But was anybody really looking for him? Had word of his desertion reached all the way back to Earth yet? He didn't know. It took six weeks to traverse the Galaxy, and that's about how long he'd been gone. Maybe not quite yet, but he had to assume that somebody would be sent out to track him down eventually. Until then, he knew it was crucial to lowball his true identity, stay off the more beaten interstellar pathways, and concentrate on finding a way to the Home Planets, that place from where the Freedom Brigade was thought to have come. The place Hunter believed in every fiber of his being was calling him home.
He landed the flying machine on the remote highlands of Sigma-TKE and did a quick ground-level environmental check. The planet's puff was still adequate, though the surface of the place was entirely desert, meaning the air would be dry. Pater Tomm replicated some food and drink and lit a huge fire. Flames were good for the soul, the priest said, and Hunter could not disagree with him. For the first time in a long time, he set aside his crash helmet and loosened his flight suit. He felt the strain finally begin to lift from his shoulders.
They ate and drank and watched the wash of stars come out above their heads. This star system might have been isolated, but it was beautiful nevertheless. As they turned away from its pale sun, the night sky became filled with tiny bright white lights. These were moonlets, zillions of them, orbiting the desert planet, comprising a ring more readily found circling a gas giant. It made for a very elegant spectacle while they took their evening meal.
Once done, Pater Tomm pulled out the old star charts given to them by the rebels' intelligence officer. The priest refilled his wine cup and began to spread the parchments out on the flat, open ground. Leaning forward on dusty knees, electronic magnifying glass in one hand, his quadtrol in the other, he began poring over the maps almost as if they were ancient religious texts, which in some ways they were.
Some of the charts were intricately inscribed and provided high detail for those star systems once considered important. Others simply presented thousands of connected dots punched into an otherwise featureless map. Either way, they made little sense to Hunter. Even during his brief tenure as a military officer of the Fourth Empire, he could never understand the freaking things, and this collection was no different. While bearing a reputation for being isolated and sparse, this part of the mid-Fifth Arm actually looked damned crowded to him. Trying to wend one's way through the millions of star clusters and systems just on luck and pluck alone would take a few thousand years, even in a vessel as speedy as his own. Yet he couldn't imagine the ancient maps making that task any simpler, just the opposite, in fact.
Tomm, on the other hand, knew how to read the old star charts. He was what the ancients called a navigator. Hunter was not. So he sat back and tended the wine bottle, leaving the heavy thinking to the priest.
He knew it would be better that way.
They had just drained their fourth mug of wine when Pater Tomm suddenly came to life.
"Very interesting… " Hunter heard him whisper.
"You've found something, Padre?"
"Alas, it is not our goal," Tomm said without looking up. "But I am familiar with some of the more notorious star systems nearby. Here is one known as Zorro-Beta. Tonk's star system used to be called Zorro-Wilco… You see? They seem related, which means they may be close."
He flipped over to the next star chart, the twelfth of nearly one hundred parchments. At the same time, he held his cup out, hinting that Hunter should refill it. The pilot complied. Pater Tomm slurped his star juice noisily.
"This might take a while," he said. "You should get some sleep, don't you think?"
Hunter could only shrug in reply. He wasn't into sleeping, now or ever. Sleep was time wasted, or at least that's what he'd come to believe in the past few weeks. This was not some video game he was playing here. He was on a quest to find a system of planets that might not exist, at the same time possibly being pursued by the Empire, maybe with a price on his head. It didn't seem right to waste a single second out here falling asleep. He had to get to the Home Planets; he had to find out if they were real. He felt this deeply, almost painfully, way, way down in his psyche. Why? Because the soldiers he'd found on Zazu-Zazu were more like him than anyone he'd met since coming to this strange time and place. He had to find those people again, to find their home. To see if there were any more like him.
How could he possibly sleep with all that going on?
He glanced back at Tomm, studying the maps feverishly now. Hunter had his excuse, but what was driving Pater Tomm on this quest? The priest had hooked up with the Freedom Brigade shortly after their arrival on Zazu-Zazu, providing them with spiritual comfort as they faced what would ultimately become their final battle. He had even gone so far as to journey to several Fringe systems seeking weapons for his adopted unit, frustrating sojourns as it turned out. But Tomm was there when the climactic battle began, and he'd seen the last of the Freedom Brigade disappear in the smoke of that battle. Later, he'd helped Hunter search among the dead, looking for one last soul who could point them in the right direction to the Home Planets.
They'd found that poor vessel, lying close to death on the battlefield. And he'd given them a few tantalizing clues before drawing his final breath. His last words were spent practically begging the priest to lead Hunter back to the Brigade's home system. Though he had little idea even where to start, Pater Tomm had agreed, and their journey had begun soon afterward. But was it simply the strength of that promise — the honor of his given word — that pushed him forward? Or was it the vocation that every soul in the Galaxy needed ministering, even those who dwelled in places that might not even exist?
Or was Tomm simply weary of traipsing from planet to planet, system to system, cluster to cluster, trying to single-handedly save the spirits of those many billions who inhabited the girdle of the Five-Arm?
Even after these six weeks. Hunter still didn't know. But the most likely answer, he finally decided, was probably a bit of all three.
He drained his wine and spread out a sheet of pressed gold. It was the material of choice for sleeping under the stars, and eventually he did decide to lie down upon it, if just to stretch his tired bones. The light display above him grew even more fantastic. He quickly realized that all of the moonlets were in separate but very close orbits; they were of varying sizes and shapes, as well. This meant that while some were moving across the sky at a relatively slow pace, others seemed to be streaking by. It looked like pandemonium, like the moonlets were but a heartbeat away from colliding with each other and ending the display with one massive pulverization. But then Hunter came to realize that this wasn't chaos, it was a dance. A dance be-tween gravity and mass, choreographed long ago, millions of years perhaps. He took a deep breath and felt the dry air of the little desert world warm up his oxygen-saturated lungs. It was sad in a way. The moonlets' ballet was an amazing example of cosmic beauty, way out here, on a small forgotten planet, in a long-lost star system, with no one else to see it except him and Pater Tomm…
He closed his eyes, just for a moment, and by habit tried to conjure up an image of Earth. It seemed like hundreds of years had passed since he'd been there. In fact, sometimes it seemed like he'd never been there at all. But the vision that came to him now was one of a shimmering diamond, reflecting the jewel-like quality of the mother planet. Revolving around that warm, yellow sun, the oceans, the ancient bridges, the floating cities. Everywhere buildings soaring, the star catchers lighting up the night. No wonder it all seemed like a dream. There was no place like it anywhere else. Nothing even came close.