Starhawk (14 page)

This was strange, because Joxx was also quite brilliant. He was master designer, had been known to correct calculations on some of the most complex bubblers, and could commit string matrixes to memory without the aid of thought drops. He was so sharp some whispered that he couldn't possibly be a real Special. Intelligence was not exactly the forte of the extended imperial family.

Joxx enjoyed getting dressed up in his finest regalia and holding court at these things. The topic of conversation was always the same: the art of war. While squads of females orbited him, admiring his long white cape, his moisteningly good looks, thinking that he might be ready for a haircut, Joxx could usually be found near the center of the room, lecturing even the most senior SG officers on his theories of battle strategy and tactics.

Two hours passed. The wine flowed, and the lights went lower. Wisps of hushed conversation began floating above the celebration.

Most of the men on hand were military officers with a direct line of Specials blood. The majority of these officers belonged to the Solar Guards, but there were also some from the Space Forces, and exactly two from the Expeditionary and Exploratory Forces. Those men who weren't military were high functionaries of the imperial court, space diplomats mostly. These types held many secrets. With the slow-ship wine bubbling up as it was, tongues became loosened. All kinds of rumors about the condition of the Empire were swirling around the hall by now. Gossip involving nearly all of the bewildering number of characters in the imperial space opera gushed forth. Revelers flitted from one whispered conversation to another, pollinating the room with hearsay and secondhand information. Careers could be made here, just as fast as old family ties could be broken. The Specials were an insipid, arrogant bunch.

By two in the morning, the intrigue was thick enough to be cut with a knife.

All of this was leading up to the grand entrance of the night: the appearance of the Imperial Family.

At exactly the stroke of three, rumored to be the Emperor's favorite time of day, there was a burst of pure white light at the far end of the Great Hall. Everybody and everything came to a halt. All conversation stopped. Streamers of wine froze in midair. The light grew so intense, many had to shut their eyes. Those who could take it stayed rigid and soaked in the effulgence. Then, at the point near the ceiling where the blinding ray was entering the hall, O'Nay suddenlv aDDeared. He was hoverine in midair, a tinv flame burning beneath his feet. Long, flowing green robe, extra long white hair, snow-white beard, those deeply vacant eyes, he stayed like this—just floating above it all—for what seemed like a very long time.

Then came another white flash, and O'Nay finally began his descent. An ethereal anthem commenced playing from the sixth dimension. A gasp went through the crowd; an involuntary response to all the carefully orchestrated wonder. The music grew; the light became even more intense. Finally, O'Nay glided down to a point exactly three feet above the floor. At this moment, everyone else in the Hall lowered themselves to the deck. Tradition said that whenever O'Nay was in the house, no one could have their feet in the air except him.

He hovered here now for another long stretch of time, the light behind him no less brilliant. Then came another flash, and at the top of the stairway of light, the Empress appeared. She, too, was beautiful, not yet 375, which was still young for a Special. She was dressed in an emerald gown, see-through in the bodice, with a train nearly one hundred feet long. She glided to the floor and settled in a spot behind her husband.

The Princess Xara appeared next. She was the most lovely of all. Radiantly blond, small and curvy, she was dazzling but in a way completely different from the rest of the Specials crowd. As the third member of the Imperial Family, Xara appeared to be the most normal, the most down-to-earth. She always seemed slightly bemused at the attention she received wherever she went and from whoever she met. Nearly devoid of pretensions, she could intelligently converse with anybody, anywhere, on any number of subjects, a trait that was not carried in more than a thimbleful by the other three members of her family, combined.

Xara held the fashion sway of the day as well, preferring simple long, white gowns, with little jewelry, her hair usually tied up but sometimes worn down, and occasionally a plunging neckline. She was considered the most beautiful female in the Galaxy.

And still, she was only eighteen.

There was no drama, onlv gracefulness, as she elided down the ray of light, like her mother, going right to the floor, where she quickly moved out of the glare. The imperial son—known to just about everyone in the Galaxy as The Dope—came next. He tried to impress those gathered with a speedy if detached descent, arms folded across his chest and a sun-ban ring covering his eyes.

But most people had gone back to talking and drinking before his feet ever hit the floor.

Xara certainly was not in the mood for a party, never mind one as elaborate and obscene as this.

She really couldn't believe anyone actually enjoyed these things, especially when so many long knives were out Except her mother, of course, who saw them as yet another opportunity to be fawned over, to direct the latest palace machinations, to launch a few plots of her own, and perhaps ruin a few good lives. But such things were routine for her.

Xara's brother hated them as well, but he hated everything. He was usually off cruising the Solar System—or terrorizing it might be the better term—he and his freaky friends and his extremely expensive ultracar. He was smart about one thing: As soon as he'd touched down, he'd taken a few mouthfuls of slow-ship wine and then vanished.

And her father?

Xara looked at him now, seated upon the hovering throne at the far end of the hall, staring blankly off into space, seeing things that no one else could see—or at least so everyone thought.

What did her father, Ruler of the Galaxy, mink of these things? What did he think about at all?

Xara didn't have the faintest idea.

The celebration swirled away from her as she walked the periphery of the Great Hall, keeping to the shadows but staying as far as possible from the edge of the thick artificial forests.

She turned down many offers of slow-ship from hovering robot trays, at the same time shaking her head in disgust at the heavy hitters who were taking their streams of wine directly from the pool floating in the middle of the hall.

So
lazy they can't even hold a glass
, she thought.

She nodded to most of those who caught her eye and embraced a few old aunts and uncles. But her intent was to circumnavigate the party just once before quickly blinking back to her apartment, where she could be miserable again in peace.

