Starhawk (25 page)

Joxx's shaky fingers went to his forehead, feeling the ring hidden beneath his perfectly mussed hair.

"A mind ring trip!" he gasped. "By what perversion have you brought me into something like this!"

"Because you have to see what I've seen," Hunter told him harshly. "My friends and I have started our campaign against the Fourth Empire because it is guilty of crimes against humanity on the grandest scale. We bested you at Megiddo and at Thirty Star Pass. And because you have such an inflated opinion of yourself, I could have kicked your ass all the way back to the Pluto Cloud. But that would not have served our purposes. So I've taken you into here, so you can see for yourself just what your relatives back on Earth have done, what they've allowed to happen. What they've allowed to continue—"

Joxx almost laughed. "You're mad!" he said. "You can't possibly get away with this. And who the hell do you think you are, assuming you can educate me on such things?"

Hunter looked up, the first Saracen armored car was now just three hundred feet away. He began talking even faster.

"Ever hear of the Home Planets?"

Joxx numbly shook his head no.

Hunter gave him a very abbreviated history of the isolated prison star system. He told him how the people living there were the original inhabitants of Earth and how he'd seen for himself the degradation they'd suffered getting thrown off their home planet—all via the mind trips he took on Xronis Trey.

"When I went into my second trip, I was able to break into a vault containing thousands of mind rings taken from the people being deported from Earth. These rings included historical scenarios, private memories, correspondences; many went back hundreds of years. It took a hell of a long time, but I was finally able to reduce the most vital information onto just one ring—and then I copied it. That's the one you have around your head. We will experience the same things in here, together, at exactly the same moment. So get used to it; this is going to take a while."

The armored car was now just two hundred feet away. The men farther down the ditch were readying their weapons, their faces both grim and grimy.

"Now, only my own good conscience forces me to tell you this," Hunter went on quickly. "What I've pieced together here isn't exact history. Instead, it's what happened, in bits and pieces, as told through the memories of many, many people. Not everything you will see in here will make sense. Not everything you see in here is even true, not at first, anyway. Just as a story whispered by one person comes out distorted and unrecognizable once it's passed through a hundred lips, so, too, is the situation in here.

"But in the end, it
does
tell a story. The story of how the first two Empires came and went. And how the sins of those who have finally passed on are still being committed by those in power today. So take everything you see with a grain of salt, but the conclusion will make some kind of sense. That much I can guarantee."

Joxx tried to spit in his face but missed.

"You're a
cartoon
!" he hissed at Hunter. "And a disgrace to any honor you somehow managed to win. The Empire is the greatest thing since God lit off the Big Bang. To not realize that is the height of stupidity. Look at you—you were once a galactic hero, on the same level as me, for heaven's sake. You were in for tons of money and fame. Now, you're a joke! A bandit! And a fake!"

Hunter just smiled back at him. The armored car was slowly rolling closer.

"Fake enough to knock off a few sleazeball planets and get you shaking in your boots," he said acidly. "That's all it took, smart guy. No huge fleet. No millions of men under arms. Just word of mouth to cause that stampede and a dope like you who bought into it so easily, the guy who was working for us on the inside had a hard time keeping a straight face anytime he talked to you. So I ask you now, who's the genius?"

Joxx began to say something but stopped. He was uncharacteristically stumped for a reply.

Then came a particularly loud cough of engine noise. The first armored car was less than fifty feet away. The anxiety in the trench became as thick as the fog that had slowly gathered around them.

"This is not a way to spend Easter morning," someone farther down the trench moaned.

But then Joxx piped up again. "How dare you bring me here?" he whispered angrily to Hunter. "We are officers of the Empire, for God's sake. We should be above such low-class things as mind ring trips—"

One of the three men named Paddy farther down the trench turned his AK-47 on Joxx and Hunter. "Last time: Shut yer mouth or I'll shut it for you."

