Battle at Zero Point s-4

by Mack Maloney

  Difficult to transit and unlucky? No wonder no one ever came here.

  He finally started to see the mass of the arm ahead of him, his equilibrium returning as the pinpricks of light turned into star clusters and then individual systems. He was now approaching the "crowded" part of the Seven Arm.

  But immediately he knew something was wrong.

  He called up several star maps from his flight bubblef showing this part of the Seven. The maps had come from the star charts he'd filched from the ShadoVox, and it would make sense that they would be extremely accurate, flawless even.

  But this wasn't the case.

  Hunter conjured up a floating screen that would serve to match up what was on the map with what he was seeing up ahead. That was the problem; there was no match. None of the star systems or their alignments looked like anything what he was viewing on the float screen. This didn't make sense. The charts were just a few years old, put together not from on-hand observation but through long-range scans from Earth, scans that were supposed to be accurate to the millimeter. Yet the stars in front of him weren't just out of alignment, their overall dispersal was different.

  Everything moved inside the Galaxy. Stars, planets, moons— people. But nothing moved this fast.

  Entire star systems didn't just change positions overnight. True, while the Galaxy had been settled for nearly 5,000 years, some parts had been lost as the empires fell and rose. But the Fourth Empire was on the verge of reclaiming nearly 90 percent of the inhabited planets these days, and it certainly had the technology to have the entire realm mapped.

  The only logical conclusion: the official impeüal star charts were not only wrong, they'd been intentionally drawn that way.

  He reached the first star system. It wasn't on the map. It was just the first place he came to. And here was another surprise.

  He'd been led to believe that not only was the Seven Arm practically empty, it had never been settled by anyone in the first place. Yet this first system held a medium-size sun with seven planets going around it, and it was these worlds that told the strange tale. The F-Machine's ultrapower scanners showed the planets all to be empty. But just about every square inch of their surfaces appeared battle-scarred, horribly cratered, and torn apart. Ancient cities on every planet, bombed into dust. Man-made debris was everywhere. So much that rings of it were not only orbiting each planet, but massive clouds of the stuff were drifting throughout the system as well.

  Hunter knew at least partly what had happened here; the devastation on the planets was the result of a titanic battle, fought a very long time ago. But what about the free-floating space junk? The stuff between the planets? He plugged his quadtrol into his long-range scanner and was soon reading information on sampled pieces of the debris. The initial indications showed they'd been floating around for a thousand years, maybe more.

  A large chunk of junk came up on him. Hunter slowed his machine to a crawl. The piece of debris was about a half mile long and half again as wide. Metal in character. At least a thousand years old, so the quadtrol told him. The question was, what was it? Or, what had it been?

  Hunter asked the quadtrol again. On his scanner screen, it presented three dozen holographic images, seemingly random pieces of space junk, coming together to reform their previously original state. What he saw was an enormous metal ball, 250 miles across, with several thousand mile-high spikes sticking out of it all over.

  What the hell was this? It wasn't an artificial moon; it had never had an atmosphere. It wasn't any kind of battle station, for the same reason.

  Then it came to him.

  It was a space mine. A massive weapon built to explode should anything or anyone come near it. And there were millions of similar gigantic pieces for as far as his eyes could see. That's when the cold reality of the situation hit home. Millions of pieces of this kind of debris could only mean one thing: He was in a minefield.

  A very large, very old one. One in which all the mines had exploded a long time ago, and no one had bothered to pick up the debris.

  Or didn't want to.

  He continued winding his way through the massive, jumbled cloud, going very, very slowly. He knew it would take him much longer to make it through the debris field than it did to fly the starless void preceding it. All the while, he was passing the system's outer planets, and each was like the one before it: battered, torn up, ancient cities reduced to sand.

  Once out of the system, he was tempted to boot his throttle ahead a bit. But the ocean of wreckage went on unabated, and he had no choice but to continue weaving his way through it. Even as he saw the next star system come into view — it, too, was uncharted, or more accurately out of place on the star map — everywhere he looked were waves of space junk. Twisting and turning the flying machine around it was difficult, even for a skilled flier like himself. But one thing was clear: there was no way a typical Empire ship, military or civilian, could make it through, first because of the ancient minefield and now these bands of floating obstacles.

  Obviously that was the intention all along.

  He passed through a dozen star systems. All of them were deserted, abandoned, uncharted. All of them thick with long bands of metallic space junk. Not just pieces of exploded space mines now but also gigantic chunks of ancient spaceships, artificial moons, natural satellites. All of it very, very old — but still making for a very effective barrier.

  Like barbed wire… he thought.

  By the time he entered the thirteenth system, his brain was fighting hard to put everything together.

  First, a minefield. Then the celestial equivalent of barbed wire. What did this tell him?

  Or better yet, what could he expect next?

  The answer came a moment later when his spacecraft's defensive warning systems began blaring. It was so loud, Hunter thought his crash helmet would split in two.

