The ShadoVox's official historian would later descril their departure as being "a proper send-off."
11
The vessel Saint Double-X Valdez was known as a bum runner.
It was considered a starship, but just barely. It hauled cargo that few other craft on the Two Arm would carry. Used weapons, escaped criminals, the illegal drug known as jam, just about anything that wasn't ion waste. Its crew was just one step up from being escaped criminals themselves. The captain never distributed their pay without a loaded ray gun at his side. During sleep periods, he sealed his cabin with no less than six atomic locks. The other crew members did as well.
The SDXV was about a quarter mile long, wedge-shape, and rusting heavily at the seams. It carried no weapons. In centuries past, it had relied on its small size and quick speed to get out of any tight spots. But it had slowed down considerably over the last hundred years — and this was not good, because the SDXV was in a very tight spot now.
Its crew had found themselves on the tail end of the massive bug-out from the upper half of the mid-Two Arm, A bad propulsion spike had grounded them on a hellhole of a planet called Thumbs for nearly two weeks. It seemed more like two years. The bum runner's crew of six could only watch as the mad dash of starships and refugees passed overhead. Long streaks of lights, tearing across the sky, night and day, clogging up the well-worn star lanes. From the ground up, the exodus looked nonstop.
The reason for the rout, of course, was the rumor that mad invaders were charging headfirst down the Two Arm.
They were supermen. They were cannibals. They were unstoppable and burning through anything that stood in their way. The SDXV was running empty, there was nothing aboard her that anyone would want. Still, from what the crew had heard about the marauders, they knew they would be shown no mercy. These invading monsters were both powerful and devious.
They could sneak up on a starship and blast it to dust in a fraction of a second. They could invade and plunder a planet in less than a solar day. They had left so much destruction in their wake, if one looked hard enough into the ragged star clouds that made up the upper Two Arm, it seemed like that part of the sky was on fire.
'They're coming on fast," the bum runner's crew had heard the refugees say. "If you want proof, just look up in the sky."
The runner crew had finally replicated a workable prop-spike, and the vessel got spaceborne again.
The problem was, they'd wasted so much time on Thumbs, the invaders were now right on their tails. They'd hit Thumbs just two days after the SDXV left — along with another hundred or so starships in the area, at least according to all the local jabber on the overcrowded ultrasonic radio waves. The captain of the SDXV had run the ship full throttle since leaving Thumbs, yet by his calculations, the spearhead of the invasion force was so close behind, they would overtake them in less than a day's time.
Then, about fifteen hours out of Thumbs, the invaders' advance column showed up one thousand miles off the bum runner's port bow. And it was true, what everyone said. The invaders never appeared on the runner's rear scanners. The mystery fleet had somehow come from an entirely different direction and were just suddenly… there.
The bum runner's crew said a quick good-bye prayer together, and then each man found his own little space and just hung on, waiting to be blasted to subatomic powder at any moment.
But that didn't happen. Instead, the invaders went right by them, just like they were standing still. Flying in very close formation, their numbers impossible to count, they were going as fast as prop-core ion-ballast vessels could go. The invaders' ships left such a storm of turbulence in their wake, the SDXV was tossed around for several long, heart-stopping moments. It was all the crew could do to keep the ship in one piece.
The invaders were out of sight in an instant, roaring down the star lane toward a place the runner's crew knew led into Thirty Star Pass.
The runner's crew still had a big problem. They were behind the invaders now, and there was no guarantee they'd be spared a second time if they met up with them again. Yet they didn't have enough fuel to take any other course than straight down the pike, through Thirty Star Pass. The bum runner would have to proceed very cautiously.
About two hours later, the SDXV was shaken by a fierce ultrasonic radio storm. It skewed every piece of electronics aboard the vessel to within a hair's breath of inoperation. The interference was all around them, hitting them in endless waves. Space was suddenly thick with ion rays, string ruptures, and subatomic thunder.
All indications were that a massive space battle was taking place close by, most likely somewhere up ahead.
Another two hours passed.
Finally the SDXV reached the upper approaches to Thirty Star Pass. Most of the ship's electronics had blinked back on by now. But the ship's comm room and its scanner screens were deathly quiet.
The ship entered the pass, and that's where they discovered the reason for the silence. A space battle had been fought here — a huge one. The debris stretched for hundreds of miles in all directions. The runner crew counted dozens of burning starships, some still green from the afterglow of a direct Z-gun blast. The runner pilots had to use all of their accumulated know-how to carve a path through the debris field. It had come on them so quickly, they were in it before they'd had any chance to avoid it.
The crew stared out their arched portholes, astonished at the destruction floating all around them. Whatever happened here had happened very quickly. And no doubt, the invaders' fleet had been one of the combatants. Yet the SDXV's quadtrols could not detect one atom of debris that belonged to the ships that had streamed by them two hours before.
There was only one conclusion then: This had not only been a huge battle; it had been a very one-sided affair as well.
The crew of the bum runner was no pack of angels. It was the nature of their business that they'd all done some dirty dealings in the past.
The majority of them were actually reformed space pirates — well, partially reformed anyway. Much of what they saw among the debris field posed fat targets for plunder. Any prop spikes found still intact aboard the devastated ships would be worth a small fortune alone; there might be other valuable items floating among the flotsam as well.
But the crew would not engage in any looting this time. By a unanimous vote they decided there would be no picking over the disintegrated bones of the weirdly dead. The scene was just too strange.
This time, the vibes told them to just keep on going.
12
The cell door swung open, letting a dim shaft of light invade the tiny jail.
The prisoner was stretched out on his bunk, studying something very intently on the dingy ceiling.
He lowered his eyes to see Joxx standing over him. He was dressed in his most regal white uniform, complete with white cape, ornate battle helmet, and the double lightning bolt symbol of the Solar Guards across his chest. Yet his face was slightly ashen. Two guards were standing right behind him.
"Do you have the right cell, sire?" the prisoner asked. "This place is so dank, perhaps you might try another."
Joxx smiled wanly and took off his hat. With a wave of his hand, the two guards disappeared. He pulled a broken-down hover chair close to the prisoner's bunk and sat down. One snap of his fingers, and a flask of slow-ship wine materialized in his left hand. Another snap, two small goblets were in his right.