StarHawk (21 page)

The moon Zazu-Zazu 

Orbiting planet Jazz 33 Dead Gulch Star System

The recon team had been running all night.

Through the darkened trenches, over and around hundreds of dead bodies, some still crawling, some still breathing, the team made its way east, into enemy territory, moving quickly while they still had darkness in their favor.

The mysterious noises had stopped two days before. For the first time in months, no monstrous sounds echoed through the night, no dull mechanical thuds shook the ground below. The silence became deafening.

As soon as the noises ceased, palls of thick black smoke appeared on both the eastern and northern horizons. Whatever the enemy had been doing all this time, it was clear they had completed their task—and this did not portend well for the people of Zazu-Zazu.

In the year since the tiny moon was invaded, the territory held by its citizens had shrunk, until now only the fortress city of Qez and a handful of nearby villages and farms remained in friendly hands. With the much-feared final attack apparently imminent, all of the civilians from the surrounding countryside had sought refuge inside the high walls of Qez. This had caused the city’s population to nearly double in size.

Thirty thousand people were now crowded into the city. Together, they awaited their uncertain fate.

But what was coming exactly? That’s what the recon team had been dispatched to find out. There had been no time to plan their mission in advance. Zazu-Zazu was just nine hundred miles in circumference. It spun very quickly on its axis and so had extremely short days—just three hours of full daylight, followed by three hours of dull planetshine, followed by another three hours of absolute darkness. On Zazu-Zazu, sunrise lasted but a minute and then the day would rush toward the night, when the process would start all over again.

On this particular day, planet Jazz 33 would rise about three minutes after the quick sunset. This would set up a situation where the vast battlefield separating the warring parties would be dark enough to move through, yet faintly lit from the planetshine to let the recon soldiers see where they were going. Under the circumstances, these were the best conditions they could hope for.

As it was, the recon sortie was as close to a suicide mission as one could get. Heavy fighting all around the small moon had prevented such an undertaking as this before. But, perhaps not so surprisingly, as soon as the mysterious sounds stopped, so did all enemy attacks. That’s when finding out just what was going on over the horizon became a major priority.

So the recon
had
to be done—no one disputed that. But of the six mercenary groups left defending the city of Qez, only one offered to send men on this dangerous mission. That group was the Freedom Brigade, the friends of the priest. They were known in this part of the Outer Fringe as skillful, loyal, courageous—in short, the best troops money could buy.

But beyond that, the brigade had a traditional tie to the small moon of Zazu-Zazu. Indeed, they had provided security for its people for centuries, ever since their home planet established a “research station” on Zazu-Zazu sometimes during the reign of the Second Empire. When the moon was invaded a year before, the Freedom Brigade had been the first mercenary group to answer the call for help. Even in this isolated corner of the Galaxy, loyalty and honor were still held dear.

The five soldiers selected to go were among only ninety-nine men remaining from the brigade’s original contingent of 202. Like the several thousand other mercenaries hired to defend the people of Zazu-Zazu, the strange noises had haunted them, too. Even during some of the heaviest fighting, when tens of thousands of blaster shots filled the air, the mysterious pounding and clanging had rumbled like thunder above the fray. Grim curiosity alone would have been enough reason to send out the recon team.

But finding out why the noises had stopped would not be an easy thing to do. For the patrol to get close enough to enemy lines for a visual scan, they first had to cross the killing fields of the Xomme, nearly twenty miles of no-man’s-land that separated their lines from those of their enemy. This thick band of trenches, bomb craters, devastated towns, and mile upon mile of fiat desolation was the result of nearly one year of brutal warfare in a very small place.

Once the recon team navigated this nightmarish terrain and reached the enemy lines, they were to scan a place called Holy Hell. It was a three-sided valley anchored by small mountains to the north and south.

Holy Hell was a known troop-staging area of the enemy; indeed, most of the attacks by the Nakkz had originated from this place.

As such, just about everybody concerned was sure the mysterious noises were coming from there.

