by Mack Maloney
The Princess blinked her eyes, the kid and the other guy did as well. The goon in the hair suit let out a loud, fake growl.
The Princess looked at the viz disk and just shook her head.
"Who were those guys?" she whispered.
2
No one knew why Hawk Hunter's flying machine went so fast.
Its design had come to him in a dream one night shortly after he found himself stranded on the planet called Fools 6. But while the fact that the craft looked like nothing else in the Galaxy might have been a function of his slumbering vision, why it could move the way it did was the result of pure chance — or coincidence — even though there were many learned minds scattered among the stars that would argue that these two things did not exist.
In order to power his flying machine, Hunter had hooked up a series of what he thought were identical energy transfer devices taken from an ancient Empire ship he'd found wrecked over the hill from his dwelling on Fools 6. The crashed vessel turned out to be a Kaon Bombardment ship, a frightening military vessel that had the capability to freeze time itself over a battlefield, allowing its troops to slay their enemies, literally at leisure.
Hunter's seemingly random mating of the Kaon ship's Time Shifter components to the business end of his machine's power plant gave it the ability to travel very, very fast. So fast, in fact, there was no way to measure its velocity in terms of distance traveled. It was better to simply measure it in terms of time elapsed, usually from here to there in a thousandth of a second.
But Hunter's flying machine was both mysterious and unique. Though only the size of a standard Empire spacefighter, it had interstellar capability, and they did not. In fact, Hunter's craft could travel faster between star systems than a gigantic Empire Starcrasher battle cruiser, and they were able to do it at a speed of two light-years a minute.
He and the priest — his name was Pater Tomm — were looking for a lost planet.
It was called Tonk. It was located in what was once known as the Zorro-Wilco star system. Hunter and Pater Tomm had spent the last six weeks working their way across the midsection of the Five-Arm, the fifth of the Galaxy's multiple spiraling arms, trying to find a way to this place. It was not an easy thing to do. This part of the Five-Arm was on the edge of the Fringe itself, that being the halo of outlying stars that, in many places, marked the farthermost reaches of the Milky Way galaxy. The midsection of the Five-Arm was particularly dangerous space to travel through. Considered almost desolate when compared to the massive clusters of stars closer to the center of the Galaxy, there were still tens of millions of systems out here, they supported hundreds of millions of planets, and many of those planets had people on them. Lots of people meant lots of opportunity for disagreements and war, and Hunter and Pater Tomm had seen their share of both on this journey.
In many places, way out here, war was simply a way of life. The recent dustup on the tiny jungle moon had hardly been an isolated incident. In the six weeks since the end of the noble but ultimately disastrous war on Zazu-Zazu, Hunter and Pater Tomm had found themselves involved in no less than a dozen other conflicts simply because many sectors of the space they were traveling through also served as interplanetary combat zones.
Most of these wars had a clear good guy and bad guy, and when the cause seemed just and the conflict unavoidable. Hunter and Pater Tomm had chosen sides and fought with the good guys. They did this in return for navigation data or information mat might bring them closer to the elusive stepping-stone of Tonk. These enlistments rarely lasted for more than a day. Once they'd signed on and Hunter was able to do his thing with his magnificent (some said enchanted) flying machine — well, the conflict was usually decided quickly thereafter, and always in the favor of their employers. And while Pater Tomm despised the notion that they were, in effect, serving as mercenaries, he knew this was a necessary evil if they wanted to find their way through this vast, troubled neighborhood of the Five-Arm and reach their first goal.
That Tonk was so damn hard to find was in itself very strange. It was once the most prominent planet in this part of space. At one time, Tonk had been a major spaceship rebuild-and-repair facility, boasting customers from thousands of light years around. Ship owners and government officials would wait up to a decade to have their massive ion-ballast space cruisers cored out, restored, and renovated on Tonk. At its peak, more than one hundred million people lived on the smallish planet, and every one of them was filthy rich. And how rich was that? At one point, the citizens had talked about reigniting Tonk's dying sun, a massive space engineering project. But alas, this proved too costly even for them. When the light from Tonk's sun eventually began to fade, just about everyone on the planet packed up and blasted off, heading for other, brighter places to live.
