Planet America (42 page)

"So you're the devil who's been flying that infernal machine," Deaux said to him. "Interesting concept—a small aircraft with the power of a starcruiser."

Hunter boozily waved him off. He wished the others were here. But no matter. If this was a surrender party, he wanted to get on with it.

"Make your proposal quickly," Hunter said to Deaux. "For I am honor bound to offer you your lives once you've surrendered."

Like the mythical battle on Myx, it was time for the winning side to be magnanimous.

But Deaux had other ideas. It took Hunter a few moments to realize the BMK commander had pulled out a hand weapon. The three security guards saw what happened and quickly blinked out. Even they wanted no part of breaking such a longstanding rule.

So now it was just Hunter and the chubby little man with a very big ray gun.

"This is not how these things are supposed to go," Hunter told Deaux calmly.

"I just wanted my good name in the history books," Deaux babbled, aiming the ray gun right at Hunter's forehead. "And to get paid, of course. That's all. However, you just didn't beat me on Ae battlefield,
you embarrassed me
. Made me look foolish. Now, that won't get me into the annals of time, nor will it get me my just reward. But killing you? The demon pilot. Here and now? That will accomplish both things."

Before Hunter could even move, Deaux pulled the trigger— but nothing happened. He'd forgotten to unlock the firing mechanism again. But he quickly rectified his mistake.

He aimed the gun once again at Hunter and started to pull the trigger a second time.

Suddenly there was a flash, and a moment later, Deaux was minus his head. What remained of it was floating away in a cloud of subatomic ash. His body stayed upright for a moment, but then it fell over in one great heap.

Hunter staggered back a few steps. He was astonished. Someone had just saved his life. But who?

He turned around to find an ancient man in an ancient space combat uniform, holding two huge smoking ray guns and a cracked smile.

It was his savior. The Great Klaaz.

Hunter couldn't believe it.

"Brother Klaaz!" he roared. "
How...
?"

Klaaz put his guns back into his holsters. "Let's just say a poof told me how to get here," he cackled.

But suddenly there was another flash. And a moment later, five men were surrounding them. They, too, had huge ray guns. But they were not BMK. These men were dressed in black uniforms with red trim and two lightning bolts on their collars. They also smelled heavily of slow-ship wine.

They were Solar Guards. Specifically, the members of the shadowy Post-Fringe Five Mission.

"You spent a lot of time getting here for nothing," one sneered at Hunter as another relieved Klaaz of his ray guns. "And you've managed to uncover the greatest secret since the Big Generator. We're just going to have to deal with that."

"How the hell did
you
get here?" Hunter asked them incredulously.

They all looked at Klaaz. "We followed him after our little visit to his new planet," one said. "But actually, Major Hunter, we've been looking for you for quite a while. You're a deserter from the Empire forces; you're a wanted man. Plus you've stuck your nose into something here that just cannot be known. By rights, we should bring you back for trial. But considering the circumstances and the fact that you have resisted arrest, it appears an execution is in order here, for you and your accomplice."

The Solar Guards aimed their weapons at both of them, but then there was
another
flash. Suddenly, the five gunmen were cut in half by a fusillade of blaster rays. Again, Hunter spun around to see his unknown saviors.

He found Erx, Berx, and Calandrx standing behind him, holding three smoking guns.

Erx pointed at the dead Solar Guards.

"And we followed them..." he said.

28

So the war was won.

Those BMK troops left back in the cities of the East would be allowed to leave. It was a very Five Arm thing to do. They had to evacuate the Home Planets system immediately and never come back. The fact that the only vessels to be made available to them would be the hundred or so working shuttles left, the chances of them returning to anywhere was low.

Once they were gone, the people of America could return to their cities and towns from their exile in the wilderness of the countryside.

The planet would be theirs again, except this time, they would be free.

The small group of warriors sat atop Silverine Peak now. Night was falling. They were numb. Drained. Grateful.