  He pushed his quadtrol and asked it what the hell was going on. The answer from the know-it-all device was both chilling and brief: "Antispaceship missiles closing in…"

  Pull up, Hawk'

  Hunter didn't even think about it. He yanked on the F-Machine's control stick and put the superfighter on its tail. An enormous missile roared beneath him not two seconds later.

  He leveled off with a reverse loop, but no sooner were his wings straight when the defensive warning alarm went off again. He didn't have to ask the quadtrol what was going on this time. He could see the flare of another huge missile coming his way. He veered right purely on instinct and saw the giant missile pass by an instant later.

  His defensive warning system never shut down; it kept right on blaring as more missiles were headed for him. The quadtrol said the weapons were not being fired from any hard surface, so there weren't people down there on those devastated planets trying to knock him down. Rather the missiles seemed to have been left dormant in space, programmed to come alive whenever an intruder came near.

  Another flare showed up straight ahead. Hunter played it smart this time. Just as he was going into his third evasive maneuver, he hit his quadtrol's universal event inquiry switch. Essentially, this was asking the device to scan anything unusual within its vicinity. It quickly assessed the missile as it roared by. The weapon was a true monster, at least fifty times bigger than the F-Machine and too big to have been built as a simple antispacecraft weapon.

  That was enough for him. He hit his throttles hard and rocketed away from die area with an incredible burst of speed. It took some fancy maneuvering to get around the waves of space junk in his path. But he counted to three and then pulled back on the juice again. He found himself twenty-five light-years away from the missile barrage — and this time he was breathing hard.

  Once stable again, Hunter asked the quadtrol exactly what kind of a missile had been being shot at him back there.

  The answer came back: Saturn 5.

  Hunter stared at the readout for a moment. It was the reply he'd received while tearing across the Galaxy; now it was appearin
g in the right time context. But why did the name itself sound so familiar? It wasn't any kind of rocket he'd heard about since coming to this century. But how about in his last?

  He asked the quadtrol what the missile's original function was. The reply that came back only pricked his memory: " Original lunar exploration vehicle booster.'"

  Hunter finally asked the quadtrol when and where the missile had been originally designed. This reply took a while to churn out. When it did, it was both startling and mystifying.

  It read: " Earth, 1961 a.D."

  Hunter had learned by now that few things in this time and place made sense, especially out here in the wilds of outer space.

  But all this was especially absurd. He was supposed to be in an empty part of the Galaxy, yet already he'd encountered an ancient minefield, light-years of obstructions and ancient debris. Now a barrage of gigantic missiles, designed more than 6,000 years ago, on Earth, of all places, weapons that would turn him into subatomic dander if one ever hit him.

  What was the explanation for this?

  Before he could come up with a suitable answer, the comm set inside his helmet suddenly came to life again.

  "This is your one and only warning… Leave this sector immediately…"

  The voice was gravelly and distorted. It sounded like it was coming from a million miles and a few thousand years away. Which was not that far from the truth.

  "We have orders to shoot you down," the voice said again. "Leave at once…"

  Hunter turned around in his cockpit and was astonished to see three spacecraft had crept up on his tail. Always watch your six. Those four words came back to him loud and clear now. His failure to do so had suddenly put him into a very grave predicament. Another band of space junk was lying dead ahead. It stretched for light-years in every direction, up, down, left, and right, and was much denser than those before it. Pushing himself into ultra-ultradrive now could prove fatal or, at the very least, slightly suicidal.

  In other words, he'd fallen into a trap.

  At that moment, one of the strange craft pulled up alongside him. It was about the same size as the F-Machine, and the similarity did not stop there. It also had a wing under midfuselage, though its tips were cranked upward at both ends. It had a tail supporting two small wings in the back, but these were pointing downward. Its nose was conical and blunt, and it was carrying four ancient yet extremely lethal-looking missiles underneath its body.

  There were two men in the glass bubble cockpit staring back at him. Helmets on, oxygen masks in place, he could only see their eyes. Hunter's psyche was flashing like crazy now. Memories were washing up inside him. This craft was the closest thing he'd seen to his machine since coming to this century. And he'd seen its type before. Way, way back, in that other Me he had led, before all the insanity began.

  He asked the quadtrol: What is it? But he already knew the answer. He'd seen it during his quick galactic crossing.

  " F-4 Phantom," was what the quadtrol screen said.

  Somehow Hunter knew this might take him ages to understand, but at the same time, he realized the quadtrol was right.

  This plane was a Phantom — or better yet, a recreation of one that had the ability to fly in space. He knew this type of flight machine. He had fought alongside these aircraft in his previous life; he was sure of it.

  But what could they possibly be doing here?

  There were more of them coming up to meet him. But he didn't want to fight them. The Seven Arm was supposed to be deserted — though all this had given lie to that notion. But whatever the case, he was the intruder here. And he had already passed through a number of defensive barriers and still he had not stopped.

  In other words, these guys had every right to shoot him down.

