully cap back on. "With all that's happening around us, taking your money this time just doesn't seem right."

  He started for the door, but the spy, startled that Dazz had refused his payment, had one last question for him.

  "Why did you choose to do this in the first place?" he asked him. "Be my source, I mean? I checked your dossier way back when we first started. You've been a loyal SG officer for nearly three centuries. Yet many things you've told me over the years ultimately wind up hurting your own cause."

  Dazz just shrugged.

  "Not all of us in the SG are bad, my friend," he replied, adding sadly, "just most of us are…"

  2

  Somewhere on Doomsday 212 Mid-Two Ann

  Point Zero?

  Zero Point?

  Hawk Hunter, alleged superman, woke up in Purgatory, spitting these words out like broken teeth.

  At least he thought it was Purgatory. He'd had a glimpse of Hell before, and this was not quite it. But it was damn close.

  It was hot here. Very hot. And he was perpetually drenched in sweat. Lying on his back, sharp rocks sticking like knives into his spine, a strange red fog surrounded him. He thought he could see flames crackling somewhere beyond. In his ears were the sounds of people crying. In his nose, some very nasty smells. Burned metal. Burned flesh. Burning souls…

  Zero Point?

  Point Zero?

  God damn, where the hell am I?

  He raised himself up on one elbow and tried to get his bearings. He was atop a very steep plateau. It rose above a high, cratered plain that, in turn, topped off the flattened peak of a dark, hideously twisted mountain. Volcano-type ash was falling all around him. Streams of smoke and fire were rising up from below. The crying got louder. All this craziness — hearing it, smelling it, tasting it! He wiped his eyes and thought, This isn't where I went to sleep…

  Point Zero..

  Zero Point…

  He collapsed back down to the hard ground and tried to shut his eyes again. But they refused to close. There was something else he had to see. Even though it was daybreak, billions of stars in grand formations were passing overhead. He could almost reach out and touch them, they seemed so near.

  This might be the closest I'll ever get to the stars again, he thought.

  Zero Point…

  Point Zero…

  Why these two words… and not two others?

  He couldn't remember the exact moment he went mad. Maybe it was during the battle against the ghostly ships of the Solar Guards' REF, blasting mem as they flew out of a rip in space that led directly to Hell. The real Hell. Or when he found himself tumbling out of control and falling among those same SG Starcrashers, like them, his Flying

  Machine's power systems failing because of the Great Flash. Or maybe he cracked his head when he ejected from his stricken vessel, opening his brains and allowing the insanity to seep in. Or maybe it was when he saw his beloved craft going down in flames, lost in the smoke and fog of battle.

  Or maybe… maybe it was after he hit the ground that fateful day, nearly smothering in his parachute, when he lay dazed and injured, and of all the things running through his mind, realizing just one thing: that he would never see Xara again, the love of this, his very crazy life. How beautiful was she? Well, how does one describe the indescribable? What words can possibly be used? As soft as the glow from a neutron star? As warm as the colors of a rainbow nebula? As light as the kiss of Venusian rain upon the face? Or the touch of a hand on a dark night? Sweet. Gentle. Erotic. Intelligent. Big eyes, big smile. She was cosmically gorgeous. At least that's how Hunter remembered her now.

  He'd played in the fields of Heaven with her no less. The real Heaven, for it existed as surely as Hell did. It was the place where nothing ever went wrong. Where departed souls were happy for eternity. Where love, and peace, and harmony and all that good stuff ruled, and the sky shimmered like jewels. It was also the place Hunter had managed to escape to — only to leave to take on the evil empire once again. And Xara? She had no choice but to stay behind, stranded forever in Paradise, while he went off to fight his impossible war and be the only thing he really knew how to be: a hero. And while he did that almost too well, life for him, without her, had become insanely lonely.

  If madness had set in then at that dark moment, knowing he could never be with her in this life again, his condition was surely not helped when he realized all his brave and loyal friends had been so suddenly lost as well. Erx and Berx, the two spacemen who'd first brought him to Earth. Calandrx, the famous warrior-poet. Steve Gordon, courageous CIA agent from Planet America. The Great Klaaz, a man renowned by nearly a quarter of the Galaxy for his heroism. Zarex Red, celestial explorer and freedom fighter. All gone… fallen in battle.

  And Pater Tomm, the monk who was as fierce in battle as he was in prayer. He was gone, too. Along with Erx and Berx, Hunter probably missed the holy man most. Tomm had guided Hunter on his journey to the Home Planets, the prison camp in the sky inhabited by the long-lost descendants of Earth. It was for these people — the Last Americans — that Hunter had vowed to topple the Fourth Empire and return the Galaxy to its rightful owners. Indeed, a fleet of ships from the Home Planets had fought in the initial assault on the Empire. Then a second fleet from this lost star system magically appeared during the Battle at Zero Point just in time to help defeat the rampaging REF.

  But even this great victory could not replace losing both his love and all his friends.

  Point Zero?

  Zero Point?

  Lolita Island? Is that a clue?

