by Mack Maloney
"Well, we just can't have that kind of thinking," the Secretary said sternly. "It's not good for any of us. We need to get at the truth — whatever it may be — and make an informed report to the Court. After all, that's our job, whether the SG likes it or not. But we have to gather the evidence quietly. Very quietly.
And that means someone has to infiltrate this No-Fly Zone and indeed set up a subatomic sweeper — and hopefully lead us to some answers."
He lowered his voice a notch. "We must find out three things: Did this battle take place out there or not? Is Princess Xara's disappearance connected with it somehow? And is this Hunter character involved in any of it? Again, we think it is wise to send someone out there and find out these things for ourselves."
He snapped his fingers, and a silver dish appeared in midair in front of him. On it lay a single bubble of clear fluid; a thought drop containing a multitude of information for anyone who put it on their tongue.
The Secretary directed the hovering dish across the desk, away from him.
Then he said, "And that someone, Mr. Bonz, is you."
2
The small starship named ZemVax left Earth just after midnight the following day.
It was 250 feet long and, just like everything else flying in the Galaxy these days, was shaped like a wedge. But while most ships leaving Earth were somewhat sleek and new, the ZeroVox was anything but. Its fuselage was dented and twisted. Its underbelly was patched with strips of atomic tape. Its bubble-top canopy was cracked and scratched. Even its stubby communications mast was leaning askew.
The ship's interior was no better. The rear quarter was home to a very elderly looking star engine, one that appeared, at first glance anyway, to be solely ion-ballast powered, as all civilian ships in the Galaxy were. While still extraordinarily fast, ion-powered vessels could travel at barely one-twentieth the speed of Supertime-capable Empire ships — and that was only with a very good power spike on a very good day. Not only did ion-ballast ships have to stop to refuel frequently, they also broke down a lot, especially when those power spikes gave out. This meant extremely long-distance interstellar travel was usually very uncomfortable in ion ships, or sometimes, if the distances were too great, virtually impossible.
The ZeroVox had a battered cargo compartment, a pathetically small crew quarters, and a laughably old flight deck. Small and smelly, with only one seat for the pilot, its flight control panels were flame-scarred and leaking bubble fluids. The deck's half-dozen portholes were scraped and dirty, the floor panels thick with metal shavings and yellow atomic cigar ash. Everything visible to the naked eye up here led to only one conclusion: the ZeroVox was a space truck, used for hauling things between the stars. And a very old space truck at that.
But on this tiny ship, all was not as it appeared.
Hidden beneath its cracked flight control panel was an array of incredibly advanced, ultra-long-distance sensors that were so sensitive they could spot an approaching ship from fifty light-years away, or roughly twice the distance of a typical LDS. Ensconced below the stained floor panels was an LS2 life-sign detector, which allowed the operator to search an entire planet for signs of human life including heartbeats, breathing patterns, voices, footfalls, even DNA samples blowing in the wind. In the ship's nose, twisted and battered though it was, sat a four-pack of so-called XZ guns so powerful, they could send a bolt of destructo-beams more than five light-years in any direction. And what seemed to be a broken-down ion-ballast engine in the back was actually hiding a tiny but powerful prop-core power unit beneath it. This meant the ZeroVox could actually fly in two ways: ion power or in Supertime at close to two light-years a minute.
The ZeroVox was not a space truck at all. It was a brilliantly disguised, heavily armed spy ship.
And sitting at the helm was the SF3 secret agent, Gym Bonz.
He was carrying a crew of four clankers with him, robots that resembled human beings, but just barely, in that they had two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head, all made of metal. Then-launch from Earth had gone off without a hitch. They had left from an isolated docking bay at the far end of Eff-Kay Jack, the enormous spaceport located next to Earth's capital, Big Bright City, and then fully kicked in the ion-ballast engine on leaving Earth's atmosphere. They were soon soaring past the Martian orbital plane.
