If any incident during the whole experience changed Joxx forever, that was it.
"So… what now?" he asked Hunter, "You're here, but I am still in command of this ship."
And suddenly Joxx had a gun in his hand. It was a huge blaster pistol, and its power light was burning a hole in Hunter's retinas. Meanwhile, he'd left his own dead weapon behind in the cell.
"I could throw you back into jail," Joxx said, "and make sure that others carry out the Emperor's orders to execute you."
Hunter had anticipated this moment.
"If that's what you feel you have to do," he told the SG officer plainly, "then, do it."
Joxx looked back up at Hunter, conflict raging in his sad eyes.
"But if I don't lock you back up," he finally said. "What is it that you'd want me to do? Certainly not join you…"
"No," Hunter replied quickly. "All I want is for you to let me go. Let me get to where I need to be."
Joxx laughed. "To play hero again?"
"Heroism has nothing to do with it," Hunter shot back. "Whether you know it or not, die situation is desperate — all over. If there is something I can do to prevent needless bloodshed and find some justice somewhere, well, I have no choice but to do it."
Joxx slumped even farther into his seat. "I used to know that feeling," he said under his breath.
He turned the huge blaster barrel down; it was almost as if he was no longer strong enough to hold it steady.
"Go," he said finally, sounding like a man ten times his age. "Go and do what you feel you have to do. That way people will remember at least one of us was a hero to the end."
Hunter stepped forward and almost shook Joxx's hand — but he thought better of it, "No matter what happens," he said instead, "you've just played your part. If you hadn't opened my cell door, then—"
Joxx just shook his head again. "Cell door? What are you talking about? I can barely open my own eyes…"
With that, he just waved Hunter away and put his face back down into the pile of jamma. Hunter started to say something but stopped. He checked his watch; precious time was ticking away here. He would have to figure out the jail cell mystery later.
He stepped into the control room, made a few more adjustments, and then was quickly out the door.
Hunter ran down the long passageway, wondering which power tube would bring him to the ship's launching rooms.
He finally selected one, climbed aboard, and hit the jackpot the first time. In seconds he was walking out into a cavernous compartment deep in the belly of the beast known as the ShadoVox.
Here was a huge maw that looked out into space. The opening was covered with an invisible membrane that allowed ships to move freely in or out, while keeping the airless void of space at bay.
Hunter stood there for a moment. He really didn't have a second to waste, but he just had to look at the stars. He hadn't seen the real things in how long? Since he captured Joxx in his own ship, since the mind ring trip they both shared. Everything up above had been not been real since then.
So they were still there. That great wash of real stars, real constellations. Real hydrogen, burning off real gas and spewing out real nuclear dust. This was strange. Hunter almost felt like he was being energized by these pinpricks of light. Where the hell was he? The Four Arm? Had he ever been to the Four Arm before?
It didn't matter. This was the real world. Not a mind ring trip. Not the fields of Heaven. It felt different being back here. Not better, just different.
There was something else he hadn't seen in a long time.
He moved to the center of the launching bay now, reached into his pocket, and took out something that wasn't there just a few moments before. It was a container, oval with a white pearl finish. It was a Twenty 'n Six, the same kind of device that Vanex had used in conjunction with the Echo 999.9 to create the portal in and out of Paradise.
But this Twenty 'n Six contained something very personal to Hunter, just about the only thing he could call his own in this very strange world he'd found himself in. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
He'd been doing a lot of trans-dimensional jumping lately, time jumping from here to eternity and back.
What effect did it have on him? On his psyche? On his physiology? His mental awareness? He didn't know. But here he was, and this was going to be a crossroads for him. If he activated this capsule and the thing inside fizzled — well, he'd really be out here, way out here, without a paddle. And he would have no choice but to ride the ShadoVox down with Joxx, whenever the fallen SG hero decided again it was time to go. Not the most pleasant end to the story.
So, with one more deep breath, Hunter hit the capsule's activation button. There was a flash of light and then a long stream of green mist began tumbling out of the capsule. It gathered on the deck about ten feet away from him. There came another flash, brighter than Hunter could remember. So bright, he had to cover his eyes.
When he took his hand down, before him stood his F-16XL spacefighter, his famous Flying Machine.
He felt like the weight of the Galaxy had been lifted off his shoulders — at least for a moment. He was happy. Happy that his magnificent machine was still intact. Even better, it looked to be in good shape. He finally let out that long, deep breath and felt relief run through his body. Suddenly things didn't seem so dim as before.
What was this Flying Machine? What made it so magnificent? No one was really sure, including him.
In some ways it was a figment of his imagination. Something from a dream he'd had back on Fools 6 one night soon after finding himself stranded on that very desolate planet. He awoke from a long slumber and just started writing down calculations, design cues, formulas. Where it all came from, he didn't know. But when he visited the ancient crash site of a huge Time Shifter warship just over the hill from his location, he salvaged approximately two tons of material and with the help of an electron torch fashioned the machine that stood before him now. He'd been tearing around the Milky Way in it ever since.
The strange craft didn't look like anything flying in the Galaxy these days. All Empire warships, big and small, were shaped like a wedge; all ion-powered civilian craft were, too. But Hunter's vessel was long and tubular, with two stubby wings sticking out of its midsection and two smaller wings protruding from its tail. The nose was stiletto sharp and featured a cockpit with a tear-shaped canopy. It was painted white with red and blue stars emblazoned on the tail and fuselage. Strangest of all, it had wheels to hold it off the ground. The wheel was a technology lost in the Galaxy more than 2,000 years before.
It was also the fastest thing in the Galaxy. Faster than any Starcrasher. In fact, where a Starcrasher could tool along at two light-years a minute, the cruising speed for Hunter's machine was two light-years a second. And he had yet to open up the throttles all the way.
He jumped in now and felt like he was back in the womb. All the controls survived the transdimensional jumps, which was good. Everything seemed a bit bigger though, by a factor of 10 percent or so. But this was normal for something that had lingered in the twenty-sixth dimension for a long period of time. It was OK with him. Sometimes, bigger was better.
One other oddity: way back when Hunter entered the craft in the Earth Race, he was required to give it a name, something that could be entered on the race roster and the betting slips. He'd simply written in plain text on his cockpit paneclass="underline" Flying Machine. For whatever reason, when the craft came back from the twenty-sixth dimension this time, his notation had been altered. Now it just simply read: F-Machine.