Starhawk (12 page)

These two were also close friends of Hunter's. Their names were Calandrx and Klaaz. Hearing of the pilot's critical condition was a blow equal to both.

Calandrx had known Hunter a bit longer than Klaaz. Calandrx had won the famous Earth Race more than a century before, and it was he who steered Hunter through the dark intrigues of the most recent race, giving him the advice he needed to eventually triumph. When Hunter went missing after the battle on Zazu-Zazu, Princess Xara had summoned Calandrx, along with Erx and Berx, and asked that they go in search of the famous pilot. She had provided them with a tiny but Supertime-capable Empire ship. This eventually carried them to the Home Planets, where they arrived just in time to save Hunter's life by engaging in a shoot-out with a Solar Guards hit squad, also dispatched in a swift ship from Earth. Calandrx's almost mystical wisdom had gone a long way in the planning of the attack on Xronis Trey. It had provided him with the very things he'd been seeking since winning his own Earth Race: space flight, intrigue, and adventure. But arriving to find his good friend Hunter knocking on death's door deflated the 400-year-old pilot immediately.

Klaaz was closer to 500 years old. Like Calandrx, he was a little bent, a little slow in walking, and boasted a full head of long white hair. Klaaz was a well-known hero of the Five Arm. He'd rallied entire star clusters to fight against the marauding space merc and pirate armies who had battered the middle part of the fifth spiral for centuries. Klaaz was so famous and so brave, he held the rank of space marshal in nearly two dozen planetary systems. His face adorned the aluminum coin currency of several more. To speak the name of the Great Klaaz in the mid-Five Arm was almost like speaking the name of the Almighty himself.

Tomm and Hunter had come upon Klaaz's lonely world about halfway through their search for the Home Planets. Klaaz had known Zarex and was sure the explorer/gun runner would know the way to the mythical Home Planets system. In the meantime Hunter and Tomm had helped Klaaz defeat not one but two merc armies who were closing in on his ice fortress, allowing the old warrior to escape with a large bevy of beautiful women that he had taken under his care.

When several Solar Guards attacked a pair of these women later on, Klaaz knew his old friends were in trouble. Like Erx, Berx, and Calandrx before him, he, too, eventually found his way to Planet America—just how would fill an entire knowledge bubble—arriving like the others, just in time to save Hunter's life.

So it was ironic then, that the two ancient soldiers were now part of the vigil at Hunter's bed. They had been briefed on the tragic events by the others, and pulling up a pair of hovering chairs, joined in their friend's deathwatch.

The rest of the night passed slowly.

Day came, and there was no change in Hunter's condition.

His face was locked in a clench, his eyes seemed to be shut unnaturally tight. It was clear some kind of struggle was raging inside him. Inside his mind. Inside that place where he really was.

Tomm had already performed the ancient ritual of the last rites. In one corner of the room, Zarex and Gordon spoke quietly about the best way to get the fleet ready for the long flight back to the Home Planets. Although their point of origin was speeding farther and farther away from them with every second, meaning their fuel supply would have to be stretched to the absolute limit if they were to reach the Home Planets at all, they were loath to start out, only to have Hunter die en route. That just didn't seem right somehow.

But clearly, a decision on this would have to be made very shortly.

The dying star of Pepsicus took more than two hours to finally rise above the northern horizon of Xronis Trey. Close on its heels was the last remaining heavenly body in the long-lost star system, the first rock out from the sun, the pearl-white planet of Frangelicus 5.

It was the first time the newcomers to Xronis Trey had seen the planet rise. It's concentric orbit brought it very close to its poor relatives; it rose out of the northeast, nearly twice the size of the nearby Zinc & Tin, an amazing sight from low orbit. Because of its alabaster coloring, the tiny world reflected more light from Pepsicus in a day than the other two planets did in a solar year.

And here's where it got very strange.