All that had been two thousand years ago. Tonk was so far off the beaten track now, it didn't even appear on any of the standard star charts, at least, none that Hunter and Pater Tomm had picked up in their six-week odyssey. It had simply become lost.
Finding Tonk was important, though. For it was here, Pater Tomm believed, a man lived who might know how they could get closer to their ultimate destination: the star system known as the Home Planets.
If it existed at all.
Shortly after leaving the jungle moon, they found their way to a desolate planet called Sigma-TKE.
It was second out from a dying white dwarf sun, the only puffed planet remaining in a small system of five. It was very out of the way, which was essential, because on top of everything else, Hunter was also a wanted man. He was AWOL from the Empire's military forces, and as an officer, the penalty for such a crime was banishment to some uncharted three-digit dimension, essentially a sentence worse than death.
But was anybody really looking for him? Had word of his desertion reached all the way back to Earth yet? He didn't know. It took six weeks to traverse the Galaxy, and that's about how long he'd been gone. Maybe not quite yet, but he had to assume that somebody would be sent out to track him down eventually. Until then, he knew it was crucial to lowball his true identity, stay off the more beaten interstellar pathways, and concentrate on finding a way to the Home Planets, that place from where the Freedom Brigade was thought to have come. The place Hunter believed in every fiber of his being was calling him home.
He landed the flying machine on the remote highlands of Sigma-TKE and did a quick ground-level environmental check. The planet's puff was still adequate, though the surface of the place was entirely desert, meaning the air would be dry. Pater Tomm replicated some food and drink and lit a huge fire. Flames were good for the soul, the priest said, and Hunter could not disagree with him. For the first time in a long time, he set aside his crash helmet and loosened his flight suit. He felt the strain finally begin to lift from his shoulders.
They ate and drank and watched the wash of stars come out above their heads. This star system might have been isolated, but it was beautiful nevertheless. As they turned away from its pale sun, the night sky became filled with tiny bright white lights. These were moonlets, zillions of them, orbiting the desert planet, comprising a ring more readily found circling a gas giant. It made for a very elegant spectacle while they took their evening meal.
Once done, Pater Tomm pulled out the old star charts given to them by the rebels' intelligence officer. The priest refilled his wine cup and began to spread the parchments out on the flat, open ground. Leaning forward on dusty knees, electronic magnifying glass in one hand, his quadtrol in the other, he began poring over the maps almost as if they were ancient religious texts, which in some ways they were.
Some of the charts were intricately inscribed and provided high detail for those star systems once considered important. Others simply presented thousands of connected dots punched into an otherwise featureless map. Either way, they made little sense to Hunter. Even during his brief tenure as a military officer of the Fourth Empire, he could never understand the freaking things, and this collection was no different. Wh
ile bearing a reputation for being isolated and sparse, this part of the mid-Fifth Arm actually looked damned crowded to him. Trying to wend one's way through the millions of star clusters and systems just on luck and pluck alone would take a few thousand years, even in a vessel as speedy as his own. Yet he couldn't imagine the ancient maps making that task any simpler, just the opposite, in fact.
Tomm, on the other hand, knew how to read the old star charts. He was what the ancients called a navigator. Hunter was not. So he sat back and tended the wine bottle, leaving the heavy thinking to the priest.
He knew it would be better that way.
They had just drained their fourth mug of wine when Pater Tomm suddenly came to life.
"Very interesting… " Hunter heard him whisper.
"You've found something, Padre?"
"Alas, it is not our goal," Tomm said without looking up. "But I am familiar with some of the more notorious star systems nearby. Here is one known as Zorro-Beta. Tonk's star system used to be called Zorro-Wilco… You see? They seem related, which means they may be close."
He flipped over to the next star chart, the twelfth of nearly one hundred parchments. At the same time, he held his cup out, hinting that Hunter should refill it. The pilot complied. Pater Tomm slurped his star juice noisily.
