Storm Over Saturn (26 page)

Things hadn't been the same at the Empire's secret desert base since the Empress damaged the Big Generator.

This sacred place, once guarded by entire armies of elite Earth Guards, was now under complete domination of the Special Solar Guards. Their troops were everywhere. In the mountains, scattered across the desert, and lined three deep along the perimeter, standing as immobile as statues in the climate-controlled but nevertheless uncomfortable desert heat.

Most of the heavy security was concentrated on the facility that housed the Big Generator itself. Located deep inside a nearby mountain, the inside of this chamber closely resembled a church. Candles provided most of the light. Shadows played up and down its black walls. Heavily armed SSG troops, hundreds of them, were hidden in those shadows.

Now that both Commander X and McLyx were officially missing in action, a third commander was running the SSG operations here. His name was Viktorx. In fact, his people were the ones supervising the SSG's "repair" of the Big Generator, which had continued apace.

Viktorx was considered a sudden up-and-comer in the ranks of the SSG. Few people in the organization even knew him; he'd just seemed to arrive on the scene and was in the right place at the right time to take over the SSG's operations within the deep-secret desert compound that in ancient times was known as Area 51. There was even a rumor floating around that he'd been the one who shot the Empress after her attack on the big black slab. But this could never be confirmed, because everyone else who'd been in the BG chamber that day was dead.

All except him.

Viktorx's first official duty this day was to preside over a very unusual award ceremony. Four SSG special operations troops were being given a medal, the First Order of the Fourth Empire. This was a special SSG commendation passed out only to those soldiers who showed outstanding bravery and cunning beyond the call of duty. It was a rare occasion when the SSG even bothered to recognize actions of anyone below the rank of captain. But these four men, lieutenants all, had indeed shown uncommon valor in a top secret mission they'd successfully undertaken several weeks before, one, some would say, that was actually run while other SSG activities were providing a diversion. In any case, all four officers had nearly paid with their lives as a result of this mission. As it turned out, all four might have been better off dying.

Viktorx was met at the mountain chamber gate by an escort of SSG ceremonial guards. It was early morning; the sun was looking rather dim today. He and his small entourage were led down through the chamber's many tunnels, eventually reaching the sacred hall where the Big Generator itself was located. Here they briefly observed the SSG engineers noodling around with the omnipotent power slab. Taking radiation readings where the Empress had shot it with her ray gun, charting the electrical and subatomic fields surrounding the mysterious black slab, and indeed pounding on the side of the obelisk with electron hammers, all in a crude effort to get the big black rock to do their bidding.

Throughout, a low, moaning single note was echoing off the walls of the sacred chamber, the magic tone of sorts that the SSG believed would ultimately lead to the successful manipulation of the Galaxy's omnipresent power source—just as long as a countertone did not interfere with it.

But again, watching the work on the BG was not Vik-torx's purpose for coming down here. The unusual medal ceremony held precedence today. That's why he and his entourage and escort guards lingered at the Big Generator's altar for only a minute or so before passing through a side portal and continuing their descent into the mysterious legendary mountain.

They walked for nearly ten minutes, so deep into the mountain that it was actually getting not colder, but warmer. Finally they came to yet another chamber. Its door was extremely thick ion-metal, held tight by several uranium-decay locks, the strongest in the Galaxy. It took the escort guards ten minutes to finally get this huge door open. Viktorx and his men then glided inside.

There was a small army of SSG medical personal waiting for them in here, this very secret place below a very secret place. The four medal recipients were on hand, too. But there was no indication that they knew what was about to take place or even if they knew where they were exactly. Each man was sitting up on a floating bed, each held in place by two medical staff. Though wearing their brightly colored SSG dress uniforms, each man was obviously out of it, head back, eyes rolled up into his head, unable to control his hands or feet. Two of the men were drooling uncontrollably.

They had gone mad, all four of them, during their last mission. They had been secretly sent to a place that drove all who entered it insane to some degree, many irreversibly so. This place was the area of the planet Doomsday 212 just above its equator, which had refused to be terra-formed. The place that just about everyone these days called the Badlands.

The four SSG men had been sent there just hours after the disastrous defeat of the regular SG's Rapid Engagement Fleet, that hapless gang of ships that had been somehow sucked into Hell and then unleashed again upon the Galaxy to cause rack and ruin—that is, until the rebel group led by Hawk Hunter and his allies defeated them at the mysterious and still unexplainable Battle at Zero Point.

These four officers had been experts in tracking down missing persons, such as escaped prisoners or enemies of the state. This time, though, Viktorx had sent them into the badlands to look for something else. And by great luck, they had found it, after seventy-two perilous hours on the ground. But they'd also lost their minds in the process, for the things they'd seen and heard and felt and tasted down there were enough to drive even the most stable of men absolutely crazy. Still, it was a job well done from the SSG's point of view, at the cost of four fairly dispensable minds.

Commander Viktorx pinned a gleaming medal on each man, uttering no words of comfort or encouragement, simply going through the motions and doing it as quickly as possible. After each man was honored, he was laid back down on his floating bed and then put inside a so-called maintenance drawer in the side of the chamber wall, a place where they would stay for however long they remained alive, be it days or years or even centuries.

This bit of unpleasantness dispensed with, Viktorx and his entourage proceeded to one last door, the very last portal in this secret underground chamber. He was a man of huge appetites, power being the most voracious, but he also loved to revel in his accomplishments. And that's why he wanted to go through this final door and gaze once again on what lay beyond. For this was the trophy the four SSG special ops soldiers had brought back with them at the price of their own sanity.

The door was open, but only Viktorx was allowed in. The big door shut behind him, and now he was alone in the room. Before him was the prize—alas, the
ultimate
prize in this whole crazy adventure. It was something he considered more valuable than any flying saucer or XWMD bomb.

And yes, he believed it was even more valuable than the Big Generator, even after the SSG finally altered it to do only their bidding.
A crazy thought
? He wondered now.
Perhaps
.

But from his point of view, it didn't get any better than this.

Standing before him was what had been code-named the magilla. It was here, in all its gleam and glory, a little battered, slightly dented, but on the whole very usable.

It was the spacecraft that everyone across the Galaxy knew as Hawk Hunter's fabulous Flying Machine.

And now, it was his.

* * * * *

Starhawk Book 6

The Earth War

This book has yet to be written. Just when it will come out I have no idea. But when it does, it will wrap up the Starhawk saga. From there, I want him to return to the old Wingman days. So, please, stay tuned...

Mack Maloney