by Mack Maloney
"Of course," Joxx replied. "Six Star Gulch is up there. So is the BK-South Star Cloud. Two of the best stops on the old Five Arm."
"Watch this then," Hunter told him.
No sooner had he spoken when that part of the sky lit up. There were a series of five major flare-ups, followed by at least a dozen smaller ones. They were so sharp, so bright, Joxx imagined he could almost hear the booming from the enormous cobalt weapons exchanges. He knew of course what he was actually looking at were thousands of igniting blasts constricted, contracted and telescoped by its superquick passage through space.
"The Battle of Michael's Push," Hunter put a name to it. "A big victory for him and his goons. Caught the 36 Coalition forces as they were reassembling their fleet. A total disaster for the good guys…"
Flash!
Same hill. Many months later. The night air, cooler.
Joxx didn't need Hunter to point out the location of the next battle.
It was very bright and very violent — and going on right over their heads.
"The Battle of the One Arm Frontier," Hunter explained. "Michael's forces thought they found a seam in the Coalition's defense line and sent their fleet streaming through."
The flashes overhead continued unabated.
"Michael's fleet was made up mostly of his frontier forces, or dregs picked up along the way — people he knew would be most loyal to him," Hunter explained. "He had so many ships under his command by now, he was able to break through part of the defense line set up by the 36 and their allies. Michael began descending on the Solar System itself at this point. After this battle, he broke in on all viz-screen lines on Earth and vowed he would be returning very soon."
Joxx could tell now that with each flash, its was obvious that the battles were getting closer to the Mother Planet.
"It looks as if he's making good on that promise," he said.
"Perhaps, but rarely is anything as it first appears," Hunter replied. "Actually, the 36 got real smart, real quick. They had left a hole in their line on purpose. They were setting him up for one decisive battle."
Joxx scoffed at that. "And will this be presented to jne in the same way again? In the form of another one of your lectures? With my neck hurting from looking too long up at the stars?"
Hunter just laughed at him.
"Not exactly," he said.
Flash!
"Set up!"
The forty-five space soldiers immediately jumped to their feet.
"Jet pack… check!"
"Squad One… check!… Squad Two… check! Squad Three… check!
"Weapons… check!"
"Weapons checked sir!"
Hunter looked down at his hands. As always, there was a blaster rifle cradled in them. A huge one. Multitubed, and very heavy. Probably three times as heavy as any blaster rifle he'd had the pleasure to know.
On his head, a very bulky helmet. It was of such ancient design, there were several tubes inside that were touching his lips via a mouthpiece. One contained water; one contained an elixir of supervitamins; the third was filled with painkillers — more than enough to kill you, but pleasantly.
Hunter knew all this because he'd been here three dozen times.
"Squads… get ready for jump."
"Ready here, sir!"
Hunter glanced down the long, tubular compartment. He was inside an enormous spaceship, along an extended metal railing, beyond which the gigantic maw of the ship could be seen below. He was second to last in the line of heavily armed, heavily suited soldiers.
Joxx was standing behind him.
Once again, the Solar Guards' officer was petrified. "I must admit I am more used to doing combat from behind the wheel of my ship," he told Hunter sharply. "If my ship had a wheel, that is…"
"You're the one who didn't want a lecture," Hunter called back to him.
"But what's going on here?" the SG officer pleaded with Hunter. "You have to tell me this time, especially after all I've been through…"
"Sorry, no time," Hunter replied quickly. "This one will be learned on the go."
"Squads… forward!"
Suddenly, the line of soldiers in front of them started moving. A man was shouting orders at the far end of the compartment. He was positioned next to a huge doorway ringed with blinking lights. He was dressed just as they were, but his spacesuit was much bigger, much bulkier. This man was obviously an officer. He was looking at an ancient timepiece attached to his wrist.
"Squads… get ready for decompression in three… two… one… now!"