"This might take a while," he said. "You should get some sleep, don't you think?"
Hunter could only shrug in reply. He wasn't into sleeping, now or ever. Sleep was time wasted, or at least that's what he'd come to believe in the past few weeks. This was not some video game he was playing here. He was on a quest to find a system of planets that might not exist, at the same time possibly being pursued by the Empire, maybe with a price on his head. It didn't seem right to waste a single second out here falling asleep. He had to get to the Home Planets; he had to find out if they were real. He felt this deeply, almost painfully, way, way down in his psyche. Why? Because the soldiers he'd found on Zazu-Zazu were more like him than anyone he'd met since coming to this strange time and place. He had to find those people again, to find their home. To see if there were any more like him.
How could he possibly sleep with all that going on?
He glanced back at Tomm, studying the maps feverishly now. Hunter had his excuse, but what was driving Pater Tomm on this quest? The priest had hooked up with the Freedom Brigade shortly after their arrival on Zazu-Zazu, providing them with spiritual comfort as they faced what would ultimately become their final battle. He had even gone so far as to journey to several Fringe systems seeking weapons for his adopted unit, frustrating sojourns as it turned out. But Tomm was there when the climactic battle began, and he'd seen the last of the Freedom Brigade disappear in the smoke of that battle. Later, he'd helped Hunter search among the dead, looking for one last soul who could point them in the right direction to the Home Planets.
They'd found that poor vessel, lying close to death on the battlefield. And he'd given them a few tantalizing clues before drawing his final breath. His last words were spent practically begging the priest to lead Hunter back to the Brigade's home system. Though he had little idea even where to start, Pater Tomm had agreed, and their journey had begun soon afterward. But was it simply the strength of that promise — the honor of his given word — that pushed him forward? Or was it the vocation that every soul in the Galaxy needed ministering, even those who dwelled in places that might not even exist?
Or was Tomm simply weary of traipsing from planet to planet, system to system, cluster to cluster, trying to single-handedly save the spirits of those many billions who inhabited the girdle of the Five-Arm?
Even after these six weeks. Hunter still didn't know. But the most likely answer, he finally decided, was probably a bit of all three.
He drained his wine and spread out a sheet of pressed gold. It was the material of choice for sleeping under the stars, and eventually he did decide to lie down upon it, if just to stretch his tired bones. The light display above him grew even more fantastic. He quickly realized that all of the moonlets were in separate but very close orbits; they were of varying sizes and shapes, as well. This meant that while some were moving across the sky at a relatively slow pace, others seemed to be streaking by. It looked like pandemonium, like the moonlets were but a heartbeat away from colliding with each other and ending the display with one massive pulverization. But then Hunter came to realize that this wasn't chaos, it was a dance. A dance be-tween gravity and mass, choreographed long ago, millions of years perhaps. He took a deep breath and felt the dry air of the little desert world warm up his oxygen-saturated lungs. It was sad in a way. The moonlets' ballet was an amazing example of cosmic beauty, way out here, on a small forgotten planet, in a long-lost star system, with no one else to see it except him and Pater Tomm…
He closed his eyes, just for a moment, and by habit tried to conjure up an image of Earth. It seemed like hundreds of years had passed since he'd been there. In fact, sometimes it seemed like he'd never been there at all. But the vision that came to him now was one of a shimmering diamond, reflecting the jewel-like quality of the mother planet. Revolving around that warm, yellow sun, the oceans, the ancient bridges, the floating cities. Everywhere buildings soaring, the star catchers lighting up the night. No wonder it all seemed like a dream. There was no place like it anywhere else. Nothing even came close.
Earth meant something else to him. Close to that part of his soul that had sent him on this strange quest, was the vision of the beautiful Xara, Princess of the Galaxy, and daughter of O'Nay, the Emperor himself. When he thought of Earth, he was really thinking of Xara. Her eyes. Her shape. Her hair. She, too, was a jewel, a living jewel from some fantastic diamond sun, a creature of startling beauty.
