Starhawk s-1 Read online

  Apparently we are not the first to choose it as an option to blowing up in space.”

  Erx drained his mug and nudged it toward the flask. Hunter poured both men another full mug.

  “And what about you, Mister Hunter?” Berx asked. “How long have you been marooned here?”

  Hunter hesitated again. Many times he’d wondered just what he would do when this moment came.

  When he would finally meet another human being and be asked the question.

  “I don’t think ‘marooned’ is the right word,” he finally told them. “The truth is, I’m not really sure what I’m doing here.”

  Both men stopped eating for a moment.

  “What do you mean by that, sir?” Berx asked.

  Hunter just shook his head again. “It sounds strange, I know, but I didn’t crash here. At least I don’t think I did. It seems as if one day, I was just here. Standing on the side of this mountain, wearing this uniform, with not a clue as to where I came from.”

  Erx and Berx just stared back at him. This was an unfamiliar concept to them. Everyone in the Galaxy knew where they came from.

  “Well, obviously you were part of the crew of this shipwreck nearby — and suffered amnesia as a result,” Erx said.

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” Hunter said. “That wreck happened way before my time.”

  As proof, he pointed to the wall next to the fireplace. It was lined with electron torches, small, tubelike device capable of assembling or disassembling just about any form of matter in nature. Trillions of them could be found throughout the Galaxy.

  Berx took one of the torches from the wall and examined it. “It is an old design,” he confirmed. “Three hundred years, at least.”

  “I built my aircraft with those tools,” Hunter told them “Melding parts I took from the crashed ship and putting them together from a sketch I made one night. Believe me, I’ve been over every inch of that wreck and it is in an advanced state of decay. It was certainly here long before me.”

  Berx retrieved a small handheld device from his belt. This was known as a quadtrol. It could do just about anything, from reading a planet’s atmosphere, to scanning of piece of machinery for defective parts, to doing a complete physical examination of a human being. Erx passed the device across Hunter’s forehead and began reading results.

  “There’s no indication that you’ve suffered any trauma,” he announced. “Strangely enough, you’re in perfect health. And it says here that you are thirty-three years old, Earth time.”

  Erx leaned forward a little. “And you really have no memories of childhood? Parents? Siblings?” he asked. “No evidence of your past?”

  Hunter just shook his head. “All I have are these,” he said.

  He reached into his left breast pocket and came out with a small piece of fabric. It had a strange design on it, a series of red stripes with a square blue block in one corner containing a field of stars.

  “Foreign to me,” Erx said, examining it.

  “Me as well,” Berx agreed.

  Hunter unwrapped the cloth to reveal a small piece of wrinkled material inside. On this was the faded image of a woman’s face, but not much more could be told from it.

  “I found these two things in my pocket the day I realized I was here,” Hunter said, carefully folding everything back up and returning the small bundle from where it came. “Along with the fact that the name ‘Hawk Hunter’ was written inside my boots, they are my only clues — if they are clues at all. I have constantly racked my brain, trying to remember how it is that I got here — but it seems to be impossible to recall.”

  He took a long drink of wine.

  “I mean, I’m not without a brain,” he said softly. “I know how to speak, how to breathe, how to take care of myself. I figured out how to use the electron tools. I know how to fly—”

  “That might be the strangest thing of all,” Erx interrupted. “Even the Master Pilots on Earth cannot fly like you. The best fighter pilots in the Space Forces would be amazed by your ability — as well as envious.”

  Hunter poured them more wine.

  “The name ‘Earth’ sounds familiar,” he said. “This is your home planet?”

  “It’s everyone’s home planet,” Berx said. “It is our mother world, the place from which every person in the Galaxy is descended.”

  Hunter looked across at them. “Even me?” he asked.

  The two spacemen nodded.

  Hunter thought about this for a moment, then said: “I was able to get into the logs of that shipwreck as well. About half of them were undamaged. About half of them I could understand. I know the crashed ship was part of the ‘Fourth Empire.’ Do you know where that is?”

