The words forced his eyes shut. His head rested on her shoulder.
“I know.”
“So you’re okay with dying? You’d rather fly one more mission than spend another twenty or thirty years with me?”
“It’s not that,” he said, re-opening his eyes and lifting his head so they were looking at each other. “We’re going to see each other again. I know it. Maybe not on this planet. Maybe not in a day or a year, but we will.”
“How can you know that?”
There was no accusation in her question—maybe because she had grown up on Kerchin-Joshua. It was said mystics came to the planet because they saw things in the reflected light of the crystals, visions that revealed many of the galaxy’s secrets. For anyone who was familiar with the dazzling array of lights and colors that the underground caves offered, anything could seem possible.
“Lancelot told me,” he said. “And I believe her. Somehow, she knows Vere, and I truly think Vere understands things about life and death that most of us don’t understand yet. Vere said I’ll see you again, so I believe it.”
It was her turn to put her head on his shoulder. His arm slipped around her and pulled her closer. A moment later, he felt the cloth of his shirt grow wet. In addition to never seeing her lose her temper, he had never seen her cry. The strength she exhibited every day, not just in accepting life in a place like Kerchin-Joshua where the elements were brutal and life was hard, but in her general outlook, was one of the reasons he had fallen in love with her.
She didn’t sob or curse or say anything. Instead, the two of them remained motionless on the bed until the tears stopped.
“You really have to go?” she said.
“If I don’t, billions of people will die. They might die anyway, but I have to do whatever I can.”
She gave a half hearted smile. “Well, I hope this Vere of yours is right.”
“So do I.”
“Do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
She tried to offer a smile a second time but again failed. “If we are going to see each other again, don’t be gone too long.”
He knew her enough to know that was all she would say on the subject. If he pressed any further she would shut off and they might say something they would later regret.
He nodded, turned, and put some clothes and supplies into a backpack, then stood over where she was still sitting on the bed. With her head between his hands, he leaned down and kissed the top of her forehead and told her he loved her. When she said the same in return, he turned and left.
35
More than two dozen ships had arrived to confront the Juggernaut. However, they weren’t fighting the mammoth vessel—none of their weapons could possibly harm the moving fortress—as much as they were doing their best to slow its progress. Some were racing in circles around it, seeing how close they could get before the enemy slowed to raise its hangar doors so the mechs could appear. Others pelted it with lasers to see if hitting it in one area versus another might have a different effect or elicit a response from the invaders.
The Purple Hawk watched the proceedings from afar. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the Juggernaut or its forces. He stayed away because of the collection of pirates, stunt pilots, and random people trying to do whatever they could to delay the Hannibal’s arrival at Greater Mazuma. It was well known among skilled fighter pilots that it was dangerous to fight near such thrillseekers. The weekend warrior was more of a threat than the skilled pilot because their lack of training made them unpredictable. In space, unpredictable was dangerous.
A perfect example of that unfolded before the Purple Hawk’s eyes. A pirate in a converted Cirullian fighter raced toward the Juggernaut, fired a single proton torpedo, then banked left, diagonally away from the back corner of the enemy vessel. It was what the Purple Hawk would have done if he were piloting the same vessel. But only a hundred yards away from the Cirullian fighter was a DD-Tramex spacejet. The pilot fired a pair of laser streaks from tiny blasters he had probably mounted onto his own craft. Instead of banking away from the Juggernaut’s primary weapons, the pilot turned toward them. This put him on a path directly for the Cirullian fighter, which had to swerve out of the way to avoid colliding with the other ship. In doing so, it moved too close to the Juggernaut’s thrusters and was engulfed in vaporizing energy. The Purple Hawk shook his head and sighed. The pilot of the spacejet probably didn’t even know he had made the elementary mistake that caused another pilot to die. That was what made undisciplined pilots so dangerous.