While their destination was the mid-Two Arm, and specif-ically the Moraz Star Cloud, where the phantom battle sup-posedly took place, they would have to pass through the Pluto Cloud first. Made up of millions of artificial moons and heavily armed satellites stationed at roughly the same distance the ninth planet was from the Sun, the Pluto Cloud was a seventy-third-century version of a moat. No one got in or out of the Solar System, the Empire's inner sanctum, without passing through it and showing the proper authorization. Anyone caught trying to run the border crossing was usually executed on the spot.
This massive security swarm was under the command of the Solar Guards, and in this case, they usually did their jobs too well. The SG had a variety of ways to scan a ship, ID its passengers, rummage its cargo. One sniff of suspicion, and the SG border troops wouldn't think twice about tearing a ship apart, one electron bolt at a time. Even in the best of times, getting through their checkpoints could be troublesome. These days, it was bound to be more difficult.
Bonz was confident he could pull it off, however, though he knew he would have to be very careful.
Leaving the Solar System with his undercover identity already in place was es-sential to his mission. At the very least it would prevent an SG stealth beam from attaching itself to his tail, as might hap-pen if he'd passed through the Pluto Cloud in full SF uniform. But from all appearances, his ship was nothing more than a poky space lorry whose ID string would claim its one and only purpose was to pick up and deliver slow-ship wine to planets all around the Milky Way. All of the hidden exotic equipment was being concealed by holographic barrier beams, essentially modified spectrum rays that made things look like something they were not, from the subatomics up, and thus immune from most scanning units. Right down to the last detail, nothing on board the Zero could be linked back to SF3 or Bonz's true identity. He'd done this sort of thing many times before and had not been caught yet.
But shortly after passing through what was left of the as-teroid belt, Bonz realized his masquerade might not go as smoothly as he'd planned. He hadn't been out of the Solar System since returning to Earth from his last mission about six weeks before. He was noticing now that in just that short time, things had changed drastically in the solar neighborhood.
On a typical ride out from Earth, the casual traveler was likely to pass a steady stream of passenger-carrying space-ships, both military and civilian, moving between the Pluto Cloud and the mother planet. Some were on their way out of the Solar System; others were traveling within it. Supply ships of all sizes were also a common sight, as were private vessels belonging to higher-up government officials or even members of The Specials, as the very-extended Imperial Family were known. It was also not uncommon to encounter sightseeing ships taking well-heeled joyriders on the famous nine-planets-in-an-hour tour, a breakneck spin around the original worlds of the Solar System, all of them puffed and populated some 5,000 years before.
But Bonz saw none of this frivolity now. The interplanetary travel lanes beyond Mars were devoid of anything but Solar Guard warships. From scouting vessels to monstrous Star-crashers, they seemed to be everywhere. And these weren't just single SG vessels flying about. There were hundreds of them traveling in single- or double-line formations — convoys, moving back and forth between Earth and the outer reaches of the Solar System. Even more disturbing, these SG ships were flying in full battle dress, meaning their gun doors were open, and their weapons were exposed, as if they were going in to battle — or trying to look as intimidating as possible. If it was the latter, they were doing a good job of it.
Bonz steered ZeroVox past the Jupiter Loop and then closer to Saturn, a pang of grief catching
in his throat as he zoomed by the tiny jewel moon of Titan, once his happy home. He was heading for one of the main Pluto Cloud checkpoints for leaving the Solar System, a gigantic confluence of SG garrison moons known as the Saint Golden's Gate. But now his ultra-long-distance scans were telling him there was a major tie-up of ships at this heavily used border crossing; the traffic jam stretched for thousands of miles in all directions. Bonz keyed into some string comm chatter coming from the area, and the conversations confirmed what he had initially feared: the SG was not only stopping and questioning every vessel com-mander entering or leaving the Solar System, they were ul-trascanning every ship, too. This was not good news.
They reached the Pluto Cloud about a half hour later, taking their place in the long line of outward-bound ships. The queue was moving very slowly; as he watched the search process on his long-range viz scanner Bonz could see why. Essentially every ship had to pass through a gigantic gold ring, nearly a half mile in circumference, that the SG had set up next to the Saint Golden's Gate checkpoint. This was the ultraring, and, it could see all. The SF3 technicians who had presented Bonz with the ZeroVox for this mission had assured him that the disguised vessel would be able to go through a typical SG security beam with no problem. But this huge ring was about one hundred times more powerful, more invasive mat the typ-ical SG scanner.
