StarHawk (18 page)

Hunter couldn’t help screwing up his face at that last fact.
Two hundred and seventy-five
…

“Now, most people who are not of Holy Blood live to be about a third of that age,” she went on. “But some
will
live longer because they have varying strains of the Holy Blood in them, too.”

“How did that happen?” he asked.

Xara frowned. “Because in the past, it was not beneath some of my more enterprising relatives to sell a drop or two—for incredibly huge amounts of coin. They say it still goes on today, which makes this even more disgusting.”

She played with her hair for a moment and then went on.

“So you see, the more connected you are, the closer you can get to escaping your own mortality. That’s what makes a person a Very Fortunate. They have a little more of the Holy Blood in them than a Fortunate, who has a little more in them than a first-class citizen and so on and so on.

“Now, it’s up to you to stay out of the way of a moving air car, or a stray Z-gun blast. But if you live in a safe part of the Galaxy, as many people do, then you probably have a long, long life ahead of you. And that’s the problem. Everyone wants it—but no one really appreciates it, because they’re so obsessed with how much longer they can live, even by a year, a month, a week, based on how much or how little Holy Blood they have in them. It’s
crazy
. It leads to all kinds of prearranged marriages, the pairing up of total strangers, industries to figure how much Holy Blood you have and how many years it’s going to buy you. It all leads to a total lack of diversity and misplaced energies. And it’s created a class system that is not healthy for us as a race and that I personally find appalling.”

She looked over at Hunter. He was staring very intently into her eyes.

“And how old are you, my dear?” he asked her.

Smile. Teeth.

“Just nineteen!” she replied happily. “I’m still a kid. Thank God my parents waited a long time before they started working on their heirs. I’m surprised they even stopped long enough to consider it at all.”

She let her voice trail off. The sun was just about gone by now. But she looked even more beautiful in the waning light.

“But you, Mr. Hunter—well, you’re like a breath of fresh air. Because for once,
finally
, we find someone who
really doesn’t
know where he came from. And look at him: He looks normal. He looks like the rest of us. But that’s what makes you unique, in a place where no one is truly
unique
. At least, no one we know about.”

Hunter wasn’t sure what to say, so he didn’t say anything. She turned toward him again.

“So then? Can I see it?” she asked him.

“Sure,” he answered right away, adding after a beat: “See what?”

“The clue. I heard that you carry something in your pocket—something that might give a hint as to where you came from.”

Hunter’s hand unconsciously went to his left breast pocket. The piece of cloth. The faded photograph.

He never went anywhere without them.

“There are two things, actually,” he confessed. “And I haven’t shown them to very many people.”

The smile returned. So did her hand on his knee.

“I’d be honored to see them,” she said sincerely.

Hunter retrieved the cloth and picture and carefully unfolded them. Xara looked at the picture first.

“She’s beautiful,” she said in a whisper so low it was lost on the wind. “Do you know who she is?”

Hunter shook his head no. There were some days he couldn’t bear to look at the faded picture. The emotion that welled up inside him could be that intense.

“I don’t have the slightest idea who she is,” he told her.

She studied the cloth. Red stripes, white stripes. A big blue block. Designs like stars. It was uneven, yet still symmetric. In a world where just about everything was built as a triangle, the horizontal lines looked alien. And fascinating.

And familiar.

“I was afraid of this,” she said.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Hunter replied.

She squeezed his hand again. “It might not seem so apparent now,” she said. “But not knowing where you’re from. It’s a gift. And it’s something that you might not want to give up so quickly.”

Hunter just stared back at her.

“What are you talking about?”

She turned very serious.

“While the rest of my clan is out doping it up,” she said, “I’ve taken it upon myself to learn as much as I can about what went on long before my father’s Empire went into ascension. I’ve been able to learn little bits and pieces of ancient history—things that happened even before the First Empire. Even before the people they call the Ancient Engineers inhabited the Earth. I’m talking about four to five thousand years ago.”

