He was brought to the CIA "blue room" as they had taken to calling the huge conference room with all the blue lights. Two of Gordon's aides gave him a plate of hot food, which he wolfed down without even knowing what it was. When they inquired if he wanted coffee or a smoke, he asked for a bottle of Seagram's. After a hushed conversation, they brought him a glass of it instead.
He then asked for permission to speak to his two colleagues alone. More discussion. Gordon was contacted in the first aid room, where he was getting his head wound attended to. He told his aides to grant Hunter's wish. It made no difference. The blue room was thick with eavesdropping devices, anyway.
Tomm and Zarex were brought in, and a pot of coffee and a pack of Marlboros appeared soon after. Then the aides left them alone in the cavernous conference room. They sat huddled at the far end of the oval table, Tomm with his coffee, Zarex with his smokes, Hunter with his drink.
"Brothers, I felt we three should talk first," Hunter told them. "With what I have to report from my mission, I'm not sure our hosts can absorb it all at once."
"Bingo that," both men replied.
Hunter sipped his drink.
"But before we get into it," he went on, "I have something else I must reveal to you."
Tomm and Zarex looked back at him strangely. His voice was dead serious.
"I've been keeping something from you, brothers," Hunter began. "A deep secret that is crumbling just as fast as all the other secrets around us. I feel it is time for me to come clean."
He took a deep breath.
"Brothers, the Fourth Empire exists," he told them bluntly. "I know because I was once an officer in its exploratory corps."
Tomm and Zarex just stared back at him. Essentially, Hunter was telling them that one of the greatest myths of the Five-Arm — indeed of the entire Fringe itself — was in fact true. That a huge empire controlled most of the Milky Way and was expanding its realm by gobbling up more planets with each passing day. Tomm and Zarex had speculated about this before, of course, and about Hunter's mysterious nature as well. But never had they expected him to just come out and tell them.
"Are you sure about this, my son?" Tomm asked him. "And that you just didn't hit your head on reentry?"
Hunter smiled. "Sometimes, Padre, 1 wish that was the case."
He explained that he'd been reluctant to tell them of his origins before, because knowledge of the vast Fourth Empire had to be absorbed gradually, just as the people on this planet had to absorb that fact that die three of them had come from someplace else. But now that they knew, there was no sense holding anything back. So Hunter told them about the Fourth Empire itself. About Time Shifters and Kaon Bombardment ships, and how he wasn't exactly sure why his flying machine moved the way it did. He described the omnipotent power of the Big Generator and the fleets of Empire Starcrashers that traveled in the mysterious dimension called Supertime, and were many times faster than ion-ballast starships. He told them about his amnesiac origins, his home on Fools 6, his time as an Empire officer, his less-than-coincidental arrival on Zazu-Zazu.
When it was over, Hunter felt like a huge burden had been lifted from his shoulders.
His two colleagues were quiet for a long time. Then Zarex reached across the table and shook his hand, nearly crushing Hunter's fingers in the process.
"Thank you, brother, for telling me," the muscle man said. "It makes my life so much more interesting to know that the entire galactic swirl is ringing with life."
Tomm leaned over as well, but instead of shaking Hunter's hand, he slapped his cheek none too lightly but in a priestly sort of way.
"I knew it all along, of course," he told Hunter dryly. "But thank you for confirming my suspicions."
Hunter took another drink of his Seagram's. He had about a half glass left and was already aching for more.
"So tell us, brother," Zarex urged him. "We can't take the suspense. What did you see up there?"
Hunter just shook his head. "What I found up there is the reason that I revealed to you what I know about the Fourth Empire. The empire is controlled from a planet called Earth. I've been there. It's out on the One-Arm, and a more magical and intriguing place does not exist. But I found evidence, up there, that the original peoples of Earth were taken off their planet and brought here. To the Home Planets. It's the missing clue to all the artifacts the CIA has found. It also means whoever was controlling Earth four thousand years ago created this place out here, and they are still maintaining it.
Tomm and Zarex were visibly shocked.
"Are you saying," Tomm asked him, "that this place, this mighty Earth, center of a huge empire, actually belongs to^"
"The people here," Hunter finished the sentence for him. "Here, and on the other planets I found up there."
Hunter quickly told them about his mission: Finding the Home Planets, weirdly uniform in their orbital proclivities. The heavily engineered local moon. The string of empty sentinels. Then his discovery of Moon 39 and what he'd found while on the ground, especially his viewing of the space launch event detector and the experience inside the mind ring — all except Ashley. And the mysterious blue screen.
"The holo-spy spoke too well," he concluded. "This system is a prison. What she didn't know was, it was built to imprison the people who rightfully own the Earth. And there is an entire space corps sitting out there, guarding it."
"But who are these guards?" Tomm asked. "What is their business in this?"
"That's another thing," Hunter replied. "Equally disturbing. It leads to a strange question."
"Spill, please," Zarex said.
"Brothers, earlier in our journey, you had spoken of the Bad Moon Knights," Hunter said. "How long have they been operating on the Fringe, do you think?"
Both Tomm and Zarex shrugged.
"My dealings with them go back a hundred eighty years," Zarex said. "I'm guessing they've been around at least twice as long. Do you agree, Padre?"
"Three times as long probably," Tomm said. He turned back to Hunter. "Why do you ask, brother?"
Hunter pulled the space knife from his boot pocket and showed it to his friends.
"The Bad Moon Knights?" Tomm said, examining the blade's holo-inscription. "But where did you come upon this?"
Hunter pointed his finger skyward. "Up there," he said. "On Moon 39. The prison garrison is made up of Bad Moon Knights — about a million of them."
Zarex's face almost drained of color. "You mean they followed me all the way out here?"
Hunter shook his head. "Fear not, brother. I think they're up to bigger things this time."
Hunter told them how the BMK equipment on Moon 39, while highly polished and undeniably lethal, was also very, very old. At least by six or seven hundred years. As were the soldiers' uniforms, their base layout. Everything about them screamed mid-6500s.
"That's very odd," Zarex said, settling back down. "As one who has dealt with people trying to resist these savages, I can tell you the BMK is usually very well equipped. Even their prot6g6s have the latest weapons."
"They were known at their beginnings to take on the worst jobs of the Galaxy," Tomm said. "Hence their reputation for sheer brutality. They were also not very expensive in their younger days. They were in it for the cheap thrills, and they weren't too fussy about what mere contract to take. Now they're the biggest outlaw army on the Five-Arm — and probably other places as well."
"Interesting," Zarex said, through a cloud of smoke. "Someone must have hired them to do this job and then stuck them way out here. But who? The villain in your mind ring trip— this Second Empire — are we to assume that it was a predecessor to the one in power now?"
"In some shape or form," Hunter replied. "But my brothers, the Second Empire fell on Earth thousands of years ago. And we know the BMK has not been around for that long."