Battle at Zero Point (28 page)

Two miles away, on the ninety-ninth floor of the Space Forces headquarters building, the Secretary of SF Intelligence was also packing a bag.

It was just a precaution, though. He'd told the SF troopers guarding the building that if the SG attempted to take over Blue Rock, then they would have to carry him out in a box. But this was a rare case of bluster from the Secretary. He was much too valuable to the SF to be skinned alive by the Solar Guards—and he knew it. There was an evacuation plan in place, and a space cruiser docked on the roof. Should the Huns make a grab for the rest of the aerial city, the Secretary would be the first one on that ship out.

Until then, though, he vowed to pray over every piece of intelligence that came into the soaring building and, to the best of his ability, try to figure out what the hell was going on out there, among the stars.

He'd just finished packing when the secure bubbler in the corner of his office came to life. It began spitting out the moming's SF3 intelligence summary, a compilation of field reports from across the Empire. The Secretary retrieved the viz doc, floated over to his desk, poured himself a shot of slow-ship, and then sat down to read. Usually the summary was dry and routine. But one look at the opening passage of this report told him it was a shocker.

It detailed a number of horrifying incidents that had happened across the Galaxy in the last twenty-four hours—events of sheer madness that had been widely rumored across the Empire. An X-Forces ship in the Eight Arm came upon a convoy of transport vessels lying dead in space, covered with blaster burns and with huge holes torn in their fuselages. The convoy had been carrying more than 12,000 passengers, including many members of the SF Youth, future officers in the Space Forces.

Everyone on board had been killed.

An interstellar hospital at the bottom of the Three Arm had been evaporated by a gigantic blast from an X beam. More than 250,000 patients and nearly 20,000 doctors were inside the facility at the time.

Now their bodies were floating in loose orbits around the point in space where the hospital had once been. There were no survivors.

A huge agri-planet called
Kansi One
in the Nine Arm had been attacked by two warships using X-beam arrays. Each bolt had the force of one million thermonuclear strikes. The two ships vaporized all of the planet's farming complexes, destroying billions of tons of grain and foodstuffs. Not only would millions across the Galaxy face starvation because of this act of terror, the subatomic residue from the X-beam strike had poisoned the soil of
Kansi One
forever.

The report went on and on and on. Attacks on isolated civilian ships, massacres in schools and orphanages, unprovoked bombardments of innocent worlds, some of which were unaware that the Empire even existed. There was little doubt who was behind these barbarities. So many people had reported seeing the REF's mysterious Red Ships before and after the attacks, they were too numerous to discount. And these weren't military strikes, the report concluded. Nor were they part of the interstellar war still going on between the SF and SG. Each incident seemed to have just one goal in mind: to be especially cruel to the especially helpless, to cause only misery and pain.

The Secretary was both furious and baffled. Why was the breakaway SG unit doing these horrible things? How could the elite special operations group so suddenly turn into an army of bloodthirsty thugs?

No one knew, certainly not the Imperial Court, nor the SF—not even the Solar Guards themselves. Of this last point the Secretary was sure. How? Because SF3 had been eavesdropping on SG string communications for decades. The Secretary frequently knew their high-priority orders before some of the people inside SG headquarters did. And he knew that not only had the REF stopped responding to orders from Black Rock weeks ago, Black Rock had no idea where the REF was at any given moment.

Nor did SG Command have an explanation for the REF's ability to appear and then suddenly disappear apparently at whim, or for their unexplained thirst for innocent blood, or even why they murdered SF3 agent Gym Bonz on
Doomsday 212
in the first place.

The most recent SF3 snooping had picked up a conversation inside Black Rock among the top SG officers on Earth. While it was clear by their nervous chatter that the Solar Guards were becoming overwhelmed by both their war against the SF and maintaining their martial law over the One Arm, one question that haunted the SG staff was especially telling: Where and when would their renegade REF strike next?

There were twelve SG officers in the top-level meeting. Not one of them had a clue.

The Secretary poured himself another drink. This time a strong one.

In his centuries of working for SF Intelligence, he'd never faced a situation quite like this before.

Strangeness was rarely in short supply in the Galaxy, but there seemed to be a surplus of it these days.

Case in point: forty-eight hours before, he'd received a report from several SF ship commanders who had just fought in the huge battle against the Solar Guards up in the Two Arm. These men swore that at the height of that battle, they'd seen a ship suddenly appear amid the chaos. It hadn't come from Supertime, because they were all
in
Supertime when it materialized. Nor had it come from any of the other single-digit dimensions because it had left absolutely no sub-atomic wake. But the strangest thing was, the SF commanders insisted this ghostly vessel was actually the
Resonance 133
, one of the cargo 'crashers stolen by the Two Arm invaders in the same area just a month before, only to disappear with the rest of the invaders' fleet shortly afterward.