"Decompression?" Hunter heard Joxx practically scream in his earpiece. "What does that mean?"
Again, Hunter didn't have time to reply. Joxx found out a second later.
The officer hit a button, and there was an incredibly loud rush of air throughout the compartment. As always, Hunter's spacesuit suddenly didn't seem as heavy as before. The officer hit another button, and a large panel next to him blew free. There was an even louder whoosh! and instantly Joxx knew what decompression was all about. The breathable air inside the compartment had all been sucked out. And through the hole in the compartment wall now left by the swiftly departing panel, both of them could see only millions of stars beyond. That's when it all made sudden, startling sense to Joxx. He was on a troopship of some kind, and they were going to be expected to jump out of the craft and into space.
But why?
He found that out soon enough, too.
The line of soldiers moved down the compartment very quickly, with the officer positioning each man onto the step and then pushing him out into the void beyond. Hunter might have yelled something going out the door. So many things happened right after that long step into space, he knew he wouldn't be able to hear much of anything in the next few seconds.
What always astonished him at this point though was the first glimpse of the ship they'd just tumbled out of. It was enormous. Not quite as big as a Starcrasher, but big enough. Blunt, pointed snout on one end and tiny almost comical fins sticking out of its back. A huge fuselage in between, with thousands of portholes.
This monstrosity always held his attention for a few seconds; it took him that long to realize that the vessel was adorned with the skull and three-leaf clover, the symbol of Brother Michael's forces. That image was plastered all over their spacesuits, too.
Then again, as always, he saw that there was another spaceship nearby. This one was just as big.
Joxx somehow made his way up to Hunter as they fol-lowed the long string of soldiers zooming through space.
"Can this really be?" he yelled through their primitive intercoms. "Have we really gone over to fighting for Michael's side?"
At the moment, that seemed to be the case.
There was a huge space battle going on all around them.
For as far as the eye could see, there were starships of all shapes and sizes blasting away at each other. In the distance, maybe a quarter million miles away, there was a small planet with a tiny moon. This was Pluto: habitable, puffed. There were battles taking place on it now as well as on its miniature moon.
Hunter never failed to be astonished at this point, either. This battle must have had millions, if not tens of millions, of combatants. Entire armies of starship troopers zooming everywhere, firing their huge blaster rifles, trying to avoid collisions with smaller interceptor craft weaving their way through the vicious close-in combat, some going faster than the speed of light.
But the line of troopers Hunter and Joxx were following was not heading deeper into the morass of the huge engagement. They were heading for the nearby ship instead.
This ship in front of and slightly below them was not a typical one, either. It didn't have one-hundredth the number of portholes as the troop carrier they'd just fallen out of. It was more ornate, with gold scroll designs flaring back from its cockpit bubble and flame decals stretching the rest of its entire length. It was obviously a command vessel of some kind. And the first wave of troopers from their s
hip had located a huge hole in the side of it and were pouring in, blaster rifles blazing.
Hunter caught a glimpse of Joxx's face behind his air mask and saw the SG officer's eyes were about twice as wide as usual. He'd just realized what Hunter had learned during his first dip into this part of the mind ring trip: They weren't fighting with Michael's forces; they were just dressed that way. In fact, they were part of a special operations team, the best within the 36 Coaltion forces. The vessel they'd just been ejected from was a Q-ship. Dis-guised as one of Michael's ships, it actually belonged to the 36 Coalition as well.
And the vessel in front of them?
It was the flagship of Brother Michael's Fleet.
It was hubris that ultimately led to Michael's demise.
For millions of miles around this, the First Battle of the Pluto Cloud, space was filled with thousands of starships locked in mortal combat. Had Michael chosen to ride on a typical rebel craft, he would have stayed completely anonymous. The chances of the disguised 36 Q-ship finding his vessel would have been, well, one in thousands.
But the ostentatious flaming color scheme, the tacky gold leafing, the bright lights around its cockpit dome made the deposed Emperor stick out like a supergiant star suddenly going nova.
