Planet America (6 page)

"My apologies to you both," the priest said hastily. "This is my friend, Hawk Hunter. He is a pilot, as well as an .explorer ... of sorts."

Klaaz was unimpressed. "That uniform," he said directly to Hunter. "It's an odd one. Under whose flag do you fight?"

"No one at present, sir," Hunter quickly replied.

But that wasn't nearly enough of an explanation for the Great Klaaz. He studied Hunter's garb even closer, causing Hunter to shift nervously. The mostly black flight suit was different from what billions of other soldiers across the Five-Arm wore. First of all, it wasn't frayed or dirty, and it didn't look dull. It was lined with emerald thread, except for red collar stitching, and overall, its material quality was very high end. (And a bit
stylish
, to use the ancient word for it.) But it could also take a blaster shot from twenty feet away and not even register a dent. Even closer in, such a shot might not be fatal, or at least that's what Hunter had been told by the Empire quartermasters the day he'd been fitted for it. It bore red shoulder epaulets and the four gold stars on its collar, ornaments very foreign in this part of the Galaxy. A cape could be pulled out of its shoulder seam for use in bad weather. The crossed double-X symbol of the Empire's Expeditionary and Exploratory Forces adorned its chest. The overly large, lightning-bolt trimmed crash helmet only added to the oddity.

"I knew of such a uniform many years ago," Klaaz told him now, from the end of a feebly pointing finger. "The man who wore it claimed that he was lost and that he was an officer in some great empire that ruled most of the known Galaxy from a tiny planet clear on the other side."

Klaaz's eyes narrowed on Hunter. It was Pater Tomm who shifted uncomfortably now.

"I do not know the man of whom you speak," Hunter stuttered in reply.

He didn't want to go any further with this. While local interplanetary contact was routine out here, the immense Fourth Empire was practically unknown on the Five-Arm. Much of the fifth spiral was considered yet-to-be-reclaimed territory by Imperial Earth, meaning no substantial contact had been made— yet. The stray visitor had been written and talked about down through the ages, but for the most part, many people on the Five-Arm thought life petered out somewhere near the boundary of their local super-cluster. Not unlike the Home Planets, if they'd ever heard of the Fourth Empire at all, it was through the telling of legends and myth.

This was one reason why Hunter had studiously avoided talking about the Empire with anyone he'd met out here. As an ex-officer in the Earth's advanced expeditionary forces, he knew the possible ramifications for a planet's population if they suddenly realized they were not alone in the Universe; that the Galaxy was totally inhabited and teeming with life. This was knowledge that had to be gradually absorbed. The sudden appearance of a stranger from outer space rarely sat well with a planet's collective psyche, especially one that didn't yet realize life existed beyond its own orbit. Panic, the collapse of religions and mores—when it happened, it usually wasn't very pretty. For all its faults, this was a matter still held with great concern by the Empire itself. First contact was something usually handled with great care.

In that regard, Hunter knew that any time he stepped on an isolated world out here, he was in fact an alien on that planet, with all the baggage that entailed. And of course, he did not want to call undue attention to himself, again just in case agents from that very real Empire had begun pursuing him. His trail was best left as cold as possible—reason three for keeping one's mouth shut. Though he had his suspicions, even Pater Tomm wasn't sure where Hunter was from. Not exactly, anyway. And that's the way Hunter wanted to keep it, at least for now. So his policy had been to keep his lips sealed shut and his eyes open.

Getting a new uniform someday would help, too.

Still, an uncomfortable moment hung in the air. It took Pater Tomm's quick interruption to break the spell.

"Brother Klaaz, you have a ship here. Why not simply pack up these beautiful unfortunates and blast off out of here?"

He indicated the very aged spacecraft.

"I mean, that craft is certainly old," Tomm went on. "But if it flies, then it is surely big enough for everyone to fit."

"Correct as usual, Padre," Klaaz sighed. "But you see, it's a question posed by an ancient discipline called Rocket Science. And it's a simple problem really: The ascent phase of that old stick is so slow, I just know we will be shot down in the first few seconds of flight. Alas, this has been my dilemma for months."