  Erx and Berx laughed. “The Fourth Empire is everywhere,” Erx told him. “It is the Galaxy. This Galaxy.

  This planet, its stars, everything around it. Even you, my friend. You are part of the Fourth Empire.”

  Hunter almost seemed proud. “Well, at least it’s good to know I belong here…”

  “You are happier than some upon hearing that news,” Berx said under his breath.

  “And as our greatest astronomers are certain that in the entire universe our galaxy is the only one that’s inhabited,” Erx went on, “the possibility that you are not from here is, well, impossible. Therefore your home world must be Earth. So there — one part of your mystery is solved.”

  More wine was poured. Erx intentionally spilled some of it into his stew. So did Berx.

  “Could I be from a different time, then?” Hunter wondered aloud. “From somewhere in the past? Or even the future?”

  Erx and Berx screwed up their faces in identical frowns.

  “Well, actually, we’re not into time,” Berx said, his voice dripping. “No one is anymore, not really.”

  “He means the term itself is outmoded,” Erx explained. “Ancient words like ‘weeks’ and ‘months’ are still used in charting travel through space as a passage of time. But like other archaic words we all use, they are merely convenient and part of tradition. Something for the quadtrols to recognize. At least that’s my understanding of it.”

  “Of course, theoretically, we are always moving in time,” Berx said, finally feeling the wine taking effect.

  “That’s the principle behind the propulsion cores in our starships. Or at least I believe that’s how they work.”

  He turned to Erx for help, but not much was forthcoming. “I think the propulsion core creates some kind of exception in the fabric of time that allows us to enter the faster dimension and move great distances quickly. Is that it?”

  Berx just shrugged. “I think so.”

  “You really don’t know?” Hunter asked them.

  Both men shook their heads.

  “No, not really,” Erx admitted. Clearly this was a source of embarrassment for them.

  “It all has to do with the Big Generator,” Berx said. “You’ve never heard of that either, I suppose?”

  Hunter just shook his head no.

  “Well, it’s a very complicated thing,” Erx began sputtering. “But because of it, our ships fly and our weapons work, every planet can be sustained, and we can travel to the farthest reaches of the Galaxy in just weeks. But the truth is, we are not privy to the great secrets that it holds — or even where it is located.”

  Hunter thought a moment. “Are you saying this Big Generator has an effect on just about everything you do… yet you don’t know how it works?”

  Erx and Berx stared back at him for a long moment. Then they drained their mugs and in unison said: “Bingo…”

  3

  They ate their stew and drank their fill of wine.

  Then once Erx and Berx had recovered somewhat, the three of them climbed up the mountain behind Hunter’s dwelling.

  It was about three thousand feet high, but he’d carved a trail along its slope one day, ensuring a steady but easy climb. Still, this would be the longest distance Erx and Berx had walk
ed in many decades. True, they were interstellar explorers. But the vast majority of their Galactic travel had been done on the seat of their pants.

  No surprise, then that they were out of breath and sweating heavily by the time they neared the summit.

  “My God,” Erx said, slumping next to a conveniently shady rock. “Does this planet have any oxygen at all?”

  Berx checked his quadtrol. “All of the vital readings are very low and there is an atmosphere leak of more than ten percent.”

  “Do you know when was the last time this planet was ‘puffed,’ Mister Hunter?”

  “I don’t know what puffing means,” Hunter replied simply.

  “Every planet in the Galaxy has been puffed at one time or another,” Berx explained. “The Ancient Engineers used to call it ‘terra-forming,’ I think. It means the planet’s biosphere has been altered to fit human habitation.”

  “Why do you think you can walk around out here without an oxygen tank to breathe from, my friend?” Erx asked. “Or a spacesuit to protect you from the rays?”

  Hunter just shrugged. It was a good question.

  “I guess I never thought about it before,” he said.