He'd drawn attention to himself at the worst possible moment.
And that was the beginning of the end for Brother Michael.
There were five other streams of space soldiers being ejected by the Q-ship. Like the string Hunter and Joxx were following, they were all making fast for the hole in the side of Michael's flagship. It had been hit, Hunter had learned, by five pinpoint cobalt bolts fired by a gunship hidden deep in Saturn's rings, a place where Michael's forces had never thought to look for it amidst the confusion of the battle. The Q-ship was but a light-year away when the five blasts struck home. It was on the scene before anyone aboard Michael's flagship even knew what hit them. The flamboyant rebel ship was, for the moment at least, crippled and lying dead in space.
Hunter had his big blaster rifle up and ready. It was an act of pure instinct that always kicked in at this point. His jet pack reignited automatically, and he was suddenly thrust across the last few miles of open space that still separated the two ships.
Joxx was right on his tail, screaming a hole in his lungs, zooming in and out of control as the rest of them closed in on the gaping wound in Michael's ship. They reached it so quickly that, before Hunter could even think about it, he and Joxx were streaming through the perforation and were suddenly flying inside the giant vessel itself.
They found themselves inside the ship's huge main cargo bay. There was a swarm of Michael's troops in here, but half were frozen in place, so startled by the sudden appearance of enemy soldiers they couldn't even raise their weapons. The other half already had their hands up in surrender. It didn't matter. The Coalition soldiers were moving too fast and their mission so great, they didn't have time to slow down and sort out who was who. Their blasters went off and everyone got torched, hands up or not.
The Coalition soldiers never stopped moving. They flew up and out of the cargo bay and went zooming down the gigantic causeway that led to the nose of the huge ship. Every few seconds, a clutch of the vessel's defenders would appear and display a token of resistance, but they were blasted to nothingness by the vanguard of the heavily armed Coalition raiding party.
They reached the head of the ship and blasted right through the doors, which led into the control section, the brains of the gaudy monster. There was a small army of defenders in here as well, and the next minute was filled with a sharp, electric battle that saw many killed on both sides. But the Coalition troops never slowed in their advance. That was the key; just don't stop. Just keep going. And they did. Just as Hunter and Joxx were flying into the vast control room, the last of the ship's guards had been incinerated. Just like that, the ship was in their hands.
But where was the real prize? Here, on board certainly. Hunter knew the Coalition special ops troops knew this. But where?
The swarm of 36 Coalition soldiers resumed its flight. They broke up into squads of six and began a quick, systematic search of every command compartment. Hunter relished what came next. In earlier attempts, the mind ring sometimes cut out at this point. He'd fixed that glitch, and so, once again, his heart began beating loudly. He and four other Coalition soldiers zoomed into what had once passed as this ship's chapel, Joxx trailing closely behind. They each took a side and wall of the dark compartment, but Hunter knew this was not necessary. They would not find their quarry up here in the crannies of the church.
They zoomed through the auxiliary hatch into the compartment next door. It was the officers' latrine, a filthy place. The four real soldiers went in first. Hunter screeched to a stop and pushed Joxx through the hatch in front of him. He wanted the SG officer to see the next few seconds of the trip as up close as possible. He also wanted to stay far in the background. It was always better that way.
So, it was the four real soldiers who finally cornered the prize. Cowering in the deepest corner of the shitta, his protectors and bodyguards either killed or deserted, was where they found Brother Michael himself.
The soldiers hovered over him for several long moments. He begged them for mercy, a strange request from an immortal man. Hunter eyed Joxx; what he was doing at this moment would give a good indication as to how his education was going. It wasn't hard to tell. The SG officer looked like he could have sent a blaster shot through Michael's head himself. The adrenaline was pumping so forcefully through Joxx's body, the sides of his battle suit were bulging. Out of breath, sweating behind his mask, he was so deep into the moment, it would have been hard to convince him that he was, after all, still just inside a mind ring trip.
