by Mack Maloney
Or was invasion force a better term?
He walked the length of the congested space launch farm. There were twelve gigantic docking ports here that could handle big ships, and hundreds of smaller pads where patrol craft and sky cars were maintained. At the end of this mile-long stretch of tarmac was a long, tubular building emitting a barely visible yet clearly sparkling stream of greenish mist. This was an ion-ballast works. While the much quicker technology of Supertime was used exclusively by Empire spacecraft, the vast majority of flying things in the Galaxy were powered by ion-ballast-fueled engines. This facility was big enough to provide plentiful energy for ion spacecraft of all sizes.
It was most interesting that every one of the large spacecraft bays was holding a vessel in stasis. Twelve bays, twelve ships. That probably meant there were no sizable spacecraft out patrolling in the star system somewhere. In fact, except for the small atmospheric craft and sky cars, it seemed to Hunter that much of this hardware had been sitting here, planet bound, for a long, long time.
Like a phantom, he moved around the base for the equivalent of a half hour, counting weapons, noting ammunition bunkers, estimating troop strength. He was gathering a lot of intelligence, some of it valuable, but Hunter was not yet satisfied. He'd confirmed that yes, the holo-spy was right, there was an enormous army out here, apparently poised to strike anywhere, at any time. But he still needed to know two important things: Who were these guys, and why were they out here? He couldn't leave until he found out.
He managed to locate the base's intelligence building. It was the structure with the highest number of communications bubblers on its roof. He passed through the main entrance with no problem and was soon standing in the central control room of the place. There were at least two hundred technicians at work here, monitoring various scanning arrays. At the center of the room there stood a large black box with a red light attached to its top and an enormous Klaxon protruding from its midsection.
Hunter approached the black box and, after studying its bare controls and eavesdropping on its attendant gang of techs, discovered that the monolith was actually a very simple warning device, one that would erupt whenever a certain kind of event was detected. A bank of thirty-six screens nearby told a further tale. This array of monitors was zoomed in on the Home Planets, one screen devoted to each of the three dozen worlds.
But what kind of event were they looking for?
Hunter studied the screen showing Planet America. It was just a static image of the green and blue ball, spinning through space. The attending devices didn't appear to be monitoring the planet's overall puff or working any kind of time bubble maintenance. Instead, the numbers running down the screen itself were labeled in various atmospheric measurements, such as air pressure, temperature, wind speed, and so on. The monitors seemed built to detect minute changes inside the atmospheres below.
One of a long line of light panel controllers was marked with an icon that Hunter interpreted to be the system's simulation. test. Without really thinking about it, he gave this button a push. Instantly, the live shot of Planet America turned into a lifelike graphic of the tiny world. The words: "Event Detection" began flashing on the screen. A tiny flash of bright light began rising from the landmass below. It grew brighter and brighter, a long smoky tail flowing from behind. The atmospheric readings running down the side of the screen — they, too, were part of the simulation — were going crazy. Several more warning flashes appeared. One said: "Event in Progress." Then the bright pinprick of light reached "orbit" around the graphic of the planet, and that's when the gigantic black box erupted with flashing red lights and skull-fracturing sound.
Hunter immediately cupped his ears and averted his eyes from the strobing light, but of course no one else in the room could see or hear any of it. In their reality, the simulated warning device hadn't gone off yet. And it probably wouldn't for at least another hour or so.
Hunter quickly released the sim panel button and the box stopped flashing and bleating. Everything went back to normal. It took a few moments for Hunter to get his senses back.
It had been painful to his cranium, but snooping in the right place had solved one mystery. These thirty-six arrays were looking for only one thing: evidence that any of the planets below was about to achieve spaceflight. If a successful launch was detected, the buzzer would blare and the blinding red light would flash until eyes hurt and ears began to bleed.
So this was actually a tripwire station, the means by which the mysterious celestial guards kept track of their unwitting prisoners below. There was beauty in the simplicity of this. How best do you keep prisoners in the prison? You monitor each planet around the clock, looking for the one sign that would indicate that the planet's inhabitants had reached the point of trying to get off, unintentionally trying to break out of jail. Then, presumably, boom). That's when the hammer came down.
Was this an explanation for the periodic disasters that had befallen Planet America every few centuries? The same apocalypses the holo-spy had warned them about? Was it simply part of the makeup of the people back there to try to escape their confines, unwittingly bringing catastrophe down on themselves? Could it be the same on the other planets as well?
Hunter was beginning to think so.
But why hadn't this gaggle of detectors spotted him leaving Planet America's atmosphere? Was it because his craft emitted things that these monitors could not detect?
He thought this as well.
Time to move on. He decided to find the most sensitive area of the entire intelligence complex, a place where all the top secrets would be stored. He eventually came upon a large vault, ironically on the top floor of the multistoried building. There were a dozen techs and several armed guards inside this secure room; the vault itself was open. Hunter simply walked inside.
