Starhawk (20 page)

But Joxx was hardly typical. He knew when the enemy came, they would descend in shuttles—up to 5,000 or more, the prisoner had told him. In those shuttles would be as many as two million troops. A deep blaster defense around Needle City might be able to slow such an onslaught once it reached the ground, but Joxx knew it could not stop it, at least not long enough for the REF to arrive.

He had to do something different.

That's why he'd ordered the confiscated blasters to be installed not just around the city but at many other points around the tiny planet as well. Joxx's dispersal of the weapons was widespread across Megiddo's half-dozen continents. On top of the mountains in the north, throughout the valleys and rivers in the south, and on islands in the two huge seas at the equator, clusters of the blaster installations began popping up all over Megiddo.

This deployment would have seemed foolish, an unnecessary dilution of forces, but there was a method to Joxx's madness. The scattered blaster sites weren't really scattered at all. Joxx had linked them all to a central command system, which he'd designed himself, sitting alone atop the Needle City Tower, which was now his field headquarters. Simply put, the weapons were all wired together, and instead of being positioned as artillery pieces, their tubes had been pointed skyward. Once the invasion began, any blaster that had a clear line of sight to any of the enemy's shuttles would fire on them while they were still in the air. Once one weapon was fired, the entire network would open up, sending out streams of destructo-beams in all directions, a shotgun approach to thwarting the enemy's well-known planetwide engulfment tactic. As long as the system kept acquiring targets, it would keep firing, creating a virtual cloud of death rays to meet their opponent's rapidly falling invasion craft.

Essentially, Joxx had created a massive antiaircraft system, a concept that had somehow been lost in the mists of time. While setting up a few blaster weapons around a city or a castle to fire on flying objects was not exactly unheard of in some parts of the Galaxy, Joxx had nearly 25,000 weapons pointing skyward, all thinking with the same brain—
his
—and all operating on the same principle. The more invasion craft he could destroy descending through the atmosphere, the fewer he would have to deal with on the ground.

This innovative defense was also set up in depth. The first layer of weapons—they being about half of the single-tube Faster Blasters his troops had found—would be positioned to acquire and fire at the enemy invasion craft up to 400,000 feet or eighty miles high, almost as soon as they fell out of orbit. Those invaders who somehow made it through this first ring of fire would face several more thousand Faster Blasters, throwing up another storm of destructo-fire around 200,000 feet or forty miles high. A third layer—from the half-tube mortax blasters—would meet them at 55,000 feet, or about ten miles up. After that, the piece de resistance, the arrays of gigantic Master Blasters, would blanket the skies at twenty miles and below.

If any of the enemy still survived, if any actually made it through all that, Joxx had set up a dozen rings of blaster emplacements around Needle City, including more than a hundred Master Blasters in the downtown area alone.

And who would be manning all these weapons sites?

The 20,000-man crew of the
ShadoVox
, along with the 400,000 inmates still shivering down in Big Rocks.

Installing this system was a massive undertaking, one that had to be accomplished in less than a solar day. Joxx had used his starship's substantial transfer systems to get the purloined blasters and their crews in place around the planet; sheer manpower put the weapons in place. It was getting all of the weapons connected within his command matrix that took the most effort.

The problem was, Megiddo wasn't overflowing with all the controls and sensors needed for Joxx's dream of an all-planet defense to come true. But that's when his brilliance came into play again. Not everything Joxx had cobbled together for the defense of Megiddo had come from the planet itself. His troops had jumped over to the planetoid called TransWorld 800, the mostly automated advance SG supply base forty light-years away. Joxx had made the initial trip to TW800 himself. His first act was to declare the artificial moon under martial law, another formality, as most of the people on it were in the employ of the SG anyway. The main objective was to secure the materials needed for his defense system on Megiddo. In less than a half an Earth day, Joxx's troops had taken everything they could find from the storehouses on TW800 and had stripped its small fleet of cargo 'crashers as well, mostly of command and control gear needed for the alignment of Joxx's massive blaster deployment.