  When he looked down at his hands these days, he saw the hands of a madman, bloody and gnarled. His clothes were tattered, his flight boots creased and dirty. The X-Forces cape, once worn so proudly, was now ripped and full of holes after being dragged behind him for so long. His hair, nearly down to his shoulders, was spiked from neglect and abuse; his face was bearded and burned. No longer was he the deep-space hero with the star-idol looks. Just the opposite. Were there any string mirrors around, he would have probably scared himself.

  Zero Point?

  Point Zero?

  Oh God, what do they mean?

  Since finding himself stuck in the seventy-third century, he'd acquired a habit of obsessing on whatever strange item bubbled up from his past life. Now it was these two words, spoken two different ways. As inconsequential as they might have seemed, he believed any memory, any reminiscence, any flash of recognition might provide him another clue to his past. And if he was able to figure them out, another little piece of his memory might come back.

  But this? This was tough…

  Point Zero… Zero Point…

  Target Point Zero?

  Wait! Maybe it was trying to decipher these two words that had driven him insane. Maybe it was that simple.

  But insane he was…

  There was no doubt about that.

  This planet, Doomsday 212, was once a little bit of Hell itself.

  A former ringed gas giant, it had been first terra-formed thousands of years before by the original Ancient Engineers. Made ailing by centuries of neglect and royally cursed by all the terrible things that had happened here, it had been Hunter's mysterious allies from the Seven Arm who'd puffed it again right after the Battle at Zero Point.

  The problem was, large parts of the planet did not take to this new terra-forming. Vast stretches of land north of the equator had resisted the fantastic technology that could make a dead planet come alive again. Why? No one knew. Sometimes the presence of an ancient pyramid could affect the terra-forming process. The mysterious, billion-year-old monuments could be found all over the Galaxy, and they were fanatically avoided by just about everyone,
so steeped in bad luck they were supposed to be. Perhaps one was buried on the planet somewhere. Or maybe something even stranger was at work here.

  Whatever the reason, while two-thirds of Doomsday 212 now flowed with grass and trees and streams and held fresh, clean air above the surface, the remaining third was still haunted ground. Grotesque rock formations, perilous ledges and cliffs, bottomless ravines, mile-high mountains shooting off at nearly impossible angles. Any rivers that ran here now were thick with bloodred hydraulic fluids or even real blood.

  And Hunter had been adrift in this nightmarish landscape for what seemed to be an eternity. Not talking to anyone, not seeing another human being. Not knowing what else was happening in the Galaxy.

  He was beginning to feel at home.

  Lost as he might have seemed, though, this was no idle wandering, this trek he'd undertaken through these forbidding lands. This was a search mission he was on. He'd lost Xara. He'd lost his friends. He'd lost his mind. He only had one thing left that he hadn't lost completely: his Flying Machine.

  What good was he without it? The Flying Machine was as weirdly wonderful as he used to be. Designed from a dream and faster than anyone could comprehend, at cruising speed it could go two light years a second. It had taken him to places that existed only in the wildest of imaginations. It had vanquished many a foe, saved many a friend. If losing Xara and his compadres had torn out his heart, then losing his aircraft had ripped out his soul.

  So he was out here, searching for that one last thing that might restore just a bit of what he once had. True, he'd seen it go down, seen it fall into the clouds of war as surely as he'd fallen into those of despair. But he never saw it crash, never heard the impact. So where was it now? Still burning at the bottom of a crater someplace? Scattered in microscopic fragments over a stretch of this phantasmic horizon?

  He had to find out. For even if he was able to recover just a tiny piece of it, something to always carry in his pocket along with his battered American flag and the faded, well-worn picture of Dominique, the stunning beauty in his other life, then maybe the rest of his days could be saved from complete madness.

  But searching for it was like searching for a loved one's body. You want to go on looking forever, but always in fear of what you might find.

  Sleep came fitfully in this place, these miles of cosmic badlands that after so many days seemed vaguely familiar to him now. And frequently, where he lay down to rest here was not the place he woke up, another symptom, he supposed, of his mental drift.

  Fully awake now, he crawled to the edge of the plateau and looked out over the precipice, expecting to see another stretch of ravaged land. But wait — something was different. The landscape below him was idyllic. Fields and valleys with gentle rivers curving through them. Small gatherings of trees, long grass swaying in the gentle breeze. A girl below, familiar in her cosmic beauty, was waving up at him… calling to him…

  But then he blinked — and when he opened his eyes again, the girl and the trees and the fields were gone, and the landscape below had returned to something from a very bad dream. Hunter felt his stomach turn inside out. His head began to spin. Not again, he thought.

  He'd been seeing visions like this for weeks now. The day before, he'd imagined a barrage of old-fashioned nuclear missiles crashing down on top of him, only to see them hit the ground like raindrops and disappear into tiny puddles. The day before that, a strange aircraft with a propeller and stubby wings and red ball insignias on its fuselage and tail dove out of the rising sun and tried shooting at him, only to have its bullets turn into flower blossoms the moment they touched his skin. And the day before that, he imagined he was trudging through deep snow, firing his gun at a huge moving structure that might have been an ancient radar station — on wheels. And the day before that, he thought he saw a huge battleship floating on what should have been a gently flowing stream. On and on, so many, he couldn't remember them all. Some lasting a mere second or two, others going on for hours. The common thread? Each hallucination began with a flash and ended with a blink.