The Secretary now reread this report as well as the long list of recent atrocities.
What is really going
on here
? As if the Empire tearing itself apart wasn't bad enough, he now had dozens of inhuman brutalities taking place, plus a ghost ship suddenly appearing as if from nowhere.

He sipped his drink, and suddenly his mind kicked into overdrive: Could there be a connection between all these things?

He quickly called up every viz doc he'd received in the past five weeks, ever since the short-lived invasion of the Two Arm, and assembled them chronologically. The time line read like a bad novel. First, the rebel fleet invaded the Two Arm, defeated Joxx at Megiddo, and incurred the wrath of the REF.

Then the invaders disappeared somewhere in the middle of the Moraz Cloud, after which the REF lied about destroying them. Soon after, the area was declared a No-Fly Zone, the REF disappeared as well, only to reappear, at least some of them, with their hulls painted red, to wreak havoc across the Milky Way. A war soon erupted between the SF and the SG, and in the middle of a battle between the two services came this report that one of the rebel ships had suddenly reappeared out of nothingness.

A question popped into the Secretary's head:
Are the REF Red Ships appearing out of
nothingness, too? From the same spot as this stolen rebel ship? Is that the reason the REF declared the No-Fly Zone in the first place
?

He snapped his fingers and called up a device known as the Fourth Analytic Bubbler, or more simply, the FAB4. This highly secret
el tuti
of bubblers could take in trillions and trillions of bits of information from all over the Empire and, in a microsecond, coalesce them into an information globule that was both concise and sensible. This gave it a kind of prescient quality.

He asked the device a question: "Is there a connection between the No-Fly Zone and the REF's recent activities? In effect, is the REF using the No-Fly Zone as a safe haven from which to appear and disappear?"

The answer took a long time to come back, but when it did, it read, "
Possibly
."

The Secretary asked the FAB4 a second question: "Does the REF's recent atrocities have a goal in mind, or are they meant to simply inflict pain on innocents?"

The answer that came back was surprising: "
Both
."

A third question: "With the recent spate of atrocities in mind, would the REF strike again?"

Definitely "
Yes
."

"Is it possible to determine where in the Galaxy the REF would strike?"

This time, a definitive "No." Just like the SG officers who had no idea they were being bugged, when it came to divining the REF's next victims, the FAB4 didn't have a clue, either.

The Secretary hesitated a moment before he asked his last question. The FAB4 could be accessed from all over the Empire, and its use could be traced back to him. For this reason, he didn't want to leave the impression that he was beginning to panic or even becoming disloyal. But there was no way to put the words nicely, no way to finesse them or obscure their meaning. So he just took the direct approach. "
Is the Empire in danger of collapse
?"

The FAB4 didn't take more than a second to spit out its reply: a definite "
Yes"

The Secretary drained his drink and thought about this for a long moment.

Then he floated over to where his emergency trans-bag was packed and opened its electric clasps.

True, he'd had centuries of intelligence work to rely on, and he still possessed a very sharp mind, especially for someone his age. But he knew that when in doubt, it was best to seek out some unorthodox help. And while the SF Intelligence network had thousands of analytical bubblers, as well as billions of string comms at its disposal, sometimes simpler
was
better. And more discreet.

So he reached into his bag and came out with his trusty quadtrol.

Making sure no one was watching him, he did a quick link from the FAB4 to the small handheld device, technically a violation of SF Intelligence rules, but at this point, the breach was of little concern to him. Once it was filled with all the latest information, the Secretary punched in the ultimate question, something he would never have asked the FAB4, as such a politically dangerous inquiry would undoubtedly come back to haunt him.

He asked the quadtrol: "How can the SF save the Empire?"

The quadtrol beeped and burped and took a long time before it came up with an answer, but when it did, its conclusion was very unexpected. Strangely, its reply had little to do with the REF or the war between the services. Instead, it had to do with the case of the
Resonance 133
suddenly showing up in the midst of the battle between the SF and SG. Though it was still highly secret that the stolen 'crasher had reappeared, the quad-trol determined that not only was the ship still out there somewhere, there was a good chance that the rest of the rebel fleet might reappear, too.

Why? Because when all the bits of information were considered, it really came down to one thing: regardless of how they were able to do it, ever since the nonbattle against the rebels, the REF had been appearing and disappearing at will. And now at least one of the rebel ships had done the same thing.

Therefore, there was a high probability that all of the rebel ships would return shortly as well. That's why the device suggested the Two Arm be thoroughly searched, not for the REF, but for the rest of the rebel fleet. In fact, the quadtrol said, doing so should be the SF's number one priority.

It was a strange response, because at the moment, it might have seemed the number one priority for the SF would be the dual crises at hand: the war between the services and the REF's nonstop rampage.

