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  The Fourth Empire

  ( Starhawk - 3 )

  Mack Maloney

  Lead by Hawk Hunter, the freedom fighters have brought revolution to the Emperor's door. But those who rule the galactic empire under militaristic oppression will do anything to maintain power-and the billion-years old secret that lies behind it.

  Mack Maloney

  The Fourth Empire

  Part One

  Last Time Here

  1

  Xronis Trey, Outer Two Arm

  The rundown saloon was called the Last Drop.

  It was appropriately named. The bar was the only business left on Xronis Trey, the last of three planets revolving around the last star at the end of the second spiral of the Milky Way. Better known as the Two Arm, this spiral extended farther out than any of the Galaxy's other major arms, its star masses petering out for hundreds of light-years before ending in one last, lonely string of planetary systems. Xronis Trey was at the end of that string.

  Moonless and rocky, with no vegetation or water, Xronis Trey had an atmosphere so fragile, stars could be seen in the daytime. The planet's space-engineered atmosphere, installed thousands of years before, had fallen below 69 percent, meaning oxygen masks had to be worn on the surface sometimes. Whenever the thin air blew, a bright yellow dust permeated everything. The color was so vivid that, from a few thousand miles out, the tiny planet almost looked like a dying star.

  The Last Drop was operated by a half-dozen antiquated robots. They served the drinks, they collected the money, they cleaned up when the long day was done. The barroom's only patrons — indeed, the only human inhabitants of Xronis Trey — were mercenaries from the dilapidated space-dock base just over the hill. This base was so old, no one actually knew when it had been built. It presently consisted of a control house, a barracks, five rotting space gantries, a power tower, and a deep-space antenna. It was protected by an automated space defense system that was designed to shoot down anything within 10,000 miles of the planet. Or at least, that's how it was supposed to work.

  The soldiers occupying the base belonged to a notorious space mercenary outfit called the Bad Moon Knights. This aged order of hired guns had been terrorizing the Five Arm, half a galaxy away, for almost a thousand years. The BMK carried a well-deserved reputation for ruthlessness. Their willingness to take on any job — no matter how small, how dirty, or how bloody — was legendary.

  However, this lonely outpost was their only known base outside the fifth spiral. Barely a hundred of their soldiers were stationed on Xronis Trey; most had been pulling duty here for more than three centuries. Many of the troopers were approaching four hundred years in age, making the garrison downright elderly. None of them had seen any real combat for many, many years.

  The BMK soldiers on Xronis Trey believed their superiors had forgotten them long ago. Messages from BMK headquarters way over on the Five Arm arrived at a rate of one per decade. These communiques were simply prerecorded speeches urging the men to stay on station and in fighting trim, as one never knew when they'd be called to do battle again. Not that they had any choice. The outpost didn't have any starships of its own, so it wasn't like the soldiers were going anywhere.

  Nor did the mercenaries know why they'd been assigned to the far-flung base. The BMK certainly didn't build the isolated outpost; the place was much too old for that. The prevailing theory was that the BMK had taken it over from another merc group hundreds of years before. But there didn't seem to be any sense to that, either. Xronis Trey was literally the last planet at this forgotten edge of the Galaxy. The nearest star system was 250 light-years back down the arm, heading in toward the Ball. After Xronis Trey, there was nothing left but the void. Why would anyone put a base way out here?

  This was the topic of many drunken arguments at the Last Drop saloon. After so many years in isolation, the soldiers had little interest in anything but getting drunk and cavorting with a pack of tired, worn-out holo-girls, some carrying programs nearly as old as the mercenary group itself. The troopers would routinely get juiced on slow-ship wine, the opiate liquor found throughout the Galaxy, and start arguing about whether their assignment was actually part of some extremely top secret operation, a rumor that had existed here for centuries. If tempers began to flare, a kind of slow-motion, arthritic fistfight would break out between conflicting groups. When this happened, the bar's robots — usually drunk on lubricating oil themselves— would call over to the BMK command center, and one of the base's officers would toddle over the hill and restore peace, at least for a little while. Then everyone, including the robots, would go back to drinking again, like nothing had ever happened.

  Thus was life on the last rock of the Galaxy.

  There was only one kind of meal served at the Last Drop saloon, a concoction called Greasy Bolt Stew. Made up primarily of synthetic greens and beans, its broth was, no surprise, 100 percent slow-ship wine. The stew was available just once a day: at noon when the bare light of Xronis Trey's forty-one-hour day was at its brightest. Cost of a bowl was one aluminum nickel, which many of the troopers stole back from the creaking robots once the meal was done.

  This daily ritual had just begun when things changed forever on Xronis Trey. There were about fifty troopers inside the bar; roughly half had taken stew and returned to their tables to eat. Suddenly, their bowls began shaking. Just a bit at first, but then much more noticeably, even to the most inebriated eyes. Then the stew began spilling out onto the tables. The floor began to tremble. Then the walls, the windows, and the ceiling. Wine bottles went crashing to the floor. Chairs collapsed, some with troopers still in them. In seconds, the entire building was shaking violently. Something very loud and moving very fast went over the saloon an instant later.