Occasionally, the Purple Hawk would set his Thunderbolt’s engines to full power and race across the Juggernaut’s bow, but only when he saw other pilots weren’t nearby to get in his way. More often, he sat back and watched how the Juggernaut responded to other vessels. Part of his success over the years was due to being able to see only a few movements of an enemy fighter and correctly assess that pilot’s tendencies. If he could do the same thing one more time, it would be infinitely more valuable than anything else he could hope to do in his Thunderbolt.
A streak of laser fire sailed past his ship. It missed him by a hundred yards but he still moved further away from where he had been. Looking at his displays, he identified the ship whose pilot was so incompetent that he couldn’t hit the largest vessel anyone had ever seen. It was the same DD-Tramex spacejet that had caused the pirate’s death. The Purple Hawk didn’t care about pirates any more than he cared about insects. If they left him alone he was willing to leave them alone as well, but if they got in his way or annoyed him, he would crush them. It was clear the pilot of the spacejet had to be taught a lesson.
The Purple Hawk moved the control stick forward, angling his fighter to head near the spacejet. When the pilot of the DD-Tramex turned for another pass at the Juggernaut, the Purple Hawk gunned his engine and moved in behind him. The spacejet fired another laser shot toward the Juggernaut. At the same time, the Purple Hawk let loose a pair of blasts that took out both of the spacejet’s directional controls, leaving the DD-Tramex without the ability to turn in any direction. The Purple Hawk brought his Thunderbolt to a near stop, then watched as the spacejet flew straight into the side of the Juggernaut, bursting into a small, blue explosion.
And still the Juggernaut continued forward, toward Greater Mazuma. The pilots, some skilled and many haphazard, had managed to slow the Hannibal vessel’s progress. The extra time might allow the flagships at Greater Mazuma to transport hundreds of thousands more children off the planet. It wasn’t enough, however. No amount of delaying the enemy would possibly be enough if billions of people would still eventually be killed. The only truly desirable goal was stopping it completely, so that the men and women and children of Greater Mazuma were allowed to grow old in peace.
Resigned to his fate, knowing that decades of being a fighter pilot had led to this one confrontation, the Purple Hawk sighed and began to unfasten his helmet. In the academy, it had been beaten into every cadet’s head that they were never to take their pilot’s helmet off. In all the time he had been flying Thunderbolts he never had.
With it on, the Purple Hawk could survive in the vacuum of space until his oxygen reserves ran out. With it off, if he were forced to eject from his Thunderbolt he would die in a matter of moments. Having it off, though, afforded him the chance to see the vessel he was facing with his own eyes.
A Thunderbolt couldn’t possibly defeat the enemy in front of him. And yet he couldn’t return to Greater Mazuma with his head held high if he didn’t know he had done his best. Nor could he flee from the scene and settle down on some quiet and out-of-the-way planet. He hadn’t become known as the Purple Hawk by running away from fights. He had earned the moniker because wherever laser blasts were being fired he had been the last fighter flying. Now, though, he knew he would die. Maybe in the next few minutes or the next hour. Soon.
He sighed and contemplated the enormity of the Juggernaut, a thing he knew he couldn’t defeat but also couldn’t allow to
pass by him without a real fight.
“Okay then.”
Taking one last look at the monster making its way through the Mardigan sector, he put his helmet back over his head. Instantly, an array of sensors gave faint highlights through his visor displaying where other ships were located, the makes and models of those crafts, as well as their approximate velocities. After scanning the area and seeing what the various ships were doing, he pushed the throttle forward on his Thunderbolt and began toward the massive vessel, gradually at first, but building up speed in a matter of seconds until he was soaring toward the invader as fast as any other ship in the vicinity.
He guided the Thunderbolt to fly in a straight line toward the top left corner of the Juggernaut. As he did, he fired a laser blast every two seconds to let the Hannibal know he was coming. As he got nearer, he saw two of the cannons along the vessel’s side swivel in an attempt to target his fighter. One moved from the starboard side and one from port. A moment before either could lock onto him, he swerved downward, ensuring his Thunderbolt didn’t pass through the Juggernaut’s crosshairs even for a second.
