And his robot was nowhere to be seen.
Interesting, VonRexx thought.
Day turned to night and back to day again, a matter of just a few hours on Rocks 32.
With the dawn, two men arrived at the castle's front gate. They were wearing long, black cloaks with their hoods pulled up. The ground-level security team ran them through the rigid scanning procedure, but they passed quickly. They had done business with VonRexx before, and they'd just been in touch with the weapons king before they arrived. That was enough for them to proceed directly to the forty-fourth floor.
Here they were scanned again. They were also checked for that most important thing of alclass="underline" cash. The pair did not disappoint. They were carrying thirty solid aluminum pieces, a huge amount of money in this part of the Milky Way. The security troops let them in and sent word to VonRexx that they were in the house.
The two men still had to fight their way across the very expansive room; it was like hiking through a forest of dazzling women and very drunk men. Finally, the cloaked pair reached VonRexx's location. No one saw them hand VonRexx their money pouch. Thirty pieces of true aluminum, VonRexx took it without a blink.
The men then made their way across the crowded room to the far corner where Zarex was still holding court. They saw the fascinated faces of the hardcore weapons men, many now with dabs of oil on their foreheads. Just a few minutes of eavesdropping confirmed what the two men had expected to hear. Zarex was not buying or selling weapons; he was asking for volunteers to help him fight some great battle that was about to take place on the Two Arm.
The two men had heard that the explorer had been visiting many planets in the region in the past few days; in fact, there had been several reports of him showing up on two different planets simultaneously.
And he was doing then what he was doing now: addressing some of the most noxious arms dealers, the sleaziest and the chronically dishonest, and trying to convert them — that was the only term applicable — to join him on this mysterious crusade to the Two Arm.
What was truly amazing was that many of the weapons dealers were agreeing to go. As a group, most gunrunners were patently dishonest and habitually greedy, the hazards of the trade. While they had easy access to fully stocked weapons ships and men to run them, they never did anything that would be considered idealistic. And they never did anything for free.
Yet this seemed to be exactly what Zarex was getting them to do. At least two dozen ships stocked with weapons and technicians had been reported leaving the Five Arm for the Two over the past few days. And several more were in orbit around Rocks 32, apparently ready to embark for the same location. One of these was even a ship from Slingerlands 7.
But all this was really of little concern to the two men. Why a group of slimy arms dealers had so suddenly found religion did not interest them.
They were here for a different reason.
One of the two men finally approached Zarex and shook his hand.
"I understand there is a big fight brewing somewhere?" the man asked Zarex.
Zarex looked him directly in the eye. "Yes, and I am here to recruit souls turned good to help in the cause. Are you interested?"
"Maybe," the man told Zarex. "We've both felt the need for redemption lately."
"For what crimes, my brother?" Zarex asked him, bending slightly to hear the man.
The man just shrugged. 'Take your pick," he said.
Still locked onto his eyes, Zarex thought a moment, then breathed four words: "My guess is betrayal…"
At that moment, a small ship suddenly appeared over the castle. It could be seen clearly through the glass roof of the penthouse. Zarex looked up at it for a moment. When he looked back down, the two men were holding blaster guns on him.
Zarex laughed out loud. "What is this?" he asked. "A holdup?"
The men did not reply. They just simply pulled their capes off to reveal combat uniforms beneath.
They were not arms dealers. They were Bad Moon Knights. Hands down the worst, most ruthless mere army on the Five Arm. They'd been after Zarex for nearly a century.
The partygoers scattered at first sight of them. A few women screamed. Somewhere, a blaster gun went off. Wine goblets crashed to the floor. The ship above the castle drew closer. A pulse beam appeared from its bottom, smashing through the glass roof and engulfing Zarex in an ice-blue ray. He was instantly frozen in place.
"Getting very sloppy in your old age," one of the two men: old him.
"Or maybe this is the way it's supposed to be," Zarex managed to gasp.
Suddenly, a second red beam came down from the bottom of the hovering spaceship. It hit Zarex with the force of a sonic blast. He crumpled helplessly to the floor, unable to move, barely able to breathe.
Slowly, painfully, he faded away.
The next few hours went by in a dull, red haze for Zarex.
He was bundled aboard the small ship that had appeared above the castle and brought up to orbit, where he was transferred to a larger ion-powered vessel. Still encased in the crimson force field, he was placed in the control room of this second spaceship and put on display for the crew. A sign grafted onto the field read simply: Zarex Red— Criminal Condemned to Die. Many of the crew spat at him or tried to punch him through the force field. Some succeeded, some didn't. He was completely frozen and couldn't retaliate though, not that he would have anyway.
That his captors were hard-core Bad Moon Knights was without dispute now. He'd had many close calls with the bloodthirsty meres over the years and escaped a number of assassination attempts by them.
If anything, he knew them too well. Their black uniforms and perpetual scowls were hard to mistake.
And he was sure this particular crew was in for a huge reward, now that it appeared they had him for good.
But then all this changed, for somewhere along the way, the BMK ship was attacked by the Solar Guards. Not ordinary SG, either. These raiders were outfitted in bright red uniforms and armed with bizarre weaponry. Zarex watched from the relative safety of his force field as the SG troopers — enormous every one of them — flooded aboard the BMK ship and ruthlessly mowed down the black-suited meres. It wasn't a battle as much as a slaughter, strange because the SG and the BMK
had shared many shady alliances in the past. Zarex actually felt sorry for the helpless BMK soldiers as the SG's strange weapons carved them into two or three pieces before each slice slowly dissolved away.
Their screams were so loud, Zarex could hear them clearly, even through the force field.
The Solar Guards were here for him, of course, and no sooner had the firing died down when they moved Zarex to yet another ship. He knew by its interior that this was an SG Starcrasher; odd, too, as everywhere he looked, he saw the color red. Walls, floors, ceilings, men, weapons, wires, bubblers, tubes — all red. Back in Paradise, the SF3 man, Bonz, had described his executioners as strange SG troops dressed in crimson battle suits. That description matched these characters exactly.
They were acting strangely too. Zarex was again placed right up in the control room of the ship, but this time his captors all but ignored him. The SG crewmen running the ship seemed particularly robotic, with little interaction and zero conversation. It was almost as if they were under a spell or maybe a very strong hypnotic suggestion. How they'd known that the BMK had captured him, this after VonRexx had tipped off the BMK, Zarex had no idea. His proselytizing for help in the battle to come had carried him to many of his old haunts on the Five Arm, and he knew going to VonRexx's fire party was like walking into the belly of the beast. But that's exactly what he was supposed to be doing in these days since his return, transformed, from Paradise.