Through a small porthole on the sick bay wall, they all watched the whitish planet climb above the forbidding landscape of Xronis Trey, amazed that something so beautiful could be found floating in this empty and foreboding sky. And Pater Tomm really didn't know why he did what he did. He was not a man of impulses, just the opposite in fact. But something told him to stand up and draw back the curtain of the larger window in the hospital room. And when he did, a ray of light from Frangelicus 5 burst through and fell on Hunter's body.

A moment later, Hunter opened his eyes.

Everyone in the room gasped—all except Pater Tomm, who was too astonished to do anything. In many ways, he blamed himself for his friend's plight.

Hunter coughed hard, fell deeper into his pillow, and coughed again. He still looked terrible. But he was alive. And he was coming around.

More baffling, he looked different. His hair had grown out almost as long as Zarex's mane. And he looked stronger, bigger, more rugged.

It was the look in his eyes, though; that was the scariest part.

His pupils almost seemed to glow red now. The eyes themselves seemed to have changed shape: they were now bigger, wider, the eyes of a very angry man.

"Hawk?" Tomm finally said to him, speaking for them all. "Is that really you?"

Hunter seemed to move one more step back into reality.

He slowly lifted his hand and indicated that someone should take the mind ring off him. Zarex quickly complied, only for them to see that another ring was in position underneath it. Zarex removed this ring as well, only to find another. And another. And another. This made no sense, but the people gathered in the room knew that strange things always seemed to happen to Hunter, though certainly this was among the most bizarre.

Only after the fifth ring was removed did he open his eyes again, and this time they stayed open.

He just looked up at them and took in a very deep breath. The doctors were called, but he waved away his friends' concern. He looked up at Erx; the spaceman knew what he meant right away. He had a fresh flask of slow-ship up to Hunter's lips in a flash.

Then Hunter finally spoke.

"Are we still on Xronis Trey?" he asked.

"We are, brother," Erx told him. "The endless night has passed, and we are into a new day."

"Have the robots of Myx arrived?" Hunter then asked, his voice seeming to build in strength with every word.

Calandrx and Klaaz stepped forward. Both men were beaming but at the same time shocked to see him alive.

"They are here, and so are we, brother," Calandrx said.

Finally, Hunter's battered lips were able to form a smile.

"Brothers, my plan worked to perfection," he told them slowly. "I stayed inside the vault of mind rings and put thousands of them on. Even when I felt you trying to pull me back, I had to resist. I had to get as much information as possible, even though I knew that I was in very bad shape."

Erx put more wine into him. He took an even deeper breath and seemed to gain even more strength in the process.

"But it was worth it," he began again. "Because I know the
whole story
now. I know who forced the people of Earth off their planet. I know why they did it.

"And that means we must begin our holy war against the Fourth Empire immediately."

Part Two

The Other Side of Thirty Star Pass

7

Six Months Later

Earth.

It was a diamond floating among brilliant stones, a blue crystal shimmering against the blackness of space.

The white-hot glaze surrounding the planet looked like an angel's halo. Some claimed they could see it from clear across the Galaxy. Others only dreamed they could.

The first spacecraft had risen from its surface about 5,200 years before, a short flight to orbit. Much had happened since. The first outward expansion, led by those known only as the Ancient Engineers, made nearly every planet in the Milky Way inhabitable. From rocks to gas giants and everything in between, the Ancient Engineers terra-formed first millions, then billions of planets, seeding them in an explosion of life called
puffing
. In less than a thousand years, the Galaxy was populated—and blissfully at peace.

Then something happened. A collapse? A civil war? A rebellion? No one knew for sure. Almost 70 percent of the Galaxy's history had been lost over the centuries; lost or kept as close secrets by those in power. But this much was known: The rise of the First Empire had been fueled by the discovery of ion-ballast propulsion, the technology that put the stars within easy reach. The Second Empire uncovered Supertime, in which spacecraft could travel nearly twenty times faster than ion-ballast propulsion, at almost two light-years a minute. This allowed the Second Empire to reclaim much of what the First Empire had lost. Then the Second Empire fell, again for reasons unknown. Came at least one dark age and then the rise of the Third Empire, of which just about all knowledge was lost.

Then the Fourth Empire emerged, and along with it, those known as the Specials. This very extended, deistic family had controlled Earth now for more than five hundred years.