The old soldier pauseJfor a long breath, then went on:

"My instincts tell me I must somehow counterattack the two armies that encircle my position ... or at least distract them long enough for that old buster to take off and have a chance to make it into orbit. But how can I do that? I just don't know. Moreover, the combined gravity-field shield surrounding the fort would have to be lowered at least a few minutes before I attempt the very slow, vertical takeoff. If I do that, we would leave ourselves wide open to attack and, well..."

He let his words drift off and looked up at the ice-glass ceiling way over his head. His eyes had misted over. Hunter took a deep breath and stretched to his full height. Klaaz was not a fake; he was an authentic hero, a man who'd saved literally billions of people on the Five-Arm from the hands of various interstellar scum. And even now, after a handful of centuries, he was still trying to do the right thing. He had no massive space fleet at his disposal this time though, no endless legions of space soldiers ready to follow him into battle. This time he was alone, on one of the crappiest planets in the Milky Way, with crude projections of empty holo-soldiers as his army, and a slowly draining gravity shield as his last defense.

It was no way to exit such an illustrious career.

Pater Tomm caught Hunter studying the old soldier.

The priest leaned over and whispered to the pilot, "At the moment, Klaaz needs our help more than we need his."

Hunter just nodded. "I know."

He put his hand on Klaaz's shoulder.

"If you leave our brother Tomm to get your rocket ship ready," he told the old warrior. "I'm sure you and I can take care of the rest."

4

The larger of the two armies beseiging Klaaz's ice fort
was known as the Goth-Star BallBreakers.

Boasting more than ten thousand troops, the Goth-Stars held most of the territory south of the battered fortress. They had fielded an enormous arsenal of long-range Z-gun arrays, known appropriately enough as Master Blasters. These fierce weapons held up to ten laser-tube muzzles surrounded by dozens of diamond-studded firing rings that lit up like so many halos whenever the blaster mount was engaged. Weapons of this size could deliver massive amounts of destructive power; just how the fort's combined gravity shield had held up against them for so long was indeed a mystery. True, because of the frigid air above the isolated battlefield, it took each Master Blaster up to an hour to recharge sufficiently before firing again. But still, the siege had been going on for months.

The Goth-Stars were a quasi-mercenary army of space pirates. They were presently in league with another pirate army, the SpeedBall Saints, which was slowly battering the massive ice castle from the opposite side. It would be a fifty-fifty split once this long, drawn-out affair was over. This meant that the Goth-Stars would acquire approximately one thousand beautiful Mutaman-Younguska females to dispose of however they pleased.

The Goth-Stars were holding a line about a mile south of the ice fort. They had not allowed any food or supplies to reach the beleaguered castle in months. That by these actions hundreds of frightened, innocent people were suffering inside the fort had little bearing on the Goths. In fact, many of them liked the notion of keeping their victims helpless, simply by their whim, making the inevitable invasion of the huge structure even more exciting. After all, preying on the weak and defenseless was what being a space pirate was all about. Or so they thought.

The first real sign of trouble for the Goth-Stars came just as their front-line troops began reporting for evening chow.

Feeding thousands of hungry soldiers in arctic conditions was not an easy task. The power drain on the army's food replication units lasted for an hour or more sometimes, depending on just how hungry the horde was and how cold the weather might be outside. That's why most of the troops ate in shifts.

The top communications man for the Goth-Stars returned to his forward position after dinner to find his small corps of transmission operators looking perplexed. They were having trouble contacting their allies, the SpeedBall Saints. It was routine for the two armies to exchange targeting information before commencing the night's bombardment of the ice fort. A few stray blaster rounds could wreak havoc on a bivouacked army. This communication sought to eliminate any potential fuckups during the brief dark hours.

But try as they might, the Goth-Stars just couldn't get the Saints on the phone.

The comm officer checked their communicator readings; they all seemed to be in order. The problem was not on their end. The SpeedBalls were not as organized nor as disciplined as the Goths, so the glitch didn't come as a big surprise. Their main communicator screen could be down for a variety of reasons. Most likely the operator was drunk or asleep at the switch.

