Battle at Zero Point (34 page)

A tremendous explosion overhead shook everything around them. Hunter's flight screen began going nuts again. He had to push a few panels to get it back under control.

When he looked up again, the six were all floating around his jet. They waved—sadly—and then shot straight up into the sky. He tried to see where they were going, but they were gone in a flash.

They had disappeared before he could ask them why Zarex wasn't there.

Hunter finally got his craft to take off and was soon zooming up through the thin atmosphere of
Doomsday 212
.

The fighting around the evacuation site below was still raging out of control. Ships carrying refugees off the planet were struggling to get up to orbit, having to run a gauntlet of blaster fire coming from what seemed to be swarms of REF warships as well as huge weapons the red-uniformed soldiers had set up on the ground.

But the situation here was no worse than the six other evacuation sites Hunter discovered had been set up around the burning planet. Thanks to the intercession of Tomm, Calandrx, and the others, and their use of the mythical robots of Myx as their infantry, thousands of innocents
were
being rescued.

The sudden appearance of the Third Empire ships could only help. Even now, as Hunter attained low orbit over the embattled planet, he could see the bright gold Sky Chiefs rushing to trouble spots around the planet, to assist in repelling the rampaging REF ships, all of which seemed intent on shooting down every rescue ship and killing every last innocent soul possible.

And again, this is exactly what the Ancient Astronaut said they would do: put many helpless souls in harm's way and give their rescuers the option of saving them or allowing the REF to attack the original UPF fleet when it crossed over.

But would their efforts carry the day here? How could they possibly do two things at once? With less than an hour to go before the clock ticked down, Hunter still wasn't too sure, especially with one important question still unanswered: How many REF ships were there exactly?

This had been a mystery since the renegade SG troops started their campaign of terror across the Galaxy. Many of their ships had been spotted over
Doomsday 212
before SF3 agent Gym Bonz was murdered. Up to five had been seen during the attack on the agri-planet of
Kansi One
over on the Eight Arm just a few days before. Another half dozen were seen in the area of the hospital destruction in the Three Arm. At least five were thought to be involved in the massacre of the SF Youth convoy.

There had been thirty-six ships in the original REF, before the special ops fleet found its way to Hell and back. Hunter's concern now was that not all of them had been in on the galactic terror campaign, that some were still on the other side, waiting for that moment when the other UPF ships would cross over and fly right into the weapons sights of the red-suited devils.

But again, how many REF ships were we talking about?

With just fifty-five minutes to go the UPF fleet was due to cross over, Hunter felt he had to find out.

He booted up to full power and did one circuit around the planet.

He keyed his scanners to look only for the elusive REF ships. The numbers on his viz screen started whizzing by. But to his dismay, they wouldn't stay constant. They kept changing. One moment, his readout said there were fifteen REF ships in the immediate area of
Doomsday 212
. Then suddenly that number dropped to twelve, then to nine. Then it zoomed back up to fifteen, then seventeen.

This made no sense, of course, but it almost seemed as if the huge ships had the ability to appear and then disappear off his screen at will. If they would only stand and fight, he and the Star Legion could give them a stiff battle. But just as they'd been doing since appearing on the scene, the REF was being very sneaky. They were almost refusing to duke it out, head to head, toe to toe. It was just another part of their insidious strategy.

Hunter had to do some math then. There were thirty-six ships in the original REF. Two were shot down, right here, on this woeful planet, in the opening moments of the war between the SF and the SG.

At least four had been shot down and destroyed in the opening stages of this current battle. That left thirty.

The highest reading Hunter got on the REF number was seventeen. Did that mean thirteen others were still waiting on their side of the crossover point? Still lurking in Hell?

There was no way of knowing. And without an accurate reading of how many ships they were dealing with, it would be almost impossible to defend the area around Zero Point when the heavenly fleet crossed over.

Not good
, he thought. Knowing the strength of your enemy was rule number one in any battle.

