Or die trying.
And even that prospect wasn't so bad.
The first problem, though, was stopping the flow of ships coming from the schism. How does one go about binding a tear in the fabric of space/time? Did anyone know? The Creator included?
As this uncertain notion was going through his head, Hunter's comm set exploded in a great burst of static. Suddenly he was hearing not just one voice, but many. Real voices. Some were talking rapidly, some were screaming. Some were even laughing. Then through this storm of voices, he clearly heard someone shout, " Dear God— look at that!"
Instinct turned Hunter away from the schism to a point in space that was almost devoid of stars.
That's when he saw it. It was a huge starship. It was traveling very fast and heading right for the opening.
It was a Starcrasher — there was no doubt about mat. What's more, Hunter's scans told him that the ship's prop core was overheating manually and was about to blow. In other words, the ship was going to explode on purpose. What was happening here? Was the person driving the Starcrasher going to blow it up at the entrance to Hell? Was this an attempt to seal the schism with a prop-core implosion? What madman would do such a thing?
Hunter got his answer a moment later. His scans told the tale: The Starcrasher was an M-class, the biggest ever made. But unlike all other Starcrashers, this one was pure white, and was all smooth edges, and was more swept back than any other. By these things alone Hunter recognized it. There was only one like it in existence.
It was the ShadoVox.
And Joxx was at the controls.
How the fallen SG prince knew what was going on out here, Hunter would probably never know. He started to yell into his comm set; maybe there was a better way to do this. But it was too late.
The grand ship went right by him, its outer skin already turned deep blue, the sure sign that the prop core was going to blow. Joxx turned the ship just slightly, twisting through the stream of ships escaping the schism. A few tried to stop him by firing at him. A few even attempted to ram him. But Joxx got by them all.
He hit the schism at full Supertime speed but with a prop core that was 1/1000 of a second away from destabilization. The outcome was nothing less than apocalyptic. The ship blew up, or rather it disappeared into an enormous explosion an instant later. And an instant after that, the explosion turned in on itself. And with another blinding flash, the schism sealed up, and everything around it was gone. Just like that.
Then came a dreadful silence.
It was as if everything just stopped. The stars. The planets. His comm set. Life itself. A collective state of shock, silently exploded and moved like a nova, rushing by everybody and everything. Joxx was gone, and so was the entrance to Hell. At least temporarily.
Somehow Hunter thought to check his timepiece.
Nine minutes to go.
Then, just as suddenly, everything started moving again. The light returned. Ships were moving again.
Space was moving again.
The shock of what had just happened wore off, too. It was clear that by his action, Joxx has stemmed the tide, but there were so many devil ships now, even the combined force of Hunter, the Home Planets ships, the arms dealers' gunships, and the Sky Chiefs couldn't possibly engage them all. There were just too many of them. And now there was just eight minutes to go.
But then, instead of lining up to do battle with the friendly forces, the great swarm of huge ships suddenly accelerated and began zooming off in all directions.
Hunter felt like someone had punched him in the stomach. This couldn't be happening. Those ships had to be filled with the inhabitants of the underworld, a great swarm that was now roaring off in every possible direction. Off to infect the entire Galaxy!
He just couldn't let that happen.
Hunter didn't even think about it. He began shouting orders into his comm set, and the crews of the friendly ships started reacting immediately. The combined fleet dispersed in seconds and took off, chasing the huge ships that had just escaped from Hell.
Hunter took off after the largest group of huge blunderbuss ships. There was three dozen of them, and they'd turned as one away from Zero Point and appeared to be heading down the Two Arm — and maybe toward Earth itself.
As he booted up to full power, his wide-screen scan began spitting out information on these strange vessels. They were capable of carrying more than 20,000 passengers; but at the moment the scan could not confirm that anyone human was aboard. In fact he could not detect any life signs on board at all. Do devils have a pulse? Hunter thought as he sped after them. Did he really want to know?
The scans were also telling him that despite what was inside, the weapons carried on the backs of these giants were very real. They were a huge version of an X-beam blaster gun, a combat weapon still used by some Fringe armies. A single bolt from one of these giants could destroy a good-size asteroid or even a small moon. A dozen direct hits could vaporize an entire planet.
But most disturbing of all, the scanner told him that these ships were powered by prop cores. This made no sense. As far as anyone knew, prop-core propulsion didn't come along until the beginning of the Fourth Empire. These ships were designed thousands of years before that. Was there a spaceship factory in Hell?
It was weird because as soon as Hunter received this startling information, the thirty-six ships suddenly accelerated up to almost Supertime speed. It was almost as if his thoughts had caused them to move even faster.
Hunter pushed his acceleration bar ahead, too. The chase was on.
It took only a few seconds for him to catch up with the three dozen ships. Their tight formation broke up immediately, and two fired their huge blasters at him as he streaked by. A twin storm of green bolts came right at him. They were gigantic and momentarily filled his entire field of vision. Hunter pushed his nose down and banked right, thus avoiding both titanic blasts. Still, they rocked his ship violently as they went by. Meanwhile, the huge fleet regrouped and just kept plowing forward.
Hunter pulled ahead, looped over, and came back at them head-on. He had to find a weak spot in these giants, and he had to do it quickly. He pushed his weapons power switch forward and ordered a blast at full power. Six streaks of Z beams exploded from his nose. He directed them at the ship in the vanguard of the fleet, aiming the barrage at its huge control bubble up front. The ship fired a gigantic blast at him; it went by him in a huge flash. At the same moment, his Z beams tore into the ship's bridge.
Secondary explosions appeared an instant later, and then a massive blast went all the way down to its stern. The ship blew apart a moment later. Hunter had guessed right. The ship's power magazine was located right behind the bridge and just below the gun. He pushed his ship into ultraoverdrive. Now he knew how to destroy these behemoths.
Suddenly he was flying so fast, he was leaving a trail of red, white, and blue particles in his wake. He was spinning, twisting, looping, diving, climbing, and firing all at once. His hands and feet were moving like lightning. Right hand on the throttle, left hand on the joystick, he was lining up targets two or three ships ahead of the ones he was attacking. The storm of gigantic green destructo-beams were going past him in one long blur. He was avoiding all of them, but some residue bolts were exploding dangerously close to him. No matter. One well-placed blast, and he'd be washing up on the beach back in Heaven again. Or so he hoped.
He plunged on, defying every hurdle, avoiding every X-beam blast headed his way. With every ship blown up, he felt two sensations inside: simultaneous exhilaration with another victory accompanied by a slight pang of guilt that he might be killing up to 20,000 souls a pop. But were they souls xeally? Were they really human beings — just ones that had somehow come back from Hell? He'd seen what happened to his friends when they crossed over from Heaven. They'd become what, through the ages, people had called angels. Didn't it make sense then that any people occupying these ships would then be devils?