The resident of this house was not a retired military officer, at least not yet. He was once the most famous Starcrasher commanders in the entire Space Forces, indeed; he'd been in line to become supreme commander of the entire SF someday. His combat record was superb. Whether it was hunting down space pirates, chasing outlaw space meres, or invading troublesome planets, in close to one hundred years of imperial service, he'd never lost a battle.
His name was Zapp Multx, and he was slowly dying — of boredom.
Multx was an impressive, charismatic character, with a big, muscular body, bald head, and a long, thin goatee. His home was filled with innumerable aluminum and gold-leaf medals, jeweled swords, battle helmets, and specialized dress uniforms — the typical clutter of a space hero. His ship, the BonoVox, was nearly as famous as he. In his heyday, Multx and his exceptional crew were frequently called on to get other SF battle groups out of trouble. On many occasions, Multx was able to move his ship over vast distances in impossibly short periods of time, always arriving, right on cue, to save the day.
The BonoVox was flying somewhere around the inner galaxy these days. Multx didn't even know where it was exactly. The Ball was so peaceful, he was sure his executive officers were simply out joyriding, killing time while the crew grew fat and lazy. The ship hadn't visited Sleepy Time 9 in more than a year. In fact, six months had passed since he'd heard anything from the Bono at all. It was as if his heart had been ripped out and taken away from him. He missed being on her that much.
So why was someone of his stature out here, wasting away?
It had all started two years before. Multx and his men had just completed a successful attack on an enemy planet called Vines 7 and were rushing back to Earth to accept the Emperor's blessings. Flying along in Supertime, a pirate ship suddenly materialized parallel to Multx's great vessel and started firing on it. Before anyone on the BonoVox could react, the pirate ship began dispensing troops. They were carrying heavy weapons and cutting tools, intent on slicing their way through the hull of the proud SF warship.
Such a thing had never happened before. First of all, the pirate vessel — it was a so-called Blaekship, flown by the notorious Blackship pirates — should not have been in Supertime. Only Empire ships had such capability. Second, no pirate commander would be so foolish as to attack an Empire Starcrasher; the huge warships usually outgunned their pirate adversaries by a factor of one hundred-to-one or more.
Yet that's exactly what occurred.
It was only that an incredibly courageous passenger being carried to Earth by Multx had the gumption to steal an armed shuttle, fly it outside the BonoVox, attack the Blackship, and wound it mortally that the attack stopped and the pirate vessel disappeared.
The name of that passenger: Hawk Hunter.
That Hunter went on to win the Earth Race and notoriety across the entire Galaxy was old news by now. Not so well-known was the SF Command's decision that someone had to take the blame for the bizarre incident. To this day no one could explain how the Blackship got into Supertime or how it had come so close to actually capturing the BonoVox. But the entire affair was an embarrassment to the SF, and a fall guy was needed. Multx fit the bill. The SF Command sent his ship on an open-ended patrol of the Ball, a place where no shot had been fired in anger in four centuries, in effect forcing him into preretirement. Giving him this grand house on Sleepy Time 9 only added insult to injury. It was a magnificent structure, but its surroundings were peaceful to the point of nausea, at least to Multx. This was a place where old SF officers went to die — and he knew it.
All this was hell for a person like him. He was soldier, from a long line of soldiers. And he was loyal.
He believed so strongly in the Empire that, as a younger man, he'd had O'Nay's face tattooed on his forearm. Being away from the battle, being denied the opportunity to defend the realm really was like death for him.
A very slow death.
Multx sat now in his grand room, the one that overlooked the waterfall and offered a view of all three levels of the lake. It was still early morning, but he was already into his second bottle of slow-ship wine.
Though he'd hardly been a teetotaler before his banishment to the Ball, he was a heavy drinker now. His cellars were filled with rare vintages of the popular star juice. But a year of chronic imbibing had done nothing to raise his spirits; actually, the opposite was true. In the past twelve months, he'd become a most melancholy man.
His work had always been his mistress. He was without a wife and already bored with the few eligible women of the dull little planet. He couldn't even dream properly anymore. During the previous night he'd imagined a bright light hovering above the skylight over his bedroom canopy. This light grew so bright, he'd been unable to open his eyes for several minutes. What he was able to see looked like a string of slowly developing explosions, brilliant in red, but also in white and blue. When it all finally went away, Multx was left to lie in his sweaty bed, fully awake, to wonder what had happened. A flashback from some long-ago victory of his? Another catastrophe in the making in outer space? Or maybe a host of goblins had arrived to finally take him away. In any case, he never did get back to sleep. When the planet's prime sun rose, he was up with it, drinking his breakfast of wine. By the time the second sun rose, he was close to finishing his second bottle.
He'd heard about the battles between the SG and SF, of course. Everyone in the Galaxy had by now.
They did not surprise him much. Multx had had his own run-ins with the Solar Guards, and he knew their leadership to be both deceitful and deceptive. Like many in the SF, he believed the Empire would have been better off without the junior service. But all this just made his forced retirement even worse. Had the incident with the Blackship never happened, he would have been right in the thick of this internecine conflict. And at that moment he would have given just about anything, done just about anything, to be back in the fight again. Instead, he was here, looking out on an artificial lake with an artificial waterfall, early morning suns glistening off both, trying to pull the cork out of his third bottle of slow-ship wine.
It was strange then that just as the bottle's stopper finally came loose, he looked up to see two men standing right in front of him.
Instinct alone made Multx's hand go to his belt, as if there were a ray gun there. But then he stopped.
He recognized these men.
In fact, they were two very old friends of his. Their names were Erx and Berx.
Multx was astonished to see them — and not just because they were both wanted men or that two years had passed since they'd last laid eyes on each other. It was also the manner by which they'd appeared. So quickly, so silently. They hadn't beamed in from another location. There was always a telltale flash and sizzling sound to presage such subatomic events. And it wasn't a transdimensional transfer; he would have noticed that, too. It seemed strange, but to Multx it was almost as if they'd been there all along, and he was now just seeing them.
"By the stars!" he finally managed to gasp. "Is it really you two?"
Neither man replied; both bowed deeply instead.
Multx studied them more closely now. They both looked so… odd. They had a strange glow around them. And they appeared to be much younger, much leaner, much more muscular than the last time he'd seen them.