He checked his timepiece.

The time of crossover was now less than fifty minutes away.

Hunter climbed to midorbit, still looking for REF Starcrashers. With so little time left, this was the only thing he could think to do: find as many of the enemy ships as possible, and shoot them down.

He found one lurking over an evacuation site close to the planet's equator. He didn't hesitate. Coming out of the weak sun, he sent a stream of Z beams right into its control bubble. The devils within never knew what hit them. The huge ship turned over and began going down on its back.

Hunter followed it all the way to the ground, firing blast after blast into its midsection, and the vital compartments in its enormous caboose. It exploded just a few hundred feet above the surface, breaking up in an incredible ball of fire and light that quickly transformed into a horrific-looking mushroom cloud.

It actually made Hunter nauseous to look at it; he'd seen such a thing only a few times before and really never wanted to see one again. But because this had been his handiwork, he was compelled to watch.

The mushroom cloud attained an altitude of about two miles, when it started falling back on itself, finally shrinking into a self-made singularity, which exploded again, on cue, taking three-quarters of the massive ship's wreckage along with it. And slamming the rest to the ground. But incredibly, among those pieces of flaming debris left behind Hunter could see tiny black figures moving amid the smoke and flames. How could anyone—or anything— survive a crash like that?

He didn't know. But very quickly, he was down on the deck, his six-gun Z-beam package firing at full power, strafing the shadowy images as they staggered about the smoldering, wreck. He hit targets; he could tell by the flare of green flame on the ground whenever his blasters found something with a pulse, but even though he made more than a dozen strafing runs, there was no way he was sure that he had eliminated every living devil inside the kill zone.

He checked his timepiece. Five minutes gone. Less than forty-five minutes to go. He couldn't waste any more time.

He and his machine would be of more use elsewhere.

He screamed back up to orbit.

Approaching the planet's southern pole, his comm set suddenly exploded with excited chatter. He could tell by the pitch that the noise was coming from one of the Sky Chiefs.

He turned over, amazed that even large portions of the planet's subarctic region below him seemed to be engulfed in flames. He hit the power bar and told his flight computer to get him to where the radio buzz was coming from.

He soon came upon an astonishing sight. It was happening about 120 miles directly above
Doomsday
212's
south pole. One of the Sky Chiefs had cornered an REF Starcrasher coming off the planet before it could kick into Supertime.

The two ships were riding side by side, not more than a mile separating them, firing massive fusillades at each other. This was crazy. Starcrashers were designed to fight at very long distances in space, not this close in. The Sky Chiefs, grand and flowing, and about half the size, had been originally built to do the same thing. For both ships to use their incredibly powerful weapons at such short range was almost incomprehensible.

But something else was going on here. In the chaos of the battle, hundreds of beams were being shot out of both ships, but they were not of the same type. The REF ship was firing X beams—green and deadly. The Sky Chief was firing something else—thick and deep, deep blue. These two different beams were meeting each other, perfectly, about halfway between the Starcrasher and the Sky Chief. In the collision that followed, space was being lit up with an incredibly bright light, like that a thousand suns.

Counterpower
was the word that came to Hunter's mind, though it might have been whispered in his ear by the invisible voice that seemed to be following everywhere during this incredible adventure. In the confusion of the moment, it was hard to tell. The Sky Chiefs did not carry offensive weapons. They couldn't; it was against the very foundations of the Third Empire. But the Sky Chiefs did have the ability to hit incoming beams with something strong enough to neutralize them. They were called negative-energy weapons—a very Third Empire concept. When used properly, they were the perfect defense against just about any other weapon in the Galaxy.