Would Zero pass the test?
There was only one way to find out.
It took six long hours, but finally the ZeroVox reached the front of the line.
It was directed into the huge scanning ring, which had been set in place between two small artificial moons slightly beyond the Saint Golden's Gate. There were no less than 2,000 SG troops in the vicinity of the big scanner. Some were stationed in huge gun turrets on the two accompanying moons; others were manning the ultraring itself. Three SG culverins were also hovering nearby. This trio of small, swift warships was bristling with weapons, all of them pointed at a spot just be-yond the exit point from the ultraring. The message was clear: anyone not passing muster would be blasted first, with questions asked later.
Bonz moved his ship inside the ultraring and crossed his fingers. He was immediately hailed by the SG officer in charge of the border crossing, his gruff, booming voice suddenly ma-terializing inside the ZeroVox's flight compartment. The voice demanded to know who Bonz was and where he was going.
Bonz quickly keyed his intersystem communicator and iden-tified himself as a wine hauler; destination: a backwater binary system on the lower Three Arm. He was to pick up a load of gold slow-ship wine for immediate shipment back to Earth. It was as good a lie as any, and SF3 had given him proper string documentation to back up the cover story.
The SG officer accessed this documentation, then broke off the communications link. Bonz called back to the clankers and told them to get ready to be scanned. Two seconds later, a bright blue, ghostly light penetrated the hull of the ship. It began moving slowly from stem to stern. Bonz stayed glued to his seat and began thinking about a particularly unattractive but busty girl he knew out on the Three Arm.
She could drink him under the table and was a damn good cook. She would do anything for the right amount of slow-ship wine, and after all, that was his business. If only she took the time to wash her hair or actually bathe every once and a while…
The SG ultrascan could see, hear, and sense everything, in-cluding the thoughts of everyone on-board. It could penetrate every cell of a being, could capture memories, feelings, and inner thoughts.
It was intrusive, demeaning, and intimidating— the Solar Guards' usual way of saying hello. The mind-scan part was the most tricky, though; it could not be easily fooled. But Bonz had done this sort of thing before, and he was good at it. Not only could he will away any of his own personal thoughts, he had cultivated thoughts that would be in the head of a typical space trucker — thus the dream about the loose woman out on the Three Arm. But generating the appropriate amount of false memories was only half the trick here. Bonz also had to maintain a slight modicum of reluctance to the scan, a hint of holding something back, as just about anyone would. As for the four robots on board, they'd had their brains wiped clean before leaving Earth.
The scan finished its initial sweep, then disappeared. Bonz fought back an almost involuntary sigh of relief, a dangerous emotion had it happened just seconds before. The holo-barriers had held, thank God, and his mind games had worked, too. If not, a small army of SG troops would have beamed aboard already. He waited a few seconds, then another tremor shook the ship back to front. This was the passport EMP, a marker that indicated the ship had been cleared by the SG security people at the Pluto Cloud. Bonz did breathe a sigh of relief now. The booming voice invaded the flight deck once again, telling Bonz he was free to go and strongly suggested that he do so "with all haste."
Then, strangely, the voice added, "And if you see any of our SG brothers out where you're going, tell them we said hello."
'Tell them we said hello?" Bonz wondered aloud. What the hell did that mean?
This puzzled him, but not for very long. It would be dan-gerous to linger here any more than he had to. So he thanked the SG officer, killed the transmission, and yelled back to the clankers to hold on.
Then he hit the accelerator and left the SG checkpoint in a blur.
A few seconds later, the Solar System was far behind them.
Once he was certain no one was trailing him, Bonz settled down to begin the next part of his mission.
