"Yes," she replied. "You can leave me alone."
She started to cross the barrier to the stage where the Big Generator sat.
The officer reached out and held his hand in front of her.
"I'm sorry, my lady," he said, very nervous, "but you are not allowed in there."
She turned on him. "Not allowed?" she hissed. "Do you know who I am?'
The officer began stammering. "Of… of course, I do. But, still, my lady. This is a restricted area."
At that moment, the officer felt something pushing against his chest. He looked down to see that it was a blaster pistol. The Empress had it pointing directly at his heart.
"Do you know the difference between Heaven and Hell?" she asked him crossly.
He numbly shook his head no.
"People like us don't go to Heaven automatically," she told him. "We've got to work to get there."
25
Hunter threw the last bit of dirt on Sheez's grave, then wiped the dust from his hands.
Tremendous chaos was still going on around him. The sky was filled with enormous warships. The battle at the evacuation site had grown more fierce. Large quakes were running through the planet itself.
There was smoke and fire and wind and soot. But still, Hunter felt this man deserved a decent burial. It didn't take much to determine that he'd led the huge group of refugees to the rescue site and that he gave his life so that they might keep theirs. He had done the simplest thing in human existence then. He had done the right thing.
Hunter patted the last of the dirt down with his hand and paused a moment.
Another hero, he thought.
One of many to be made this day.
It would have taken volumes to explain how Hunter had arrived at this spot, at this exact time, wearing the armor of a Third Empire soldier. It all started with a great secret — and some simple mathematics. The Galaxy held billions of stars, those stars held hundreds of billions of planets, and those planets held trillions of people. The people who ruled it all, the Fourth Empire, were very secretive — and for good reason. Among those staggering numbers, they knew of things so volatile, so potentially disruptive on a galactic scale, that they were forbidden to even write them down, this under penalty of death, no matter how high the offender was in the imperial hierarchy. These things were called the Cardinal Secrets, and there were at least five of them, though many believed there were at least several more.
One Cardinal Secret was the name of the person who invented the Echo 999.9. Another was the origin of the Big Generator. Another was the secret behind the life-extending properties of Holy Blood.
Still another, the reason why Star-crasher prop cores worked as they did.
The fifth Cardinal Secret was that there were actually two empires in the Milky Way. One was the vast Fourth Empire, which ruled from Earth to the Ball, out to the end of each of the nine major arms, except one: the tip of the Seven Arm. This area was known collectively as Far Out, with its capital, Far Planet.
It was here that the Third Empire, thought long lost and clearly forgotten by many, still existed.
It was small as empires go.
Just the equivalent of four star systems, clustered together, containing just twenty-seven planets, fifty moons, two minor asteroid belts, and several dozen free-floating battle stations and docking ports. And how the Third Empire came to exist— and survive — was a long story worth telling, but not today. Suffice to say, at one time, nearly two thousand years before, it, too, had occupied just about the entire Milky Way, and it, too, had embarked on a mission to reclaim all die planets and people lost after the catastrophic fall of the Second Empire and the long period of Dark Ages that followed. That the Third Empire still existed was the result of a titanic struggle against an enemy of whom only a handful of people knew the identity, and they certainly weren't talking. The result of that struggle, though, that aftermath, it being the topic of many a lost war poem and heroic saga, was an agreement and a compromise: that the Third Empire, actually the last ember of the once pan-galactic realm, would be allowed to remain, but only at one of the farthest points away from Earth, and only in the deepest, darkest secrecy. And that never, ever would there be contact between the two. Thus the great obstacles, both physical and in the mind, encountered by anyone trying to get from one place to the other.
Hunter had been given a tour of the Third Empire, a trip that lasted just an hour or so. But in that short time, he discovered many remarkable things about the place.
The people who lived there were very similar to the people he'd found on the Home Planets. That is to say, they were like the Last Americans, and the people from the other thirty-five planets in that concentration camp in the sky. They were people who were more like him than the strangely different, looking, and acting people who made up the Fourth Empire, a place where it seemed that everyone's name either began or ended with an X.
This, of course, all had to do with the Ancient Astronaut, for the Third Empire was his doing, and it was his story that would fill another book. But the people around Far Planet worshiped him, not in a religious sense — though it bordered on that — but mostly because he was a hero, a great hero. A man who saved billions and when faced with a cruel choice, chose to stop fighting, and thus saved many billions more.
The burial complete, Hunter looked up at the gold warship over his head. The Legionnaires called these vessels Sky Chiefs and it was an appropriately cool name. Hunter was suddenly talking to the ship's two pilots — no comm set needed here — just another trick of the Third Empire that he'd been made privy to.
They could leave, he told them. He was finished down here. The field of dead REF troopers had all turned to ash by now, there'd be no burial for them. And the people Sheez had saved had made it into the evacuation circle and would soon be lifted off this hellhole. So, that was one mission was accomplished. The problem was, they had about a million more to go.
The Sky Chief departed, flashing over to the evacuation site to help the ongoing rescue effort. Hunter pulled an oblong box from his pocket. It was gold, of course; both the color and the precious metal were revered by the Third Empire. There was a tiny spindle on top of the box; Hunter gave it a twist. There came a huge puff of smoke — not a flash of light — and it lingered longer than it should have in the wind.
But eventually it began forming into a familiar shape. It was a machine, long and slender, with a sharp snout, two wings, and a glass bubble on top. It was a contraption that was a stranger in both empires.
But not to Hunter. It was his F-Machine, rebuilt, repaired, and revitalized, all in the blink of an eye, shortly before he and the Star Legion left Far Planet to fight this faraway war.
His heart jumped on seeing it again. He was always glad when his buggy reappeared from transdimensional storage. This time it did not come not from the twenty-sixth dimension; the oblong box was not a Twenty 'n Six. It came from a much more orderly place, rediscovered by the Third Empire a long long time ago: the sixty-sixth dimension. And the machine looked fine, there being only one difference. No surprise, his aircraft was now the color of gold.
He felt a bit of wind on his face, and from this, he knew it was time to get going. He moved his left hand in a circular motion, and an access ladder appeared at the side of his jet. Another hand movement, and the canopy opened. He ran over to the ladder and was up and into the cockpit in a shot.
He pushed the flight control button, and the aircraft's power plant came to life. Another great feeling.