  Instinct drove the troopers out to the dusty street, the robots close behind. This street was an unusually wide thoroughfare, cracked and cratered now, but holding clues that it had served a grander purpose sometime in the distant past. Some troopers dove for cover into the deep holes in its surface. Others simply lay down flat and covered their heads.

  The noise hit again.

  Ear-splitting, bone-rattling. Heart-stopping…

  "Doomsday!" one trooper cried out. "Hell has finally come to save us!"

  Indeed, at that moment, between the mind-numbing roar and the violent quaking, it did seem as if the planet was shaking itself to death.

  That's when they finally saw it. At first it appeared as just a streak of white light turning back toward them out on the southern horizon. But this light was moving at such tremendous speed, it screeched over the saloon a second time not a moment later. The stunned soldiers instinctively began sucking on their oxygen masks, a sure sign of panic. Those who dared to look saw what now appeared to be a fully involved ball of fire make an abrupt turn to the west and then go straight up, disappearing into the thin midday clouds.

  All became silent again. The soldiers on the street began to help each other to their feet only to discover the fireball was coming back. Same blinding flash, same frightening noise, it roared out of the east this time and turned sharply over the saloon a third time.

  At this instant, the fireball came to a screeching halt. Suddenly it took on a definite shape. The soldiers were astonished to see that this was not some kind of apocalyptic angel above them but an aerial machine, one unlike any they'd ever laid eyes on. Just about everything flying in the Galaxy these days, big or small, was shaped like a wedge. Pointed nose up front, with huge quarters in back. Yet this craft was small, tube-shaped, with two stubby wings sticking out of its midsection, and a tail supporting two smaller wings on the back. It had a bubble-top canopy covering a cockpit that could hold one or maybe two people at the most. It appeared to
be painted in splashes of colors and adorned with lightning bolts and stars on its wings.

  It hovered, frozen in place, for a moment or two. It was almost as if someone inside was looking down at the troopers, studying their uniforms, their weapons, their numbers. Then there was another frightening screech, and the machine rocketed away again, banking sharply and heading toward the BMK base on the other side of the hill.

  The frightened soldiers finally regained their feet. The effects of the slow-ship wine wore off quickly now as the elderly mercs tried to make some sense of what was going on. Then, from over the hill came the wail of a siren, a noise they'd heard only in drills and rarely in the last century.

  The drunken soldiers all looked at each other, as if to say, What does that sound mean again?

  Then it dawned on them. The siren was blown only in case of an emergency. This could only mean one thing: Their base was under attack.

  The soldiers scrambled to the top of the hill to find the ungodly aerial machine had turned around again and was now sweeping through the valley that housed their base.

  The facility sat at the edge of a huge, ancient crater, an impact made millions of years before. To the north there was nothing but wide open space. To the south, a vast desert that featured an enormous, solitary butte. To the east, beyond the five enormous, rusting space gantries, a half-dozen mountains ran for ten miles or so. To the west was a series of shallow hills, one of which bordered the small town where the Last Drop stood.

  The flying machine was bearing down on the base's 2,500-foot deep-space antenna tower now — the BMK garrison's only link to the outside world. The winged devil screeched across the sky with the same ear-piercing sound, a stream of Z beams spilling out of six blasters attached to its nose. The craft twisted and turned like nothing these men had ever seen before, blasting away at the base's communication cell, shearing off the top of the tower and exploding it into a cascade of bright yellow sparks.

  Then the mysterious craft disappeared again. Some of the soldiers thought it had blinked out, vanishing into another dimension. But others claimed it had simply accelerated very quickly and departed the area at incredibly high speed.

  No matter. It was suddenly on them again, this time coming from the east. In one long, perfectly executed strafing run, its six blasters tore into the base's ammo dump, its food supply warehouse, and its mess hall, leaving a string of earsplitting explosions in its wake.

  But at the same time, a new sound could be heard. The ground began rumbling just in front of the base's huge docking gantries, followed quickly by a massive explosion of dirt and rocks. From this small storm of yellow dust, a huge mechanical monster began to rise.

  It was one of the base's recessed Z-gun platforms, part of the antiquated space-defense system. Breaking through the rocky crust of the planet's surface, the enormous platform rose to a height of five hundred feet, its multiple-tube Z guns swiveling in the direction of the bizarre spacefighter.

  A cheer went up from the drunken mercs on the hill.

  At last, they were fighting back.

  But right away, problems arose. The base's huge gun platforms were completely automatic. Their robotic sensors were designed to identify hostile spacecraft many thousands of miles away, focus their targeting systems on the enemy, and then let loose with a stream of Z-beam fire that could prove deadly to even the largest of spaceships. Yet the mysterious craft attacking the base was minuscule compared to any vessel the guns had been built to destroy. What's more, it was capable of accelerating to speeds that the Z guns' targeting systems simply could not keep up with.

  So once the flying machine pulled off a strafing run that had carved the base's barracks assembly in two, it veered left, directly toward the gun tower. The platform's Z-beam weapons saw it coming and fired once. A storm of the green destructo-ray flowed from the enormous tube and rocketed harmlessly off into space, missing the swiftly moving aircraft by nearly a half mile. The aircraft was traveling so fast, even the speed-of-light Z beam could not catch up to it.

