Battle at Zero Point (4 page)

Next in the synapse line were two pilots named Erx and Berx. Famous officers of both the SF and the X-Forces, they were middle aged and looked like human boulders with arms, legs, and extremely long
mustachios
attached. These were the men who'd rescued Hunter from the isolated planet called Fools 6 and eventually brought him to Earth. They'd been sent back out to the edge of space about a year ago by Princess Xara to find Hunter again after he'd so mysteriously disap-peared, but they hadn't been heard from since, either.

Next came Petz Calandrx, the well-known space hero turned poet, who was both a personal friend of the Emperor and win-ner of the Earth Race more than a century before. He was a real oldster, rapidly approaching his fourth century. At one time, however, he'd been a brilliant soldier, and for a while, a regular on the Specials' ultraexclusive party list. He'd been sent with Erx and Berx on Xara's mission to rescue Hunter, only to go missing as well.

Then came a character named The Great Klaaz. Apparently a hero in the outer regions of the Fringe, this stooped and craggy old man was practically unknown to Earth's intelli-gence services. As he was approaching his sixth century, he seemed an unlikely candidate for what was afoot. Yet he, too, had apparently fallen in with Hunter and his band and was ¦ow wanted for questioning as well. After him came a short, mysterious, middle-aged man who went by the name Pater Tomm. Though he claimed to be a priest—and in the fuzzy mage provided to Bonz on the mind drop, he was sporting a long cassock and bowl haircut similar to those worn by those |«f a religious bent—he hardly looked the part. Tax enforcer land knucklebreaker was more like it. The last member of this Igroup was named Zarex Red, a gigantic individual with mus-Ides bulging everywhere and a costume that looked like some-thing out of a viz-screen movie. He was approaching his 150th year, Bonz estimated, and was known both for running weap-ons and discovering new or lost star systems out on the Fringe. He always traveled in the company of a huge robot.

Who were these people? They were as strange a collection of space rogues as Bonz had ever encountered, and most not so short on the tooth. Yet the SF3 believed this unlikely group was responsible for the mysterious invasion of the Two Arm and an equally mysterious disappearing act soon afterward. And because the people of the Empire were obsessed with putting a name on everything, a habit that was not discouraged inside the intelligence services, they had been christened by SF3 as The Hunter-Calandrx Gang, for their two most famous members.

In addition to his primary mission to the No-Fly Zone, Bonz was also supposed to look for this gang—or, more accurately, look for
signs
of them. Life clues, DNA debris, those sorts of things, anything that could place them at the scene of the crime, so to speak. He would also be searching for any clues to Princess Xara's whereabouts, and those of the Imperial Jan-itor, Vanex, though Bonz couldn't imagine them
all
being in the same place. No matter; it was all fine with him. Among his many undercover talents, he was also very adept at tracking down fugitives.

If it was his job to find them, then find them he would.

The rest of the thought drop consisted of a briefing on what else he had to do when he reached his secret destination. More specifically, it explained how the equipment packs hidden in the cargo hold would help him fulfill his bigger mission, looking for signs of the phantom battle. But these thoughts he would not have to access until the time came to put them into action. His brain work was done, at least for the time being.

Bonz drained his cocktail, double-checked the ship's con trols, then walked back to the crew quarters where the robots were on their chargers. He checked over the prop core; it wai running at such a low volume, the casing was barely warm He then calibrated the ship's hidden hum beam; once activated they would be fairly immune to any long-range deep space eavesdropping. Satisfied all was well, he returned to the füghi deck and locked the door behind him. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small white cube. It sparkled, emit-ting a tiny crackle of subelectricity. He set the cube on the battered control panel and tapped it once. There was a bright flash, and suddenly, three more people were in the control room with him.

Or so it seemed. Immediately his eyes began to water. His nose felt funny, and a lump formed in his throat. They looked so real. They were smiling, and waving, and trying to get him to join them, even converse with him. But they were not real. This was a projection; an old 3-D holographic image loop of his family—his wife and two daughters in matching SF flight suits—posing at the top of a peak on Ganymeade. It was taken during a vacation to Saturn's rings. The last image of all of them together.

