Starhawk (6 page)

It looked very suspicious; Hunter had to see more. Another worker repeated the actions of the first. Money was being exchanged, the worker was allowed to pass between the lines. Hunter reached inside his pocket and found a handful of aluminum coins—so convenient he was sure Kyx had somehow programmed them to be there. He pushed his way through the knot of workers, walked up to the biggest soldier he could find, and gave him his pocketful of coins. The soldier looked at him just long enough for Hunter to wonder if he'd just made a huge mistake, but then he stepped aside and pushed Hunter through the invisible barrier.

Hunter stumbled along for a few feet, surprised by his sudden access. He tripped going through the green door that led into the small adjacent building. It was here he discovered why Kyx had enjoyed this mind trip so much, why he'd frayed the program by overuse, and why the BMK officer had taken great pains to hide this last ring.

The room was filled with young female deportees. Teenagers some of them, others in their twenties, but none much older than that. Beauties all, they were standing in irregular rows, held in place by some kind of localized force fields. All of them looked nervous and intense. They, too, had been relieved of their Earthly clothing, but the drab smocks issued to them were cut very high on the thigh and low on the chest. No one here had gotten her head shaved, either. There were probably a hundred girls jammed into the holding room. Two soldiers were slumped in hovering chairs at the back. Both were sound asleep.

The two workers who'd preceded Hunter into the building were looking over the females like customers might view a new shipment of spaceboots. Finally, one worker stepped forward and yanked a young girl out of the first row, causing a crackle of electricity as she was released from her force field. She went with the man, very reluctantly, toward an even smaller room nearby. When the worker opened the door to this room and pushed the girl inside, Hunter heard a chorus of squeals coming from within. None seemed to be cries of pleasure.

It didn't take an interstellar genius to figure out what was going on here. Hunter's thoughts streamed back to Kyx, sitting in the interrogation room, looking so smug—until they relieved him of his precious mind ring.

That freak
...

The second worker selected his prize and literally dragged the girl to the next room. All eyes now turned to Hunter. He felt his hand reach out to grab the girl being held nearest him, but with all his strength, he managed to pull it back. He started to say something to the captives but found no words would come. What was there to say? This was real, but not real. He seemed powerless to stop it; all he could do was drink it in. He hesitated for another moment, but finally he knew he had to leave. He turned on his heel and made a quick exit from the building.

Through it all, the two soldiers sleeping at the back of the room never moved.

He hurried away from the small building, passing back through the soldiers without a word, and falling into the stream of workers once again. He tried to comprehend everything he'd seen so far: the sprawling base, the electric city, the processing station, the small room off to the side. This ring depicted some version of actual events, Hunter felt certain of that. Kyx had somehow stumbled upon it or more likely taken it off the cold body of the commanding officer he'd managed to outlive and replace. Then Kyx had used it over and over again, just to take advantage of what was happening behind the green door. The ring had survived then, not as a historical document but simply as a vehicle for lust.

But the strange trip also confirmed what Hunter and the others had speculated all along: that Xronis Trey had once been a thriving planet, vital and even booming, due solely to the fact that all of Earth's former inhabitants had passed through here on their way to jail. Yet the ring trip had not yet resolved the number-one question, the mystery above all others: Who were the people responsible for deporting the Earthlings in the first place? Hunter had seen no flags here, no signs or emblems or uniform insignias that might lend a clue as to who was committing these enormous acts of barbarism.

So, even though he was certain that Kyx had never bothered to go beyond this point in the trip before, Hunter had to press on.

He was soon walking along the eastern edge of the base; the main part of the warehouse where the deportees were being processed—and relieved of their clothes, their belongings, and their dignity—was now directly off to his left. Even though the blue-light electrical field separated the huge way station from the rest of the base, it was easy to see through the ion field and follow what was happening on the other side.

The processing station appeared capable of moving thousands of people a minute; the stream of deportees trudging in and out of the place just never stopped. There was a network of clear, superglass jet tubes running along the ground all around the structure; most were about two feet in diameter. Hunter could see all kinds of things blowing through these tubes. Clothes, baggage, hats, shoes, you name it—the lives of the hapless deportees being sucked right out of them. But where was all this stuff going? These overlords didn't seem the type to throw anything away; they seemed intent on stealing everything they could from the deportees in their desperate hour and were being very methodical about it. The network of jet tubes told that tale.

The tide of workers slowed down. Ahead there was an official checkpoint of sorts, a main ingress station through which workers could pass and get into the heart of the processing area itself. The command cluster was located here. The structure actually looked new to Hunter now. Its twelve domes were gleaming white and were not the sickly pale hue they were today. Several soaring passageways swirled around them like a jeweled crown. Rather than a poor-cousin castoff hanging on by the edge of a huge crater, the cluster was now the center of attention at the sprawling space base.

Because of the apparent shift change, two huge streams of drones, going in opposite directions, were funneling through the nearby checkpoint. Hunter simply went with the flow, squeezing in slightly as he passed through the opening in the electric-blue fence. Suddenly he was inside the last perimeter of the base; the jet tubes were flowing all around him. He veered off from the formation of workers and went to inspect the massive tangle of see-through superglass conduits.

Some ran along the edge of the cordoned-off area and out to the western edge of the base. A dumping ground of sorts was located out there. Some tubes ran through the command cluster itself, terminating at a point just below the main dome. But most continued right through the middle of the base, past the space gantries and beyond, to the eastern terminus of the facility. Back on present-day Xronis Trey, what lay east of the BMK outpost were a half-dozen small mountains. In the mind ring though, these were six domed structures that were almost as big as mountains. The jet tubes were leading directly into these buildings, each tube apparently delivering only certain types of items to what were obviously huge storage facilities.

