by Mack Maloney
It was only later, while running blasters to one side in the brutal Bunker-Sabrini System civil war, that he learned exactly who his client that day was. One Rebel planet in the Bunker-S was holding out until reinforcements could fly in from the next system over. Royalist forces battered the planet for months, until the cavalry finally arrived and chased them away. When the victorious forces beamed down to the planet, they found all of its valiant defenders dead. One contingent had been made up of meres who, it had been whispered, were from "way, way out." On hearing this, Zarex visited the battleground, saw the bodies, and examined their combat weapons. They were from the load he'd dropped off on Myx just months before.
His buyer had been a battalion of the Freedom Brigade.
"But how can such a wretched place have a connection to the Home Planets?" Tomm asked Zarex, now that he'd had a good look at the place again.
"It's a hard question, with a hard answer, Padre," the explorer replied. "Perhaps whoever inhabits the Home Planets — if, in fact, they still exist — knows that this place is the most cursed rock on the Five-Arm, if not the whole Galaxy.
"Add in the whole mythological jumble about the place. At the very least, the person who put that juicy legend together wanted people to believe this planet was holy, scary, unlucky— all at once. Just further incentive to stay away should anyone happen to come upon it. In my mind, that all makes a perfect place to do supersecret things"
Tomm could barely look down at the planet now.
"Amen to that," he said.
Zero Degree Zero. That was the coordinate on Myx that Zarex had beamed down to that day many years ago.
This was a point, located in the western hemisphere, where legend said, the Whites and the Grays had maintained their longest front line, a twenty-five-mile stretch of territory that cut through a deep valley about midway across the planet's largest landmass.
It was no surprise that the ZDZ looked even more devastated than the rest of the planet, if that was possible. Bomb craters everywhere, wide swaths of blaster residue torn into the landscape. The region was extra thick with exotic booby traps. On the entire planet, this seemed to be the absolute worst place for anyone to want to land.
Yet this is where Zarex told them to go.
After circling the coordinate several times, Hunter's keen eye found a spot where he could set the flying machine down without disturbing any of the trip wires. This LZ was actually the highest elevation found in the vicinity of Zero Degree Zero. Not a hill, but the remains of mountain that had been caught in a massive cross fire of blasters ages ago, shearing off its summit.
Hunter landed close to the edge of the flattened-out peak and immediately checked the atmosphere with his environmental management systems. How the planet's puff was still intact was yet another mystery, but his gear said the air was still breathable, though barely so.
This didn't make what they saw outside any more appealing. The wreckage, the echoes of the carnage, the dreary overcast. The pyramids off in the distance. The vibe here was not good.
"Whose idea was this again?" Hunter asked as he gazed out at the endless miles of wreckage.
Both Pater Tomm and Zarex answered on cue, "Yours…"
Hunter just shook his head. "Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting."
He popped the canopy and gingerly climbed out of the flying machine. There was an eerie wind blowing across the ZDZ. It sounded like many voices crying at once. And no matter where Hunter looked, he saw nothing but destruction. Fires still bum-ing, devastated buildings, and tens of thousands of silhouettes of white soot. The ground, when you could see it between the robots, was stained mightily with blood.
Tomm, Zarex, and 33418 climbed down from the cockpit, and Hunter immediately put the flying machine into his Twenty 'n Six.
"Not exactly what I pictured from the fairy tale," Pater Tomm whispered, moving his hand from his forehead to his chest and then giving a tap to each shoulder.
They stood there, the four of them, for a very long time, not talking, letting it all sink in. The all-encompassing destruction under the blur of the dull blue sun became oddly fascinating after a while.
Hell… That was the word that kept popping into Hunter's mind. If there really was a Hell somewhere, it had to look a lot like this.
They set up a small camp. Tomm produced some ancient fire, Zarex commanded 33418 to go on full-passive scan. The robot's head began swiveling back and forth. Even Hunter had to admit he felt better with the ten-foot mechanical man standing watch over them. This place was giving them all the creeps.