Working the few authentic controls on his dilapidated pilot's seat, he pushed his speed up slightly, though still only calling for a fraction of his available power. The idea was to ride on ion ballast until they got to the Two Arm, as traveling in Su-pertime in a space truck would tend to arouse suspicion, to say the least. Bonz inputted the set of coordinates SF3 wanted him to follow and then put the spy ship on automatic control. The new course would bring them right into the Moraz Star Cloud, which made up much of the mid-Two Arm, and then to the edge of the SG No-Fly Zone itself.
This done, Bonz poured himself a drink, shook it gently, and finally relaxed. The heavy lifting had been completed; now it was time to do his brain work. Among other things, the thought drop he'dingested back on Earth contained a secret file filled with memory images and dossiers on a very unusual group of people. Bonz sipped his cocktail, then leaned back in his squeaky flight chair, closed his eyes, and began access-ing this file. Hawk Hunter was the first image on the memory string. There was little information on the dashing yet enig-matic pilot that Bonz didn't already know. Indeed, at one point two years ago, Hunter was the best-known person in the Gal-axy, next to the members of the Imperial Family. It seemed back then, everyone knew everything about him. Bonz cer-tainly didn't have to dwell on him now.
Next in the synapse line were two pilots named Erx and Berx. Famous officers of both the SF and the X-Forces, they were middle aged and looked like human boulders with arms, legs, and extremely long mustachios attached. These were the men who'd rescued Hunter from the isolated planet called Fools 6 and eventually brought him to Earth. They'd been sent back out to the edge of space about a year ago by Princess Xara to find Hunter again after he'd so mysteriously disap-peared, but they hadn't been heard from since, either.
Next came Petz Calandrx, the well-known space hero turned poet, who was both a personal friend of the Emperor and win-ner of the Earth Race more than a century before. He was a real oldster, rapidly approaching his fourth century. At one time, however, he'd been a brilliant soldier, and for a while, a regular on the Specials' ultraexclusive party list. He'd been sent with Erx and Berx on Xara's mission to rescue Hunter, only to go missing as well.
Then came a character named The Great Klaaz. Apparently a hero in the outer regions of the Fringe, this stooped and craggy old man was practically unknown to Earth's intelli-gence services. As he was approaching his sixth century, he seemed an unlikely candidate for what was afoot. Yet he, too, had apparently fallen in with Hunter and his band
and was ¦ow wanted for questioning as well. After him came a short, mysterious, middle-aged man who went by the name Pater Tomm. Though he claimed to be a priest — and in the fuzzy mage provided to Bonz on the mind drop, he was sporting a long cassock and bowl haircut similar to those worn by those |«f a religious bent — he hardly looked the part. Tax enforcer land knucklebreaker was more like it. The last member of this Igroup was named Zarex Red, a gigantic individual with mus-Ides bulging everywhere and a costume that looked like some-thing out of a viz-screen movie. He was approaching his 150th year, Bonz estimated, and was known both for running weap-ons and discovering new or lost star systems out on the Fringe. He always traveled in the company of a huge robot.
Who were these people? They were as strange a collection of space rogues as Bonz had ever encountered, and most not so short on the tooth. Yet the SF3 believed this unlikely group was responsible for the mysterious invasion of the Two Arm and an equally mysterious disappearing act soon afterward. And because the people of the Empire were obsessed with putting a name on everything, a habit that was not discouraged inside the intelligence services, they had been christened by SF3 as The Hunter-Calandrx Gang, for their two most famous members.
In addition to his primary mission to the No-Fly Zone, Bonz was also supposed to look for this gang — or, more accurately, look for signs of them. Life clues, DNA debris, those sorts of things, anything that could place them at the scene of the crime, so to speak. He would also be searching for any clues to Princess Xara's whereabouts, and those of the Imperial Jan-itor, Vanex, though Bonz couldn't imagine them all being in the same place. No matter; it was all fine with him. Among his many undercover talents, he was also very adept at tracking down fugitives.
If it was his job to find them, then find them he would.
The rest of the thought drop consisted of a briefing on what else he had to do when he reached his secret destination. More specifically, it explained how the equipment packs hidden in the cargo hold would help him fulfill his bigger mission, looking for signs of the phantom battle. But these thoughts he would not have to access until the time came to put them into action. His brain work was done, at least for the time being.