A Type-KL space racer, a single-man craft built for speed, flew past him in the opposite direction. The two ships passed within a mere one hundred feet of each other. With just his eyes the Purple Hawk would have seen only a gray blur pass by him. With the augmented vision of his helmet’s visor he was able to see that the pilot of the space racer had given him a thumbs up as the two ships passed each other.
The Purple Hawk was not one for being lighthearted. It wasn’t possible after the space battles he had been a part of. The deaths of so many friends had made him cold and hard. Even destroying an enemy vessel was a solemn task because those ships were also piloted by men and women who had friends and families of their own. Yet he couldn’t help but smile at the Type-KL pilot’s positive outlook. If they stayed in the fight against the Juggernaut they were going to die. It wasn’t a matter of if but when, and yet some random person in a craft that was meant for joy-riding was in the same fight as the most decorated Vonnegan fighter pilot of all time, and the pilot had the audacity to give a thumbs up. The Purple Hawk grinned and shook his head.
On his way around the other side of the Juggernaut, he spotted one of the hangar doors that occasionally released the mechs. His thumb moved to the top of the control stick and pressed a glowing red button. A proton torpedo discharged and rocketed toward the hangar door. It exploded in an array of yellows and oranges, and he followed up the explosion with a dozen laser shots, each hitting the same metal panel.
Right on cue, the other hangar door in sight rose and a mech, the color of dried blood, appeared. The Purple Hawk assumed the two hangar doors on the other side of the ship had also been raised and that two other mechs were also coming for him. The displays beside his navigation system confirmed this by showing three new dots in the area.
The mech closest to him turned on its transport disc and began toward him with its long ion sword. An alarm chirped in his helmet and he jammed the controls downward. A streak of energy sailed past the spot where he had been. Sending the Thunderbolt into a spiral, he looked back over his shoulder to see the white mech aiming its ion bow at him. Before it could fire a second time, he turned right, then jerked the controls hard the other way to put some distance between him and the mechs.
On his displays, he saw a dot disappear as a random ship exploded into a burst of white. Where it had been, the gray mech brought its scythe back into a readied position.
As the Purple Hawk watched, the white mech fired another ion arrow. This one streaked across space until it cut through the middle of a converted space harrier, no doubt belonging to a local pirate. The harrier erupted into a series of explosions as it flew away from the battle until finally it dispersed into thousands of tiny bits.
The Purple Hawk brought his Thunderbolt around for another pass, but this time he flew directly in line with the cannon pointed toward him, making sure to keep one of the mechs between him and the larger weapon. When the black mech moved to get out of the line of fire, the Purple Hawk adjusted his course to keep directly in line with the the Juggernaut and the mech, daring the Hannibal flagship to fire on him at the mech’s expense.
The mech held out its huge iron gauntlet, revealing what looked to be a scale with a cylinder balanced on either side. As the Purple Hawk continued racing toward it, he unleashed a series of blasts that pelted the mech. Halfway toward the mech he saw a cloud of energy appear from its unconventional weapon. The cloud expanded in size faster than he thought possible. It also seemed to move toward his ship. The controls of his Thunderbolt creaked as he swerved away from the deadly poison.
Knowing the other mechs were nearby, he sent the Thunderbolt into a spiraling nosedive. Glancing above him, he saw a streak of energy pass by where his ship would have been if he hadn’t changed direction. To his side, he watched a junker vessel, too heavily modified to tell what it had originally been, fire a pair of dual-cannon lasers at the mechs. Before the junker could perform another maneuver, the reddish brown mech came up beside it and sliced the ship in half with its ion sword. Just like that, another of the pilots fighting alongside the Purple Hawk was gone. A moment later, another disappeared from existence when one of the Juggernaut’s cannons erupted in a brilliant flash of energy.