The vault was eerily similar to the one under Weather Mountain. Lots of numbered doors containing pull-out drawers. But instead of holding artifacts, these drawers contained suspended droplets of liquid ether. One drop contained ten-to-the-twentieth-power bits of information. The drops were files; you put them on your tongue, and suddenly you knew their contents. Amazing technology, yet it was more than a thousand years old.
Hunter knew he didn't have much time left. The dreamy nature of this invisible exercise made it almost impossible to tell how many virtual minutes had gone by since the start of it. Nor was he sure just how far in the future one hundred times around this moon would put him. Certainly no more than two hours or so. By his estimate then, he only had about another twenty minutes or so left on the ground before he had to think about getting out. So instead of going through all the liquid files, he began a search for the one drawer that appeared to be holding the most secret information of all. He found just such a drawer at the rear of the vault. Its door was painted white with bright red stripes crossing through it. A holo-sign indicated only the top echelon of the base's command structure had access to the contents. A neutron lock kept the door sealed tight.
Hunter bore through the subatomic clasp with ease; all he had to do was disengage the quarks from the larks with the aid of his electron torch. His hunch about this drawer paid off. Inside he found not a miniocean of brain drops but a set of mind rings. One was marked "Mission Background, Day One. Guard Duty. Year 3237."
It was just what he was looking for.
Without hesitation, Hunter took off his helmet and jammed the mind ring onto his head.
Flash!
He was suddenly standing in a crowded spaceport. Everywhere he looked, he could see gigantic rocket towers spiraling overhead. And people. Everywhere. Millions of them.
He looked down at his clothes. He was wearing a bright green battle suit with thick epaulets on the shoulders and a long, flowing cape. He had a helmet under one arm, an ancient style atomic rifle under the other. He was a soldier. He looked around and for almost as far as he could see, there were soldiers wearing the exact same uniform as he.
And the stra
nge thing was, Hunter knew where he was. The gigantic spaceport, the monstrous launch towers and galleys. The electric city across the river to the west. He was on Earth, at the Eff-Kay Jack spaceport. The lighted metropolis spread across the horizon was Big Bright City, the capital of Earth— but as it looked almost four thousand years before.
What was going on here? Hunter joined one stream of soldiers who were walking toward one of the gigantic launch gantries. The spacecraft attached to this tower was at least two thousand feet high. It was also very bulbous, with a blunt, pointed nose and tiny fins on its rear. At this moment, they seemed to be the only thing supporting the rocket's massive weight.
This rocket was painted bright green, as were all the others in the gigantic forest of spaceships. There were loading ramps sticking out of the bottom of this rocket, twelve in all, ringing the spaceship like spokes. There were literally thousands of people climbing these gangways, all of them civilians. They were being herded onto the gigantic spaceship by soldiers wearing the same caped uniforms.
He stayed attached to the loose column of soldiers. They marched about a half mile down the spaceport's tarmac before turning in to the launch area of the next green spaceship in line. Like with all the vessels he could see, people were being marched onto this spacecraft as well. Hunter's detachment of soldiers wound up relieving another unit that had been manning the entrance to one of these crowded gangways. The soldiers were pushing along anyone not moving fast enough up the narrow ramp. Hunter nudged his way to the front of the line and eventually found himself not fifty feet away from the entrance to the gangway.
Nearby, he saw hundreds of people — men, women, seniors, kids — being deposited in a huge receiving area by sinister-looking shuttle craft flitting in and out. After a quick security bath, these people were being pushed toward the ramp and eventually into the ship itself. Some were carrying baggage. Very few were wearing very much more than the clothes on their back.
Above the entrance to the gangway was a sign that was engraved with characters, many of which were too small for Hunter to see. But at the top of the poster, he thought he recognized six words: "By Order of the Second Empire…" Stationed next to the sign was an ancient deatomizing device. Within its chambers were bits and pieces of burnt cloth, the remnants of lackadaisical pulverization. Each bit of this cloth was either red, white, or blue. Each had once been a piece of a flag.
Hunter just froze on the spot. It all became so clear now. Even though the mind ring had probably originated as an orientation tool for up-and-coming prison guards, it had told him just about everything he needed to know on this subject.
These were the people of America being deported from Earth more than 3,900 years ago. They looked beleaguered, bitter, angry, lost. Hunter didn't have to go any further into the mind ring to know where the big green ships went once they'd blasted off for space. And he didn't have to inspect the ashes of the deatomizing machine to know its job was to destroy the Americans' flags. This was a forced deportation. The Americans were being shipped out of their own country.
Hunter found an anger building so deep inside him he thought it would affect this little mind trip he was on. All he knew was he had to get the mind ring off his head now and return to whence he came. But just as he was reaching up to remove his headgear, a person passing by in a group heading toward the gangplank caught his attention: blond, blue eyes, cheeks that were pink because she smiled so much… It was Ashley.