She looked deeply into his eyes. “If you had a chance to
really
find out where you came from, would you take it? Would you being willing to do anything, go anywhere, to find out?”

Hunter sat straight up on the rock. “Of course… that’s all I care about. It has to be… Why?”

She squeezed his hand a little more and penetrated his soul with her enormous emerald eyes.

“Because I think I know how you can find out…”

Hunter stared back at her. “Really? How?”

Flash
!

The planet was indeed red and the dirt was indeed made up of tiny diamonds. And yes, there were canals here, too.

Lots of them.

This was Mars. First planet to be puffed by the Ancient Engineers. Apparently in the older texts, what few there were left of them, the Ancients believed that Mars ran best when it was crisscrossed with canals—just like Earth. So they built them, hundreds of them. So many, the planet could look like a red gemstone wrapped in a huge spiderweb if the sun’s rays were hitting it just right.

Mars was also considered a sacred place as well, on the same par as the bridges that spanned the triads on Earth. Travel here was restricted to only the Specials and an elite contingent of the Solar Guards. And while it supported its own atmosphere and was enveloped in vast plains and forests running along the
canali
, there was a definitely mysterious air to the red planet. Next to Earth’s Moon, where travel was banned for all, even the Specials, Mars was the least-visited body in the solar system.

But Hunter was here now.

He and Xara had popped in near a place called Bogus Charmas. It was near the southern pole, a region where stunted trees and dull red grass coexisted with bitterly cold winds and frozen-over canals. There were no diamonds on the ground here. It was the most desolate place on an intentionally desolate world—and about as far away from the tropical beauty of Venus as one could get.

There was a small scientific station set up here—just a permahut built next to a big hole in the ground. A string of dim lights faded away into the blackness of this cavity, underlying how deep and dark it really was.

“We’re going down there?” Hunter asked Xara once he’d shaken off the effects of the sudden transplanetary pop-in.

She nodded eagerly. Somehow during their transport, Xara had managed a complete wardrobe change.

Gone was the long, flowing white gown. She was now dressed for action: tight-fitting black jumpsuit, boots, gloves, and helmet. Hunter was still dressed in his ancient flight suit. Lucky for him he was not a slave to fashion.

“Many answers to your questions might be found down there,” she told him now as a brisk icy gale blew across the rugged plain.

Hunter fought off a chill.

“At this point I’ll do anything, to get out of this wind,” he said.

They walked about two hundred feet nearly straight down, to a rickety hoverlift. This brought them down even deeper into the hole; the temperature drop was so drastic, Hunter could soon see his breath.

Finally they reached a chamber that was made entirely of ice. Two dull lamps illuminated this place, casting eerie reflections off the clear, glasslike glacier.

Xara pointed to the far end of the ice chamber. “Down there,” she said. “Take a look.”

Hunter walked farther into chamber and soon discovered what she was talking about. Imbedded in the thick ice, perfectly preserved, was a very small, very ancient-looking spacecraft.

“Only a handful of people know of this object’s existence,” Xara told him, moving closer in an effort to keep warm. “We have no idea when it came down here or who sent it here. All we can speculate is that the people on Earth—and I mean in very ancient times—sent it here, maybe to study the polar ice cap.

Our scientists believe it was damaged on landing and never really fulfilled its mission.”

Hunter studied the spacecraft. It was obviously damaged. Its sides were crumpled, as were what appeared to be its landing struts. A large orange piece of material with many slim pieces of rope was draped over nearly half the object, hiding various attachments from view.

“Does anyone have a guess how old this thing is?” he asked her.

Xara shook her head no.

“The best estimate I’ve heard was also the most outlandish—approximately five thousand years ago,” she said. “As far as we can tell, that’s just about the same time the Ancients began spaceflight. But we know nothing about the people who built it.”

She shivered a bit—and got a bit closer.

“But what does this have to do with me?” he asked her.

