Storm Over Saturn (2 page)

It took the
KosmoVox
twice as long as usual to leave the Solar System.

The enigmatic little ship encountered a storm of invisible turbulence just outside the orbit of Mars, a mysterious disturbance not picked up by its battery of flight sensors.

Passing by Jupiter, its compartment was suddenly filled with static, from the depths of which ancient rock 'n roll music could briefly be heard. On approaching Saturn, a strange mirage: so many Solar Guards supply ships were orbiting the great planet, they appeared to make up yet another ring. By contrast, the heavily populated Neptune and its coterie of colorful moons seemed all but abandoned.

More blinks
, the spy thought, staring out his porthole in back.
God is still fooling with us
…

Very real, however, was the traffic jam of spaceships clogging up the approaches to a Solar Guards border checkpoint known as Saint Michael's Pass.

Thousands of vessels were backed up, trying to get through the enormous, midspace frontier crossing, each one subjected to a long, thorough and, more often than not, very stressful SG scanning. The Solar Guards had declared martial law within the Pluto Cloud weeks before, and this was one result of that decree. No one got in or out of the original Solar System without the SG inspecting every sub-atom in said person's body and ship.

Only by his special Imperial pass was the spy able to get the
KosmoVox
to the head of this line. And while the Imperial agent was supposed to be above such things, the gruff SG border troops insisted on probing his ship and its passengers not once but twice. Finding nothing, they were harshly sent on their way.

Once in open space, the
Kosmo's
crew did a last check of their flight systems, then set their controls to the outer part of the One Arm, where the two fleets of SG and SF ships were facing each other. A long-range forward scan of the area confirmed what the spy already knew: that many planets in this part of space had been evacuated long ago. Few Imperial vessels other than those belonging to the SG were permitted to fly within this corridor, and indeed, tens of thousands of SG supply runners could be seen shuttling between the trouble zone and the Pluto Cloud.

As for civilian vessels, none were allowed within a thousand light years of this very crowded piece of space.

They reached the edge of the One Arm less than an hour later.

Even from a great distance, the enormous double line of warships seemed to stretch to infinity. The spy had been in the service of the Empire for nearly two hundred years, still a young man by contemporary standards. (If you were lucky enough to have some of the life-prolonging Holy Blood in your veins, as did many in the very-extended Imperial Family, you could live nearly four times that long these days.) The spy had seen many strange things in those two centuries of undercover work. The aftermath of endless wars. Entire planets vaporized. The stars themselves turned upside down.

But he'd never seen anything like this.

On one side, that being the direction roughly pointing toward Earth, were hundreds of thousands of Space Forces warships, gleaming blue and white. On the other side, facing in the opposite direction, were the similarly numbered SG ships, sinister in their dark gray. They were separated by only a few miles in some places—not the hundreds the spy had envisioned for some reason. In fact, it was almost frightening just how narrow the separation between them was, especially when most of the warships facing each other were Starcrashers, two miles long themselves.

Early on, someone had dubbed this celestial front line the Star Trench. It was a good name.

And it was into the heart of it that the Imperial spy now had to go.

Because the
KosmoVox
belonged to the Earth Guard, neutrals in this fight, it was allowed, however grudgingly, to move through the SG lines and into the Star Trench. The pilots slowed their speedy craft to a crawl and flew the very narrow space separating the two gargantuan forces. The spy had his nose pressed up against the scout ship's bubble canopy now, his huge floppy spy hat curled back, his jaw dropped in astonishment as he eyed the warships on both sides of the Trench, side by side, almost entangled in one another.

He was struck by the same thought as anyone who'd been able to view this bizarre front line: all it would take is one crew member, on one ship, to make a mistake, or go mad, or misinterpret an order and launch a weapon. Cosmic brownout or not, the resulting volleys back and forth would destroy every ship along the Trench and kill the billions of crew serving inside them. One shot… and both fleets would be subatomic ash in a matter of minutes, and almost two-thirds of the Empire's warships would be gone. And that would mean the core of the Empire would be vulnerable for a very long time to whatever outlaw horde chose to attack it.

So the potential for disaster up here was nothing less than colossal.