Despite being battered by a fierce storm most of the way, the recon team finally reached their objective six hours later.

Hurricanelike storms were routine on the small moon—some said this was because the satellite’s ancient puffing was slowly becoming undone. The recon team had been especially deluged during the final hour of their trek. And while the storm had hid its advance, it also had prevented them from clearly seeing into the pit at Holy Hell. Had they arrived under better climatic conditions, the team could have gathered what it needed and then started the long dash back home in the waning darkness. But this time the weather had screwed them.

Not that it made any difference, for when first light arrived and the recon troops saw what had been built inside Holy Hell, they knew two things immediately: It made no difference when they spotted this thing, and the people they were here to protect were doomed.

It was gleaming in the red light of the dreary dawn when they got their first good look at it.

They thought at first it was an enormous prop of some sort—maybe a religious symbol, though the Nakkz had hardly showed any signs of spirituality. It was only after the last of the rain and mist cleared and the recon soldiers could do a proper scan of the object that they realized to their great dismay that this thing was real.

It was a xarcus, a tracked armored vehicle that could carry men and weapons across a battlefield. During the year of warfare on Zazu-Zazu, hundreds of these armored movers had been used by both sides. But a typical xarcus was only twenty feet long by ten feet wide.
This
xarcus was a colossus. It was at least half a mile wide and a quarter of a mile high! Its dual tracks were enormous. There were thousands of Z guns sticking out of innumerable gun blisters pockmarking its body. An enormous Z-beam tube projected out of its massive turret; its barrel alone was at least a quarter of a mile long. Even worse, the colossus appeared to be constructed of reatomized electron steel. This meant it was virtually indestructible.

It seemed unbelievable at first, but the proof was in the viz-scan. Somehow the Nakkz had come upon an enormous weapon that could undoubtedly move many thousands of men at once, and had enough weapons to level Qez or any defensive position remaining along the defense line.

But there was an even more frightening aspect to discovering the monster. The Nakkz could never have built this colossus on their own. They were made up mostly of retread space pirates—fierce fighters, but definitely not a pool of any great thinkers.

How, then, had such a giant come into their possession?

However it happened, as the recon troops contemplated the gigantic xarcus on this awful morning, they knew there was no way they and their allies could put up a defense against it. Most of the conflict’s fighting had taken place in areas like the Xomme. On a few occasions the Nakkz had actually come within sight of the Qez. But these had been small and mostly symbolic victories. No matter where these breakthroughs took place, the enemy’s lengthy lines of communication and the atrocious conditions of the combat zone itself always forced them to withdraw eventually.

But now, with this huge weapon, all that was a thing of the past. The xarcus was itself a self-contained city. Once it made its way across the battlefield and reached the Zazu-Zazu defense line, there would be no way of stopping it. It could crash through the wall surrounding Qez at any point—that is, if it didn’t simply level it with its overwhelming weaponry first.

And once it got beyond Qez and into the countryside, it would just be hours before the rest of the tiny moon was conquered.

This would not be good. The Nakkz were well known for their brutal treatment of anyone living on or fighting for Zazu-Zazu. Soldiers or civilians, young or old, it seemed to be the intent of the Nakkz not only to conquer the small moon, but to wipe out its population as well. With a weapon of this magnitude, that terrible moment now seemed very close at hand.

These were the bad tidings the recon soldiers now had to bring back to Qez.

The recon troops had just completed their depressing survey of Holy Hell when their luck began to run out.

Just as they were getting ready to withdraw, an enemy robot aircraft suddenly appeared overhead. This thing was called a Stinger. It was just ten feet long, six feet at its widest, and shaped, of course, like a triangle. It carried no weapons of its own. However, it could send viz-scan information back to enemy gunners, who could then deliver deadly accurate X-beam fire to just about any point of the battlefield.