Hunter scanned the tired faces. It seemed a fitting cast for this, the end of the first great adventure. Tomm was there, of course, drinking only coffee from his flask. Could his contributions to this epic ever be fully appreciated? Probably not. Zarex, lighting a fresh cigarette from the burning end of a nearly spent one. He had been the genius behind selecting Ghost River Valley as the site of the dramatic showdown; he'd also led the army of policemen and armed civilians in building the fortifi-cations on the Plain of Stars and the brilliant, if intentionally temporary, defense of the same.

Senior Agent Gordon was also on hand. He and his men had served as target-spotters for Hunter, both in America and over on Planet France. Hunter's continuous air raids had prevented more troops from moving west to help the BMK armies in Wyoming; they'd also postponed the genocide squads from taking any action on France.

The big surprise, Erx and Berx, were there too, exuberant even after their long search for him. An even bigger surprise: Calandrx, Hunter's mentor, was also present, pleased just to be in outer space again. The old warrior Klaaz, the first hero to save the day, was sitting by a roaring campfire, in deep discussion with the holo-spy.

Even the poof was on hand, slinking around the cliff rocks nearby.

Behind them, watching over them all, was the clanker 33418.

On the valley floor below, the immense robot army of Myx.

Tomm looked around and nudged Hunter. He said, this time with a twinkle in his eye, "What a merry band are we ..."

The night grew longer, and the swirl of stars overhead grew brighter. No surprise, Erx and Berx had brought gallons of slow-ship wine with them. At the moment, Hunter was enjoying a half and half cocktail: half slow-ship, half Seagrams. The result was mind-blowing. Or was it mind-opening? It was hard to tell. In any case, many things began running through his head.

What would come next? They would have to liberate Planet France. But first, they would have to get out to Moon 39, to lay claim to the deserted base and the six ion-ballast starcruisers still in dock out there. The robots of Myx would do the fighting on France; the starcruisers would get them there.

Then what? Find a way to pop the system's time bubble? Possibly. But if they could simply come and go, once they had made it out beyond the star system's boundaries, there might be an advantage in keeping these planets just as they are. Educate the people certainly, but keep the uncomplicated life intact. Could these two things coexist in what might soon become a very violent, very different Galaxy?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But it might be interesting to try.

Hunter reloaded his drink, then moved farther up the cliff, quietly slipping away from the others.

He reached the mountain's summit and sat on top of a rock at its peak. Gazing out on the great ocean of stars before him, he was once again astounded by the unusual celestial display. This place had been built as a prison, true. But it had also been situated in an area of space that allowed for the most spectacular view of the entire galaxy, a place where all of the heavens could be seen at a single glance. Hunter found this very strange. Was the breathtaking vantage point built-in by design? Or was it just a happy coincidence?

He gulped his drink and more questions came flooding in. Why were the original Earthlings allowed to live? Why didn't their ancient jailers simply liquidate them three thousand five hundred years ago and be done with it? Another huge question: How were the Specials involved in all this? Their ancestors had ruled the Galaxy for thousands of years. The present Royal Family must have at least been aware of the Home Planets—after all, the Solar Guards were. Was there a connection between the Specials and the people who originally built this prison system more than three millennia before? Could they be one and the same?

Oddly, the Americans had come upon a small, if tantalizing clue on that: It emerged from a discussion Gordon had conducted with the holo-spy right after the big battle. Zarex had shown Gordon how to tap deeply into the projection's memory banks in order to learn everything he could about the people of the original Earth, minutiae included. Gordon asked the holo-spy for the most obscure fact she knew about the mother planet and the forced deportation of its people. Her reply? It came in the form of a rumor she'd picked up while training for her stillborn mission, but it had the potential for a real bombshell. All along Hunter and the others had just assumed that every country from the original Earth was accounted for out here in the prison system, that some unknown outside entity had forced them off the planet. But according to the holo-spy's memory banks, this might not be so. The rumor was that one of Earth's countries might have actually been spared the forced deportation. For some reason, its people never made the journey out here, beyond the edge of the galaxy. The holo-spy had never heard this coun-try's name or where it was located on "old" Earth, and her knowledge of it ended there.