Finally, the Coalition soldiers yanked Michael to his feet. Bizarrely, he still had one silver cross sticking out of his chest It was a telling sign. No blood, just swelling around the pure white wound. Later on, the poets would claim the cross had gone right through Michael's heart, and here he died.
But this was not the truth. Michael's enemies would not make the same mistake twice.
This time, it would be different.
"You sir," one soldier said to him, "are now the prisoner of the 36 Coalition."
Flash! The battle was over. The remaining ships of the 36 Co-alition were lined up in formations that stretched for thousands of miles across the orbital plane of Pluto.
Far off, there were faint explosions dotting the background of space. These were ships of Michael's forces being destroyed.
There was no ceremony aboard the Q-ship. The top officers of the 36 were lined up in the cargo hold; Brother Michael was stripped before them. A machine was brought in that had the ability to encase things in burned glass, the exact same device that had trapped Emperor Jimmy. But turning Michael into a twenty-second piece of pyrotechnics was not the plan here. His fate would be worse.
They began the encasement process. Michael was clearly terrified.
"What did he promise you?" he screamed as the glass was wrapping around his feet.
"Only what is ours," one officer told him. "The thirty-six original regions of Mother Earth, our homes before you came on the scene. We just wanted our planet back. He's given it to us."
The encasement process was sped up, and Michael was quickly surrounded by the crystal prison. The plan now was to simply open the loading door and give him a push, via an ion-depleted high explosive. He would be sent on a trajectory leading into a particularly empty part of space, through which his glass coffin would travel for eons, with him trapped inside, alive, for eternity.
But even as he was being shot out of the spaceship, it was clear that Michael was laughing — and shouting something, but no one on hand could make out just what.
No one except Hunter. He and Joxx were standing nearby.
"What is he saying?" Joxx asked him. "I'm sure you must know."
Hunter nodded somberly. This was where it all started to
go downhill.
"He's saying, 'What makes you think my younger brother will be any better than me?' "
Flash!
They were back on Earth.
The site was the huge plaza that fronted, ironically enough, the huge orange hall where the Second Empire's biggest parties and events were held.
The plaza was now filled with troops. The top echelon of the 36 Coalition, including the thirty-six original officers themselves, stood in formation on one side of the square. Each officer was holding the flag of his region of Earth, the unfurled reminder of how things once were in the peaceful days of the First Empire.
Across the plaza stood another army of troops. These were soldiers who had fought with Michael, but now that the dictator was gone, they had sworn an oath to Michael's younger brother, the new emperor of the Second Empire.
The Galaxy was at peace again, thanks to the men taking up the right side of the square. The thirty-six officers of the victorious Coalition were roundly saluted. A hovering table weighed down by medals hung nearby.
Hunter and Joxx were standing at the rear of the formation of second-tier Coalition commanders. They were turned out in resplendent green space uniforms, with beret-style hats and ceremonial pistols in their holsters.
A huge communication speaker had been set up in the middle of the plaza, with the soldiers standing facing each other on either side. Through this, a speech began. There was no doubt the speaker was the brother of Michael and Jimmy. His voice echoed in everyone's ears. He had a thick accent, but his words came out measured, almost dreamily. There was no cheering, no adrenaline-fueled electricity. He spoke, and the plaza — the whole of Earth and the Galaxy itself — hung on his every word. He spoke of peace and tranquillity and the need for citizens of the realm not to fight against each other. He spoke of new technologies that had arrived with him, including what would become the theory of Supertime, incomprehensibly fast travel in the seventh dimension and the mysterious Big Generator from which all power throughout the Galaxy would come.
There was only one detail left to be done, the new Emperor told his new Empire. The men of the 36 Coalition had to be given their just rewards for what they had done in expelling his brother Michael from the ultimate seat of power.