Battle at Zero Point (36 page)

Then he took another deep breath and opened his eyes… but only to see something even more horrifying than before.

A deluge of warships was pouring out of the schism. Red Starcrashers bearing the unmistakable markings of the REF. Two of them, three, four, six,
ten
! Traveling incredibly fast. But behind them came a stream of other vessels. Huge blunderbuss ships, as large as Starcrashers but bulbous, bullet-shaped, with a blunt nose and ridiculously small fins in the back. And each one had an impossibly huge blaster on its back, running the length of the ship and attached by a series of concentric atomic rings. Like the REF vessels, these ships, too, were the color of blood.

Hunter couldn't believe it. He'd seen these types of starships before! A long time ago, when he took a mind ring trip that put him back when the evil Second Empire was in power, these monsters were the ships of the line. Crude and gigantic. And now they were spewing out of the huge tear, surrounded by flames that turned Hunter's stomach to salt just looking at them.

What was going on here
? These ships were more than 4,000 years old. Were they missing ships?

Ships lost over the ages? Ships destroyed while doing battle with nefarious reasons in mind? Or had they simply fallen into the same hellish pit the REF had—several millennia ago?

Or was this all just a sick, distorted dream?

Whatever the case, Hunter hastily put out an SOS to
Doomsday 212
below. Three dozen ships came off the planet, rushing to answer his call. They were beside him in an instant, almost
too
quickly, just impossibly fast. He didn't have to deliver the bad news to them; they could see it for themselves. No longer did they have just a couple dozen enemy ships to deal with. Now there were hundreds.

And those ships were still streaming out of the schism non-stop. In a way, they didn't look real. There were so many of them, it almost seemed like Hunter was looking at a viz-image loop playing over and over again. But once more, the words of the Ancient Astronaut came back to him. The bad side was trying to overwhelm them with madness—and at the moment, doing a very good job of it.

For one very revealing moment, Hunter wished, truly and deeply wished, that he had gone through that screen door of the house back on Far Planet. That he made his presence known to Dominique and that he could have washed his hands of all of this. It would have been the copout of the ages, and so much of what he wanted would have been lost. But still he was only one person, only one soul. There was only so much he could do. Sure, sometimes life forces you to be a hero. But that didn't mean you had to like it.

The moment of uncertainty passed as quickly as it came. There were other voices urging him on here; they had been since this whole crazy adventure started. In fact, there were so many of them now, he couldn't begin to separate one from the other. If he was back where he belonged—back in that world the man with the hole in his basement gave him the opportunity to return to—they would have surely put him in the booby hatch.
That's
how many voices he was hearing in his head these days.

So there was no sense in fighting it. Too many spirits were counting on him, both here and in other places. He
had
to do the right thing, whether he wanted to or not.

Or die trying.

And even that prospect wasn't so bad.

The first problem, though, was stopping the flow of ships coming from the schism. How does one go about binding a tear in the fabric of space/time? Did anyone know? The Creator included?

As this uncertain notion was going through his head, Hunter's comm set exploded in a great burst of static. Suddenly he was hearing not just one voice, but many.
Real
voices. Some were talking rapidly, some were screaming. Some were even laughing. Then through this storm of voices, he clearly heard someone shout, "
Dear God
—
look at that
!"

Instinct turned Hunter away from the schism to a point in space that was almost devoid of stars.

That's when he saw it. It was a huge starship. It was traveling very fast and heading right for the opening.

It was a Starcrasher—there was no doubt about mat. What's more, Hunter's scans told him that the ship's prop core was overheating manually and was about to blow. In other words, the ship was going to explode on purpose. What was happening here? Was the person driving the Starcrasher going to blow it up at the entrance to Hell? Was this an attempt to seal the schism with a prop-core implosion? What madman would do such a thing?

Hunter got his answer a moment later. His scans told the tale: The Starcrasher was an M-class, the biggest ever made. But unlike all other Starcrashers, this one was pure white, and was all smooth edges, and was more swept back than any other. By these things alone Hunter recognized it. There was only one like it in existence.

