Then he put his eyes level again and knew what was happening. The great battle everyone was expecting was indeed going to take place. Not at Zero Point but here in the skies above Doomsday 212.
And he was going to be right in the middle of it.
The first wave of devils went zooming by him a moment later. An instant after that, Hunter was surrounded by men in white uniforms. These were UPF soldiers; there was no doubt about that. But just as Tomm and Calandrx and the others had been transformed by their crossover, so, too, had these men.
They were flying without the aid of propulsion units, and they were armed with little more than huge swords.
The two sides met head-on, and the battle was joined all around him. It was as if he wasn't really there. The fighting was instantly fierce, hand-to-hand, and brutal. He got to see some of the REF soldiers up close, and as angelic as the UPF soldiers had become, the REF soldiers had become just as ugly and disgusting. Several flew very close to him, their faces hideously distorted, their eyes red and filled with rage and hate. Their hands seemed deformed, too, as if it was impossible now for them to hold any kind of weapon save a huge sword.
All of these beings were moving incredibly fast — seeing him but avoiding him at the same time.
Meanwhile, he was twisting and turning in the chute, the cords were becoming tangled in the great whirlwind he'd found himself in. Great flashes of light were going off all around him, burning his already singed eyeballs. The flashes seemed both real and un-real, and it was only as he was passing out of the thick of the battle did he realize that each flash was created when one of the combatants was dispatched.
A sword to the heart caused a silent, bright flare — and then there was nothing. No remains. No dust.
Nothing.
There would be no bodies left after this battle.
Hunter finally hit the ground — hard. His arrival scattered a group of refugees who'd been watching the battle above, too astounded to move. They took one look at him, though, and their mass paralysis was cured. All of them ran as fast as they could to get away from him.
He'd come down on top of a plateau of sorts, and it was windy up here. His chute dragged him for hundreds of feet, banging him up against many of the rocks strewn about the forbidding terrain. He finally released the straps, and the chute blew away. He fell backward, absolutely stunned, and watched in awe as the strange combat went on above him unabated. The white-suited soldiers continued to battle fiercely with the devils. He thought he could even see faces of people he recognized. Some of the combat was happening no more than 100 feet above him, or so it seemed.
He straggled to get to his feet. But then came another bright flash. It was so strong that it picked him up like a doll and blew him backward. He went flying over the edge of the plateau and fell for what seemed like a mile or two to the hard plain below. He hit with a great thud. Had he not been wearing his helmet, he would have surely cracked his skull open. As it was, he had a huge welt right in the middle of his forehead.
He rolled over and was flat out on his back again.
Dizzy.
Dazed.
Maybe even seeing things.
The ethereal fighting went on. Hunter saw it all — or at least he thought he did. At one point it seemed to be taking place just a few dozen feet above him. At other times, the combatants were battling each other in outer space. But for some reason, he could see that close up, too.
Then, for a little while, it seemed that he, too, was an angel and that he was in the middle of the great battle. That his friends Tomm, Calandrx, Erx, Berx, Klaaz, and Gordon were right beside him, and together they were battling furiously. Hunter and the others were fighting with huge swords, Tomm with his famous blackjack. And as they were slaying the REF soldiers, who really did look like devils now, Tomm and the others were telling him all kinds of things — infusing his brain with centuries' worth of knowledge. They finally told him how Zarex had died at the hands of the REF, and how by doing so, he'd really saved them all, but this Hunter did not understand, at least not yet. They told him how many people that day had simply done the right thing, and how that would help in the eventual victory. They even told him names of some of these people: SF officers, the anonymous arms dealers, even the guy Hunter had buried near the first evacuation site. Many heroes were made this day.
Then somehow they returned him to the ground and said their good-byes — final ones this time. And he watched the last of the great battle, the sky filled with flashes, as the devils were finally vanquished with the angels, triumphant, disappearing right along with them. And he knew, in that moment, that he would never see his friends again. That Tomm, and Calandrx, and Gordon, and Klaaz, and his two oldest friends,
Erx and Berx, were really gone this time. That their spirits had moved on forever.
And then there was one last great flash, and the sky above him was empty again. He lay there for a very long time, unable to move. Not because of his injuries, which were many but small. But simply because he was exhausted. He hadn't slept in weeks — or was it years? He didn't know. So he closed his eyes and started to drift. And of all the things that floated through his mind, it was the visions of men with wings that lingered the longest. From that, the strangest but strongest memory of his previous life came back to him.
Men… with wings.
He used to be something like them. Not exactly, but close.
He used to be… The Wingman.
And remembering that, he smiled, for the first time in a long time.
Then he finally went to sleep.
It wasn't until much later the next day that Hunter woke up.
But where was he? He'd fallen asleep on hard, rocky ground, but now he was lying on a grassy plain.
Beside him was a stream, running quick with cold, fresh water. It was the sound of this water that eventually caused him to stir. He opened battered eyes to see not just miles of grass everywhere, but mountains and trees and lakes. For one very long moment he was convinced that he had died and gone to Heaven— again.
But then he looked up and knew, sadly, that this was not the case. High above, he could see the huge planetary rings, which he recognized, and that's when he knew he was still on Doomsday 212.
Yet the planet had changed radically in just a short time. How?
He looked off in the distance and saw six enormous Sky Chiefs moving slowly just above the landscape, beams of golden light shining down from their nose cones.
Then one word came to mind: Puffing.
The Sky Chiefs were puffing the planet.
No surprise, the Third Empire held the secrets of the Ancient Engineers, too.
He got to his feet and tried to remember what had happened. The original UPF ships finally did cross over, of that much he was certain. Their appearance had been delayed, though, almost as if on purpose — but that had been a good thing. If they had crossed over at the expected time, the REF would have blasted them to nothingness. By appearing when they did, they'd saved many lives and had won the day.
How then did they know to delay the arrival?
Just as the thought came to him, an image was standing in front of him. Huge. Smiling. But transparent. There, but not really there.
It was Zarex.
And at that moment, Hunter recalled what Tomm and the others had told him about Zarex's death.
Then, at least one part of what happened became clearer.
"You let them kill you…" Hunter said to him now, "so you could go back to Paradise and warn the fleet."