In fact, events and recent history had relegated the short-lived invasion of the Two Arm to the back bubbler, so to speak. But there was a subtle beauty in the quadtroFs conclusion. By the strictest interpretation, protecting the Emperor and the Empire
was
the number one priority of the Space Forces, and at the moment, only the rebels had the stated purpose of disposing of O'Nay. The interservice war and the REF's activities, while extremely troubling, were actually sideshows. It was detecting the return of the rebel fleet first that would give the largest political advantage to the SF.

It would show that while the SG was in effect running wild, it was the SF that had to be called on to deal with the enigmatic invaders.

In other words, for the ultimate big bang, if and when the rebel fleet reappeared, the SF should be there to meet it, attack it, and utterly destroy it.

And if they did this, when everything else settled out, the SF would be credited with nothing less than saving the Empire.

There was an empty piece of space located halfway between the bottom of the Two Arm and the entrance to the One. It was called the
Andromeda Zee
.

The Zee was astride the main star road leading to the original Solar System. Traditionally, this was a place where civilian cargo vessels parked while awaiting authorization to enter the One Arm. Most of these ships could be found floating around a string of artificial moons. These big satellites had concessions for necessities such as water, food, power spikes, and of course, slow-ship wine.

Usually no more than several hundred ships would be lingering in the Zee at any given time. But now there were more than 50,000 ships here. Many were crowded inside the Zee's ill-defined border, but many more were hanging on the outskirts, hoping to get in, both for the proximity to provisions and the relative safety in numbers. Small pirate gangs had been nipping at the edges of this outer mob for weeks.

The 50,000 ships were part of the same makeshift fleet that had recently carried millions of civilians away from the Two Arm. Starting about a month before, those who hadn't fled in the panic surrounding the Two Arm invasion were forced from their homes after the SG declared a large part of the Moraz Star Cloud a No-Fly Zone. Once they'd been herded from the
verboten
area, the SG had left all these civilians high and dry, with no protection, only orders not to return to their home systems in the Two Arm under penalty of death. Hundreds of thousands had reached the Zee, exhausted and out of money. Many had no choice now but to remain there.

Exactly how many people were crowded into the Zee? No one knew for sure. The best guess could be determined by estimating 10,000 bodies per ship, multiplied by 50,000 ships. That was at least a half billion souls with nowhere to go.

In other words, the Zee was no longer just a truck stop among the stars.

It had turned into an enormous refugee camp.

The conditions inside the forgotten ships had been deteriorating steadily since the first week. These were not top-flight Empire vessels, in which just about every desire of comfort or nourishment could be had by a mere wish. These were civilian carriers, hardscrabble star buses and hastily converted cargo humpers that contained a few inches of space for each individual and accommodations that equaled the worst of steerage. Many people had already died from this overcrowding. Many more lay sick, especially in those vessels just outside the Zee.

That the SG so suddenly left them in this interstellar lurch was considered typical of the Empire's second service. As the Solar Guards were essentially the police force of the Galaxy, the Empire's citizens on the whole both distrusted and feared them. The SG was known throughout the Milky Way for being heavy-handed, corrupt, and ultra-authoritarian. While they were famous for going after some outlaws with a vengeance— such as tax dictators and space pirates—they were also known to be heavily involved with people of the same ilk. Rumors of shady alliances with space meres and freebooters for black-market wine, aluminum, and even
jamma
were rampant.

The SG's fascistic antics lately only added to this grim perception.

It would always be hard then to determine exactly how the startling news first reached the Zee. Few of the stranded ships still had workable scanners on board, and none of them had other kinds of deep-space detection equipment. What was clear, though, was that on the morning of their thirty-third day in limbo, a fleet of Solar Guards warships suddenly showed up close to the enormous floating refugee camp.

Absolute terror swept through the dour collection of ships, especially after it was determined, again somehow, some way, that the ships belonged to the SG's REF. Even isolated out here in the celestial wilderness, the refugees had heard whispers about the REF's atrocities across the Galaxy. How their intent these days was to inflict as much pain as possible upon the most innocent and vulnerable souls in the Milky Way.

And at that moment, there was no group of people more innocent or vulnerable than the unfortunates caught in the
Andromeda Zee
.

But then a string comm message arrived on all of the ships—this whether their communications systems were working or not. The message was from the REF, and it was very surprising.

They weren't here to harm anyone, the SG commanders said.

In fact, they told the refugees, the REF was here to take them home.

When word of this spread around the Zee, the SG were suddenly hailed not only as heroes but as saviors.

Their plan seemed simple, too. The trip back to the Two Arm would take just two days at ion-power speed, and it would be done under the protection of the SG warships the entire way.

It seemed too good to be true. The dispossessed had just one question: Once back in the Two Arm, what would be the procedure for returning them to their individual home systems, their home planets, their homes?

That's when the faceless SG officers running the operation informed the refugees that this was not part of the plan.