She led him around the block of ice, to a point where they could just see under the orange shroud. One of the spacecraft’s panels had partially come loose and was poking out from under the orange covering.

Hunter took one look at this panel and felt a chill go through that had nothing to do with the conditions inside the chamber. Painted onto the side of this panel was a series of long red and white stripes, a block of blue, and a collection of white designs within.

Hunter was stunned. He took the piece of cloth from his breast pocket and held it up against the ice. He and Xara both nodded at once. There was no mistaking this.

It was the same design.

“I think that might have been a flag of the Ancients,” Xara said. “But just like our flags today indicate what planet someone is from, this flag might have indicated a particular region of the Earth. Apparently the people back then were actually proud of what
part
of the world they lived in. They called them
nations
. Not like these days, when entire planets present themselves as one nation.

“So we are pretty sure we know where this machine came from and what that symbol painted on its side means. The question is, why do you have the same kind of symbol in your pocket?”

Hunter was nearly speechless. He had no idea.

“This only deepens the mystery,” he whispered.

Xara smiled. She liked surprising him—and she had one more in store.

She pointed to a slight blemish on the side of the ice case just above the part of the spacecraft that bore the red, white and blue symbol.

“Can you see that? It’s the result of a VLR/VSA hit…”

“VL-RV… S… A?” Hunter stuttered.

“It stands for ‘very-long-range visual sensing array,’ ” she explained. “It’s a technology that has not been used for centuries. However, I’ve been told that it was a way to get a visual reading from just about anyplace in the Galaxy, like a very-long-range camera lens, I guess you could say. Primitive by our standards. But when our scientists returned to Mars after the last Dark Age, they were fascinated with this spacecraft but also this evidence of a long-range sensor scan. They discovered that someone at the other end of the Galaxy had scanned this planet—indeed, had scanned this very piece of ice, possibly looking for that symbol.

“Our scientists theorize that a VLR/VSA, located way out on the Fringe, might have been set on unlimited search—a simple device with a simple mission. Go right across the Galaxy looking for this symbol and beam back the information, no matter where it could be found. Well, they found it here. Many, many years ago…”

Hunter was quiet for a very long time. There was something very emotional about a faint light crisscrossing the Galaxy on its lonely mission to find a symbol long-ago forgotten.

“The scanning signal that painted this site aeons ago came from someone way, way out there,” Xara went on after a while. “My guess is that they wanted to know the same thing you do. They wanted to know what that design on your piece of cloth means.”

She nuzzled up very close to him.

“I think we can deduce that the symbol is from Earth. But it was from an Earth of many centuries ago, a civilization that could have spanned a millennium, for all we know. So now maybe we know
where
you’re from. You’re from Earth—eventually just like everyone else. But that still doesn’t answer the bigger question: Who are you?”

She paused and looked deep into his eyes.

“I think the best way to find that out,” she said, pointing to the scan burn on the ice, “is to find them first…”

Hunter could only nod in agreement.

“But how?” he asked. “There are trillions of planets out there that we know about. And probably a trillion or so we
don’t
know about. It would take about that many lifetimes to search them all—even if I could get out to the Fringe.”

That’s when Xara smiled maybe her widest smile. Then she hugged him, tightly, unexpectedly.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” she said.

“Really?” he asked, not letting go of her. “Why?”

“Because,” she replied, “I have a plan…”

On EarthThe next day

The trip up to the floating palace known as Number One took less than the blink of an eye.

One moment Hunter was in his new living quarters, having just climbed into the white ceremonial uniform that had been left for him, and …
flash
! … he was standing at one end of an immense hall.

Like much of that associated with the Specials, the predominant color here was green, or more accurately, emerald. The walls of this chamber seemed to shimmer like jewels. The ceiling was so high, Hunter imagined he could see clouds forming at the top, due in part to the fact that they were
riding
on a cloud.

There were as many as ten thousand spectators on hand. Some were on the floor, or more accurately, hovering a bit above it. Others were perched in galleries that lined the sides of the hall. All of them were Specials or high military officers.