"You better do what he says, Joxx," Hunter whispered to him. "Call it a defect in the mind ring or just plain old age, but everything that will happen to us in here physically will be as real as real can get. And I mean that about the weapons in particular. You can get hurt in here. You can even get killed. Take it from me. I know ..."

Hunter took one last look around and then pushed Joxx farther into the ditch. A moment later, there was a huge explosion not thirty feet down the road from them.

"And so it begins," Hunter said. "Again ..."

The first armored car had hit a land mine square on. The powerful blast lifted the tanklike vehicle three feet off the ground, then slammed it back down to the muddy road again, where it burst into flames. The rear doors opened up, and three soldiers staggered out; each one was on fire.

Then came a shout from the ditch, and the men to the left of Hunter and Joxx opened up with their automatic weapons. They cut down the three burning men in a quick, merciless fusillade. More screams echoed from within the flaming vehicle, and three more soldiers fell out, their uniforms smoldering, too. They were cut down as well.

The second armored car had roared up behind the first. Realizing the small patrol had run right into an ambush, its driver attempted to push the burning vehicle off the muddy road. But then another explosion went off. Another mine had detonated. It knocked the front wheels right off the second Saracen but somehow failed to ignite anything inside, or at least not right away. The back door to this armored car flew open, and this time eight heavily armed paratroopers stormed out, guns blazing in the direction of the ditch.

These troops took up a position on the opposite side of the road. A sharp gun battle erupted with the men in the ditch near Hunter firing at the eight well-armed soldiers no more than twenty feet away. The soldiers were all carrying heavy-duty combat weapons; bigger and better than the elderly Kalishnikovs and M-16s. They were also much louder and packed more punch than a shotgun or hunting rifle. The men in the ditch were instantly overmatched by the superior firepower. But this did not deter them from firing away.

At this moment, the third armored car rolled onto the scene. Its driver had slowed some twenty-five feet behind the two burning Saracens, allowing his men to climb out the back and join their colleagues in the trench on the opposite side of the road. This time, the driver and gunner stayed inside their vehicle. Quickly wheeling the huge car around, the driver repositioned himself so the Saracen's machine gun could now fire on the ditch where Hunter, Joxx, and the other nine men lay. Everyone went down for cover.

Another mine went off, but this was placed too far away to do anything more than send a massive tremor through the ground. The bullets were flying like crazy now. Two of the men near Hunter hurled hand grenades against the soldiers in the opposite trench. There were two loud pops, and suddenly the air was filled with the cries of two soldiers, mortally wounded.

In the next instant, two more soldiers jumped up from their position and charged across the road headlong into the withering fire coming from the men in the ditch. They were cut down immediately. No sooner had they hit the ground when four more soldiers charged the ditch, this time under the support of machine gun fire coming from the remaining Saracen. Between this and the soldiers firing as they ran, four of the men in the ditch were killed instantly and four more mortally wounded.

At that point, the third armored car tried to move closer to the ditch. But in doing so, it ran over not one, but two land mines. The resulting explosions were enormous; it felt like the ground itself was going to crack open, the shaking was that violent. The armored car went straight up in the air and slammed back down again, blowing up on impact.

Just a faint scream could be heard from the wreckage before the roaring fire took its two victims.

The gun battle raged in the close quarters of the ditch now. Two more soldiers ran across the road. One had the misfortune of stepping on the fifth and remaining land mine. He was blown to bits. His comrade was thrown through the air and landed in a bloody heap right in front of Hunter and Joxx. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Joxx couldn't help but read the information on this man's shoulder patch: 5th Parachute Regiment. BA.

"Dear God, those words indicate we are somewhere in the very early twenty-first century!" he exclaimed. "Practically prehistoric times! Is this the era you've brought me to?"

"Good guess," Hunter mumbled.

The battle raged on. Two more soldiers rushed across the road. One of the men in the ditch calmly stood up and shot them both to death with his M-16. He was then killed by six bullets to the throat by two of the soldiers closest to him in the ditch. Someone threw a pair of hand grenades across the road. Two more loud pops. Two more dead soldiers.

