Starhawk (17 page)

One of Joxx's intelligence officers spoke up: "Are you saying then that the Two Arm is being ..."

He couldn't quite say the word.

"
Invaded
?" the prisoner said for him. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying...."

The prisoner paused for a moment.

"Something has been unleashed here that will be impossible to stuff back into the bottle," he told them. "It's so bad, I'm
afraid
to look into the future, though I know it is less than a few days away. I fear greatly what I will see. I've been shooting the Two Arm for nearly two centuries now, and I've never witnessed anything like this."

He fell silent. His mouth seemed dry.

'Two centuries?" Joxx asked him. "You don't look that old."

The prisoner shrugged again. "A benefit of my profession, I suppose," he joked.

Joxx stared back at the man for a long time. The prisoner had indeed delivered some disturbing news, and the proof of it could be found in the massive evacuation happening throughout the star cloud. Finally he asked him, "But why did these invaders spare you? It's not like you're special or anything."

"Because they wanted me to come down here and spread the news about them," he replied quickly. "They knew word of their actions would reach the Empire eventually. I

believe their game is to challenge you. Taunt you. They even possess the desire to capture one of your ships."

Joxx's jaw fell open.

"
Capture one of our ships
?" he roared. The thought of someone capturing the
ShadoVox
literally made him feel ill. "How would you possibly know that?"

The prisoner closed his eyes. It was almost as if he was trying not to speak.

"Because, sire," he finally replied. "Those were their very words."

The prisoner was taken back down to his jail cell.

Joxx and his intelligence officers remained sitting around Sheez's floating desk. The intell men were looking very anxious.

"So, do we choose to believe this man?" one asked Joxx now.

Joxx's reply was emphatic: "We certainly do! I am an expert in these things. And I, for one, could see the truth in his eyes."

"But it is just the word of one man," one of the other intell officers protested. "How do we know for sure what is happening farther up the Arm?"

"He is one man who speaks for many," Joxx shot back, indicating the nonstop stream of escape vessels still rising from the planet. "And besides, there is no one left up there who could tell us anything different. My brothers, look at it this way: This man is actually a godsend for us. We know these crap movers have a dark little talent. They can predict the future in the harshest of destinies, a compulsion so strong they cannot even lie about it. Now, if we follow this man's word as truth, if we believe everything he tells us, then at the very least we can prepare ourselves to face the worst-case scenario."

The three intelligence officers were stunned.

"Are you suggesting that we should stay here and make battle, sir?" one blurted out. "One fought by us, alone?"

Joxx pushed the hair from his eyes. "Do I have to remind you these marauders are on the threshold of the mid-Two

Ann? And from all indications, they are moving so fast, they could be here in less than two days. History will show us at this time and at this place. We must insure that it will depict us in the best of light."

His intelligence men were almost speechless.

"But sir," one finally croaked, "we may be here at this time and place, but we are here
by ourselves
, against an oncoming tide of very organized barbarians, with the nearest help at least four days away."

"Our vessel is the best in the universe, sir," a second officer said. "But against a hundred other ships? If we try to engage them, if we try to slug it out, blow by blow— especially now that we know their desire to capture one of our holy vessels—well, my fear is only the ion mover can predict that result."

Joxx turned in his seat to look out the massive windows to the city and the green sea below. He was an arrogant bastard—he knew it himself. But he was also a realist. To his mind the circumstances were as plain as the hundreds of streaks crossing the sky, all heading for safety farther down the arm. It was a dire situation he'd found himself in. Their isolation couldn't have been more complete, stuck here at this lonely crossroads in the stars. Even sending a message back to Earth about all this would be a major risk at the moment. If word of an invasion of the Empire spread around the Galaxy, the results could be catastrophic.

But if there was one thing Joxx was good at, it was keeping his cool.

He snapped his fingers and brought Sheez out of the sixth dimension, where he'd been put for the time being. The president was furious upon his release.