  Erx wiped his forehead of perspiration. “I envy your lack of knowledge,” he said wearily. “Sometimes I think I know too much.”

  On the other side of the mountain was a vast salt plain. It stretched, nearly unbroken, to the far horizon.

  About twenty miles to the east were the remains of an enormous starship. It was sticking out of the ground at a seventy-degree angle. Its monstrous tail went up at least a mile into the sky, so high, clouds were forming around its top.

  There was no real mystery how the massive vessel had wound up in this position. When it came down here, the vast salt plain had been a small ocean, and Hunter’s mountain quite possibly no more than the tip of an island. The starship had hit the water at hypersonic speed — and kept on going. Driving itself deep into the soft sea bottom, it stopped only when it reached a depth of a half mile or so.

  Had the impact contributed to the quick retreat of the ocean’s waters? It was a good guess. But why hadn’t the ship’s prop core blown up? Mostly likely the crew had been able to shut it down before they even entered the atmosphere.

  Or then again, maybe something else had happened…

  Erx held his quadtrol out in front of him now and began reading information from its readout screen.

  “Mister Hunter is right,” he announced. “This wreck has been here at least three hundred years. It’s a regal S-Class design. Old Empire markings…”

  He paused a moment. “My God, its name is the Jupiterus XVI…”

  “Jupiterus?” Berx said. “Are you sure?”

  Erx showed him the quadtrol’s readout. They looked back at the massive ship with new, if troubled interest.

  “That’s no ordinary spacecraft,” Erx said urgently to Berx. “It’s a Kaon Bombardment ship.”

  Kaons? Hunter had never heard the term.

  “What was this ship’s function?” he asked them.

  Erx and Berx exchanged a worried glance.

  “I’m afraid that’s a state secret,” Erx said. “As officers in the Empire’s military forces, we can’t really tell you more than that. Suffice to say, it was a weapons system of incredible power. Then and now.”

  “I should have figured that,” Hunter said, looking out at the ship now. “Not only did I build my aircraft’s body from parts reassembled from that wreck, I built its power plants from the salvage as well. Interesting…”

  He checked the sky. It was getting dark, and a stiff breeze was blowing up. In less than an hour, it would be a howling gale. Then the rains would come and the sands would blow. The combination could cut a man to pieces in minutes. Fools 6 was not a place to be traveled at night.

  “Time to head back,” he announced. “I hope you’ve seen enough.”

  The two spacemen assured him they had. But as Hunter moved away back down the trail, Erx grabbed Berx and asked him in an urgent whisper: “Is it possible that he reassembled some of the Kaon Bombardment system components to power his craft? Could that be why his aircraft flies the way it does?”

  Berx nervously ran a hand over his bald dome.

  “It’s a good question,” he replied. “But I’m not sure we want to know the answer.”

  4

  The rescue ship arrived two days later.

  It had picked up the SOS signal sent out by Erx and Berx right before their ship went in. As the closest military vessel of any size to Fools 6, this vessel had diverted from its course and appeared soon after the red giant’s morning sunrise.

  The ship’s captain was a highly decorated star commander named Zap Multx. He was a ninety-seven-year veteran of the Fourth Empire’s Space Navy. He was a huge, imposing man nearly twice the size of either Erx or Berx. His head was shaved in the style of the time, and he sported a very long, thin goatee. His vessel was the BonoVox, an M-Class battle cruiser. It was a massive warship, two miles long and 3.5 million tons earthweight. Like all Empire starships, it was shaped like a gigantic wedge.

  A small city of glass-bubble control decks dominated its upper shell, hundreds of weapons systems studded its immense fuselage below.

  The BonoVox also was a troop carrier. More than twenty-two thousand Space Marines were quartered in its lower decks. Essentially these soldiers were Multx’s private army. They were highly trained, highly motivated, battle-hardened special operations troops.

  And at the moment, they were in a hurry.

  * * *

  Berx and Erx were sitting in Multx’s opulent commander’s cabin. They had beamed up to the starship shortly after it appeared above Fools 6.