Though he was astounded by his tour of the Star Trench, it was not the reason the spy had come out here.

The real purpose of his trip was a very secret meeting that had been arranged on a planet nearby. The name of the planet was Toons 20. It was an M-class world about the size of Earth's sacred moon, Luna. Like many bodies inhabiting space between the One and Two Arms, it was mostly rocks, valleys, and mountains. A very desolate place, it had no rivers, no ocean, no seas. It was also empty of its inhabitants; they'd been forcibly evacuated by the Solar Guards weeks ago.

There was a small city located just north of its barren equator called Tiny Toon. A collection of gambling halls and saloons mostly, one boarded-up barroom here was called Bozzy's Botsy. A place once notorious for gunrun-ning and illegal drug sales, it had a back room that, in the distant past, had been electronically soundproofed by way of a hum beam. This made it impervious to any kind of eavesdropping, either by human ears close by or super-string scanning ones bounced from a very long distance away. The room also had several means of access and exit, in case a quick getaway was in order. Such things were occupational hazards for the people who used to do business here.

Sitting at a table in the middle of this small room now was a man dressed in an indistinct one-piece spacesuit and a skully cap. Short, pudgy, with very dirty hands, he was nervously stirring a large mug of slow-ship wine, the opiate liquor that could be found just about everywhere in the Galaxy. At exactly midnight, there was a bright green flash in the corner of the room. An instant later, the Imperial spy was standing before him.

"I was getting worried," the man at the table said. "I thought you might not show up this time."

The spy threw half his black cape over his shoulder and pulled his huge floppy hat farther over his eyes. An Imperial spy never revealed his face, and that was certainly the case here. The man at the table saw only a shadow under the big hat.

"You never have to worry about me not keeping one of our appointments," the spy told him. "The Empire would fall first."

The man at the table frowned and took a long swig of his drink. "Best not to joke about such things, my friend," he said. "I fear the day of the Empire's decline is finally upon us."

The mild rebuke stiffened the spy. This was not an idle comment made by an ordinary citizen. This man was Jak Dazz, a well-known high commander of the Solar Guards and ten-stripe officer in the SG's elite 101st Space Combat Division. Devious and ill-mannered, Dazz had nevertheless served as a secret informant for the spy for years, exchanging bits of information about the SG in return for money and privileges back on Earth. It was he who requested this latest meeting, their first since the war broke out.

The spy took a seat and waved his hand over the table. A glass of slow-ship wine appeared. The spy rarely imbibed, preferring to get high on star music. But this night, he needed a little extra buzz.

"Considering what's going on up in that Star Trench, you took a big risk coming here," he told the SG officer. "It must be important."

Dazz nodded glumly. "The tension up on that line is unbearable. Everyone's on edge. I've been a military officer for nearly three hundred years. I much prefer battle to
waiting
for battle.

The spy tipped his glass in the SG man's direction. "I agree with you there," he said.

"And I see no way of preventing a catastrophe," Dazz went on dolefully. "Not just up on the Star Trench but elsewhere. We have some fanatical people at the top of the Solar Guards—people who can't be controlled by me or my superiors and frankly not by the Emperor, either. They're highly unpredictable. And some of them, rather unstable."

Again, the spy was taken back. Disparaging anything, in any way, having to do with the Emperor or his armed forces was considered highly verboten in the Fourth Empire. People were given painful brain wipes or even executed for such things, be they high military officers or the lowest of citizens. This was why hum-beamed rooms were so popular around the Galaxy.

"These fanatics will not back down," Dazz went on. "They are bent on carrying this fight through, this stupid war, however it started, by devils I suppose…"

The spy almost laughed. If only the SG officer knew just how accurate his last statement might be.

"The Space Forces commanders believe they have the moral high ground," the spy told Dazz.

Dazz just shrugged. "Why? Because one of our commanders attacked one of their ships to begin this whole thing?"

"And that they executed the SF intelligence agent," the spy added. "Revenge ranks very high on the scale of human emotion. Not to mention the perfect motive to go to war."