She had come into his life right after he'd won the famous Earth Race; at first it was to save him from the clutches of her rather dysfunctional family and later to help him take the first step in his search for someplace to call home. But faster than his flying machine could ever go, he had fallen for her and fallen hard. Space was curved, gravity could be a bitch, and he had been in love with Xara at first sight. These were the only three things Hunter was sure of these days. Everything else was really up for grabs.
He wondered what she was doing at that very moment. Was she asleep? Awake? Lying in the arms of another? Or was she staring up at the stars, just as he was doing? Might she be thinking about him, just as he was thinking about her? What were the chances of that?
He turned away from the moonlet parade and looked toward the thick band of stars that dominated the sky fifty degrees above the horizon. If he tried hard enough, would he be able to see right through the center of the Galaxy? Could he see beyond that brilliant clutter of a hundred billion stars, through its middle and clear to the other side? Because if he could, then somewhere way, way out there, was Earth. And that's where Xara was.
"By God's good grace!"
Hunter was awake in a shot. He sat bolt upright, his blaster pistol in hand, pointing in all directions at once.
"What is it?" he yelled, only to be surprised that it was light again, and that the night had gone and had taken the moonlets' light show with it. His face felt slightly warm; a very dull sun was peeking up over the horizon.
So much for not falling asleep…
And now Pater Tomm was standing before him, cassock dirty, collar unlatched, a wine-stained grin reflecting the early-morning light. The priest didn't smile very often. When he did, it was usually for good reason.
"Favorable news, Padre?" Hunter asked him now.
"Bingo that, my brother," the priest replied, holding up what must have been the oldest star chart of them all. "For I have found it. I finally know how to get to Tonk."
3
Hunter had never been to an 8-Ball system before.
These were collections of planets stuck orbiting a nearly depleted star, one that was just a step away from becoming a full-fledged black dwarf. There was precious little light in an 8-Ball system. Sometimes the
illumination coming from any gas-giant planets on hand was a hundred times brighter than that being thrown off by the system's dying, shrinking sun. This, and the fact that the star could go nova at any moment and obliterate everything for millions of miles around, made 8-Balls very strange places to call home. Who lived in an 8-Ball system? Cutthroats, murderers, and criminals, mostly. Or people on the run. Or people who simply hated other people. Whatever the reason, living the 8-Ball life was not for the weak of heart.
This one was appropriately nicknamed Dim Bulb 3. It held thirteen planets. Three were gas giants; the rest were rocks. When the ancient puffers reached this part of the Galaxy thousands of years before, they'd apparently bypassed the sickly sun and engineered two of the giants to revolve on roughly parallel orbits. The intention was to give a semblance of daylight to the solid planets floating nearby, but it had been a halfhearted affair, even back then. As a result, the dim light from the coupled gas giants provided only half of what would be considered normal sunlight. This meant a system with lots of shadows, lots of murk, lots of places to hide. The fifth planet in this unsavory bunch was Tonk.
It was 238 light-years from Sigma-TKE to Dim Bulb 3. Hunter's flying machine covered the distance in just under two hours, using what he considered cruising speed: two light-years a minute, the same speed as an Empire Starcrasher at full throttle. While his speed could be unlimited — he really didn't know— he still had to consider the wear and tear on the rest of his craft. He figured if the empire ships held together at two light years a minute, there was a good chance his would too. Anything faster than that for extended periods of time tended to peel the paint off his rig.
They found Tonk right away and entered orbit around the gloomy little world. Its past glory long gone, Tonk was now a graveyard planet, a place where old spaceships came to die. Graveyard planets were the result of a strange space-faring custom. When an interstellar vessel came to the end of its useful life, there was really nothing else its owner could do but crash it into a planet or send it into a sun. Sending an old ship into a sun was considered very bad luck in just about every part of the Galaxy. On the Five-Arm it was almost never done. On the other hand, crashing dying ships onto a graveyard planet was a very strong tradition here. It was supposed to bring clusters of good luck. It also meant that the planet soon became a scrap heap for ion movers looking for cheap parts. These people were rarely model citizens, either.