In front of Hunter were two long line of soldiers; standing on either side of an aisle, they seemed to stretch on forever. On his left side were ceremonial troops of the Space Forces, unmistakable in their blue uniforms and oversized battle hats. On his right, an almost equal number of Solar Guards, again unmistakable in their black combat suits.

At the end of these two long lines was yet another Imperial throne. The Imperial Family was waiting for him upon it. The Emperor’s miter was glowing with an ethereal yellow light; a beam was coming through a well-placed window in the hall. The Emperor himself appeared to be StarScraping, drawing the yellow light from his favorite sun, called Impervious C, located at the center of the South Dog Night system some thirty-three light-years away.

Two words came to Hunter’s head on seeing this:
Mood ring
.

He started walking.

Music came up from somewhere. Ethereal strings, not so much bass. He was suddenly aware of his boot heels clicking on the pearl floor. Just as quickly, this noise went away.

He saw the color beaming down on the Emperor change slightly. The yellow became a tinge of orange.

Hunter picked up his pace. He was very aware that there were thousands of eyes on him—none of them belonging to the soldiers in this multiservice honor guard, though. True, the soldiers on either side of him were standing eyes straight, but they weren’t looking at him. They were looking across the aisle at each other, a long-held game of psyche-out between the rival SF and SG soldiers.

It added an interesting if slightly tense element to the room.

Hunter finally reached the end of this gauntlet to find that the last ten soldiers on his right side were not Solar Guards, but representatives from the third, smaller service, the Exploratory and Expeditionary Corps—the X-Forces.

The last two soldiers in this line were Erx and Berx.

Hunter nodded in their direction, then turned eyes front. He looked up at the Imperial Family. The Emperor as usual looked detached—there but not there, his face vacant as always. The glow on his hat had dulled a bit. The queen looked sexy but stern. She could not bring her eyes to meet Hunter’s. The Prince simply looked hung over and bored.

And Xara looked beautiful.

A platform appeared in front of Hunter. A man in thick ceremonial dress materialized along with it. On the platform were three emblems. The five-star gold badge of the Space Forces, the twin gold lightning bolts of the Solar Guards, and the crossed silver stars of the X-Forces.

“By order of all that is holy,” the priest said, “our Emperor has declared that as a reward for the ability you displayed in contest, you will be granted your choice of what service in which you will serve him…”

The man looked Hunter in the eye.

“It is now time to select,” he said. “Please choose well…”

Hunter looked over at Erx and Berx; they appeared extraordinarily happy—no doubt because their pockets were thick with winnings from the Earth Race. He looked up at Xara, who was gazing down as him, a regal smile in place, but her eyes sparkling. Yes, she certainly had a plan.

Suddenly the Prince spoke up.

“You will look your best in the uniform of the Space Forces,” he said, to some amusement of those gathered.

“
I
prefer that he join of the Inner Defense Forces,” the queen barked, suddenly coming to life.

Hunter grinned nervously. The Emperor appeared to be looking down at him, but Hunter felt his stare going right through him. At best, the most powerful being in the Galaxy appeared to be caught in a daydream—one that didn’t look pleasant.

Hunter stepped forward to the platform. He’d thought about this decision long and hard ever since returning to Earth from Mars.

Although his face had been flashed across the Galaxy, and his name was indeed on the lips of trillions of citizens, no one had come forward claiming to know who he was. This meant he would have to find out for himself, a task that could quite possibly take a lifetime or two scouring the lost planets of the Fringe.

But then again, maybe it wouldn’t take quite that long. If he played his cards right.

So he allowed his hand to hover on the Space Forces badge first. Then the one representing the Solar Guards.

Then he reached down and picked up the silver double stars of the X-Forces.

A gasp went through the crowd. The Empress and the Prince looked especially shocked.

But when Hunter looked up to the throne again, he saw Xara smiling down at him.