  The huge Z tube began moving again, but it was already too late. The winged craft let loose with a Z-beam barrage of its own, hitting the gun platform's hinged assembly squarely on the turning knuckle, effectively cutting it off at the knees. The platform hesitated for a moment, almost as if it was defying gravity, then came crashing down, slamming into the rocky surface with an explosion so violent, a tiny yellow mushroom cloud emerged from the impact.

  But as this was happening, another of the base's gun platforms broke its way through to the surface. It reached its full extension much quicker than the first, its sensors locked on the previous action. It began firing off destructo-beams even before its supporting platform had locked in place.

  The roar was tremendous, the emerald Z beams blinding to the unprotected eye, but again, it was a futile act. The flying machine simply turned itself over, deftly avoided the wash of deadly fire, and unleashed another staggering blast from the half-dozen guns in its nose. This barrage hit the top of the second gun platform, vaporizing the weapon in a huge ball of sickly orange flame. Like its predecessor, this platform came crashing down with such force, it caused a series of minor quakes around the tiny planet.

  Undaunted, a third gun platform exploded from beneath the surface, then a fourth and a fifth. These huge weapons began firing almost randomly. Suddenly, the thin blue sky was filled with gigantic waves of incredibly powerful Z-beam blasts. It seemed almost impossible that anything could make its way through the wall of emerald fire, but somehow the attacker did just that. It emerged from the firestorm, twisting and turning on its stubby wings, weaving through the river of lethal rays with ease.

  It let loose one barrage from its nose weapons, turned quickly to the left, fired off another, then turned again and let go with a third. In lightning quick succession, the three streams of fire found their marks on the three huge gun platforms, severing them all at the hinges. In a trio of successive impacts, the huge platforms came crashing down, sending another series of tremors around the planet.

  The soldiers on the hill were all back down on the ground by now, breathing heavily in their oxygen masks, hugging the craggy surface for dear life. The sound of the attacker's power plant and the base's facilities being turned into subatomic dust had caused some of their ears to bleed. Their throats were hoarse from involuntary screams.

  Finally, the space fighter left the scene, exiting the area with yet another earsplitting screech. A full minute of silence went by before a few brave souls took their heads out of the sand and actually looked up. Their eyes could not quite believe what they were seeing. Perhaps it was Doomsday after all.

  The crater valley was a smoking ruin. The immense flaming wreckage of the five gun platforms was throwing tremendous clouds of smoke into the sky. Fires crackled everywhere. More than two-thirds of the base's structures were either flattened or engulfed in flames. After several thousand years of existence, the base had been practically destroyed in less than two minutes.

  But even stranger things were to come.

  Not a minute after the space fighter vanished, there came another flash of light above the base.

  This one was bright red, blinding in intensity. It was followed quickly by five more. In a blink there were suddenly six enormous starships hovering over the smoldering base.

  These ships looked old, like travelers from the past. They were about a quarter mile long, from the needle point to the back of the wedge. Their superstructures had a flared look that had gone out of style early in the last millennium. These ships had a gleaming quality though, deep-space blue with bright superchrome throughout. The weak sun was glinting off all this chrome, making the starships look deadly but dazzling at the same time.

  No sooner had they popped into view, when these starships began dispensing hundreds of shuttlecraft. At first, these shuttles looked no different than the standard model used throughout the Galaxy for centuries, essentially a long tube with legs. But very quic
kly, they showed themselves to be anything but ordinary.

  The shuttles swooped down on the burning base and began adding barrages of blaster beams to the already smoldering rubble; indeed, each troop transport was lugging up to two dozen single-tube Z blasters, giving what had always been simply a transportation vehicle a very frightening and lethal pop. Shuttlecraft carrying more than one gun? That was a new one.

  The bulked-up shuttles were now landing all over the base. No sooner would they hit the surface, when hundreds of soldiers began sprinting out of access doors lowered even prior to landing.

  The drunken mercs watching all this from the crest of the hill couldn't believe their bleary eyes. They'd never seen soldiers move so fast. In seconds, there were at least a thousand troops running throughout the base, securing the few buildings left standing, and dashing up the side ramps, which led to the base's decaying power tower.

  It took just a few more minutes for the invaders to reach the oblong bubble that served as a cap for the tower, using back-carried jet packs to carry them up the 750-foot structure. The flying machine returned one more time, doing a mind-numbing, dizzying victory roll above the burning base and past the seized power tower. A cheer went up from those invading soldiers on the ground. Peering up through the mist and the smoke, the stunned BMK mercs saw that the soldiers had raised a flag at the top of the tower.

  Using their viz scanners at supertelescopic level, they were able to see this flag up close.

  Full of stars and stripes, its colors were red, white, and blue.

  Hawk Hunter put his flying machine on its tail and nudged the throttle forward 0.0001 of an inch. The aircraft rocketed up through the thin atmosphere of Xronis Trey, popping into space an instant later. He quickly tapped the throttle back to its original position and turned wings over. Just like that, he was upside down, in a low orbit above the tiny planet, looking down on the burning BMK base.