But no sooner had 33418 been activated when the usual hum coming from its chest suddenly skyrocketed in pitch. The danker walked to the edge of the precipice and stared down into the trench-filled valley. A beam shot out of his helmet visor and began actively scanning the battlefield below. Suddenly the robot pitched forward — it was almost as if he was throwing himself into the maw. But then the power jets in his boots ignited, and he was airborne a moment later. The three humans watched, mystified, as the danker flew to the deepest, foggiest part of the valley, eventually diving down and disappearing into the murk. He reappeared a moment later, shooting straight up for about one thousand feet, then curving over and coming in for a perfect landing not far from where he'd taken off.
He was carrying with him the remains of two battle robots. He dropped the wreckage at Zarex's feet.
"I think he's trying to tell you something," Hunter said.
"Or educate us," Pater Tomm added.
Zarex tugged at his woolly mane. "I should tell you I'm not the best when it comes to communicating with him," he admitted. "He understands our basic language, but he's so old, I think he was programmed in a more ancient version."
"Go ahead anyway," Hunter urged Zarex. "Encourage him."
Zarex shrugged and then said to the robot, "Ah, OK… Proceed…"
The clanker did not move.
"Ah, carry on?" Zarex tried again.
Still nothing.
'Try this," Hunter said. "Engage___"
The robot moved, but ever so slightly and only for an instant.
"Try it again, Hawk," Zarex told him.
Hunter cleared his throat and said even louder, "Engage!"
That did the trick. Twin beams suddenly erupted out of the clanker's visor, hitting the dead robots at his feet. Almost instantly, the two piles of wreckage began to move. Twin hums of electricity filled the air. Incredibly, the mechanical corpses were beginning to stir.
Pater Tomm's eyes went extra wide. "We might want to take a step back for this," he said.
All three did, and right before their eyes, the two robots began rebuilding themselves. First it was just a clink here, a clank there. Then an arm stretched out. Then a leg started coming together. The process began to speed up, and before they knew it, the two snarling, snorting robots had regained their full height, which was just a tad shorter than 33418 itself.
"So it is true!" Pater Tomm said with a gasp. "They can come back to life!"
Hunter and Zarex were just as startled as the priest.
"I've never… I mean I really didn't think…" Zarex began stuttering.
The battle robots stood about eight feet tall, looking fierce in their metal faces, their huge clamperlike hands, powerful torsos, and ridiculously muscular legs. They had a variety of weapons strapped to their belts and many more sprouting from their huge wrists and forearms. Further diluting the legend, neither robot was white or gray. In fact, one was deep black, the other dirty green.
In perfect synchronous movement, both robots coiled back, and after an instant or two of contemplation, lunged at each other with snarling ferocity. The humans quickly retreated even farther as the mechanical soldiers commenced to tear each other apart again. Few weapons came into play in the brief but brutal battle. It was simply massive force versus massive force. The robots pounded away at each other, creating huge dents and searing rips in their metallic fabric. And sure enough, they fought each other
to an absolute draw. In less than thirty seconds, both robots had been reduced to piles of junk again.
"Wow!" Pater Tomm whispered, as 33418 gently pushed both piles of rubble over the cliff, sending them tumbling back into the deep valley again. 'That certainly was educational."
"It surely was," Zarex said. "I just learned that I don't want to be here when the five million other tin cans on this rock decide to rise from the dead again."
"I'm with you there," Hunter said, visualizing the entire planet in the throes of a relentless mechanical struggle. It was not something to be caught in the middle of. "But now what?"
"Well, that's the problem," Zarex said, scanning the smoky sky above them. "Now, we just have to wait. If the people who know how to get to the Home Planets from here want anything to do with us, they'll have to let us know."
Pater Tomm needed no convincing. He collapsed to the seat of his pants, as if all the energy had suddenly been sucked out of him. Zarex, too, found the most comfortable rock to sit down on. Hunter was at the point of exhaustion as well. The long trip added to so much uncertainty didn't help the condition. What lay now in the future? It had taken them so long and so much effort just to get to this place, it seemed like such a dead end now that they'd finally arrived.