Dazz drained about half his cup of slow-ship and shrugged again. "I don't deny it happened that way. And I can tell you that many people in our top command are as baffled by that action as I'm sure the SF is. But your friends in the Space Forces are not so innocent…"

The spy sipped his drink. "Please explain."

Dazz smiled darkly. "Do you know
all
the details of what happened out near that godforsaken planet Doomsday 212? I mean, before
and
after the war started?"

The spy shook his head. "I'm not sure anyone does," he replied.

It was a mystery, most of it. First the SG's elite Rapid Engagement Fleet disappeared while hunting for a rebel group who'd vowed to take down the Empire. More than thirty Starcrashers, suddenly gone. Then, just as suddenly, the REF reappeared, just long enough to kill the SF agent on Doomsday 212 and then shoot down two Space Forces warships without warning. This was the action that started the war. Soon afterward, the REF disappeared yet again, only to return a third time. And on this occasion, they began a rampage of terror across the Galaxy the likes of which no one had ever seen. Their warships, which for some reason had turned crimson from the SG's standard gray, streaked around the Empire, relentlessly attacking innocent people and undefended targets, seemingly intent on causing as much human misery as possible.

The enigmatic fleet then reassembled near a point close to Doomsday 212. It was there that ships belonging to the aforementioned rebel fleet, helped by a motley collection of other soldiers of fortune, met and somehow defeated the REF, while, it was widely reported, the SF stood by and did nothing. By some opinion, the SF's inaction amounted to aiding and abetting an enemy of the realm.

"I might be getting ahead of myself," Dazz said, slightly drunk now. "But do you really think those rebels and their shit-kicker friends were enough to defeat the REF on their own? Or do you think they had special help?"

The spy was not so surprised by the question. Many things were still unanswered from that day. "Well, we know Hawk Hunter was there," he replied.

Again, Dazz nodded glumly. Hawk Hunter. Bane of the Solar Guards. The man who led the rebel fleet. The man who'd vowed to topple the Fourth Empire itself. He'd been reported right in the thick of this strange battle. He and his awesome Flying Machine. It was the fastest ship in the Galaxy.

Everyone knew about Hawk Hunter; he was an authentic living legend. He'd been found stranded on a desolate planet at the far edge of the Galaxy nearly three years before. His origins unknown, even to himself, he was brought to Earth shortly afterward, and with his incredibly fast space fighter, he won the illustrious Earth Race. As a result, he was lavished with riches and praise and given a ship's command in the Empire's forces.

Hunter soon went missing, however, part of a scheme fomented by the Emperor's own daughter, the unimaginably beautiful Princess Xara. She'd allowed Hunter to search for the remnants of the people he called the Last Americans. And sure enough, he found this lost civilization living on a planet so far off the star roads, it wasn't even inside the Milky Way.

But the word on the streets around the Empire said Hunter not only located his lost Americans but also found evidence that Earth had been stolen from these Americans and the other original peoples who lived on the mother planet several thousand years before. Indeed, they claimed this sinister aspect of history was woven into the fabric of all four Empires. But was it true? Had Earth been stolen

from its original inhabitants? There was no way to tell. Almost nothing of the history of the empires had survived the handful of Dark Ages that separated the realms. In fact, very little was known about the Galaxy prior to the rise of the present Fourth Empire. But many people in the Milky Way were beginning to believe this tale, just on Hunter's charisma alone.

It was Hunter who'd led a previous rebel attack on the Empire, one that nearly reached the One Arm itself, until he and his allies ran up against the REE That's when Hunter's fleet disappeared, too, only to return just in time to meet the reemerging REF. And that's when the second battle near Doomsday 212 took place.

"And it is no surprise he was on hand," the spy went on. "Hunter seems to be everywhere sometimes…"

The SG officer laughed darkly again. "Well, he
is
a superman, the son of a bitch," he said. "I saw him fight at the Siege of Qez. And before that, I saw him win the Earth Race. Only the stars know what he is planning next. What deep thoughts and machinations are going through his brain. They say he never sleeps. That he is always thinking. Planning. Plotting against us. Dreaming up new ways to take us down. I'm sure at this moment, that mind of his is racing like a string clock, conspiring our demise."