Starhawk (22 page)

Xara just shook her head. This was disturbing news, but why was the spy telling her? And not her father? Or the top military commanders?

He was coming to that.

"I have in my possession an image that will answer your question," he said. It was his turn to read minds.

He used his right hand to carve a square out of open space. It soon turned into a viz screen. On it, a slightly fuzzy sequence showing the invaders' attack on Trans-World 800 appeared. Six blue and chrome starships could be seen rocketing in and out of the action.

The spy froze the image and pointed to one of the attacking starships. There was an emblem emblazoned across its fuselage up near the cockpit. It was a red, white, and blue square, with thirteen stripes and fifty stars.

"That flag?" he asked her. "You're familiar with it?"

Xara's hand went to her lips. It was the same flag that Hawk Hunter always kept in his pocket.

Her eyes lit up. "Oh my God. He's alive?"

The spy nodded. "We believe he is—and I thought it was important for you to know."

Xara unintentionally rose about eight inches off the couch before settling back down again. She couldn't help it—she was that happy.

But right away, dark truths came flooding in. "
He's
the one attacking the Empire?"

The spy nodded slowly. "He and his friends: the explorers, Erx and Berx; the hero, Calandrx. Just where Hunter's been since he deserted the X-Forces is a matter of conjecture, though I know in the basement of the Solar Guards headquarters, there have been many—how shall I say it?—
theories
about his whereabouts. But it's very clear at the moment where he is. Not so clear is
what
he's doing—or why."

Xara could just barely see the spy's eyes hidden in the shadow of his turned-down hat. But it seemed as if they were two laser beams shooting out at her now.

She had a deep secret to tell. She was the one who sent Hunter out to the Fringe in the first place, where he quickly disappeared. And worse, she sent Erx, Berx, and Calandrx out to find him—and they'd been swallowed up by the stars as well.

But the spy was kind. When she started to speak, he simply raised his hand and put his fingers to his lips.

"There is no need, princess," he told her. "I already know your tale. The reasons don't even concern me. What is important now is that I have shared this information with you. Because the really bad news is still to come."

Xara braced herself.

"Hunter and his friends have pulled off a major coup here," the spy began. "And I can predict with ease that this place—the Palace, the city below, the Galaxy itself!—will never be the same, once word of this gets out. We have fought space pirates, tax criminals, rogue mercenaries, and many other kinds of space trash out on the Fringe for five hundred years. There have been major wars and innumerable smaller ones. But never has anyone attacked the Empire itself. This is a big moment. A historic moment. I think you and I should work toward the common goal of making sure it does not turn into a disastrous moment."

Xara was nearly beyond words. "What do you mean?"

"First things first," he said. "That these invaders have taken over six cargo 'crashers is already known to the top men of the Solar Guards. And they have already devised a countermeasure. Apparently, as a solution should any of their vessels fall into unwanted hands, the SG planted a number of tiny sensors in all their ships, hidden among the power tubes and bubblers. When activated, these sensors become like beacons, you might say. They will allow a special antispace rocket to home in on them very quickly and with great stealth, while still in Supertime. In case of mutiny, or a commander gone mad, or maybe just a way to eliminate a crew that had seen too much, such a ship would be easy to destroy. A sort of fratricide theory really, as only Empire ships can achieve Supertime. And so typically paranoid of the SG. But now, in light of events, somewhat brilliant.

"The Rapid Engagement Fleet is heading for the trouble zone. They will soon be sent a secure message string from Black Rock, telling them that their mission has now changed. They will now hunt down the stolen 'crashers. The message will also contain the information they need to replicate the precise weapon that will home in on the sensors buried inside the stolen ships. Once the REF assembles what's required, they will find those six cargo ships and utterly destroy them. Your friends will not have a chance. In fact, without help, they will never even know what hit them."

He looked up at Xara. She was in tears.

"You mean Hunter's come back to life," she sniffed, "only to get killed again?"

The spy could only shrug. "An unanswerable question, my princess ..."

Xara wiped her eyes. If someone could actually look more beautiful while crying, it was her.

"War, rivalries, empires! I don't care about any of it, you know," she whispered. "I hate the politics, the intrigue, the endless dramas that everyone within the realm seems so intent on playing. I know these things are fueled by nothing more than greed and the thirst for power, no more than right here in the Palace itself. And I don't care about any of it! All I care about is Hunter. I want him safe. I want him alive."

She wiped away another tear. "But what choice is this? If I try to help him, I defy not only my family but the Empire itself. If I do nothing, Hunter and his friends will surely be killed-—and whatever he found out there, whatever spurred him to take on the Empire in the first place, will be lost, too."

The spy said, "There may be a way we can prevent both things. But it is a journey you will have to undertake, my princess. I can guide you. But it will be up to you to see it through...."

Her face brightened again. The room seemed to lighten up as well. "I'll do anything," she said.

The spy pulled his hat further down around his eyes. "You might just have to," he said. "But we must leave immediately. There is something at my hideout that I must show you, explain to you. If you agree that this is the way to go, we can proceed. But I must warn you, time is our biggest enemy now."

She looked at him strangely.

"We know my reasons for doing this," she said to him. "I'm trying to save Hunter. But what is your motive? Why would you want to help these invaders? It borders on treason."

The spy thought a moment.

"Did you hear what happened in the Blue House the night of the Great Saturnalia?" he finally asked her.

Xara shook her head no.

The spy almost laughed. "They found a leak, my lady. In one of the water pipes. Caused quite a stir, I'm told. Some of the clankers actually blew circuits because they didn't know what to do. They had never seen a leak. This was something totally new to them, and they did not like it. I heard it was the same for some of the human workers, too. No one knew how to fix it.

