He'd jettisoned the temporary crew who'd helmed the ShadoVox after the disaster at Megiddo. (His original crew, elite and almost as well-known as he, had abandoned him at the height of the campaign, leaving him buried in the rubble of his command post and fleeing the embattled planet. Of everything that had happened to him in the past month, that might have been the cruelest cut of all.) As he had designed the ShadoVox himself, Joxx had no problem driving it alone in space. The flight bubblers handled all but the most important functions, and these he took care of himself. But he couldn't be everywhere at once.
The ship was two miles long, and he'd yet to leave the observatory bubble adjacent to the control room for anything. Farther down the main passageway, just about out of earshot, the ship's comm room was echoing with messages from Earth ordering Joxx and the ShadoVox to return immediately. But there was no one on hand to reply, so the messages went unheeded. Joxx had not spoken to anyone back on Earth in nearly four weeks. Ironically, or perhaps fatefully, he had no idea then that the Empire was in as much turmoil as his own life.
Possibly even more.
One of the oldest traditions in the Galaxy had to do with the disposal of old space vessels. When a ship was used up, when it had passed its point of usefulness, or even when it had come to be considered unlucky, its owner would crash it into a graveyard planet, where salvagers could pick away at the carcass and retrieve anything that might be made workable again.
Joxx had wondered in these aimless days if the same thing could be done for a man's soul. By crashing it, by busting it up into a million pieces, could some of it then be found, rehabilitated, and maybe go on to be part of a more useful spirit?
Somewhere between his second and third pound of jamma, he decided to find out.
Which was why the ShadoVox was now heading straight for a world named Junky Munky 2.
A graveyard planet.
Hunter saw the faint light of his quadtrol blink once in the darkness.
The reading was disheartening. The ShadoVox was still on course to crash into the deserted class-M planet and would hit said planet very soon.
He leaned back and wondered what it would feel like, just moments before impact. The UPF would be on its own, after all, he thought. That is, if they made it to the other side at all. But would they be able to carry on the fight to Earth without him? He'd always felt strongly that he had been transported here to the seventy-third century for one reason only: to right the wrong that had been committed against the original peoples of Earth. His mission was to carry the American flag, as well as all of the others, back to the Mother Planet, returning them to where they belonged. How did his death at the bottom of a haunted ship serve that purpose? Had the cosmos been wrong all along? Was this the punch line of the long-awaited cosmic joke? Were the forces that brought him here, to this far-flung century, powerless to stop what was about to happen to him now? Or was he brought here simply to become a martyr for the cause?
There was no way he could know, of course, but then again, all was not lost. There was a silver lining to this very dark cloud. Because at the end of it all, he hoped, would be a way to return to that place from where he'd just come. And have another chance to walk the fields of Heaven with Xara.
And that wouldn't be so bad.
He would just have to endure these last few minutes of torture, and then crushing pain and death and—
Suddenly he heard a very strange sound. He looked to his left and saw the locked door of the cell slowly open. The creaking alone chilled him to the bone. No one was on the other side. No one had touched the clasp or disabled the electronic bolt. It was as if it had opened on its own.
Hunter was astonished. That door had been locked, sealed, practically ion-welded shut just seconds before. His quadtrol had confirmed it. Yet now it was wide open, and the bare light of the passageway was flooding in.
How could this have happened? How could a locked door suddenly spring open? How could his soul, so close to crossing over once again, be dragged back at this last moment?
He didn't have a clue.
Purely by instinct, he checked his quadtrol screen. The ShadoVox would hit the graveyard planet in less than five minutes.
He stayed frozen in place. He desperately wanted to see Xara again — but could the reunion wait just a little while longer?
He thought about this for a few moments, then jumped up and was out of the cell an instant later.
Up in the observatory bubble, the planet Junky Munkyz was quickly filling the field of view.
Joxx looked up from his pile of jamma and smiled weakly. It would all be over very soon.
Or would it?
He felt the ship begin to accelerate; then came the bright flash that indicated the vessel had just jumped into Supertime. An instant later, the ShadoVox went right through the graveyard planet, coming out, intact, on the other side.
Stunned that he was still in one piece, Joxx tried to understand what had just occurred. Starcrashers could go so fast in both space and time that they could pass through planets, too, but only if they were going at full Supertime speed. And he had not been, until a moment ago.
What happened?
He was suddenly aware that he was no longer alone inside the control bubble. He looked up to see a man's face and recognized it immediately. But there was no shock in Joxx's dead eyes.
"I guess I'm not so surprised to see you again," Joxx mumbled, badly slurring his words. "You'll be haunting me for the rest of my life — or what is left of it."
Hunter bowed slightly. He'd boosted the ship's speed at the very last moment, saving them both. But that had been ten long seconds ago. Now he was simply astonished at just how bad Joxx looked. Gone were the youthful, handsome features, the cold clear eyes, the great mane near-white hair. Joxx seemed to have sunken in on himself, as if he'd spent the last century slumped in his chair, doing jamma and staring into empty space.
"I had no choice but to return here," Hunter finally told him. "That's how the device you gave me works."
He looked up at the rearview viz screen; the graveyard planet was disappearing from view.
"And I thought I got here just in time," Hunter said. Then he eyed the pile of jamma. "But maybe not…"
Joxx seemed almost unaware that Hunter had just saved his life.
"And you accomplished your mission?" he asked Hunter instead. "Wherever the hell you went?"
"Let's just say it's still an ongoing process," Hunter replied.
There came an uncomfortable silence between them. By all rights they should have been bitter enemies: Fourth Empire golden boy and a time-displaced iconoclast. But events had changed that.
"You know I still have dreams about them," Joxx began, mumbling again. "Those two young girls… being dragged away like that…"
His voice trailed off, but Hunter knew what he was talking about. At the climax of their shared mind ring trip, he and Joxx had been chained together and brought aboard one of the huge ships that were carrying the dispossessed people of Earth to their prison in the sky. In this sequence, a mother and her two young daughters had run to Joxx for protection against the enormous prison guards; men had made a habit of going through the swarm of deportees, picking out all the attractive girls and forcing them to provide pleasures for them and more. Two huge guards literally ripped the girls from Joxx's protecfive arms, leading the SG high officer to pummel a third guard nearly to death — a violent and telling epiphany for Joxx, even though it was all taking place within a mind ring trip.