  Still, he had to get away from them. He had to find Far Planet, or this whole exercise would become a huge, senseless joke. But the debris was still pretty thick up ahead. He still couldn't boot his craft up to any kind of ultrapower as he wasn't sure if he would pass right through the debris or simply crash into it.

  Maybe a warning shot will scare them away.

  Hunter pushed his weapons bar, and a mighty multiblast shot out of the front of his craft. Six beams of blinding X-beam power. Butthen something strange happened: the flight of ancient aircraft suddenly started shooting — not at him, but at the barrage of X beams he'd just fired.

  Their weapons seemed extremely elderly, but they twisted and turned and intersected his barrage perfectly, causing an enormous explosion, which resulted in a gigantic ball of flame and debris.

  Hunter let go another barrage. Again the Phantoms fired at it. Again they hit it on the nose. Another ball of flame was produced; this one quickly joined with the first.

  Counterweaponry? The word just popped into Hunter's head.

  Before he could ponder it any further though, more bells and whistles went off in his cockpit.

  One was from the quadtrol, and it was bearing surprisingly good news. He'd asked it way back at the beginning of the journey to look for any world that would qualify as Far Planet. At least according to the star charts. The strange thing now was, the device had found it.

  How? By checking the map. Just like Tomm said.

  Hunter was astonished. Every point and star on the chart was wrong and intentionally put out of place, except the small dot of a world called Far Planet. It was right where it was supposed to be. And that was no more than a few hundred miles below his present position.

  He immediately put the nose of the craft down and boosted his throttles, hoping to shake the Phantoms and make for the planet as well. But then came the second warning, this one from right inside his head.

  Hawk, check your six!

  Damn…

  Hunter turned around and saw not the flight of Phantoms coming at him, but the ball of flame and debris that had resulted from their counterblasting his warning shots. Before he could hit his throttles, the orb of high-speed shrapnel slammed into the back of his spacecraft. He nearly went through the canopy, the impact was so great. His spacecraft immediately began spinning out of control. There were so many warning buzzers going off now, he couldn't tell which one was warning him about what.

  He went hard right and pointed the nose straight down— this took him out of the spin and punched him through the top of the planet's atmosphere. He yanked the throttles back to 1/ 10,000 percent power — this to avoid a very nasty collision with the ground below — only to look behind him again and see that the tail of his Flying Machine was on fire. He turned forward and started pulling on his joystick.

  A steep ascent back into space might put the fire out. But it was no good. His controls were not responding.

  There was another explosion, and the curve of the planet below became more acute. Smoke began filling the cockpit. The fire was crawling up his wings. He began pushing control panels, hoping something would work. But it was no use. All of the lights on his flight board had blinked out for good.

  Came one final explosion — and everything started to go black.

  Hunter couldn't believe it. He'd just shot himself down.

  17

  Hunter awoke, facedown, in the middle of a shallow stream.

  The water was cold. It was running up his nose and into his mouth and even into his ears. He could not move. Every bone in his body was broken, or at least that's how it felt. He couldn't see, either.

  Something warm and sticky was keeping his eyelids shut. Most of all, his head hurt. A lot.

  / guess this isn't Heaven, he thought.

  He managed to roll onto his back, allowing the water to pour over his chest. It felt like ice, but it seemed to revive him. He cupped a handful of water and brought it up to his eyes. It was so cold it stung, but it helped clear away whatever was blocking his vision. Another splash of water, then another. Finally he was able to see.

  He was in the middle of a forest. His uniform was burned and ripped; his helmet was floating in a pool nearby. The F-Mach
ine was caught in an enormous tree off to his right. Hanging about twenty feet off the ground, its wings and tail section were still on fire. Hunter felt a sharp pain in his chest; the aircraft looked irreparably damaged. The canopy had fallen off, his ejector seat had activated, and his ancient parachute had billowed open. But it was hanging off another tree nearby.

  This didn't make sense. How had he wound up here, dumped not on the jagged rocks that surrounded the bottom of the huge tree but in the freezing-cold stream? It had not been a soft landing for him. But it had not been a fatal one, either.

  He managed to lift himself to his knees and then finally got to his feet. Though he was in a deep woods, it was very warm. There was a large yellow sun almost directly overhead; it felt strangely soothing on his battered face. The air here was dry and sweet. Wherever he was, the puff was holding up well. The trees were numerous in all directions, with only the stream running through them, and a small grassy bank on each side.

  He took a step and was amazed that his legs weren't shattered for good. Two more steps, and he was out of the water. He half expected the Phantoms to swoop down on him at any second, so he made for the cover of the nearest tree. But the only things overhead were fair weather clouds and the deep blue sky. Nor was there any sound, except the wind in the leaves.

  He retrieved his helmet, then made his way over to the tree holding his Hying Machine. He took one long look, then fell to the seat of his pants. The fuselage bent and scored. The cockpit insides were still burning, and the tail section was in dozens of pieces. The crash had been catastrophic. His aircraft was destroyed. Dead…

  But how could he still be alive?