Everything was carried over to Megiddo in two huge space trucks Joxx had found at Brakes; a half-mile-square area next to the space needle had been leveled as a place for these large vessels to land. Then Joxx drafted two thousand of TransWorld's civilians into his newly christened Army of Empire Defense and had them brought over to his fortress planet as well. The TW800 facility was then sealed and anything able to fly locked up tight.

Joxx also had one more star in his pocket, a very secret weapon: the
ShadoVox
itself.

That his prized warship might be one of the intended goals of the invaders only made his position more precarious. He'd used the ship continuously in the past twenty-four hours, setting up his defense system and getting the manpower and the right materials in place. Megiddo had been rocking with the thunderous noise of the starship flying here and there at the bombastic crank power, so much so, that many on the ground found their ears had begun to bleed anytime the starship passed overhead. The noise was that loud.

But again, as awesome as it was, the
ShadoVox
could not engage an unknown number of invading starships on its own. True, by wading into a swarm of enemy vessels, the
Vox
could probably take out nearly half of them. But that left the other half, and in that scenario, he didn't have to be a military genius to know the numbers just weren't in his favor. And why would he deliver into the enemy's hands one of the things they'd come for in the first place?

No, using the
ShadoVox
up front was not in Joxx's plans this time, either. He was much too clever for that. Instead, he'd hidden the massive battle cruiser in a place where not even the most astute enemy commander would think or even dare to look for it.

The truth was, the
ShadoVox
wasn't even on Megiddo anymore.

15

It was just after dawn the next day when a mysterious craft blinked into a very low orbit around Megiddo.

It stayed in view for just thirty seconds, descending at high speed into the upper reaches of the planet's atmosphere right above the repair yards at Brakes before blinking out again. The crews of nearly one-quarter of Joxx's blaster sites picked up the craft on their viz screens. It was way too small to be a starship and was moving too fast to be a shuttle. The anti-aircraft crews began tracking the object, but it stayed just out of range of their most powerful weapons. A coincidence, or so it was hoped.

The brief sighting did trip Joxx's worldwide firing system, though. As soon as the first weapons site spotted the bogie, the whole network lit up, right around the planet, just like it was supposed to. Sitting before a monstrous bank of viz screens in his headquarters atop the sky needle, Joxx celebrated this small triumph. His grand idea had worked. His system was in sync.

One hour later, the mystery craft appeared again. This time about 100 miles above Knifetown, an abandoned pirate base 1,500 miles west of Needle City. Once again, the craft entered the top layer of the atmosphere at very high speed, staying visible for just twenty seconds or so before disappearing again. It was still too high for any of the newly installed blasters to fire. But Joxx's brainy acquisition system had worked again. The interlocked batteries lit up around the planet less than a second before the target vanished.

The object was sighted twice more in the next two hours. Once up around Megiddo's north pole, then again above the Big Rocks prison on the planet's south pole. As before, the ship blinked in for just a few seconds, disappearing again just after the blaster system came on-line.

Perched atop his three-mile-high tower, a small army of technicians in position around him, none of this bothered Joxx. What was the mystery ship doing? Probably scouting locations for troop landings, Joxx surmised, taking some quick intelligence readings needed before the invasion began. But at the same time, the enemy's activities were still working to his advantage, putting his system through crucial real-time tests, all but proving it would work when the real attack came.

As the day wore on and word of the mysterious appearances and disappearances went through the ranks of the planet's defenders, the system began powering up and then shutting down on its own, the result, no doubt, of some itchy trigger fingers.

But that was ok, too. Joxx knew if he was to succeed here, his people on the ground had to remain alert.

Night fell over the northeastern half of Megiddo's northern hemisphere. Joxx remained in place at the top of the sky needle, his personal viz scanners floating in space all around him. He could see as far as orbit with some of these long-range devices. Like several hundred thousand other eyes around the planet, he was looking straight up, trying to detect any hint that the enemy was up there and coming down.

