Storm Over Saturn (22 page)

The quad replied, "Take a left." He did so, and found twelve buckethead soldiers waiting halfway down the tunnel for him.

He tried to turn around, but his feet failed him. The soldiers were on him in seconds. They fell atop him, crushing him, pounding him again, dragging him along the floor. It was only that he was still wet and slimy that he was able to squirm away after a few minutes of torturous beating. But the soldiers were soon on him again.

Through bleary eyes, he spotted a jail cell close by. It had bars that might protect him, so he leaped for it, slamming the door behind him. The soldiers mindlessly began banging on the door, but they were simply too clumsy to open it.

CX smiled for a moment, temporarily safe—or so he thought. He turned and that's when he first realized he was not alone in the cell. There was a man standing right in back of him. A man with a very familiar face.

"You?"

Hunter smiled: "Me…"

Hunter hit Commander X five times hard, right in the face. That was it. The SSG officer collapsed to the floor, rolled himself up into a ball, and pleaded for Hunter to stop.

Hunter picked him up off the floor. "I hear you like to torture people." He punched him five more times, again, all five right on the nose.

"No more!" CX was begging.

Hunter reared back, ready to deliver the knockout blow, when he said, 'Tell me…"

CX could hardly speak. 'Tell you? Tell you what?"

Hunter let CX drop to the floor.

"Everything…" he said. "The BG repair. The 066 Warehouse. The magilla."

CX was confused. "But why did you put me through… all this?"

Hunter was right in his face. "Would you have told me what I wanted to know if we hadn't?"

Even CX saw the logic in that. He shook his head numbly. "I would have killed myself first."

Hunter grabbed him again. "That's right, butt head," he hissed. "Now, spill!"

The plan worked. Battered and bruised physically and psychologically, CX told Hunter everything he knew. They were soon joined in the cell by Zoloff and Annie as well.

Although they got a wealth of information from the SSG inquisitor, all of it was troubling. The
SSG
was very close to manipulating the Big Generator to do their bidding. CX said such domination of its power flow was days if not hours away. Furthermore, the SSG was indeed working on a new weapon down on the surface of Saturn, one of

frightening proportions, though the details were such deep secrets that CX, by virtue of his position, would not have had access to them. All he knew was that it might be a craft of some kind that didn't rely on the BG for its power.

As far as the mysterious magilla went, CX had never even heard of it.

There was no need for parachutes to get down from Ping's Palace this time.

Zoloff had simply waved his hand, and the four of them found themselves on the ground of Adventure Land, standing atop the pastoral hill where the ticket booth was located. Hunter took a long look around as he shook off the mild effects of the sudden transfer. It seemed like he'd stood on this very hill just hours before, looking off into the distance, trying to catch one last glimpse of Annie. Now she was here with him, glued to his side, holding on so tight it seemed like she'd never let go.

Strange how things turn out
, he thought.

Getting rid of Commander X was their first priority. Both Hunter and Zoloff agreed blasting him with a death ray was too good for him. Instead, with another wave of his hand, Zoloff had magically dressed the battered little man in the uniform of a Nazi private. Then, by quick manipulation of the Adventure Land PC, the Mad Russian sent the sadistic SSG officer to the Land of Mirrors, where he'd be exiled forever, caught in the endless war between the fascists. Annie slapped him hard across the face just as he was fading away. After what he'd been through with these three, CX almost looked happy to go.

But even with his inglorious departure, Hunter and friends still had a major problem on their hands: what to do about the mystery inside Warehouse 066. They agreed it was probably a more immediate threat than what would eventually happen with the Big Generator. And if what CX said was true, it was something that could prove devastating for Doomsday 212 and many other planets of the mid-Two Arm. Hunter felt it was his duty to investigate. Zoloff felt obliged to look into it, too.

They'd confiscated CX's super-quadtrol before he was sent on his way. It pinpointed the location of Warehouse 066. It was in Saturn's eastern hemisphere, about halfway between the equator and the north pole. Like much of the surface of the big ringed planet, this area was crowded with the bureaucratic offices of the SG, some so big, they literally ran for miles in all directions. In the middle of this sprawl was the building in question.

The question was: How could they get down there to check it out?

No surprise, the Mad Russian had the answer.

Zoloff took some time punching more information into the creaking PC. Finally he hit the Enter button, and suddenly Hunter found himself standing on hard, dusty ground, with no grass to be seen or trees in sight. At first Hunter thought they'd beamed right down to Saturn's surface itself. But he wasn't that lucky.

He looked around and saw he was actually standing on the edge of an extremely long asphalt runway. In front of him was a large aircraft hangar, one of several in a row. He was suddenly very hot; he began to sweat. He sniffed the air and then felt a shiver go through him. That's when he realized where he was: back on the Alien Mystery World, the place where he'd almost been killed. This hangar was just one of many at the re-creation of the secret base known as Area 51.