It was the
ShadoVox
.

And Joxx was at the controls.

How the fallen SG prince knew what was going on out here, Hunter would probably never know. He started to yell into his comm set; maybe there was a better way to do this. But it was too late.

The grand ship went right by him, its outer skin already turned deep blue, the sure sign that the prop core was going to blow. Joxx turned the ship just slightly, twisting through the stream of ships escaping the schism. A few tried to stop him by firing at him. A few even attempted to ram him. But Joxx got by them all.

He hit the schism at full Supertime speed but with a prop core that was 1/1000 of a second away from destabilization. The outcome was nothing less than apocalyptic. The ship blew up, or rather it disappeared into an enormous explosion an instant later. And an instant after that, the explosion turned in on itself. And with another blinding flash, the schism sealed up, and everything around it was gone. Just like that.

Then came a dreadful silence.

It was as if everything just stopped. The stars. The planets. His comm set. Life itself. A collective state of shock, silently exploded and moved like a nova, rushing by everybody and everything. Joxx was gone, and so was the entrance to Hell. At least temporarily.

Somehow Hunter thought to check his timepiece.

Nine minutes to go.

Then, just as suddenly, everything started moving again. The light returned. Ships were moving again.

Space
was moving again.

The shock of what had just happened wore off, too. It was clear that by his action, Joxx has stemmed the tide, but there were so many devil ships now, even the combined force of Hunter, the Home Planets ships, the arms dealers' gunships, and the Sky Chiefs couldn't possibly engage them all. There were just too many of them. And now there was just eight minutes to go.

But then, instead of lining up to do battle with the friendly forces, the great swarm of huge ships suddenly accelerated and began zooming off in all directions.

Hunter felt like someone had punched him in the stomach. This couldn't be happening. Those ships had to be filled with the inhabitants of the underworld, a great swarm that was now roaring off in every possible direction. Off to infect the entire Galaxy!

He just couldn't let that happen.

Hunter didn't even think about it. He began shouting orders into his comm set, and the crews of the friendly ships started reacting immediately. The combined fleet dispersed in seconds and took off, chasing the huge ships that had just escaped from Hell.

Hunter took off after the largest group of huge blunderbuss ships. There was three dozen of them, and they'd turned as one away from Zero Point and appeared to be heading down the Two Arm—and maybe toward Earth itself.

As he booted up to full power, his wide-screen scan began spitting out information on these strange vessels. They were capable of carrying more than 20,000 passengers; but at the moment the scan could not confirm that anyone human was aboard. In fact he could not detect any life signs on board at all.
Do
devils have a pulse
? Hunter thought as he sped after them. Did he really want to know?

The scans were also telling him that despite what was inside, the weapons carried on the backs of these giants were very real. They were a huge version of an X-beam blaster gun, a combat weapon still used by some Fringe armies. A single bolt from one of these giants could destroy a good-size asteroid or even a small moon. A dozen direct hits could vaporize an entire planet.

But most disturbing of all, the scanner told him that these ships were powered by prop cores. This made no sense. As far as anyone knew, prop-core propulsion didn't come along until the beginning of the Fourth Empire. These ships were designed thousands of years before that. Was there a spaceship factory in Hell?

It was weird because as soon as Hunter received this startling information, the thirty-six ships suddenly accelerated up to almost Supertime speed. It was almost as if his thoughts had caused them to move even faster.

Hunter pushed his acceleration bar ahead, too. The chase was on.

It took only a few seconds for him to catch up with the three dozen ships. Their tight formation broke up immediately, and two fired their huge blasters at him as he streaked by. A twin storm of green bolts came right at him. They were gigantic and momentarily filled his entire field of vision. Hunter pushed his nose down and banked right, thus avoiding both titanic blasts. Still, they rocked his ship violently as they went by. Meanwhile, the huge fleet regrouped and just kept plowing forward.