Could they really find their way to the Home Planets from here? At the moment, it seemed very unlikely.
Hunter finally sat down and rubbed his weary eyes. The wind blew again, and it sounded like another thousand voices screaming in agony. The robot stayed rigid, his head again sweeping back and forth, constantly scanning. But definitely slower. The hum coming from his insides had taken on a mournful note.
Pater Tomm looked at the sullen group gathered around the fire and just shook his head. "What a merry band are we," he sighed.
The night came quickly.
Setting in the west, the dull blue sun cast the weirdest shadows as it died away. Purple, aqua, hints of bloodred flooded across the wreckage-strewn plains. Then came complete darkness. There were no moons to glow and precious little starshine here. Once all light was gone, the wind began to absolutely howl. Now it sounded like tens of thousands of people screaming in pain. There were even more horrific cries rising up from the valley below, more chilling than the wind. Low-pitched, mechanical, guttural, like some gigantic danker trying to catch his breath. Every once in a while, a bone-rattling electronic moan would float up from the ancient killing fields, causing the humans to stir. Hunter found himself constantly feeling for the handle of his blaster pistol. Zarex had a massive ray-gun rifle resting on his knees. Pater Tomm sat between them and tended the fire. The robot simply kept scanning.
Hunter tried to pass the time, as always, by staring up at the heavens, but the night sky here was uncomfortably devoid of stars. In almost every direction he looked, he saw only the blackness of space with just a few pinpricks of light shining through. If they needed any further proof just how far out they were, this was certainly it.
The only wash of stars at all was off to due south, looking back into the Five-Arm. Hunter tried to play his game again, tried to see right past this thin band of light, hoping if he squinted hard enough, maybe he'd be able to see right through the center of the Galaxy and beyond.
To where Earth lay.
To where Xara was.
But it didn't work too well this time. Her face came to him as always. And her near perpetual smile. But her hair — what color was it again? More brown, than blond? Or the other way around? And her eyes — they were blue, right? Or were they green? Hunter shook his head sadly, his gaze still fixed on the lonely patch of starlight to the south. The truth was, Xara's image barely registered in his memory. Even now, her face began to fade. He fought a silent battle to retain it, but it was no good. She was just too far away.
The hours dragged on. The howling below became more intense, the sky even scarier in its near emptiness.
After a while, Zarex slowly eased his way closer to where Tomm was sitting.
"May I have a private conversation with you, Father?" Zarex asked once the wind had died down a little.
"Do you mean a confession, my son?" Tomm replied, his tone clearly indicating that he would rather forgo such a thing.
Zarex almost laughed. "We'd be here an eternity for that, Padre."
"I feel we might be here that long, anyway," Tomm replied.
Zarex nodded in Hunter's direction. The fighter pilot was fast asleep. Or so it seemed.
"Who is he, Father?" Zarex asked. "Do you know?"
Tomm looked over at Hunter.
"I'm not exactly sure," he replied carefully. "He is a different sort, that much I will grant you. But a likable chap. And an honorable one as well."
"He seems that way, which is no little relief," Zarex said. "But how can we be sure?"
"For several reasons," Tomm answered. "His compulsion to find the Home Planets is genuine… of this much I am certain. And the Freedom Brigade were honorable men. This 1 know from the few months I spent with them — though at the time they were all very reticent to discuss where they came from exactly, which I now realize was understandable. Finally, I just stopped asking."
"But where is the connection then, Father?"
"It's simple: the men I knew from the Freedom Brigade were all very much like Mr. Hunter over there. They were different from anyone else I'd ever met out here — and so is he. And he keeps some things close to the vest, just as they did. Makes me think that he actually is connected to them somehow and that this calling-home stuff might be real. He's on a quest — a soul-quest of sorts. I just think it's my priestly duty to help him."