But how could one country avoid being taken off Earth? Perhaps because they were the ones in charge of the deportation in the first place? Could this "missing" country be responsible for locking up the rest of Earth's original inhabitants? Hunter knew if this proved even a little bit true, then the real villains in this might well be the people from this mysteriously-absent country.

He gulped his drink again. In the end though, no matter how or why, only one thing was for certain: Earth belonged to the ancestors of the people of the Home Planets. It had been taken away from them at the height of an empire that was as great as the present one. The question was, how could such a crime be redressed? Certainly not by compromise, or accommodation or reparation. There was no way that a deal would make such a monumental injustice just go away.

No, the only way to properly right the wrong was to take it all back. Earth. The original Solar System. The entire Milky Way. Everything. Piece by piece if necessary. And it couldn't be just a war against the Solar Guards. They were just the flunkies here. The whole imperial structure would probably have to go. Top to bottom.

Did this mean then that the United Planets were destined to fight the Fourth Empire? To bring it down by force? Hunter almost laughed out loud. The Fourth Empire was quite possibly the largest enterprise in human history. They owned the secrets to Supertime, the Big Generator and the Holy Blood. How could their little band of planets, with no real army or weapons or spacecraft, ever hope to take down something so huge? It would be an impossible campaign, even with their horde of fierce combat robots. But in Hunter's mind, there was no other choice.
They had to do it
.

And that meant a final dealing with Emperor O'Nay, God Himself or the closest thing to it. Leader of trillions of troops, with the support of billions of planets.

The father of Xara...

Another complication.

Hunter gazed deeper into the massive ring of swirling stars now, his hand going to the pocket where he kept his American flag wrapped around the faded photograph of the pretty blonde whose name he did not know. At least now he realized why he'd been drawn here, to this time, to this place in the universe. He was an American. And someone, somehow, somewhere, had bent the rules of Nature to get him here just so he could participate in the great crusade ahead.

But who brought him here? Who had the power to do so? That was another mystery for another time. He tapped his pocket three times, thought of the woman in the photograph, and then, strangely, of Ashley. Where was she right now? At this very moment?

He drained his flask then looked down at his hands. Even though it felt like they were shaking slightly, they were actually very calm. He looked back up at the great wash of stars and squinted and searched like always but then ... suddenly, there it was. Shining like a bright blue jewel amongst the clutter of the One-Arm. The magical place.

The new goal.

Home...

The real one.

Hunter smiled...

Yes, this time, he really could see Earth.

Billions of Miles Away

On a very simple, pastoral planet, hidden yet not hidden, in a very ordinary star system, there was a small cottage built on a hill, which looked out on grassy fields and a river beyond.

Inside the cottage, in the bedroom, an ancient form lay on a Sears Roebuck four-poster bed, sagging with a Sealy mattress, a tiny RCA radio emitting nothing but static on the bed stand nearby.

The man on the bed was dressed in a spacesuit nearly five thousand years old. The suit was remarkably intact; indeed just like its owner, it was enjoying an unprecedented long life, now approaching its sixth millennia.

The helmet was still firmly in place around the man's head; his hands were still covered by Velcro-sealed gloves, his feet shod with the bulky, self-heating magnetic boots. On his left shoulder was a patch bearing the letters NASA. On the right, a flag consisting of red and white stripes with a blue field of stars.

The man was an astronaut—literally, an ancient astronaut. He was more than five thousand years old. No one knew how he had managed to reach such an advanced age, least of all himself.

Two female attendants cared for his needs day and night. These were few. He needed no food, no water, just air, apparently. He was alert, though mostly sleepy, and he would talk, but only from behind the thick faceplate on his helmet.