Battle at Zero Point (31 page)

The biggest surprise, though, was what he saw off to his west. Other streams of refugees were off in the distance, heading north as well. It was almost as if they were under the influence of a siren call. And then he spotted other groups of refugees much closer to him. Some were moving right below the ridgeline and, seeing his group, fell in line with them. By the time Sheez had even walked a mile, his troop had swelled to nearly 10,000 people.

They kept moving, and the farther north they went, the stranger things became. Huge flashes of fire and light were going off way up in the sky, some even as high as orbit. They heard enormous explosions, some so powerful the mountain itself shook beneath their feet. REF ships of all sizes rocketed over their heads. Some were Starcrashers, some were smaller shuttlecraft, all had hulls painted red. And while Sheez always had his people take cover whenever he heard something coming, there were several times the aircraft flew right over them and didn't do a thing. Almost as if they had other things on their minds.

Very strange.

About three hours into their trek, there came such a tremendous explosion, Sheez yelled for his people to hit the dirt. A moment later, a huge SG Starcrasher went right over them, not more than 200 feet above their heads. It was in flames and falling apart, trailing pieces of debris behind it. It came down about three miles west of them, exploding on impact. The refugees leaped up and let out a great cheer, but Sheez screamed for them all to stay down. The ship's prop core blew up a few seconds later, creating a huge mushroom cloud before it all fell back in on itself. Once the smoke cleared, all that remained was a mile of smoking wreckage, or so it seemed. Incredibly, Sheez could see tiny figures moving around inside the skeleton of the burning ship. Were these REF troopers who had somehow survived the crash? How could that be? Were they
that
hard to kill?

Keep moving
, the voice told him.
Just keep moving
…

They walked for another hour, making good progress, considering just about everyone was in need of food, water, and rest.

But the farther north they moved, the more violent the rumbling under their feet became—and more frequent. And soon enough smoke began appearing on the far horizon. Then they could see the glow of flames as well.

It soon became obvious something big was happening up over the next peak. Sheez picked out two young guys and sent them ahead to check it out. Meanwhile, he had the rest of the group lay low.

It took the two runners about a half hour to move up, see what was happening, and then run back to the group's position. When they reached Sheez again, they were both so excited and out breath, it was hard to get anything out of them at first.

Finally all one of them could say was, "Boss, you won't believe what's happening up there…"

It took Sheez just fifteen minutes to get up and over the line of hills, his suddenly energetic body moving quicker than ever before.

With each step, he heard more tremendous explosions and felt the ground literally quake beneath his feet. The sky ahead was incredibly bright with flame and flashes of light. There was so much smoke and dust in the air, he couldn't see anything else across the entire northern horizon.

Finally he reached the top of the peak and peered over the other side. And his young scout had been right. He
didn't
believe what he saw.

Sheez had never been a soldier. He'd never carried a weapon in combat, he'd never been on a real battlefield. Surely, he'd seen the results of battle. He'd witnessed the beginnings of the destruction of his planet Megiddo. But he was long gone before the hammer really came down.

That's why what he saw before him now was so astonishing.

It was a battle—at least that much was clear. The crisscross of blaster fire was blinding, the smoke and flying debris tremendous. There were ships of all shapes and sizes coming and going, explosions all around them in the air. But there were other ships firing at them, too, or sometimes firing at each other. It was confusion times ten. Times a hundred. Times a thousand.

Sheez had to clear the dust from his eyes. He tried to figure out who was fighting who and who was caught in the middle. It was very hard to do at first, but gradually things started coming together.

He was looking down on another immense valley. This one was long and rectangular, typical topography for
Doomsday 212
. In the middle of the valley was a huge circular trench— yes, a trench dug into the concrete surface of the dead, rocky planet. So what he was looking down at was a defense perimeter. But Sheez couldn't believe what else he saw. Inside the trenches were thousands of robots, huge mechanical men with huge blasters, seemingly firing in every direction. And these weren't ordinary clankers. Sheez recognized them. They were the robots of Myx.

He knew these tin men all too well. When the Two Arm invaders attacked Megiddo, they'd sent streams of the almost-invincible robots raining down on Joxx's defensive positions. The defending troops did their best to blast the flying robots out of the sky, but that proved impossible, as the robots would simply pull themselves back together again and fly away. As it turned out, their attack was actually a very successful effort to distract Joxx from the invaders' real objective: the artificial planetoid of TW800, where they managed to steal six cargo 'crashers. Nevertheless, Sheez knew what these monsters could do. But what the hell were they doing here? Certainly the Two Arm invaders weren't involved in this.

Or were they?

There was no way Sheez could tell how the robots had gotten to
Doomsday
, or who was controlling them or why. He could see that they were lined up shoulder to shoulder in the trenches and firing wildly out of the circle. And who were they firing at? Thousands—no,
tens
of thousands—of REF soldiers.

Entire armies of the enormous red-suited troops were trying breach the trench line. And the robots were doing everything they could to keep them out.

In the middle of this perimeter—the circle was probably a half mile in diameter at the most—Sheez saw a dozen or so strange starships, some on the ground, others hovering just above it. These ships appeared to be from another part of the Galaxy entirely. Even so, refugees were be being led into them.

That much Sheez could tell because at certain points around this huge battlefield, he could see streams of refugees pouring into the perimeter, somehow dodging all the blaster fire, the smoke and dust, and running right up to the waiting ships under the protection of the huge robots.

It was only then that it dawned on Sheez exactly what was going on here. This wasn't just a battle; it was an evacuation, a rescue effort. Just as the REF had dumped thousands of refugees onto
Doomsday
212
, and may have been dumping them still, probably to die, someone else was trying to lift them off and save their lives.