The recon soldiers knew well that being hit by an X beam would be an especially cruel way to die. Just how the Nakkz had come into possession of a ray gun so different from the Z beams used by just about everyone else in the Galaxy, no one seemed to know. It was a very strange weapon. An X-beam blast could be as murderously accurate as that of a Z beam—but getting hit with an X beam meant that about 80 percent of the victim’s atoms were instantly ripped apart from each other—leaving 20 percent of the human being intact, to die incredibly slowly and incredibly painfully. This and their other exotic weapons provided a good insight into the cruel minds of the Nakkz and their mysterious patrons.

The recon soldiers had seen many of their comrades die the horrible death of partial-atomic disassembly.

That the same fate awaited them was a frightening thought indeed.

They began their withdrawal in haste now, but it was already too late. A devastating X-beam barrage rained down upon the soldiers just a few seconds after the Stinger spotted them. One man was hit instantly, and slowly began to fade away.

The survivors quickly jettisoned all unnecessary gear and began an all-out retreat. They had no means of communicating with Qez; no way of telling anyone back there what they had discovered. It was imperative that they get away. But the robot craft would pursue them across the bloody mud of the Xomme for the next three hours.

Coordinating the long-range beam fire from Holy Hell, the Stinger was able to zero in on individual members of the recon unit, and allow the Nakkz gunners to pick them off one at a time.

The sun went down quickly, planetrise occurred, and two more of the recon soldiers died.

The robot plane’s pursuit became even more relentless with the darkness. Stripped of all but their basic uniforms, their blaster rifles, and their battle helmets, the recon men were running madly through the maze of trenches, stepping over or sometimes into partially disassembled bodies, the remains of fighting from as long as a year before. The two men who died during the night had each been isolated, trapped, and then slowly blasted to death. When the sun rose again, only two soldiers remained.

Noon came quickly—and that’s when the airborne robot stalker suddenly disappeared from the sky. But the respite lasted no more than a few seconds, as a heavily armored aerial scout car just as quickly materialized above the two brigade soldiers. Known as an XA-10 Bolt to the defenders, this machine could carry up to twenty enemy soldiers along with a huge gun in its belly. Its appearance signaled a change in tactics by the Nakkz. They had tired of toying with the survivors of the recon unit.

With them almost halfway across no-man’s-land, the Bolt had been sent out to deliver the final blow.

Its appearance was a matter of bad timing for the last two recon men. They were crossing a huge crater field, created by a previous bombardment so concentrated it had obliterated the trenchworks for a quarter mile around. The first soldier made it across in one piece—but the second man was not so lucky.

He was about halfway through the field when the Bolt showed up. Its big gun unleashed a mighty blast ray at him right away, in effect slicing him in two. As the bottom half of his body began to dissolve away, his upper half began writhing in agony in the mud. He began crying loudly for his comrade.

The Bolt went into a hover over the mortally wounded man. A dozen or so helmeted soldiers peered out from their portholes, enjoying the sight of the soldier in his death throes. A person wounded such as this could linger for hours, even days, in intense agony before finally succumbing. Yet watching the man die seemed to be a form of entertainment for the soldiers aboard the Bolt.

Their blood lust would not last too long, though. With the man screaming in sheer pain, another ray hit him square in the chest, finally killing him completely and blowing his subatomic remains into the unknown dimensions. It was difficult to tell what had happened at first. But then the thin trail of smoke coming from the far end of the massive bomb crater finally told the tale. The last recon soldier had killed his wounded comrade.

It was the last act of mercy for a friend.

Now the Bolt began moving again. There was one live body still out there that could be cut in two, and there would be no one around to save this man from a long, slow death.

The last recon soldier was quickly running for his life again. Zigzagging through the trenches, the Bolt was firing indiscriminately at him, most of the blasts landing either right in front of the hapless soldier or right on his heels. Finally the Bolt launched one of its incendiary artillery shells. It blew up a section of trenchworks just in front of the desperate trooper, in effect blocking off his means of escape. The soldier tried reversing course, only to find that another blast had sealed the trench in that direction as well. He tried a side route. Another blast, another dead end.