It had simply taken the better part of a month for the de-bris — both human and metal — to make its way through Thirty
Star Pass and reach Megiddo. It was now locked in eternal orbit around the devastated planet.
"Rather appropriate," was how one of the robots put it. "Death above. Death below."
Bonz could not disagree.
They took a few more readings, and then Bonz prepared to bump the spy ship back up into Supertime. But suddenly, the bells and whistles started going off again.
The ship's control panel lit up, this time with bright red and yellow lights. The Long-Distance Scan array was pulsating madly. The life-sign detectors were blaring, too. Even the long-range Z-beam gun in their nose clicked on.
All this could only mean one thing: a ship was heading for them. An SG ship.
Bonz almost laughed. Well, at least he knew all the spy equipment was actually working. He would have thought he'd run into at least a dozen SG vessels in the No-Fly Zone by this time. But it was almost as if the Solar Guards were taking their own no-fly edict to heart themselves. Until now, that is.
Bonz magnified the LDS signal, expecting to get an indi-cation of an SG ship flying in Supertime but still some distance away; one that would simply pass on by. But he was in for a surprise: his scanner screen was telling him the SG ship was not flying in Supertime but rather was down here in regular time with them. In fact, it was coming right up on their tail.
Bonz pushed his rear-projection viz-screen button, and there it was. It was a culverin, a kind of pocket cruiser, about three times the size of the ZeroVox. Oddly, it was not a type flown by the SG's Rapid Engagement Fleet; they only flew Star-crashers.
Nevertheless, within seconds, it was flying right next to them.
Bonz hurriedly initiated the holo-activate string to secure all his spy gear again, then pushed his engine's idle output down to near zero. This would, he hoped, mimic a faulty star engine. Next he climbed into a very dirty flight suit and called the robots forward. Just in time, too. The SG boarding party beamed over just seconds later. No hail, no prior warning.
They were just suddenly there: six of them, all heavily armed.
But these weren't regular SG troopers. Their uniforms were light brown as opposed to the black satin and red-trim outfits regular front-line SG troops wore. These men were SG support troops, soldiers who flew the repair ships, the ammo ships, and sometimes, the hospital ships. One was an officer.
"We are authorized to destroy this ship and execute the crew," the officer said. "You have violated a standing military order by flying into this restricted area."
Bonz stayed cool. Regular troops or not, the SG modus op-erandi was to always come on strong at first. These guys did not disappoint.
"A million apologies, sir," Bonz replied. "But we did not fly into this area; we have been here since catastrophe struck Megiddo."
The officer seemed baffled. "You were here… during the battle below?"
"We were in the pass, but close by," Bonz lied. "All the subatomics skewed our power spike. We've fixed it as best we could and have been creeping along ever since. But it has been a long five weeks."
The clankers began squeaking on cue. Suddenly it seemed as if all of them were in dire need of a good oiling. "As for any executions," Bonz went on. "I'm afraid I am the only mortal soul on board."
The officer nodded to his soldiers, and they quickly went about searching the rear areas of the ship.
Several tense minutes went by as they tossed everything from the engine compartment on forward.
Finally they returned, carrying only a few bottles of slow-ship wine with them. They'd found them in the galley; it was Bonz's personal supply.
The officer took one bottle, popped its top, and took a sniff. He smiled, displaying a set of gold teeth.
"You have a remarkably good nose for vintage," he told Bonz. "For a space bum, that is—"
"In our best days, we deliver the finest wine around," Bonz replied, seeing an opening for a bribe.
"So, please, consider those a gift."
The officer looked around the dilapidated cabin and shook his head uncertainly. He, too, was dirty and disheveled as were his men. They all seemed as lost as Bonz was pretending to be. Finally the officer nodded to the boarding party. They be-gan blinking out, one by one, Bonz's booze supply going with them.
The officer was the last to go, but before he'd faded out, he halted his transfer for a last question.
"By the way, space bum," he said to Bonz. "Have you en-countered any more of our ships out here?
Vessels belonging to the regular Solar Guards?"
Bonz shook his head. It was an odd question to ask.
"No, we haven't," he replied truthfully. "Not a one."
He might have added that there were plenty outside the star cloud but none so far within it. But of course, he said no more.
A funny look came over the officer's face. "Neither have we," he said, almost to himself.
Now came another awkward silence, as the partially dis-solved officer looked at Bonz, and Bonz looked back at him.
"Very well then," the officer finally said, as he slowly faded away for good. "You must be gone from this area immediately. And take my advice: for your own good, go as fast as that claptrap engine will take you."
3
The planet was called Doomsday 212.
It couldn't have had a better name. It was located about four-fifths of the way up the Moraz Star Cloud, sixty light-years over from Megiddo and Thirty Star Pass, and just ten light-years from the wrecked cargo facility at TW800.
Its sun, Love Field 888, was 175 million miles away and failing, making the planet's days long, and dim. But this was the least of its problems. During the initial expansion to the stars by the First Empire, the so-called Ancient Engineers terra-formed just about every planet in the Milky Way. By puffing even the most despondent rocks floating about, they gave life to the Galaxy. They made billions of gas giants livable, too, usually by draining off the harmful vapors and then terra-forming the solid core beneath.
Many of these old gas-bags were still habitable, despite enduring centuries of neglect as three subsequent empires rose and fell. But then, many were not so hospitable. Doomsday 212 fell into that category.
The millennia had not been kind to the planet, which was about ten times the size of Earth. Most of the breathable atmosphere was gone except for a thin layer very close to the surface. Below this air pocket were the remains of the craggy, disturbing core, a ball whose landscape was pockmarked with millions of meteor-impact craters, weirdly twisting dead river-beds, grotesquely shaped mountains, buttes, and mesas all carved out between miles of bottomless pits and valleys.
It got worse. At one time the planet had boasted a triple set of yellow, red, and green rings. They had been the rage of the star cloud many centuries before. But the only things orbiting the planet now were the angry swarms of rock fragments left over from these rings. Most were about the size of a boulder, but others were much larger. They made life on this bleak world extremely dangerous as they tended to fall through the planet's ultrathin atmosphere with great regularity, coming in at the speed of a small bomb and with enough kinetic force to ruin anyone's day. And those fire rocks remaining in orbit made navigating around the big planet a very dicey operation.
So why did SF3 want Bonz and his robots to come here? Simple. Doomsday 212 was the closest planet to that point in space where both the mysterious battle was supposedly fought and the mysterious invasion fleet supposedly disappeared.