  Multx knew the two explorers well; their paths had crossed many times over the past century.

  Nevertheless, he made it clear to them that he was in a rush.

  “If I hadn’t heard it was you two stuck way out here, I would have never changed my course,” Multx told them now. “I’m falling behind schedule as it is.”

  “Important matters somewhere else?” Erx had asked him.

  “Only the Selesian System War,” Multx replied with a sniff. “I am relieving Loy Staxx and his army. His men are, well, fatigued… or at least that’s what I’ve been told.”

  Erx and Berx could read between the lines. Multx and his men were relieving a space corps that couldn’t do the job.

  “It must be tough going out there,” Berx said, trying to feed Multx’s gigantic ego and meeting with some success. “Sileasia is not a pretty neighborhood.”

  “It’s nothing we can’t handle,” Multx replied with confidence. “Nine planets have been cleared, but three remain full of pirates, bandits, and assorted misfits. Still, it seems to be a mopping-up operation. I can’t understand why Staxx’s corps could not handle it.”

  “You will have no problems, that’s for sure,” Erx told him.

  “We rarely do,” Multx replied with a wave of his hand.

  “So we may hitch a ride with you then?” Berx asked him.

  “Certainly. It will give you a chance to see my men in action. We will be returning to the Pluto Cloud after that. I can deposit you somewhere in that region, I trust?”

  “So close to Earth?” Erx asked excitedly. “Gladly.”

  They took the next few minutes briefing Multx on their crash landing, their near-miraculous escape, and the many skills of their mysterious rescuer.

  Multx was intrigued.

  “This man Hunter you go on about,” he said. “How could he possibly learn to fly so well he was able to escape a prop core explosion? If he is the only living being on this planet, where did he take his training?

  Learn his technique?”

  Erx licked his lips. He was still buzzing from two days of drinking Hunter’s slow-ship wine.

  “We have no idea — and neither does he,” the spaceman replied. “He’s a different sort, that’s for sure.”

  “Yet he�
�s been nothing but helpful toward us,” Berx interjected. “We have been his guests for two days here and it’s been extremely hospitable as well as interesting. He knows every inch of this forlorn planet. He has many unusual devices made from his own designs.”

  “He’s quite clever and bold — without being a smart-ass about it,” Erx added.

  “But are you certain he’s even human?” Multx asked. “Perhaps he’s one of those well-constructed robots from years past. You know how some of the good ones were? They actually believed they were human.”

  “He’s definitely not a robot,” Berx said. “I scanned him: He is flesh and blood.”

  “But where he came from is a puzzle,” Erx went on. “As we said, he doesn’t even know himself. Yet I feel it unlikely that he was the passenger of a crashed ship and just doesn’t remember. Nor do I believe he was ever part of the Empire Forces — either Outward or In-Close.”

  “What makes you so sure of that?” Multx asked. “His flying ability seems on a level of our master pilots.”

  “Which is exactly why a pilot of his ability would not be flying around in a two-million-ton spaceship.

  More likely he would have been identified by Space Forces Command upon entering military service and assigned to a front-line star-fighter unit. My God, he’d be a senior master pilot — the master of senior master pilots, even.”

  “And the craft he flies,” Berx went on. “It is the most unusual thing I’ve ever seen. It can go extremely fast, yet it defies all of our latest design functions. It actually has wings. And wheels.”

  “Wheels?” Multx asked. “What for?”

  “That’s how he keeps it from hitting the ground,” Erx replied. “He does not park it in the hover mode. At least I don’t think he does.”

  “But it is the speed of his craft,” Berx reiterated. “He’s told us that he usually flies it at one-one-hundredth throttle. Yet the thing reaches incredible velocities very quickly.”

  Multx thought a moment.

  “Perhaps in the excitement of being saved, you two have exaggerated these things in your mind,” he told them. “It’s a common problem in combat. We get many reports of people doing very heroic things, and—”