And even in the middle of all this—in his very dangerous position as it was all happening a relatively short distance from him—Sheez, former hustler, former crooked politician, former tin pot dictator, was struck by something.

He heard it come from his own lips; there was no voice whispering in his ear this time.

"Noble…" he said, uttering the word for the first time in his life. "What a Goddamn
noble
thing to do."

Five Hundred Miles Away

It was on its next pass through the No-Fly Zone that the SF stealth ship
XenoVox
finally got a close-up look at what was happening on
Doomsday 212
.

Flying within a hair's breadth of the planet, its crew discovered a ground battle had erupted in its northern hemisphere. It was so immense, the smoke and flame obscured even the
Xeno's
most powerful scanners, and they could usually see through just about anything.

Above the battlefield, there were ships going in and coming out; some were the same sorry vessels that had dropped the refugees onto the planet in the first place. But now they appeared to be under someone else's control. Even stranger, there were other ships involved here: the mysterious fleet of arms dealers and gunships the
Xeno
had detected flying in from the Five Arm earlier. Among them were the REF Red Ships, trying to fire on these disparate vessels. But somehow the arms dealers were also using their huge guns to protect the refugee ships leaving the planet's orbit.

None of this made sense to those aboard the spy ship. Was this small force of arms dealers from the faraway Five Arm actually taking on the renegade REF? As unlikely as it seemed, that appeared to be at least partly the case.

The
Xeno
dashed away from the area and was about to report these bizarre developments back to the Omega Force, when suddenly its ultra-long-range scanners started going crazy—again.

They had picked up something else very strange, not down on the planet or even inside the No-Fly Zone. This was coming from somewhere very, very far out.

The
Xeno
crew began triangulating, and soon their bubblers were telling them they had detected a number of starships heading
down
the Two Arm, moving toward the trouble zone at incredible speed.

Even more fantastic, the
Xeno's
subatomic scramblers could not pick up a contrail from any of these ships, which suggested, foolishly, that they were somehow moving without the aid of star engines. But then again, they weren't traveling in Supertime, either. They were actually flying
even faster
than Supertime.

However, the most startling piece of information was the point of origin of these ships. The
Xeno's
superbubbler was insisting that they had flown into the Galaxy from a location someplace
outside
of it.

This made no sense. It was the stated policy of the Empire— and the almost universally held belief among the citizens of the Galaxy—that all life in the universe was contained within the Milky Way.

Therefore, it was impossible that any life could exist outside of it.

But now, here were indications that at least twenty bizarre starships of some type were moving down the second swirl at inconceivable speeds. What did it mean? The
Xeno
crew asked their superbubbler.

The answer that came back startled them: From all appearances, the bubbler said, this was an invasion from somewhere outside the Galaxy, by beings unknown, who possessed technology that seemed to dwarf even Supertime.

It wasn't the invaders the Omega Force were supposed to be looking for.

But it was an invasion, nevertheless.

• • •

The flagship of the Omega Force was an enormous M-class Starcrasher called
TempusVox
.

This colossus was two and a half miles long, carried a crew of nearly 10,000, plus thousands of weapons and an entire of corps of Space Marines, numbering more than 25,000.

As it was the lead ship of Omega, all orders for the special fleet were generated from here. Since the fleet was on a highly secret mission and there were to be no communications at all back to SF Command, the
TempusVox
had the final say for the entire operation.

The commander of the
Tempus
was a 150-year-old veteran of the Space Navy named Haxx Grinx.

Handsome, bright, and energetic, Grinx was also a highly capable 'crasher driver who had helmed Omega's flagship for the past twenty-three years. He was well-connected within SF Command and respected by his contemporaries throughout the Empire. He was also very loyal to the Emperor.

Grinx was on his bridge when the startling message came in from the
XenoVox
. He read over the communique several times before it actually sank in. The
Xeno's
report seemed so outlandish, he doubted its credibility at first. But still, in these days of high uncertainty, he knew everything had to be taken as truth unless proven otherwise—even the most outlandish. So Grinx put out a call to the rest of the Omega fleet, telling them to move into a close battle formation at a point just outside the Two Arm.

He then ordered his squadron commanders to beam aboard his ship immediately.

The six SCOs were standing in Grinx's war room a few moments after that. Grinx explained what the
Xeno
had found. Twenty-four ships were confirmed to be heading toward the mid-Two Arm at incomprehensible speed, and these ships appeared to have an origin point
outside
the Galaxy.

To a man, the squadron commanders were shocked upon hearing the news.

"An
alien
invasion?" one of them blurted out. "Is that even possible?"

The other SCOs were visibly uncomfortable with their colleague's choice of words. The phobia about life in other parts of the universe was so prevalent in the Galaxy that the word
alien
was not allowed to be spoken in public nor did it appear anywhere in the Empire's string documents or charters. Nor was it taught to schoolchildren. It was, in effect, a nonword.

"Anything is possible these days," Grinx replied somberly. "And I just don't know what else it could be."

"They must be some kind of ultra-advanced craft if they can move quicker than Starcrashers," another squadron CO said. "Who knows what kind of weapons they possess? What powers they have?"

"And if they get by us," Grinx said, "they could be on Earth in a matter of hours, minutes even."

"But what can we do?" another officer asked. "We are probably the only souls in the Empire who have this information already."

"We must fight them, of course," one commander said defiantly.

Grinx bit his lip. Fighting them might prove suicidal. Though Omega outnumbered the incoming force, their technology seemed so highly advanced there was a chance that Empire weaponry might not have any effect on them. Plus, these ships would be in their area in just minutes. There certainly was no time to bring any other SF ships in to do battle with them.