The cube was actually filled with many holographs of his family; he was even in some of them, in uniform, his chest weighed down by all his medals. But this one Bonz liked the best. The girls, smiling and happy, his wife radiant. At just the right moment, he reached out and ran his finger down her face. She closed her eyes and smiled, just as she had that day so long ago.

Like every mission in the past four decades, Bonz's family would be making this trip with him as well.

It would take them five days to reach the bottom of the Two Arm. Another half-day's journey would get them to the edge of the Moraz Star Cloud.

Bonz's mechanical crewmen passed the time playing end-less rounds of
diceo
. It was a three-dimensional game of chance in which markers could disappear into other dimen-sions at completely random and unexpected times. Huge swings of luck and money were frequent. Of course, the robots loved it. Most clankers were notorious gamblers, a quirk which, it was believed, had grown out of several thousand years of artificial intelligence being passed on to successive models and designs. The strange thing was, win or lose, the robots showed no emotion, no leaping about at gaining a big pot, no head-holding when a fortune in aluminum chips went down the drain. This gave the game a surreal edge, especially when the pots grew large and the tension in the air was thick.

Bonz drifted in and out of the game; he was smart enough not to play for too long with any robot, and these four seemed very up on their
diceo
. He spent most of his time up on the flight deck, driving the ship, catching up on his sleep, and keeping an eye on what kind of ships were flying around them. He'd been briefed on the horde of refugees that had rolled down the Two Arm in front of the mysterious invaders; their first movements had been a harbinger of the bad things to come. From Bonz's vantage point now, it was clear this mass exodus had not yet stopped. If anything, it had become worse. The usually busy space lanes linking the Two Arm with the rest of the Galaxy were brutally congested due to the uncer-tainty pervading the second swirl in the wake of the short-lived invasion and the forced evacuation of planets inside the SG's forbidden zone.

The rush of tens of thousands of ships an hour, hour after hour, became perversely fascinating to watch as the days wore on. Of course, all this traffic was heading away from the Two Arm, and in the opposite direction from Bonz. Millions were leaving the area—but for where? Worlds hundreds or thousands of light-years away? To find long-lost relatives and hope there was room to squeeze them in?

Or maybe some of these people didn't have anywhere to go. Maybe some would be doomed to wander the stars forever. Suddenly the stability of the Empire—authoritarian as it was—seemed like some-thing that really
was
slipping away.

A strange thing to miss
, Bonz thought more than once.

Even more disturbing were the large numbers of SG ships mixed in with this tidal wave of the displaced. If someone had told Bonz that every SG warship in the Galaxy was now trav-eling in the vicinity of the Two Arm, he would have been hard-pressed not to believe them. From massive Starcrashers to the smaller, swifter
culverins
, to supply ships, cargo ships, scout ships, and even prison ships, the SG vessels were either mixed in thick with the high-speed traffic jam of refugee ships—
herding
was once the term for it—or flying above it all in Supertime, as detected by the
ZeroVox's
top secret Ultra-Distance Scanners. In any case, the Solar Guards were every-where.

So many SG ships made Bonz uneasy, especially when he seemed to be the only one heading toward the trouble zone and not moving away from it. At the moment, though, the SG appeared too preoccupied to notice one little old space truck going against the tide. Bonz could only hope it would stay that way until he got where he had to go.

The days went on, and the one-way stream of space vessels did not abate.

Until, that is, Bonz and his robots found themselves on the eve of the sixth day, at the foot of the Two Arm and about twelve hours from the edge of the Moraz Star Cloud. That's when the crowded space lanes suddenly dried up. A few strag-gling ships were still rushing by them in the opposite direction, but even that trickle petered out over the next few hours. When the sixth day finally arrived, no more ships—neither civilian nor SG—could be seen anywhere around them.

It seemed as if Bonz and his tin men were out here all alone.

Not a pleasant feeling.

They reached die edge of the Moraz Star Cloud on the morning of the sixth day.