Midnight came and went—nothing. Another hour of darkness passed. Still nothing. Then, about two hours after midnight, a streak of light appeared in the sky above the pole. Then another appeared high above the western mountains. Then another down near the south arctic.

In seconds, hundreds of streaks were crossing the sky above Needle City. They were first appearing way, way up, obviously plunging in straight from orbit.

Several voices screamed into Joxx's intercom now. Battery commanders, from all around the tiny planet, were all yelling the same thing: "
Here they come
!"

A new viz screen appeared in front of Joxx. It gave him an instant readout showing the number of objects falling in on the planet. The number was 1,782 when it first blinked on.

This tally fit Joxx's prediction. He figured each enemy ship was carrying about fifty shuttlecraft. One hundred enemy ships, a total of five thousand shuttles.

But strangely enough, none of the invaders' warships had appeared in orbit. Had they launched their shuttlecraft from farther out? Were they somehow masking their presence? There was no way to tell.

A few seconds later, the number of incoming objects had risen to 3,517. Another few seconds, it was up to 4,023. Two seconds after that, the number went up to 4,933.

Joxx went into action. He punched the activator button on the main console in front of him. This gave out the command for his interlocking blaster system to start tracking automatically. It took not a second for his command to go right around Megiddo. From the equator to each pole and back again, every weapon was instantly juiced up and waiting for the first objects to pass below 400,000 feet.

Joxx looked up at the new viz screen; the number of incoming objects had risen to 6,429. The enemy had more shuttles than he thought. No matter. His blaster network was large enough to handle them all. He began receiving go lights from all around the planet; the system was ready. Joxx looked at the viz screen again. The incoming number had jumped to more than seven thousand.

Yet there were no mother ships in orbit.

How could that be?

were working correctly. They were. The number of objects now falling on Megiddo had topped ten thousand.

Joxx was stunned. This was twice as many shuttles as he'd expected. He did a slew of calculations in his head. His blasters could still handle the invaders, but more of the shuttles might get through the first layer of blasters. However, many of those would undoubtedly be decimated by the second layer, around 200,000 feet. His confidence level was still running high.

Then he checked the readout screen again. The number of falling objects leaped to 22,000, then 25,000, then 28,000.

Then the number doubled.

Then it tripled.

Joxx looked around at the battery of technicians in place with him atop the needle. Each man appeared more confused than the next. When Joxx looked at the readout screen again, the number of falling objects had increased to more than 150,000!

Another panel pushed. The first targets were approaching the magic threshold of 400,000 feet. Joxx sent out the final order. All targets had been automatically acquired. The number was now approaching a quarter million. Finally, a site in the northwest mountains detected an object passing below 400,000 feet.

The gigantic network of blasters opened up just two seconds later.

Few words could adequately describe what happened next. Chaos. Panic. Aeronautical mayhem. All applied, but it was still so much more than that.

The skies all around Megiddo—day side and night—lit up in a tremendous flash of combined light as more than 25,000 blasters fired almost simultaneously. The combination of the energy and flash served to emblazon the skies with an illumination nearly three times that of the system's substantial yellow white sun.

This blinding fire continued for more than a minute. The sky brightened even further as the first cascades of objects passed below 200,000 feet. There were now more than a half million targets falling through the atmosphere all around Megiddo. Sheer numbers alone allowed many of the objects to make it through the first wall of blaster fire.

There were just too many of them for the combined tracking systems to lock on to, never mind try for a hit.

Nowhere was this rain of objects heavier than above Needle City itself.

The skies overhead the sprawling, beachfront metropolis were thick with blaster streaks, firing nonstop at the incoming targets. Joxx had stopped looking at his tracking readout screen; the number of falling images had ballooned to nearly 700,000 by now, inconceivable in Joxx's master plan. His anti-aircraft system was pounding away furiously, sending thousands of artificial lightning bolts skyward from all points around the globe. Were they hitting anything? It was impossible to tell. His acquisition screens were locked up tight, there were so many objects coming in his direction.