Two more hand grenades were thrown. Both went off, but at such close range, they killed one soldier and the man who threw them. His partner stood up and fired point-blank at the soldiers advancing on him. He killed two more but then took a spray of bullets right across his face. His skull exploded in a bloody mist. He dropped his Kalishnikov as he fell backward, knocking the ammo clip from its feeder. The man who'd been crouching next to him picked up the rifle and jammed the clip back in, but the soldiers were just inches away from him now. The man fired the assault rifle haphazardly, wounding one of the soldiers, but the three others fell upon him and began stabbing him with their long, razor-sharp trench knives. He died with a gurgle and then a scream.

Only two men remained at that end of the ditch now. Both were holding shotguns, but both were out of ammo. The soldiers fired on them without mercy. One man threw his last weapon—a hand grenade. It went off and instantly killed two of the soldiers. The four remaining soldiers sim-ply took their place. They fired on the two helpless gunmen. One man, the older of the two, finally fell, his chest ripped open by a barrage of twenty-two bullets. The last man had at least a half-dozen grenades on him. He was mortally wounded but managed to uncork two and throw them, killing yet another two soldiers.

But before this man could throw another grenade, the last two soldiers were on him with their knives and began stabbing him, even as he was begging for mercy and crying out for his wife and children.

Then somehow, some way, two hand grenades lashed to his body went off, finally killing him and the remaining pair of soldiers.

And suddenly, just like that, it was over.

Silence returned. Only the sound of the Saracens burning and the raindrops splattering on the muddy, now bloody road could be heard. The air was filled with smoke and the thick odor of iodine. Joxx looked like he was about to go into shock; he dropped his weapon to the muddy ground. The battle had been so sharp, so vicious, so quick, he never fired a shot.

He looked up at Hunter, who just shrugged.

"It always ends this way," he said.

Hunter gathered up all the usable weapons, handed six of them to Joxx, and then began pushing him back into the woods behind the ditch.

The stunned SG officer accepted his burden without complaint and began stumbling along the path that led into the trees. Once under the cover of the thick hemlocks, the trail split into several different directions. Hunter had taken this mind ring trip more than three dozen times; he knew the way by heart. He was able to steer Joxx by nudging him on the shoulder, indicating which direction he wanted him to go.

It took a few minutes of trooping through the thick forest for Joxx to regain his composure. Then he began talking.

"The punishment for this is death, you know," he told Hunter over his shoulder. "I don't care how big a hero you are. Once the Imperial Court realizes that what you have done here amounts to kidnapping a Special—well, the only question will be, just how they will choose to execute you."

Hunter wasn't paying him much attention. He had to remain alert here. Noises were all around them. In front, the high, ethereal screaming never stopped. Behind them were the unmuffled engines of more Saracen armored cars, roaring across the fields. Then, right on cue, a new noise from overhead. Hunter was expecting it by now, but Joxx was clearly startled and stopped dead in his tracks. Hunter just pushed him forward again. They did not have to worry about this particular noise—at least not at that moment.

After about five minutes of marching, they reached a clearing. Another patch of very thick woods lay about a hundred yards beyond. In between was a bog.

Hunter didn't like this part. He had learned that there were two kinds of bogs in this very green land. Some were shallow, just a foot or two deep. Others were bottomless, or at least seemed that way. Their water was always dirty and always cold. The smell of decaying peat around them was pungent.

Just another name for a swamp
, he thought, as always.

They reached the slightly raised edge of the bog and finally stopped. Joxx turned to look at Hunter as if to say,
What now
? Hunter just pointed forward. It took a moment for Joxx to realize that he wanted him to plunge into the cold water and get across that way.

"But I'll freeze to death," he complained. "If these things are possible as you claim—"

Hunter just told him, "I've done this many times. It's the only way to get to where we have to go."

With that, Hunter pushed him. Joxx hit the water feetfirst and immediately went in up to his neck. Only by instinct did he raise the weapons and ammo belts above his head.