Zarex paused for a moment. A strange green light went streaking over their heads. Finally he asked, "Another question Padre: Do you believe in all this Empire nonsense?"
Tomm shrugged. It was not the first time he'd been asked the question.
"I'm not sure," he replied. "I mean, an immense galactic empire, out there, somewhere? It seems we would've run into some of these people by now if it was true. But then again, maybe we have, and we just don't know it. These Empire types are supposedly very talented at concealing themselves, and the legends say they are very careful in selecting which planets they choose to reveal themselves to. Either way, they are covered insofar as keeping their presence among us mute, until it is our time to know, that is."
"Yes, but couldn't that simply be a convenient deception, proof that it's all a fabrication?" Zarex asked. "I mean, if we've never met them, does that mean they aren't really there? That's the only either/or in the equation."
"Then it's probably an unknowable thing," Tomm replied. It was his favorite saying. "But why did you ask me that in the first place, my son?"
Zarex shrugged and again nodded toward the sleeping pilot. "Because I, too, think Hunter's quest is legitimate. He also saved my life, thus I am bound to help him."
"And?"
"And I think it is odd that Mr. Hunter seems so much like these mythical people from the Home Planets yet… I believe that if there really was a big empire out there, slowly but surely making its way toward us, Mr. Hunter would be just the type of person to be the first off the ship, to greet us. A benign invader. The combination really becomes a very mysterious thing."
Tomm nodded in agreement. He knew Hunter well, yet then again, knew very little about him.
"I saw some very strange things happen during the war on Zazu-Zazu," Tomm confessed. "And I will tell you that Mr. Hunter certainly has some unusual acquaintances, with some very unusual weaponry, not the least of which is that flying machine of his."
He paused. "But is he from this mythical Empire we keep hearing about?" he asked in a whisper. "Maybe that's an unknowable thing as well."
It was just a few minutes past midnight when 33418 suddenly stopped scanning again.
The sound of his electronics changed so abruptly, Hunter woke up immediately, blaster pistol in hand, ready for anything. Other things had changed on the mountaintop. The wind had ceased
howling. The air had become thick and pungent; And the restless spirits of the mechanical soldiers below had become quiet as well.
Too quiet? Hunter thought.
Tomm and Zarex were quickly awake, too. They'd also detected the new hum coming from the danker. The robot was now frozen in place, looking off to the west.
"Is this what happens when he's spotted something?" Pater Tomm asked Zarex.
The big explorer just shrugged. "I'm never really sure what he's up to." He's a good bodyguard, but beyond that, who knows?"
The humming grew louder. Then the robot lifted his arm and pointed to the west. They all looked in that direction, but it was very dark, and the smoke made it difficult to see very far. But then, through the murk and gloom, Hunter spotted something way off in the distance flying above the war-torn fields.
Tomm and Zarex saw it, too. It was a single, glowing orb.
"What is this?" the priest asked Zarex worriedly. "I thought everything out there was supposed to be dead."
"On this place, you can never know," Zarex replied.
No sooner were those words out of the explorer's mouth when the object was suddenly right on them. It looked like a ball of light at first but just a few feet away from the edge of the cliff, it morphed into the image of a horribly disfigured woman. Eyes, blood red and bulging; a nose crooked and long and covered with growths. Teem black and dripping, long hair trailing like a tangle of slime. The skin was a sickly corpse gray.
And it was coming right at Hunter. He saw its mouth open to gigantic proportions, its teeth turning into a mouthful of tiny daggers. He quickly dove to his right. Had he waited a second longer, this thing would have bitten his head right off. Instead, the apparition rocketed right over him, dragging a trail of foul-smelling smoke behind it.
"Is this the person you made your blaster deal with?" Hunter yelled over to Zarex.
"Hardly!" the explorer replied to the grim joke.
They watched as the apparition turned over and dove on them once again. This time Zarex was its target. Two bony hands with razorlike fingernails suddenly appeared out in front of it. Hunter could see the gleam coming off the pointed tips — they were that sharp.