"There is an ancient theory, the idea that chaos itself is not chaotic at all. It is not disorganization, rather it is the organizer of everything. A soldier sneezes on a distant planet somewhere, and if it happens in the right place at the right time, the air pressure from that sneeze will build and build until the planet is racked by a super tornado. It's a huge catastrophe, but it still takes that little sneeze to start the events that eventually destroy the planet."

"I think you might be losing me," she confessed.

He nodded and began again. "Did you know that last year was the first time that the percentage of wealth brought in to the imperial coffers was higher than the number of planets we reclaimed? A statement probably better off explained by the Empire's bursars, but I think I know what it means. We have lost our view. We have begun to fail in our first mission: reclaiming the Galaxy. We have become so absorbed by the riches we take from our subjects that making things better for those subjects themselves is slowly fading away. It's just a pinprick really, a trend that might take another hundred years to really be noticed. But it is a warning sign, a symptom, that other things are wrong. With the Empire. With the planet. With us. We've become so self-absorbed in the grandeur of it all, and with everyone trying to get a piece of that grandeur, that a certain kind of blindness has set in."

He paused a moment. Xara was transfixed. Intelligent conversation was a rarity in her world.

He began again slowly. "One of the oldest texts we have ever found here on Earth was a fantasy written by one of this planet's greatest writers even before the first humans went into space. Only a few pages remain, and many of the words are so archaic, we have no idea what they mean anymore. But the main idea was this: No matter how big or small, empires always reach a point of inevitable collapse, a point where they more or less have to fall, some in order to regain whatever was great about them in the first place. And where the first crack appears is usually from within. I guess what I'm saying is, I wonder if maybe the leak in the pipe is trying to tell us something. Perhaps we've reached that point.

"Now this man, Hunter—I know a few things about him. His claim that he simply appeared one day out on that lonely rock in space is apparently true. It really was as if someone had simply dropped him out here, from somewhere else. My dear princess, as you know, the Galaxy is filled with mysterious and wonderful things. But I've never heard of a case like his. Just suddenly
there
. And look at what's happened since. In less than a year, Hunter has won the greatest acclaim in the Galaxy, then he has vanished, only to reemerge to attack the Empire itself—and so far, very successfully, against one of our most brilliant commanders. From my deepest thoughts I've come to believe that Hunter is here for a reason. Is it to conquer the Empire? I don't think so. I think he is here to simply tip it over. Either way, stopping him might not necessarily be the right thing."

Xara didn't speak for a very long time. Finally, she said. "So my reasons are for love. And yours are for history?"

She thought the spy might have actually smiled for a moment. It was hard to tell.

"Can you think of any two better?" he replied.

17

Chesterwest, Twenty Miles North of Big Bright City

Captain Vanex, chief custodian of Special Number One, was dreaming of the great eastern ocean overflowing its artificial banks, rising up over the grand triad and flooding into his home, when a sound interrupted his slumber.

Was that someone
knocking
on his door?

He fell slowly out of bed, padded into the hallway, and over to his front entrance. He opened the door to find no one standing there. A small box was floating at about eye level. It was shedding a bright emerald aura, almost the same hue as the pine trees surrounding his home. This indicated the package had been sent to him by someone within the Imperial Family.

He took the package from its hover, closed the door, and brought it inside.

Placing the package on his bed stand, he lit a candle to see better. It was almost noontime, but Vanex's 700-year-old eyes welcomed the additional light. He pushed the button sequencer on the top of the package, and it slowly began to open. He found inside—of all things—a holo-girl capsule. An ion impression identified it as an Echo 999.9, Transdimensional Test. Top Secret.

Vanex was stunned. A
holo-girl capsule
? He hadn't seen one of these things in almost two centuries.

He studied the palm-size container. It was obviously some kind of advanced model. He knew the Echoes were not only able to provide the user with the comforts of a very heavenly creature, they also had the ability to bring that user into the mysterious thirty-fourth dimension, where time more or less stood still, and where one could live and love and frolic with her forever—or at least until the power strings ran out. Such experiences could last for what seemed to be a month, thirty days in paradise with an angel. And upon return, it was like you never left. Whatever was happening the moment you began the experience was still happening the moment you returned.

An encrypted message suddenly popped into space just above the capsule. It contained a short sequence of words, presented in the archaic language that few people on Earth understood anymore. But Vanex was one of them. And these words were somewhat simple.

The message instructed Vanex to summon a sentinel to his quarters. Sentinels were the very strange beings who existed primarily in the sixth dimension. They had been around for centuries and for want of a better description, these days served as ghostly valets. They looked after the daily affairs of the Imperial elite. From grooming and dressing, to making sure the very special Specials had water at every hand, they also served as musicians, envoys, escorts, tour guides, you name it. They even served as stand-ins for the Emperor himself, experiencing, if not exactly enjoying, a secret and very close relationship with the all-knowing O'Nay. They were odd-looking characters, most of them. Tall and gangling, with long faces, dark, deeply sunken, tremendously sad eyes, hunched-over shoulders, and terrible posture. Sometimes they appeared in a shape that resembled O'Nay himself, but in a rather disturbing way.

No one was really sure who these characters were; they were one of several deep mysteries of the Fourth Empire. Whether they were real or just part of some deeply secret program running somewhere at some location unknown, few people knew, if any. Because they weren't really human, they had an ability to project themselves to any point in the Galaxy instantaneously but could only stay at that location for a few seconds' time before they disappeared— for good. These one-way missions lasted just long enough to perhaps deliver a document, a weapon, a bit of good or bad news. Then the messenger would fade away like a ghost, never to be seen again. There was one theory that the sentinels were actually a race of disposable, computer-projected spies left over from the Second or possibly even the Third Empire. Because Vanex was in effect part of the Imperial Court, he could summon a sentinel at any time.