True, she was only eighteen, yet her heart felt like that of an ancient soul, weighed down as if she'd lived a couple thousand years already. Why the melancholy? It was all very foolish really. She was in love with Hawk Hunter. She dreamed about him every night and had sent romantic things to him in the past. And though she had not laid eyes on him now for nearly a year, he was always in her thoughts, his name always on her lips. It was almost as if she was able to carry on conversations with him in her mind, which really was foolish, because the number of times that they had been together—truly, just he and her— she could count on one hand.

Yet he had touched a place inside her where no one else had been. He respected her, as the first daughter of the Galaxy of course, but she knew he could have cared less about her position in life. He knew that she felt the same way. And he was mysterious and gallant and handsome and a true hero. What girl her age wouldn't be intrigued by all that?

So, she was in love with him, and that was the cause of her heartache.

Because she was convinced she was also responsible for his death.

By five a.m., the entire Imperial Family had left the building.

O'Nay had retreated to his tower to begin a long period of solitary, self-imposed meditation before the day of the big race arrived. The Empress departed quickly for Venus, for the ultraexclusive retreat of Langra-ji, to mingle with the family's harder-edged relatives. Xara was back in her apartment, crying herself to sleep. The Dope was heading for a secret jam party on Jupiter.

Inside the Gold House, everyone was back off the floor again. In the deepest parts of the artificial forests, screams could now be heard, along with a few yelps of delight. Most of the women had paired off with the eligible men, and some with each other. The invisible orchestra was playing more subdued tunes now. The lights in the Great Hall were down to barely visible. Thousands of candles had been lit instead.

It was just about this time when a young Solar Guardsman suddenly appeared among the crowd. Though splendidly turned out in a black satin uniform, he looked puny and unwashed in the room full of Specials. He'd entered through a side door, nervous but undeterred. He walked down the center of the hall, taking a right by the floating sea of slow-ship wine, and quickly located Xayz Joxx, the elder high commander of the Solar Guards. He and a group of SG officers were talking near the
potatos
display.

The soldier marched up to them and saluted.

"Message, sir," he said. "From the secure bubble in Room 13."

He handed Joxx the Elder a tiny silver plate. The Solar Guards commander took the message drop and placed it on his tongue, dismissing the soldier with a curt nod. It was strange, because most of the officers standing around Joxx the Elder thought the message concerned the dizzying array of wagers the High Commander had put down on the upcoming race. The secure bubble in Room 13 at the bottom of SG headquarters was a communication set used only for the highest priorities or the deepest secrets. Who to bet in the Earth Race, and by how much, was a study in religion among the Specials, more so as the day of the big event drew near.

But when Joxx the Elder tasted the message drop, his eyebrows shot up for a moment. He motioned his coterie of officers to a darkened corner of the forest, far away from a small clutch of curious Space Forces types who had wandered up nearby. Joxx the Younger saw the slight commotion and joined the small group of SG officers.

Joxx Senior rarely looked troubled, but at the moment, he did appear concerned. He briefed his officers on the message. It seemed so harmless at first. It originated from the upper part of the mid-Two Arm, from a listening post contracted out by the SG to a local mercenary group. Spies from this merc force reported a large movement of refugees traveling through an isolated star system called Laramie 66 about five light-years from their position. There seemed to be at least ten million people on the move, possibly a lot more, and they were coming from higher up on the Two Arm. The report gave no reason why the sudden tide of refugees had shown up or which direction they were now heading.

What made this particular report odd was that shortly after sending the transmission, the listening station went dead. Attempts to contact it through strings, deep-space comm, and even ultraradio, had been unsuccessful. The situation took yet another unusual turn when the station that had initially reported that the first station had disappeared, suddenly went off the air as well.

That was two secret listening stations gone, plus a report of millions of people apparently fleeing something in deeper space.

The Two Arm was a strange place. It strung out farther than any of the Galaxy's other arms, yet about 90 percent of the planets were aware of the Fourth Empire. Those few who weren't, were considered backwater systems with little to offer the realm at the present time. Most of the area from the upper mid-Two Arm inward was under an unofficial protectorate of the Solar Guards, meaning it was a rare occasion for a Space Forces ship to pass through.

Though more or less peaceful, like many places out on the Fringe, the middle Two Arm could be a wild place, too. There were more than twenty million planets in the slender stream of stars that made up the midsection. Humans being what they were, at any given time, there could be as many as a million wars going on among these planets. Some could be particularly brutal. The SG only intervened in conflicts that posed a direct threat to the Empire, though. If the tax revenues or important trade routes were being threatened, the SG would stomp one or sometimes both sides of a dispute. Most times, though, they just let the combatants fight it out. And the planet's populations stayed in place.

"These doings are not so typical in the mid-Two Arm," Joxx Senior said now. "Refugees are usually a sign that something very big is wrong. I wonder what could be rattling the chains out there?"

The SG officers—close confidants all—offered various explanations for the sudden flow of the displaced: volcano orgy, a civil war, discovery of a pyramid on the world in question. All of these things would cause a planet's population to head for higher ground.

None of these theories satisfied the SG High Commander though.

"Or it could be the Banndx-Mayyx Gang," one officer tried again. "They go on a rampage every twenty years or so. And that's near their last known area of operations."

Joxx Senior pulled his chin in thought. "The Banndx-Mayyx were pretty much killed off after our last engagement with them," he said. "Though I suppose it's possible some of them could come back from the dead."

He snapped his fingers, and instantly there was a 3-D map of the area in question floating in front of them. Joxx Senior snapped his fingers again, expecting the 3-D map to light up with icons indicating how many SG warships were in the area.

He was surprised to see none.

"None?" he exclaimed. "We have
no
warships out there at all?"

"Many are here, just inside the Pluto Cloud," one officer told him. "Either that, or they're heading in, for the Race."

Joxx Senior was surprised. "
Every one
of our ships is coming in from the Two Arm for the Earth Race?"