Starhawk (13 page)

Wagering on the race, by the trillions of citizens across the Galaxy, was staggering. Untold riches were showered on the race winner, including a permanent residence on Earth itself. Neither he nor his family would ever want for anything again; in fact, the largesse would be so vast, the winner's descendants would be well off for generations to come.

The excitement of the Earth Race was equaled only by the celebrations it generated. While the Great Saturnalia was observed just about everywhere on Earth, the promi-nence of a party was most evident by its location. The preeminent fete of all was held, no surprise, up on Special Number One, in the Gold House, the massive, sacred structure located right next door to the Imperial Palace itself. By tradition, the invitations for this intimate gathering of 3,000 were sent out one hour after the previous Earth Race had been concluded.

This gave those people privileged enough to attend an entire solar year to plan what they would wear.

It was about thirty minutes before midnight when the large air-chevy began its mile-long climb up to Special Number One.

The flying car's bright emerald color scheme identified it as the personal vehicle of Vanex, the Captain of Engineering, Clocks, Bulbs and Wires, for the floating Imperial City. This mouthful was actually his ceremonial title. Essentially, Vanex was Special Number One's head custodian.

The guards at the imperial front gate spotted the big green air-chevy shortly after it launched from Earth. They all knew Vanex, and he knew them—and that was the problem. Even by contemporary standards, Vanex was an ancient man. He was at least 700 years old, older than Emperor O'Nay Himself. Vanex carried with him a few dozen stories, oft repeated, each time with a new twist or turn added. He'd been everywhere and had done everything in the Galaxy in his long, long life. He even claimed to have knowledge of the mysterious Third Empire, a piece of history that practically no one knew anything about.

If the guards stopped the chevy as they were supposed to, there was no telling how long Vanex would stay and gab with them. They'd all heard his war stories before; they didn't need to hear them again. So when the chevy arrived at the front gate, the guards just waved it on through.

Once in, the air car slowed down and began creeping through the narrow, winding streets of the floating city. Those thoroughfares in the light were crowded with the beautiful people on their way to the Gold House Saturnalia. In the background, columns of soldiers, tarted up in vivid, colorful uniforms, marched endlessly up and down the avenues.

Vanex's air car passed the Emerald House, the residence of the Imperial Family, and then the Imperial Palace itself. Atop the palace was an immense tower, soaring 500 feet above everything else. This is where O'Nay could be found most of the time, in a small room at its tip, sitting in a very basic compartment, gazing out on empty space and presumably thinking his great thoughts.

The chevy turned right and headed for the structure known as the Blue House. It, too, was an immense building, nearly a half mile around, with a large glowing dome on top. A combination cathedral and plant works for Special Number One, it was here that the controls, the devices, and the magic needed to run the floating city could be found.

The Blue House was the closest thing Vanex had to an office. He hadn't been in for a while though, at least a few months. His job was more a formality these days. He lived in a fabulous house up in Chesterwest, the most exclusive suburb of Big Bright City, and he just didn't come to town that often anymore.

But this was an emergency of sorts. It took a small army of maintenance workers, both humans and clankers, to make the floating city work. The head of this force had made a call to Vanex. Something had happened in the Blue House that no one could recall happening before. It had baffled all of the maintenance officers, and they needed some of Vanex's wisdom and advice.

The maintenance officer had wisely not mentioned just what the problem was; he wanted Vanex to see for himself. Nothing
ever
broke on Special Number One. Everything ran splendidly, day after day. So much so, the small army of maintenance men did hardly any work at all. It was the robots who did all the actual cleaning, waxing, washing, and anointing around the aerial city.

Vanex's chevy came to a halt just outside the front entrance to the Blue House; he was helped out by a squad of soldiers guarding this main door. Vanex thanked them graciously and paused for a moment, intending to have a chat with mem, but the soldiers scattered before he could get the first word out. They knew Vanex very well, too.