Annie was right at his side again. She felt him tense up. Patting him gently on his arm, she said sweetly, "It's OK. It's all just make-believe."

Hunter could only shrug. "I hope so," he said.

Zoloff waved his hands again, and on cue the doors to the hangar in front of them opened. A very strange craft began rolling out as if under remote control. It was huge. It took about a minute, but finally, this vehicle stopped in front of them. Hunter stared up at it in awe. Zoloff seemed to delight in the amount of time it took for him take it in.

Strangely, it was a design Hunter recognized. Not for any kind of extraterrestrial vehicle, but as a jet fighter from way back on old Earth. It was painted green all over, with the requisite red star emblem on its wings and fuselage. It had a huge opening for a nose, a bubble-top canopy, a pair of extremely swept-back wings, and a high tail with smaller wings on top. It was a design that screamed 1940s Russia; it looked like it was going fast, even though it was standing still.

Hunter tried very hard to dredge up from his long lost memory just what this thing might be.

Then it hit him.

"It's a MiG," he said triumphantly. "A Soviet MiG-17."

Zoloff smacked him hard on the back. "Precisely!" he cried. "The best airplane in the world at one time. Fast, could climb very high. And stay up high, which gave it an advantage over American planes."

But this was no usual MiG fighter. Again, it was gigantic. The original MiG-17 was a one-seat, nimble jet airplane, thirty-five feet, nose to tail. This craft was ten times that size, nearly as big as an Empire culverin, a sort of patrol cruiser. Hunter had to admit the scaled-up fighter design made for a magnificent spacecraft. But it also looked very, very old.

"Where did this thing come from?" he asked Zoloff as the three of them began to walk around it, Annie right at Hunter's side. Obviously, he hadn't seen this contraption during his first visit to this place.

"I built it," Zoloff replied proudly. "Practically from scratch. I used to fly a seventeen when I was in our space program. It was a trainer craft by then, but speedy and great to drive."

"You
built
this? From memory?" Hunter asked with astonishment. That's how he'd put together his own Flying Machine when he first arrived in the seventy-third century. This was another link he had to the Ancient Cosmonaut.

"Yes, from my own brain cells," Zoloff revealed. "I knew nothing about how aircraft were built. I only knew how to fly them. But you have to remember, I've had a few thousand years down here by myself. I needed things other than the dizzylando to occupy my time. So when I created this desert world and this base, I started building this crea-ture as well. I always thought if I ever wanted to leave my precious moons, if just for a short flight to Saturn or Mars, this is what I'd do it in."

Hunter knew Zoloff was not exaggerating. The huge MiG was easily 2,000 years old. And while its design looked spectacular from one hundred feet away, up close, Hunter could see its fuselage was covered with hundreds of irregular ion-steel patches, thousands of uneven aluminum rivets, and more than a few dents and scrapes.

"Has it ever taken off?" Hunter asked Zoloff. "Has it ever left the ground?"

Zoloff just shook his head. "
Nyet
," he replied. "And it will not unless you tell me what I want to hear."

"And that is?"

Zoloff smiled and said to him, "Can you fly this thing?"

Hunter smiled, too, then just shrugged as he stepped over a small ocean of ion steering fluid dripping out of the right wing.

Zoloff added, "I mean, it's one way I know for us to get down to where we have to go… and we are rather pressed for time, wouldn't you say?"

Annie pulled Hunter to a stop and hugged him tightly.

"Can you do it, Hawk?" she asked him dramatically. "Can you?"

Hunter looked over the giant spacecraft again. One of its landing gear tires was nearly flat, and many of its cockpit windows were cracked or broken. And who knew what it looked like on the inside.

"Can I fly it?" he asked the question again. "I guess I can give it a try…"

• • •

There were more than a half billion SG troops on the surface of Saturn.

They were spread out all over the terra-formed planet, but most of them were armed with nothing more than an electric pen or a string bubbler. Saturn was the center of the Solar Guards' bureaucratic universe. All personnel changes, logistics files, and supply requests for the fifteen-billion strong Solar Guards emanated from here.

Just as much of Saturn's surface was covered with office buildings and warehouses, some more than ten miles long. Orbit around the huge planet was usually a very busy place as well. But most of the SG ships coming and going were cargo humpers, transition ships, or liaison vessels. It was a rare occasion that an SG warship came anywhere near Saturn. There was never any need.

So it was an extreme rarity that the planet's space traffic control station would get a report of a ship in trouble. Empire starships rarely crashed; they rarely even broke down. The only problem they could have was if something happened to the prop core; starved of the proper amount of power, the mysterious star engine could begin to fail, which would lead to a series of nuclear reactions, whereupon everything involved first blew up, then collapsed into nothingness. Never a pretty sight.

