Mack Maloney
Planet America
Part One
While Shooting the Five-Arm
1
The secret base was located just beneath the surface of the tiny jungle moon.
It had two hidden openings: one to the east, another to the west. Both were cut out of sheer rock. The top of the base was covered by thick vegetation and hidden by a perpetual blanket of fog. Two towers poked up through this mist, guarding the entrances at either end of the base. A series of ancient ruins stood nearby, too; they masked ventilation tubes for the hidden chamber below. Other than that, the secret base was invisible.
The underground facility was large enough to accommodate an entire squadron of spacefighters. Trouble was, these eighteen combat spacecraft were no match for the calamity that was about to befall the secret base. The few hundred people inside were the last holdouts of an antümperial faction that had once proliferated in this part of space. They had fled here after a series of battles with the hated imperial forces. But somehow the secret location of this last safe haven had been compromised. Now their enemies were about to finish them off in a most gruesome manner.
A huge mechanical battle star — the enemy's most powerful weapon — was drawing close to the tiny jungle moon. This enormous space station carried an immense death ray capable of destroying an entire planet in a matter of seconds. It could vaporize a tiny moon such as this in the blink of an eye.
The enemy death star had shown up out of nowhere. It was presently on the other side of the planet around which the tiny moon revolved. It was moving very swiftly, though, and once the mother planet got out of the way, the enemy's gigantic death ray would have a clear shot at the moon.
The rebels faced an impossible task then: trying to stop the battle star before it destroyed the tiny moon. The problem was, the rebels' rather puny spacefighters were built only for combating other spacefighters. Attempting to disable or even destroy the huge ball of metal coming their way was light-years removed from their capabilities.
Still, all eighteen of the rebel spacecraft were getting ready to launch and give it a try. The pilots all knew this would probably be their final mission. At least half the rebel spacefighters would have to be dispatched against the fifty or so opposing fighters this big, black, death station thing was known to be carrying; stopping them would be another impossible task. There was no doubt that the rebel pilots would fight the good fight, for they were known far and wide for their bravery. But the reality of the situation was clear: Against the powerful battle star and its own combat spacecraft, die rebels' valiant effort would probably end in a very brief, very one-sided contest.
There was no little chaos within the secret base now. Pilots getting strapped into their spacecraft. Mechanics doing last-second checks on the small, swift fighters. Squads of security troops rushing to their positions; robots of all shapes and sizes scurrying about as well. Above it all, a high-pitched warning Klaxon was bleating full blast.
The rebel spacefighters were lined up along a launching ramp that cut right through the middle of the subterranean chamber. Standing next to this ramp was a handful of people. One was a young woman. She was very pretty, dressed all in white, with odd, tightly woven pigtails rolled like pinwheels against the sides of her head. She was the leader of the rebels. She was known to all simply as the Princess.
Close by were two young men. One had blond hair, a flashy uniform, and a strangely blunt swordlike device stuck in his belt. He was about to climb into the last of the waiting spacefighters; indeed, he would be the last pilot to strap in. Despite appearances, he was a bit overwhelmed by the drama of the moment. He looked a bit like the Princess. Possibly he was her brother.
Next to him was an older, rakish man, more weathered than the kid. He was loading supplies onto another spacecraft, one different in shape and size from the rebel spacefighters. Though the Princess was obviously fretting about the looming catastrophe, this man was trying to sneak peeks at her shapely rear end every chance he could get. Several steps behind him was the strangest individual of all. Very tall. Weird face. Big teeth. Hair from the top of the head to the soles of the feet.
The combined whine of spacecraft propulsion units filled the chamber now. All of the spacefighters were carrying substantial weapons loads, the very last of the rebels' ammunition stores. The warning Klaxon began blaring even louder. The lights inside the hidden chamber suddenly became dim.
Then an amplified voice announced in ominous tones, "The battle star will be in attack position in two minutes… "
These words sent a wave of grim electricity through the hidden base. Pilots revved their propulsion units. The first of the spacefighters began moving toward the chamber's opening. On the Princess's signal, the lead craft shot forward and roared out of the chamber, climbing through the fog into the skies beyond. It was followed close behind by the rest of the squadron, all except for the spacefighter being piloted by the kid who looked a bit like the Princess.
No sooner had the seventeen spacecraft departed when the walls of the chamber reverberated once again with the gloomy, amplified voice. "The battle star will be in attack position in one minute, fifty seconds… "
The Princess looked around the nearly empty facility. She choked back a tear. She considered this tiny moon very dear to her. Soon, it would be blown to bits.
"One minute… forty-five seconds…"
She turned toward the kid's spacefighter; he was ready to take off and just waiting to have one last word with her.
"One minute… forty seconds…"
Their eyes locked — tears on both sides now. It appeared as if both were going to speak at the same time, when a very strange sound interrupted them. They turned to see a spacecraft swooping down out of the sky and heading right for the eastern approach to the hidden chamber.
What was this? Was one of their spacefighters returning to base? Why? Even extreme mechanical trouble was not an ade-quate excuse for avoiding combat under these dire circumstances.
But this craft was not a returning spacefighter. That was apparent almost immediately. It looked unlike any spacecraft those left inside the chamber had ever seen. It was not built in the standard triangular fashion that prevailed in all flying things throughout the Galaxy. This aircraft was slender, tubular. It had wings. Stranger still, it had wheels.
And it was traveling so fast that not two seconds after first spotting it, it was suddenly right in front of them, screeching to a halt about twenty feet from where the Princess and her party stood. A faint green mist was spilling from the tail end of its fuselage. Its rubber wheels sizzled on the chamber's damp concrete floor.
This strange craft had appeared so quickly, the chamber's security troops had had no time to react. Now, as the Princess watched, the bubble-shaped canopy on top of the winged machine popped open. Two men could be seen inside. One of them climbed out from the back of the cockpit and jumped down to the oil-stained floor below. Only then did the security troops go into action. They quickly surrounded the hissing spacecraft and seized the man who had jumped from it.
But the Princess raised her hand, freezing the soldiers in place. The man was wearing a long, brown cassock and a tight white collar around his neck. He looked up at the Princess, then bowed deeply. He was short, of middle age, probably close to 200 years old. His face was that of a weary man of faith caught in a very faithless part of the Galaxy.
Obviously, he was a priest.
"My apologies, your highness," he said now. "My friend and I are lost and we are seeking directions…"