The old man regained his equilibrium and then glided through the door of the grand building. The long hallway was lined with robots; all were down on one knee. Vanex moved past them, soon reaching a hovering lift. This carried him down three full stories, nearly to the bottom of the building itself. He floated down a particularly gloomy corridor to a set of huge steel doors. Even Vanex's ancient hearing could detect a commotion coming from the other side.

The doors opened for him automatically, and he glided in. There was no ceremony here. What lay beyond was perhaps the most unkempt corner on the floating city. This was the so-called Boiler Room, an archaic name for the underbelly of Special Number One. It was a large place, dark and smelly, where hundreds of thousands of pulsating power tubes converged. These barely visible conduits pumped pure energy into the floating city from... well, no one really knew where exactly. But it was widely assumed that it all came from the so-called Big Generator.

There was no small amount of confusion going on in the Boiler Room at the moment. At least a hundred humans and robots were locked in a scene of quiet panic, scratching their heads, huddled in deep conversation. The robots were more worried and more animated than their human counterparts. That's the way the robots were: fretting, nervous, trying to help, interrupting conversations where their presence was not desired. But the humans on hand looked worried as well.

As soon as they saw Vanex, they all fell to one knee, again, the proper greeting for someone so close to the Imperial Throne.

Vanex looked over the crowd of workers as if they were his children.

"Oh, arise!" he said with a small measure of self-delight. "It's only me...."

The humans regained their footing; most of the robots stayed down low.

"Now, what seems to be the problem?" Vanex asked no one in particular.

Two high officers slid up in front of him and, hats in hand, motioned him toward the far wall of the chamber. They walked slowly as Vanex glided behind, nodding and blessing the workers as they parted way for him.

They finally reached the wall. There weren't any power tubes in sight. Instead, the wall contained a tangle of a very ancient technology known as
pipes
.

Vanex had to contemplate the jumble of aluminum for a moment, trying to remember exactly what their function was. One of the officers saw his problem, stepped up, and whispered, "They're for the water flow, sir."

Vanex nodded immediately. "Of course, I know them well."

"It is here that the problem lies," the officer said.

The reason for the pipes was simple really. The Specials didn't have to eat, but they did need water. There were literally tens of thousands of ornamental gold faucets in place around the floating city, never more than an arm's reach away from any member of the Imperial Family who needed a thirst quenched. The water system had been in place on Special Number One since it was first built.

Vanex scanned the tangle of pipes; all of the maintenance men and robots had gathered around him.

"Where is the glitch then?" Vanex asked.

The officer indicated a certain length of pipe, then pointed to its T-junction. On its left-hand seam, there was a drop of water.

Vanex studied it for a moment. This
was
very strange. He reached up and took the drop of water away with his gloved hand. Then he dramatically flicked it into the air, where it disappeared. He turned back to the officer and smiled. "Problem solved," he said.

But the man directed Vanex's attention back to the T-junction and the seam. Another drop of water had appeared. The officer flicked this away, only to have yet another drop materialize. He repeated this several times, and each time, another drop would appear.

A gasp went through the crowd; the robots became even more restless.

"It's leaking, sir," the officer said in a very hushed voice.

Vanex just looked back at him, somewhat befuddled.

"Leaking?" he repeated the archaic, unfamiliar word.

The officers nodded solemnly.

Vanex turned back to the pipe. Two more water drops had appeared.

"
Leaking
?" he said, almost to himself. "That's never happened up here before."

The Gold House Saturnalia always began at midnight.

This was not such an unusual hour to start a celebration. Midnight was where the day began in the Fourth Empire, a necessity of the far-flung realm.

The guest list for this party was ultraexclusive; indeed, it contained the names of only the very closest relations to the Imperial Family, all of them highly placed Specials. At the stroke of twelve, the doors to the Gold House disappeared, and the 3,000 guests floated grandly into the Great Imperial Hall.