  Madness. What else could it be?

  He looked back down into the valley now. Fires roaring out of control. Cracks in the surface spewing unimaginable vapors. Gigantic rocks shooting up like monster's teeth, saw blade sharp and black as a night without stars. Badlands, indeed. So much so, a sane man would have turned back long ago.

  But staring into this particularly horrid part of 212's netherworld, Hunter knew it was where he had to go.

  He found wreckage two hours later.

  It was halfway across the killing plain, still smoking, surrounded by blue flames exploding up into violent flares, blinding his bloodshot eyes even from a mile away. The smell was awful. Burnt subatomics, scorched superglass, white-hot electron steel — but another smell, too. Again, burned flesh… And it was this stink that told Hunter this was not the holy grail he was seeking. This, and the fact the wreckage stretched on for nearly a half mile.

  Not his cherished, lost Flying Machine, these were the remains of an Empire starship, one that had been driven by a prop core. It was dispersed, in pieces, around a huge crater. This was where the nuclear singularity had gone off, once the prop core died its quick, nasty death.

  After much climbing and trudging through the smoky muck, he finally reached the largest piece of the wreck: the hind end of what had once been a Space Forces cargo ship. It towered over him. Hunter took out his quadtrol, the know-it-all device carried by just about everyone in the Galaxy. He asked it a simple question: what ship was this? The answer came back right away: JunoVox. Hunter knew the name; it was one of the first vessels shot down in the opening minutes of the war between the SF and the SG, the mighty conflict that had started here, above this hellish place.

  "Fucking great…" he mumbled as he felt a little more mind juice run out of him. This was the thirty-third wreck he'd come upon in his quixotic search. Just his luck that Doomsday 212 had been a graveyard for crashed spaceships in the centuries past. There were wrecks everywhere.

  In sheer frustration, he took out his ray gun and began firing at the carcass. Pieces of fuselage and pipes and su-perstrings and electron steel suddenly went flying in all directions. His barrage created more flame, more smoke, more stink, but it unleashed something else as well.

  Humanlike forms suddenly began rising from the wreck. They were wearing SF uniforms. Some were whole, others were skeletons. Hunter watched in dumb astonishment as they ascended into the filthy air. They were laughing at him, emitting the most outlandish shrieks. Crying for him to join them. It all coalesced into a weird chorus of screams and ethereal song.

  Hunter began firing at them as well, but his rays were going right through their transparent bodies. This only made them howl at a more frightening volume. One moment, he felt like his eardrums were going to burst. In the next, it seemed like his entire head was going to explode. Louder… and louder… and louder…

  Then came another flash of light. It caused him to blink. When he opened his eyes again, the spirits were gone.

  He took a deep breath and tried to compose himself, but only rotten air entered his lungs. How much more of this could he take? He put his ray gun back into his holster and stumbled on his way.

  These weren't the first ghosts he'd shot at since coming down here.

  Beyond the wreck of the JunoVox, the terrain grew hilly again, then dipped into a gigantic ravine.

  Hunter descended into the narrow valley almost without thinking, one foot in front of the other, a living ghost of sorts, trudging the haunted badlands. The vapors pouring out of the landscape down here were more putrid than the grounds above. The thick fog covered what was left of the sky overhead, nearly turning day into night.

  He forged on, finding fields of wreckage every few miles, all of them from ships crashed here long ago. He passed more than a few ancient skeletons as well, preserved by all the formaldehyde-like gases hissing up around him. Always with death smiles on their faces, t
heir fingers crooked in his direction, they were bidding him to sit and talk a while.

  Back in his hero days, Hunter had displayed an amazing talent, in combat and out. It was a kind of natural long-range scanner — or radar, back in his previous life — that allowed him to sense flying machines heading in his direction long before they arrived. This feeling would come over him in the form of an electrical jolt running through his body, making the hair on the back of his head stand at attention. This sixth sense was always with him and had never let him down in the past. It was as normal a part of his makeup as breathing.

  But not this time.

  This time all he saw was a shadow. It came over him at first like a huge cloud, blotting out all that was left of the murky sunlight. He turned, slowly, and discovered an enormous starship hovering above him. No warning. No noise. No electrical jolt to the back of his head. Suddenly, it was just there.

  Another vision, he was sure…

  It was not shaped like a wedge as all Empire starships were. It didn't have a needle nose or a large ass end, and its canopy was not a bubble top, with a little city inside full of people meant to steer it. Nor was its fuselage white or blue or gray.

  Rather it was gold. Pure gold, gleaming and brilliant even now, in the darkest of hours. And the ship was sleek, with flowing lines and sails that looked built for nothing less than to catch superneutrinos from the stars. It had wings and a large deck, and golden strings glistening from front to back. And it appeared that when it flew, even in space, men could still stand out on that deck and look over its sides and see where they were going and know where they'd been.