But at this moment the STC station was contemplating a report that a huge, unidentified ship had entered Saturn's atmosphere above the eastern hemisphere, that it was "nearly totally involved in flame" and coming down fast.

The control station put out an immediate string comm asking all ships in orbit around the huge planet to report their status. Within seconds, the space traffic controllers knew that none of the 50,000-plus SG ships circling the planet were having any problems.

Whose ship was crashing then?

Traffic control dispatched spacefighters to the area, this as a large unidentifiable object was picked up on its long-range scan arrays. It was no secret that SG space-fighters on Saturn were flown by second-echelon pilots: retirees, pilots who'd been injured, or men who were no longer fit for combat. Not exactly the cream of the SG's aerial crop.

A squadron of six of these needle-nosed fighters proceeded to the trouble zone, but at a leisurely pace. They knew if this was an Empire ship in trouble, its crew would simply eject in their safety capsules, and the ship would be directed to blow itself up. With Saturn's artificial atmosphere being more than 10,000 miles thick, just as long as the ship in trouble wasn't flying in Supertime, it would take a while for it to fall through that soup. So why hurry?

That attitude changed quickly, though, when the space-fighters arrived at their vector point. They immediately spotted the ship in question, and it was indeed in the process of crashing—or so it seemed. But it was not an Empire ship. What was it then? It was big and green and had wings. It was at least 350 feet long and had a wingspan of at least 200 feet. There was a full size flight deck under its bubble canopy and hatchways down near its nose that allowed the crew to climb in. There were gigantic red stars on its wings and its fuselage. None of the spacefighter pilots had ever seen anything like it.

Their reports both startled and mystified the officers back at space traffic control. Red stars? Big, green, and with wings?

Not knowing what else to do, they ordered the space-fighters to blow it out of the sky.

The spacefighters hastily realigned into two attack formations, a pair of chevrons containing three planes each. The fighters were armed with nose-mounted single-blaster X guns, powerful weapons that lost some of their effectiveness at high altitude but were very deadly nevertheless.

The first flight approached the big green craft from about ten o'clock. The intruder was now about 7,000 miles above the surface of Saturn and still dropping fast. The first three fighters opened up about a mile off the green spaceship's gigantic tail. X beams traveled at several times the speed of light. This meant, to the human eye, a discharge and a strike on target looked instantaneous. But amazingly, the huge mystery craft banked hard left just before the first barrage of beams arrived, causing them to dissipate to no effect. As the SG pilots were contemplating this, they were astonished to see a stream of return fire heading back in their direction. It had come from weapons that had suddenly poked out of the side of the strange green spacecraft's wings. Before the three pilots could react, their spacefighters were hit by this return fire and evaporated in an instant.

Meanwhile, the second trio of SG spacefighters had swooped in from the west. They didn't even get a chance to fire their weapons. Hesitating just a second in the realization that their comrades were so suddenly gone, they, too, met the same fate: three instant beams, fired once again from the wings of the ship; three more spacefighters vaporized.

The big green spacecraft continued its plunge.

• • •

The SG officers inside space traffic control began to panic. They ordered every armed ship within 10,000 miles of the trouble zone into the area. Moving at crank speed—that being the fastest a prop-core ship could fly within the gravitational field of a planet—no less than 300 ships of all types and sizes were soon on the scene.

They set up an aerial gauntlet, stationing themselves at ten-mile intervals all the way down to the surface. These were mostly interplanet ships, not starships, cargo carriers packing a couple nose blasters at best. Still, 300 ships, firing two weapons each, represented a huge wall of destructo-rays that would be near impossible to avoid or survive.

Yet the big green spacecraft was doing just that. Its tail end was on fire, but it was clear now that was simply due to its extreme angle of entry into Saturn's atmosphere. The flames were doing nothing to affect the maneuvering of the strange ship. Indeed, its pilot seemed to know just when and where a beam blast was going to arrive a few seconds before it hit, giving him just the right amount of time to turn this way or that and avoid certain destruction. And while many of the attacking craft were following the intruder down, it was firing back at them wildly, vaporizing dozens of them with well-placed mystery ray weapons of its own.

It went on like this for nearly a half hour. It took that long for the huge craft to make its way through the atmosphere. Only when it was about five miles from the ground did those SG ships still tailing it see three figures exit the craft and glide toward the ground using an ancient escape technology known as a parachute.

The big green spacecraft crashed seconds later into a logistics staging area known as 054. It caused a huge amount of damage.

The three parachutes were seen landing in the vicinity of Warehouse 066.

Hunter was the first to reach the ground.

He'd been the last to bail out of the MiG, but by maneuvering his chute and shifting his weight forward, he was able to speed by Annie and Zoloff and land on an empty concourse in front of a huge rectangular warehouse that he hoped was 066.