It was an enormous ballroom. Its walls and floor were made of solid reionized gold. The roof held a special design of superglass, which boasted incredible magnification properties. On a whim, it could show the most colorful, most unusual stars in the Milky Way as if they were no farther away than orbit.

Small forests of exotic plant life from around the Galaxy lined both sides of the hall. Trees and high bushes, some reaching thirty feet or more, were swaying in an artificial wind, bathed in a light spray of pure, crystallized water. Later on, it would not be too unusual to see a young girl fighting to get out of this maze of trees, her neck bloody, a mob of drunken revelers stumbling in hot pursuit.

Ethereal chamber music wafted through the ballroom. The ghostly strings were being provided by a vast orchestra of sentinels hiding in the sixth dimension, not seen, only heard.

Ringing the outside of the ballroom were several hundred ceremonial troops. All of them at attention, all of them heavily armed.

Above it, a small fleet of air-chevys and battle cruisers orbited in ever-changing, aerobatic formations.

The people inside the Great Hall were not immortal. They just seemed that way.

They were all Specials, of course, so their veins ran thick with the Holy Blood, the life extender of the Empire's minor gods. Many of mem were destined to live for 600 to 700 years, some even more. Most carried the centuries well. A handful did not. It was a bizarre sight to see an 800-year-old couple gliding around, two feet off the ground, their clothes weighed down with sparkling crystals and aluminum, their skin and bones sagging as well.

The guests moved in a clockwise manner around the long, rectangular hall, floating and talking. The proper height at which one could be at these things was twenty inches, with elders, military heroes, and the top 10 percent of the Specials allowed to glide at exactly two feet. Most everyone here already had a case of red-eye, the telltale sign of significant ingestion of slow-ship wine. There was a small sea of the stuff hovering in the middle of the hall. All one needed to get a drink was to part lips and think:
Wine
. A thin stream of the highly intoxicating liquor would rise up from the pool and find its way through the crowd to deliver a gulp or two, all without losing a drop.

As for food, there was only one kind served at these celebrations: an ancient and mostly ceremonial dish called
potatos
. Most times, the vast containers of the white, pasty mash went untouched.

Of the 3,000 guests this night, more than two-thirds were women. Both married and single, by the custom of the Specials, nearly all of them were available sexually. Most of these women possessed beauty beyond words. There really was no describing many of them. The Holy Blood not only kept one alive, it provided a radiance, a luminescence, an aura of gorgeousness that lasted for centuries. Big eyes, high cheeks, great curves, and nice feet. That was the look, and it was hard not to wear it well.

The women glided the hall in twos and threes, seeking out the most handsome and courageous space officers, open to just about any idea and all conversation.

Stunning, all of them.

Many of the women attending the imperial party thought the men were just as gorgeous as they—the Holy Blood thing cut both ways.

No one in the room was more handsome, though, than Razr Joxx.

As the saying went, Joxx had the stars in his pocket. He was blessed with startling good looks. He wore his near-white hair long and ruffled, like the heroes of the Ancient Second Empire, and he stood an even six feet tall. Joxx was a four-star commander in the Solar Guards, the highest rank allowed in the field. He had his own Starcrasher, the very famous
ShadoVox
. It was the flagship for a unit of SG warships known as the First Imperial Wing.

Joxx had received preferential treatment from the moment he took his first breath. His father, Xayz Joxx, was Supreme High Commander of the Solar Guards. His mother was a sister of the Empress. Joxx, then, was nephew to the Emperor Himself.

Joxx was already a war hero, though he'd yet to reach his thirtieth birthday. While it was true that he had received his Solar Guards commission purely by social rank, he was no coddled son. He'd fought in a number of interstellar engagements, mostly against the space pirates who operated out along the Fringe. He was a brilliant tactician, a crafty strategist, and when in the midst of space battle, absolutely fearless. That he would someday rise to the rank of supreme SG commander—his father's commission—was a given. There was even a chance that, if he managed to live long enough and the line of succession stayed constant, Joxx might one day become the Emperor himself.