"I really must protest this treatment, Joxx!" were the first words out of his mouth. "May I remind you that I am an acquaintance of your father? And the leader of this planet? Throwing me into the sixth dimension—with all those creepy sentinels. It's so, so
crude
...."

Sheez caught his breath, then looked out the tower's huge window. The skies above Needle City were even thicker with fleeing ships now.

"But then again, no harm done," he said, quickly chang-ing his tune as he reached for his bags. "And if there is nothing else I can do for you, dear old friend, can I please resume the process of getting my ass out of here?"

Joxx ignored his question. Instead, he asked, "Do you have a map of this place?"

Sheez was near total exasperation now. He hastily snapped his fingers, and in a flash there was a large, three-dimensional globe of Megiddo spinning above his desk.

"Highlight all your heavy industries," Joxx ordered Sheez. Another snap of the fingers, and the globe began blinking with tiny floating icons indicating the planet's top industrial sites. They were mostly ship repair yards.

Joxx remained silent for a long time, studying the globe. He could almost feel the wheels turning in his head. He had to protect the Empire, and he had to protect his ship. He needed a plan to do both. And for that, he needed to improvise.

Luckily, that was one of his talents, too.

"Excuse me again, Joxx," Sheez said, gathering up his bags once more. "But if there isn't anything else ..."

Joxx calmly took out his ray gun and without even looking at them, blasted Sheez's valuables-laden baggage to smithereens.

"Sorry Sheezie, old boy," he said. "But you're not going anywhere."

10

The Inmates heard the
ShadoVax
coming.

The huge starship had slipped down through the atmosphere of Megiddo, appearing the next morning just off the coast of Needle City. Here, it picked up Joxx and his intelligence squad; they'd spent the night on the ground, deep in planning. With its captain back on board, the grand star-ship made the trip down to the south pole in less than a minute.

This was done by running the ship's propulsion units at a setting called
crank
. Translation: as slow as slow can go. The low drive was used only when the huge ship was inside a planet's puff. It gave the vessel, normally a silent runner, great speed relative to the ground but also an ungodly noise to go with it. The racket was deep and rumbling, yet with the sonics of a screech. It could scramble internal organs if the exposure was too long.

No surprise then that the
ShadoVox's
arrival shook the enormous prison down to its burned-ice foundation.

The inmates were lined up in the gigantic prison yard, waiting for it.

An immense snowstorm was in progress, but none of the inmates complained. They were all condemned men. They never saw beyond the four bare walls of their cells. Being out in the air now, despite the blizzard, was nirvana to them.

The
ShadoVox
had ground to a halt at a point just above the north wall of the monstrous prison. It was hovering silently now, at exactly 1,000 feet, its pearl-white fuselage unbroken and gleaming like a sun. It hung like this for many minutes, to give the inmates shivering below enough time to be sufficiently awed by the starship's size and magnificence. It worked. There were a half million men jammed into the prison yard. Between the cold and the intimidating presence of the two-mile-long vessel, few of them could speak.

Finally, a shower of green beams cascaded down from the ship, burning their way through the pesky snowstorm. Suddenly, there was a large protective bubble hovering fifty feet above the prison yard. A gaggle of SG officers was standing within, illuminated by unseen lights. Joxx, of course, was front and center.

Most of the inmates recognized him. Cape flowing, wild haircut, amazing good looks, larger than life, he was gazing out over the vast prison courtyard, chin raised in his best imperious pose. Many of the inmates had fought against him over the last ten years; after all, they were criminals, and the Solar Guards were the police force of the Galaxy. The inmates here today were the lucky ones. They'd done battle against Joxx and had somehow come away with their lives.

Joxx opened up a subatomic broadcast link and began speaking. His words were suddenly all around them. "Anyone who has ever seen combat on a starship should raise his hand," he said.

Roughly half the inmates raised their hands.

"How many have ever worked the mechanics of a star-ship before?"

The other half raised their hands.