From a distance, the Purple Hawk unleashed another proton torpedo and then another pair of laser blasts. He ignored the mechs and instead focused on the hangar doors of the Juggernaut to see what kind of response it would elicit.
To his surprise, the mechs ignored him. Instead, hundreds of projectiles began streaming from portholes alongside the Juggernaut’s hull. Each was smaller than a proton torpedo. From the way they flew through space, he could tell they weren’t meant to be weapons. Some of the cylinders remained close to the Juggernaut. Others dispersed in a wide pattern around the perimeter of the fighting. He knew exactly what they were, and soon enough the space around him went from being a void with sparkling stars in the distance to being filled with enormous circles of energy—hundreds of portals forming a defense around the Juggernaut. In front of him, he could no longer see the moon-sized ship, only a white disc of energy. The same behind him, to his sides, above, and below him.
Looking down at his displays, the Purple Hawk saw three more ships in the area were gone. Each had been sliced in half due to having only part of their ship get past newly formed portals. The back half of the ships had been caught in the portal’s energy and were transported across the battlefield.
The good news was that by releasing the portals, the enemy had been forced to further slow its progress toward Greater Mazuma. The bad news was that on the cockpit displays in front of him, the Purple Hawk saw the four mechs had moved close to the Juggernaut. It was what he would do if the Athens Destroyer he had flown out of was going to unleash explosives to the surrounding area...
An alert told him the Juggernaut fired blasts from three of its cannons. All he could see were circles of energy, but he knew what would happen. Without another thought, he jammed the Thunderbolt’s controls to the side so he was racing away from the middle of the nearest portal. A moment later, a streak of laser fire erupted from that same portal, disappeared into the next portal on the other side of him, then reappeared three portals down, heading in the opposite direction.
The sensors in his helmet were confused by what was happening, forcing him to turn the controls off so he was looking through a clear visor. A display by his left hand showed the progression of what was happening. Three cannon blasts were being guided through various portals like a laser ricocheting inside a room covered with mirrors. Because the portals were closely arrayed, the blasts would appear and disappear before anyone could make sense of where it had come from or where it was going. Their speed made them resemble thousands of laser streaks. As the Purple Hawk watched, dots that noted various ships in the area vanished one by one. He saw the Type-KL space racer, piloted by the person who had gi
ven him a thumbs up, turn away from the Juggernaut in an apparent attempt to get outside the perimeter of portals. A moment later that dot disappeared from the display as well.
Knowing he was trapped, knowing he couldn’t hope to outrace the cannon blasts randomly appearing in the blink of an eye, the Purple Hawk did the only thing he could think of. He fired every remaining proton torpedo into the closest portal, hoping they would either make their way back to the Juggernaut or else force the Hannibal to turn off their portals.
To his surprise, the Hannibal did disengage the hundreds of portals. But only for a split second. When they burst back into life a moment later, portals around him again, his ship’s alarms immediately screamed. Four projectiles were racing toward him.
The Purple Hawk had just enough time, as the proton torpedoes sped toward him, to appreciate how ironic it was that the most decorated Vonnegan pilot of all time would meet his fate not at the hands of a sworn enemy or lifelong foe but by his own weapons. Then his ship erupted in a blaze of light and fire.
36
When CamaLon’s best scientists and engineers finished taking apart Lancelot’s ship and were on their way to building the first moveable containment field, Talbot took a break from overseeing the preparations. There was only one place he wanted to go.
When he got to his parents’ house, however, it looked and felt completely different than what he remembered. The stone exterior had always represented safety to him. He could turn the corner, see the stone walls, and know he was soon to walk through a sanctuary where he could be alone with his thoughts or else sit at the table and talk to his mother for hours. Now, as he approached, the stone seemed fragile, decaying. The rock itself would slowly wither away over thousands of years because of the wind and rain. The mortar between each stone would go much quicker, and he noticed that a portion toward the ground was already flaking away. If one of the joints were to weaken, the entire house could collapse.
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