The gigantic collection of star clusters stretched out before them like a brilliant, swirling ocean. Even the robots were impressed. This was one of the most beautiful parts of the Galaxy; some kind of celestial exotica could be seen wherever one looked. When the first explorers from Earth came here nearly 5,000 years before, they'd claimed that a strange but beautiful sound would envelop their ships—star music, they'd called it—and its resonance would stay with them even long after they left. But looking at the star cloud now, Bonz could hear nothing but silence. Dreadful silence. Strange things had been happening in those clusters of stars up ahead, so strange, even the star music had gone away.

Sitting alone on the flight deck, Bonz mixed himself another cocktail, shook it vigorously, then downed it in one long gulp.

Suddenly he couldn't wait to do the mission and get the hell back to Earth.

After another six hours of travel, they reached the border of the No-Fly Zone.

Once again, there were no ships around, either civilian or SG. Bonz could hear no chatter on Ms long-range comm sets, no indications at all that anyone was out here but him and his mechanical crew.

Odd as it was, their apparent isolation was a good thing, at least for the moment, as the real talent of the
ZeroVox
was about to be put to the test. Bonz signaled the robots to tie down, then belted down himself into the tiny pilot's seat. He rechecked all his systems controls, and everything came back green.

He snapped his fingers, and a small, hovering control panel came into view; it had a large red switch surrounded by several smaller ones. Bonz took a deep breath and then hit the red switch.

The ship's tiny prop core instantly became hot, as it fully tapped into the omnipotent power of the Big Generator and allowed the ship to enter Supertime. Suddenly, the
ZeroVox
was moving at tremendous speed. The stars outside took on the look of long, straight lines, sparkling with dazzling colors. Within seconds they were deep inside the No-Fly Zone, trav-eling at blinding velocity. There was no need to steer or ma-neuver here. Bonz simply set the controls for the upper reaches of the Moraz Star Cloud and sat back to watch the light show. And what if he should find himself dead on the path of an approaching star, with little or no time to stop or alter course? No matter; the ship would go right through it with barely more than a ripple.

That's why they called them Starcrashers.

But only Empire ships could travel this interstellar highway, and this was where the
ZeroVox's
ultra-long-distance scanners would come into play. Bonz knew these sensors were so juiced up, they would let him see an SG ship coming long before the SG ship would see him, an invaluable aid for what he was about to do. But suppose the forward scans
did
pick up an SG ship coining toward him, then what? Bonz would simply drop out of Supertime and look for someplace to hide, not that difficult out here. And if he was caught anyway? He would quickly boost power to the ship's holographic barriers, order the clankers to dummy up, and then assume the role of a slow-thinking captain of a lowly ion-ballast-powered vessel, who somehow never got the word about the imposition of SG's No-Fly Zone.

As a veteran spy, Bonz knew playing dumb was a talent in itself.

They passed several key star systems in their dash through the forbidden zone.

One was Moog-SRX, with its one and only planet, the up-scale party world called Cubes. A favorite of Empire flight crews, Cubes featured thousands of drinking clubs, casinos, exotic eateries, and holo-girl houses. But the place was aban-doned now. Bonz had turned the life-sign detector on the planet and cranked it up to full power; he received not a single reading in return, not even a blip. On the viz screen, Cubes looked dead, lifeless. Certainly no Solar Guards or anyone in the Hunter-Calandrx Gang was anywhere near it.

Next they streaked by the Stygnus-Malone twin star system, a place also known as S&M-2. Thirteen planets orbited the binary suns; at one time they'd held more people than any other system in this part of the Two Arm. Bonz once again used the life-sign detector, this time to scour the entire star system; he was sure there were more than a few places for someone to hide on the thirteen different worlds. But again the scanner came up empty. It found no inhabitants, civilians, outlaws, Solar Guards, or missing princesses anywhere. He proceeded to his next station, a star system called Gyros 6. But it was more of the same here. Lifeless, deserted planets.

Next came the artificial moon, TransWorld 800, the place were the mystery invaders stole the six SG cargo 'crashers. It was basically a large silver ball with induced gravity, a bare atmosphere, and no vegetation, just hangars and bunkers. The Secretary had told Bonz he privately suspected the Hunter-Calandrx Gang might be using the big silver ball as a place to hide. But like everywhere else the
ZeroVox
had passed so far, TW800 was empty. No people, no cargo, no cargo ships. Just empty.