Now, of those holding their hands aloft, how many were due to be executed within the next month? Four in every five hands went down. There were roughly 100,000 left. These inmates were told to step forward, hands still raised.

Of this number, how many wanted a chance to be released from prison altogether, along with a full pardon?

Not one hand came down.

Joxx smiled; the snowstorm increased. He knew many of the 100,000 inmates were lying, but that didn't matter.

He immediately conscripted them all.

The
ShadoVox's
next stop was the city of Brakes.

Located on the west coast of the landmass shared with Needle City, Brakes was an enormous spaceship repair facility, one of the largest in the Moraz Star Cloud. It did major business and had dozens of gigantic repair bays; they stretched for miles in all directions. The facility was deserted now, though. Everyone had bugged out two days ago.

Left behind in its work yards were 120 ion-ballast star-ships, all in various stages of reconstruction, all of which had seen some sort of military service in the past. By Joxx's orders, the ships had been scanned from orbit during the night by the
ShadoVox's
universal quadtrols. Everything that needed to be done to make each ship spaceworthy again had been identified and documented. Then Joxx decreed that a small ocean of thought drops be manufactured, with his own voice injected, each one containing a tiny piece of the knowledge gained from the massive ship analysis.

With the crew of the
ShadoVox
acting as prison guards, those inmates who'd claimed experience in starship mechanics were airlifted to Brakes. Each inmate took his thought drop and heard Joxx's voice tell him what job he should do and how he should do it. Joxx had already programmed the
ShadoVox's
replication devices to create thousands of electron torches. These were distributed to the inmates along with clear-cut orders to get the abandoned ships back in working order—quickly.

And for anyone found to have been lying about his ability to fix starships?

They would be executed on the spot.

The conscripted shipbuilders went to work. Joxx's vision was to turn the broken-down vessels into a fleet of ships, each one equivalent to a midlevel space cruiser. This meant a 2,500-foot-long, wedge-shaped vessel with fast engines and many, many weapons. The ships were refitted with new ion-ballast propulsion units. On their best day, these engines could go only a fraction of the speed of an Empire Starcrasher, but that didn't matter. The invaders were flying ion-ballast ships, too. The builders installed hundreds of Z-gun batteries and multiple space-torpedo launchers as well, utilizing just about any point on a ship's fuselage that could bear an extra load.

Those inmates who'd claimed space combat experience were then brought to Brakes. They'd been given Joxx's thought drops, too. Each contained a mission to be fulfilled once the ships were spacebound. This second wave of inmates familiarized themselves with their new weapons, their living quarters, and the nascent ships in general. Thus the vessels were crewed with both the builders—who'd now become ships' engineers—and those inmates who'd fought in space. There were about eight hundred men assigned to each ship, a very skeleton crew.

The combined fleet numbered ten dozen ships. By Joxx's word, it was christened Irregular Space Wing #1. The crews were dubbed FSH—for
future space heroes
—and given stylish, self-replicating black uniforms. Joxx named each ship after a member of his extended Imperial Family. Each vessel was also emblazoned with the traditional war colors of red and green.

In ancient times, such a massive project would have taken weeks, months, even years. But combined with the unlimited power of the
ShadoVox
, the sheer force of Joxx's personality, and brute manpower—lying or not, every inmate did his duty, preservation of life being the best motivation—all this took less than twenty hours, the length of one Megiddo day.

It was a grand achievement, done in Joxx's grandiose style, but he had no illusions about the abilities of his new fleet.

He knew most of the fighting men aboard the ships weren't seasoned space warriors. Many had simply survived battles. In his plan, though, none of that mattered. For this strange campaign, all the future space heroes needed to be were warm bodies with brains attached.

The flight plan for every ship was already set in an unbreakable string program, locked in sequence with its control bubbler. The firing sequences for all the weaponry was carved in strings, too. The ships were so loaded with weapons, they were little more than firing platforms with people inside. All that would be needed from the crews would be to fire the right weapons at the right place and at the right time.
How hard was that
? Even a robot could do it.