Hunter walked up to one tube, which was slightly smaller in diameter than the rest. Like the others, it was made of clear superglass; seeing inside it was no problem. While the other tubes seemed to be moving along the generic essentials of life—clothing and so on—this narrow tube was carrying something else. Hunter could just barely make out a few of the items as they went flying by, but these things were very telling. This tube was carrying very personal items, valuable things: coins, gemstones, jewelry, and even some paper currency. And turning within this swiftly moving stream of booty, Hunter saw something else: many, many mind rings.

"
Hey, mook
—
what the hell are you doing
?"

Hunter spun around to find an enormous individual had suddenly come up behind him. This man towered over him and was an especially rough-looking character. A heavy beard covered his chin, a slimy mustache adorned his upper lip. Contempt was etched in his face.

"Did you hear me?" he growled at Hunter again. "What the hell are you doing way out here?"

This man was obviously some kind of boss, a foreman, Hunter guessed. He was wearing a jet-black combat suit of an almost satin quality. There were lightning bolts splashed all over it, the first ornament Hunter had seen on anyone here.

"I'm on my break," Hunter finally managed to say. "I'm just stretching my legs...."

The foreman screwed up his face in an expression of pure bewilderment.

"
Break
?" he said, mouthing the word as if he'd never heard it used in this context before. "What the hell do you mean?"

Hunter tried to recover. "You know, a break ... from my job? I'm taking a few minutes off."

"
Taking a few minutes off
?" the foreman roared. "You just came on duty!"

The foreman took three steps toward Hunter. He must have weighed at least three hundred pounds, probably more. Hunter wondered what would happen if he had to duke it out with this guy. Could you get hurt inside a mind ring? How about a mind ring that was suffering from chronic overuse?

"We've got a goddamn ship to land," the foreman spat at him, pointing to another huge space vessel that was passing over their heads. "And you're in an area off limits to mooks. So turn around and get back to the crew pit, or I'll break your back with one hand."

"OK, OK, I'll get right on it," Hunter said, pushing his way past the foreman. He made a quick U-turn and tried to go back through the perimeter gate. But two heavily armed guards were suddenly blocking his way. Both were about the same size as the foreman.

"ID ..." one of them demanded.

"I'm the new guy," Hunter tried to lie.

"I said, let me see your ID, wiseass," the guard growled at him. "No one gets out without showing it."

"I lost it..." Hunter shot back.

"
Lost it
?" the second guard barked. "It's imprinted on the back of your head."

At this point, Hunter decided to just walk away, hoping the guards would simply fade into the swirl of the mind ring trip.

And that's what happened. But then the foreman was behind him again. This part of the program was persistent.

"Hey, wait a minute!" the foreman yelled at him. "Who the hell are you, anyway?"

Hunter turned around just as the foreman was pulling a huge ray gun from his belt.

"No ID, in an unauthorized area," the foreman was growling. "You're a security risk. Probably one of them angels in disguise, I'll bet."

Once again, Hunter just turned his back and tried to walk away, hoping the mind ring would absolve itself. But the foreman was suddenly right in front of him. And this time, he had his ray gun pointing directly between Hunter's eyes.

"Move again, and you're dust," the foreman told Hunter.

At that point, everything seemed to stand still. Hunter found himself studying the foreman's uniform. Black, shiny, with tiny double lightning bolts on the collar and on the sleeves. It was starting to look familiar....

Back in the future, there were two major branches of the Fourth Empire's military: the Space Forces, which were the Empire's far-flung Army, Navy, and Air Service, and the Inner Defense Forces, the Emperor's vast and murky personal army, which was charged with protecting the original Solar System from the Pluto Cloud in, but in reality could be found in just about every corner of the Galaxy. They were also known as the Solar Guards.

There were some very dark elements within the Solar Guards: Hunter knew this from personal experience as a hit team of Guardsmen had been dispatched from Earth to take him out just as he was leading the forces on Planet America to victory. It seemed crazy now—because the history books said the Solar Guards had only been in existence for only four hundred years or so—but this guy's uniform was starting to look like those worn by the SG.

Hunter just couldn't resist challenging him. "Who do you work for?" he asked the foreman directly. "Who's
your
boss?"

The foreman never replied. He just pulled his trigger. Hunter was able to dive away at the last moment; still, the blast hit him high on the left shoulder, throwing him back a good ten feet or more. He hit the ground hard, scattering those images around him. He knew in that instant that he was in big trouble. He could feel real pain in his shoulder; he was bleeding, too. This mind ring was corrupted beyond belief—and now the foreman was aiming his weapon again.

Hunter went up to one knee, his shoulder felt like it was on fire. He reached across to his side holster and instantly, his gun was out and pointing at the foreman's chest. But then Hunter hesitated. Did he really want to shoot this guy? What consequences would result? Though the foreman had just shot him, the man wasn't real. Not
really
real. If Hunter fired back at him, he might wind up blowing a hole right through the program.

But then the foreman fired again.

Hunter actually saw the stream of fire coming right at him. He dove off to his left. The blast of green fire went right over his head. The foreman took two giant steps forward and aimed once again. This time, Hunter didn't blink. He raised his gun and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

He tried again. The gun fizzled.

It was empty. Dead. Without a charge.

The foreman fired again. Two blasts. One hit Hunter's right arm, knocking the useless gun from his hand. The other ricocheted off his dopey helmet. He felt like someone had dropped an asteroid on his head. He literally saw stars swirling before his eyes.

The foreman aimed again. Hunter couldn't believe this was happening. He was now bleeding heavily, and it felt like life was just oozing out of him.

And this next blast would be a death blow___

But suddenly the foreman wasn't looking at him anymore. Instead, he was aiming at something—or somebody— over Hunter's right shoulder. An expression of complete shock had washed over the foreman's face.