But this was war, and the counterweapons could do more than just negate what was being thrown at them. As Hunter streaked toward the scene, he saw something else take place. It happened in less than the blink of an eye, and he didn't know whether it was caused by an imbalance in the two competing bursts of energy or an anomaly in the flight path of the Starcrasher. But when the REF ship let go with an enormous fusillade, it was hit by the Sky Chief counterpunch and turned back on itself. The REF's own X beams crashed back on it like a wave, smashing against its midsection and instantly splitting it in two. The rear half of the Starcrasher made a vain attempt to accelerate, but it was much too late. The entire ship disappeared in a huge nuclear cloud, which went back down into itself almost instantaneously.

The big starship, in effect, had shot itself down. As a witness to it, Hunter had to laugh grimly.

He knew the feeling…

Forty minutes now to the crossover time.

Another burst of chatter from Hunter's comm set. Someone else was in trouble. This time not near the planet's surface or in orbit. This time there was trouble out among the planet's rings.

The last ring surrounding
Doomsday 212
was its largest. It orbited the dismal planet some 40,000 miles out. Unlike the inner rings, which contained smaller pieces of space debris that eventually turned into fire rocks, the fragments making up the outer ring were huge, some of them twenty to thirty miles across. They were all irregular in shape, and many of them tumbled endlessly. They made for a very dangerous piece of space to navigate.

They also provided the perfect place to hide a warship or two. Or even six.

The pilots of those ships carrying refugees lucky enough to escape the horror of
Doomsday 212
had only one kind of flight plan in mind. They wanted to put as many light-years behind them as quickly as possible. While many of the rescue ships were the same vessels that dropped the refugees onto the planet in the first place, their commanders were intent on delivering their battered passengers to worlds farther down the Arm, where they could at least be safe from the madness of the No-Fly Zone. How they would eventually return to their home worlds would have to be determined later.

Ten of these rescue ships had found each other rising up from the smoldering planet at about the same time. Their holds filled with the confused, former REF prisoners, it took just a few bounces between the string comms for the ship commanders to agree to form up in a column and leave the area together.

They did this not so much for safety, but in case any ship suffered mechanical failure, the others could help it out.

But what the ship commanders didn't count on was one distressing constant: evil did not rest. It couldn't. It had to exploit itself anywhere and everywhere it could, at any opportunity, whenever, wherever it was found.

So while the battle back on
Doomsday 212
was still raging, its outcome still teetering and undetermined, six ships belonging to the insidious REF had drawn away from the fray and had hidden themselves here, among the tumbling rocks, looking for unsuspecting vessels, whose occupants believed that they were finally safe from harm.

The convoy's pilots successfully navigated the largest of the outer ring's fragment clouds and saw only clear sailing ahead. But then their forward scanners lit up. Their comm sets erupted in static. That's when the half-dozen REF ships suddenly swooped down on them and positioned themselves directly over the center of the convoy.

At first, the convoy's commanders thought their viz scanners were wrong. After escaping from hell, how could they possibly run into this? But then their true visuals—their own eyes— confirmed the awful truth. The REF Starcrashers had them trapped. There was no way they could outrun them, no way they could fight back. They were doomed.

Or so it seemed.

From the point of view of those aboard the convoy, what happened next happened in less than a split second.

One moment two of the Starcrashers were just a mile above the lead ships, their weapons about to fire, when suddenly there was a great rush of flame and light and then two huge explosions. Hunter's machine went flashing by an instant later. Two blasts from his Z-guns, and just like that, two REF ships were reduced to subatomic dust.

But there were four left. And they quickly scattered.

Hunter keyed in on the nearest enemy ship. But again, he was faced with a Hobson's choice. If he took on this singular ship, the remaining three REF vessels would be free to attack the defenseless convoy. But if he protected the convoy, all four ships might get away. Actually, it was no choice at all.

Killing the REF was what he was doing out here. He bore down on the REF ship closest to him and opened fire. Again, he hit the control bridge first and then went after the vulnerable underbelly. He was moving much too fast for any of the REF's weapons to hit him. That was the ironic thing. Once he had them in his sights, he could dispatch the devils in an instant. It was getting enough of them in his sights that was the hard part.