Hunter pulled ahead, looped over, and came back at them head-on. He had to find a weak spot in these giants, and he had to do it quickly. He pushed his weapons power switch forward and ordered a blast at full power. Six streaks of Z beams exploded from his nose. He directed them at the ship in the vanguard of the fleet, aiming the barrage at its huge control bubble up front. The ship fired a gigantic blast at him; it went by him in a huge flash. At the same moment, his Z beams tore into the ship's bridge.

Secondary explosions appeared an instant later, and then a massive blast went all the way down to its stern. The ship blew apart a moment later. Hunter had guessed right. The ship's power magazine was located right behind the bridge and just below the gun. He pushed his ship into ultraoverdrive. Now he knew how to destroy these behemoths.

Suddenly he was flying so fast, he was leaving a trail of red, white, and blue particles in his wake. He was spinning, twisting, looping, diving, climbing, and firing all at once. His hands and feet were moving like lightning. Right hand on the throttle, left hand on the joystick, he was lining up targets two or three ships ahead of the ones he was attacking. The storm of gigantic green destructo-beams were going past him in one long blur. He was avoiding all of them, but some residue bolts were exploding dangerously close to him. No matter. One well-placed blast, and he'd be washing up on the beach back in Heaven again. Or so he hoped.

He plunged on, defying every hurdle, avoiding every X-beam blast headed his way. With every ship blown up, he felt two sensations inside: simultaneous exhilaration with another victory accompanied by a slight pang of guilt that he might be killing up to 20,000 souls a pop. But were they souls xeally? Were they really human beings—just ones that had somehow come back from Hell? He'd seen what happened to his friends when they crossed over from Heaven. They'd become what, through the ages, people had called angels. Didn't it make sense then that any people occupying these ships would then be devils?

No matter. He sure wasn't going to stop one and find out

It went on like this for what seemed like forever. Hunter kept weaving his way through the loose formation and kept destroying targets. They weren't avoiding him exactly, but at times it seemed like the number of enemy ships was endless. He'd grease one, and it was as if two would take its place. He'd splash another one, and two more would pop up behind it. It was madness! And he'd become part of it.

But he had to keep going. He couldn't let any of them get by him. He kept firing and firing and firing.

But then, suddenly, he just stopped.

He literally put on the brakes and stopped his ship in mid-space—and thought a moment. Something was wrong here. This was almost too easy. The words of the Ancient Astronaut came back to him. The devils will use everything to get what they want: deception, distraction, deceit.

They will try to make the heroes fool themselves.

Hunter checked his timepiece.

Damn; the countdown had less than thirty seconds to go!

And that's when it hit him. These ships probably weren't carrying anybody. They were able to fire.

They were able to present themselves as targets. But they were a distraction.

And it had almost worked. The heroes
had
almost fooled themselves.

But not Hunter. He turned his ship 180 degrees and vengefully hit his power bar again. An instant later, he was screaming back to Zero Point.

There were twenty-four REF ships waiting there.

Some had flown through the schism just before it had closed; the rest had come up from
Doomsday
212
. All of them had their weapons systems cranked up to full power. All of them had their crews at battle stations. With the ships of the good forces off chasing the empty decoys from Hell, the REF ships were able to align themselves in four attack formations of six ships each. Their noses were pointing to a piece of space not far from where their portal to Hell had been sealed. This was the exact spot where the UPF fleet had disappeared just a little over a month ago.

This was where that same fleet was due to emerge.

The REF ships never saw Hunter coming.

Too intent on ambushing the UPF ships once they crossed over, their crews were distracted. They weren't paying attention to anything but the matter at hand. The gold F-Machine came upon them so suddenly, they didn't even move. One ship went up, hit by a massive Z-beam barrage on its control bubble. Another went up, hit by a murderous fusillade on its prop core. A third exploded, its aft section blown away from the rest of its gigantic body.