She was dressed differently, and she wasn't smiling at all now, but Hunter was sure it was her.
But how could this be? She lived on what Planet America would become, four thousand years later. How could she be here, in the memory of this mind ring?
He tried to push his way through to her and succeeded in reaching the entrance to the gangway at the same time she did.
Their eyes met. Hers went very wide. Then came an astonished smile.
"Hawk?" she said. "Is that really you?"
"It's really me," he replied.
But just as he was about to reach for her, he found himself staring at an enormous blue screen instead. It stretched in every direction as far as he could see; its top literally went right up into the clouds.
Hunter thought his heart would stop beating right then and there. As part of the Earth Race, he'd had to penetrate several blue screens not unlike this one, and behind each he found a reality that was far stranger than anything he'd experienced since waking up on Fools 6. The mysterious blue screens were part of the obstacle course that made up a large portion of the Earth Race.
So what the hell is one of them doing here?
He put his hands up against it… and felt himself falling. He lost his balance, passed right through the screen, and hit his head on something very hard far below.
Flash!
When he opened his eyes again, he was lying on the floor of the intelligence vault on Moon 39. The mind ring was spinning across the floor away from him.
There were several techs staring into the vault now, quizzical looks on their faces. Hunter did not move. He was hoping they'd been alerted only by the sound of the mind ring hitting the floor, something that hadn't really happened yet.
Once they seemed satisfied that nothing was amiss inside the vault, the techs returned to their posts. Hunter slowly got to his feet, tried to shake the stars from his eyes, then put the mind ring back in its compartment, closed the door, and left.
He'd come within one inch of touching Ashley's face.
He staggered back out on the parade grounds and tried to get his bearings.
He knew he had to get going. On one level, the recon had been an outstanding success. Hunter was now very familiar with all the visible aspects of this army's capabilities. So he knew what they were: a quick-reaction space force, equipped with passable arms and a lot of transport. And he knew why they were here: as prison guards, just as the holo-spy had indicated.
The trouble was, he still didn't know who they were. He'd seen no flags or banners identifying the space corps by name nor any ship markings or weapons stamps stating exactly who they were. Again it was obvious the massive army was working undercover.
But it was important that Hunter ID them. For this he stole into one of the barracks nearby. An army was an army, no matter how well equipped, no matter how distant the garrison. With around-the-clock shifts, the legitimately ailing and the simply malingering, at any given time, about 20 percent of any force was usually asleep.
Hunter found the barracks he'd selected dotted with sleeping soldiers. He walked down the space between the hovering bunks looking for someone who appeared to be above the rank of space grunt. Finally, he came upon a cluster of floating beds that were larger, more comfortable, and more stable than the rest of the bunks. Officer country. Hunter thought correctly.
He idled up to one officer's personal effects box hovering right beside his bed. Slowly, carefully, Hunter waved its security halo away and reached down into the guy's stuff. He quickly came out with a subatomic knife. It was sealed inside a plastic air case and looked more like a ceremonial piece than a combat instrument.
Just what he was looking for.
He quickly stuffed the knife into his boot and backed out of the barracks. He found another somewhat remote piece of flat ground and summoned his flying machine from the Twenty 'n Six.
He climbed in and engaged his power systems. Only once he was sure that he would be able to get off the artificial moon did he take the knife out of his boot and remove it from its sheath.
He was looking for some kind of trademark or inscription on the blade. This army was expert in keeping a low profile as to who it really was. But sometimes officers slipped up and carried an instrument with markings from the actual unit.
And that was the case here; Hunter had picked the right pocket. There was an inscription across the blade that answered one question but also opened up about a million others.
The inscription was just three words, but Hunter felt his st
omach twist itself a bit tighter when he read them. Who was the undercover army, waiting way out here for one false move by the people on the Home Planets?
Some unknown ancient order, nearly four thousand years old, the same age as the star system prison?
No.
The army of prison guards was actually none other than a large detachment of the Bad Moon Knights.
16
Hunter very carefully punched back into orbit around Planet America and started the long plunge down.
He'd checked out the rest of the sentinel moons; they were just as lifeless as the ones he'd found before coming to Moon 39. Now he was anxious to get back on the ground and tell the others all that he'd discovered.
But as soon as he had cleared the top layers of America's atmosphere and gotten below the clouds, he was confronted with a startling sight: The planet was on fire. He could see hundreds of smoke plumes rising into the air all across the continent. On that part of the planet turned away from the sun, there were no lights, no signs of life below. Using his very rudimentary communications device, Hunter tried to raise someone at Andrews Field.
There was no reply.
He touched down in the rain a few minutes later, passing over many fires and collapsed roadways on his approach to Andrews Field.