They were in the process of reclaiming the Milky Way once again.

Much of the Earth's surface was covered with huge triangular slabs known as triads; they were what made the Mother Planet shine. Some of these massive sections measured more than a hundred miles long. They were built of terranium, a superhard metallic material that had the ability to feed on the earthy crust, making it amenable to growing fauna.

The triads had also been created by the Ancient Engineers some time during the last years of the First Empire. But just why they chose to lay down these huge fabrications was another piece of history lost in the haze. (An attempt to reclaim surface area lost to rising ocean levels was one possibility.) For whatever reason, the triads covered more than half the planet and were arranged in such a way that Earth now supported just two enormous continents, one in the east, the other in the west.

What remained of the oceans was located in between. Water drained off from the poles traveled along huge canals . that separated the triads in many places, feeding the terranium and the life it held above. As a result of this massive engineering project, every coastline on Earth was now uniform, every river and lake drawn perfectly straight.

The triads were connected by more than 5,000 bridges. Some were hundreds of miles long and even linked the two continents at their closest points. Others were barely ten feet in length. The spans were never used—or at least not anymore. Unlike the triads, no one was quite sure who built them or why. They'd appeared some time after the triads had been put in place and before the height of the Second Empire. In any case, they were considered sacred and off limits to all.

As was Earth's Moon. It still hung in the sky, bright as ever, a pearl orbiting a diamond. But it was considered even more sacred than the mysterious bridges.

In fact, no one had set foot on the lunar satellite in more than 3,000 years.

The capital of Earth—indeed of the entire Galaxy—was Big Bright City.

It was a gigantic metropolis located in the northeast corner of the western continent. More than twenty million su-perskyscrapers of all shapes and sizes made up this place, with miles of hovering roadways, air car tubes, and water canals woven in between. Military bases, rocket pads, and space docks were everywhere, thousands of cloud bars, jam bars, nightclubs, sports clubs, dance clubs, and sex clubs were mixed in as well, especially around the huge City Arena.

Then there were the lights. They were everywhere! All colors, all shades, all tones. All burning brightly, day and night, bathing everything in an eternal neon glow. Not only was this a city that never went to sleep, it hadn't caught its breath in nearly five centuries.

At last count, more than two billion people called this place home.

To the first-time visitor, falling out of orbit, it seemed as if a layer of perfectly shaped clouds was in hover over Big Bright. On closer inspection, the visitor would realize these weren't clouds at all. They were floating cities. Dozens of them orbited the huge capital, moving easily, seemingly at the whim of the breeze. This is where many of the Specials lived, exactly one mile above the surface of the Earth. Condensation tended to gather under the bottoms of the cities, especially at night. This created the illusion that they were floating on top of the clouds. The biggest floating city of all was Special Number One, home of the Imperial Family. It was more than ten square miles around, twice the size of the other floating cities. Special Number One looked like a huge castle in the sky. Hundreds of spires, glowing in odd, iridescent colors, dominated its center. Long, sloping passageways crisscrossed these spires like trelliswork. The imperial buildings themselves were a mixture of futuristic design and ancient recreations, some of which had been put together brick for brick, nail for nail, from structures found buried on Earth thousands of years before.

Like Big Bright City below, Special Number One's surface layout was a jumble of side streets, back alleys, and courtyards running off of massive avenues.

Counting the high military personnel, the diplomats, the extended imperial family, and five separate corps of security troops, more than one million people lived up here.

It was the first day of the Great Saturnalia.

The two-week, planetwide celebration led up to the grandest of all events in the Galaxy: the Earth Race. This yearly contest pitted the best starfighter pilots in the Empire against each other in a 25,000-mile, obstacle-strewn, multidimensional competition. Some of the most famous fliers in history had taken this challenge over the centuries. Many had failed. Some had even gone mad. The Earth Race was that difficult, that dangerous. The Emperor Himself had. great affection for the contest, though, as he frequently claimed to have been a starfighter pilot in a previous life. This made the competition a huge social and political event as well.