"Launch a probe," the Goth comm officer told his men. "Put a viz-screen bug inside it and buzz those jerks."

The underlings did as told. In seconds, a small rocket blasted off from the top of their comm shack and traveled twenty miles through the frigid wind and snow in just a few seconds. It was soon circling the main part of the SpeedBalls' base.

Or at least what used to be the SpeedBalls' base ...

Because at the moment, it looked like nothing more than a string of big, black holes, slowly melting into the ice.

The comm officer stared at the viz screen; his jaw dropped to his chin.

"What the hell happened there?" he asked no one in particular. "Did those fools blow themselves up?"

Just as the comm officer turned to alert his superiors, another panel on his main communications screen started pulsating.

"What the hell is this?" one of his lowers remarked.

"Spill," the comm officer ordered him.

"It seems we have some kind of flying object, coming out of the west, with a trail originating not far from the Speedballs' position."

"A
flying
object?" the comm officer mouthed silently.

The man turned to him, his face a mask of confusion and concern. "Yes sir," he said. "It's going very fast, heading right for us."

Now this
was
odd. There were really only two kinds of flying objects in this part of the Fringe: the huge vessels that flew in space and smaller craft—space fighters, invasion shuttles, ships—which could fly inside an atmosphere, but never very fast.

Yet at that moment, something rather small yet very speedy was coming out of the black, frosty smoke that was once the location of their ally's main base. A similar object had been spotted fleeing the Goth's blaster units earlier in the day. But this time, the intent was unmistakably hostile.

A hostile threat from the air?

A strange thought came to the comm officer's mind. "Do we even
have
any weapons made to shoot down flying objects?" he asked.

The underlings looked at each other and did a group shrug.

The comm officer just shook his head. "I didn't think so," he said.

The Goth-Star front-line units occupied a mile-long, perfectly straight trench, carved out of the snow and ice about a mile south of the ice fort's front gate.

This trench was dotted with prefab combat dugouts, heated, self-sustaining units much more elaborate than anything found below Klaaz's dying fortress. Each of these units could house up to a hundred soldiers very comfortably. In between the snowball-like structures were the Master Blaster tubular arrays. Thirty-six in total, all of them were pointed at the ice fort, which dominated the horizon directly in front of them.

There was no such thing as a red alert for these front-line troops. They were responsible for little more than firing off their Master Blasters every hour or so and waiting for the eventual order to finally move on the ice fort
en masse
. They had no defensive weapons of any sort simply because they had no need for them. The weapons fire they'd faced coming from the ancient fortress had been inconsistent at best. It was the gravity shields that were keeping them out.

This lack of any true surface-to-air weaponry meant that when the object hurtling out of the west at them was first spotted, there was nothing any of the Goth-Star troops could do ... except watch it approach.

It came barreling over the far horizon, a bright flash of red light, leaving a long trail of yellow sparks across the darkening sky.

The aircraft was of a very strange design. It did not look like a typical space fighter, the only other machine the Goth-Stars could compare it to. To their eyes, it looked more like a smaller version of a enormous battle cruiser, but even then, the resemblance was only fleeting.

The flying machine was rocketing along just fifty feet above the flat, frozen, snowy plain. The noise it was making was very bizarre in a world of silent propulsion devices; a sort of mechanical scream, it was deafening and extremely unnerving. The aircraft overflew the mile-long trench line once, wings tipped, as if it was looking for something. It appeared that two figures were riding inside the contraption, one sitting behind the other and looking out at them through a long, slender bubble-type glass top. After one long pass, the aircraft went into a violent, sweeping maneuver, boosting its power plants to ear-shattering speed and lining itself back up with the trench.

Then it started shooting.

This was a new experience for the Goth-Star soldiers. Attack from low-flying, high-speed aircraft was something few soldiers on the Five-Arm or anywhere else in the Galaxy had faced before. The flying machine's nose seemed to explode in bright orange flame. What they didn't know was that this was a blaster—a six-barrel, airborne blaster—a weapon never conceived before. This stunned some of the soldiers so much, they didn't think to turn their own personal weapons toward the oncoming aircraft.