"It's a Saracen," one of the men farther down the trench called out in a whisper. "That means one mounted gun and eight blokes inside."
"I just hope those battery wires hold, Paddy…. It's a damp one this morning—"
"I told yers to shut up! Now, button it!"
Hunter let out a long yawn, then shivered in the sudden fog. The first armored car had topped the hill and was now on its way down the other side. It was following a narrow road that came down off the hill, passed through a thick grove of holly trees, rounded a bend near a violently rushing stream, and eventually ran right by the ditch itself. Hunter tightened the strands of duct tape around his weapon and blew into the firing chamber, trying to keep it dry.
That's when the man on his right suddenly came to life.
"What madness is this!" the voice screamed into his ear. "What have you done to me?"
Hunter just rolled his eyes at the outburst. This might be harder than he thought.
He turned and looked at the person beside him, this eleventh man. His clothes were muddy, just like his. His Mickey hat was floppy and water-stained, just like his. His gun was even wrapped in duct tape, just like his.
But this man was nothing like him.
Just the opposite, in fact.
It was Joxx.
And at the moment, he looked terrified.
"Where am I, you disdainful fool!" he cried out even though Hunter had raised his fist and was ready to strike him. "I'll have you burned six ways by Z guns for this—"
Hunter let go with his punch, catching Joxx right on the jaw. The Solar Guards' high prince fell back into the trench, splattering himself with even more mud. He looked up at Hunter, absolutely astonished.
And he did shut up… for about two seconds.
"What sorcery have you played here?" he began screaming again. "What cruel, sick game?"
"I told you two to pipe down!" came the sharp rebuke from farther down the ditch. "The blokes can hear you all the way back to the border."
Hunter pulled Joxx up by his collar and slapped him once across the face.
"You heard the man," he growled at him. "Shut up!"
Joxx's eyes became wild as a weird kind of reality began to sink in. The last thing he remembered, he was sitting in the control room of the ShadoVox, engines not yet running, a ray gun pressed up cold against his head. Then, suddenly, he was lying here, in the muddy ditch, dressed in dirty, wet clothes, holding a very crude weapon, and being slapped around by this man who looked strangely familiar.
Hunter pulled him up close to his face and looked him right in the eyes.
"Do you know who I am?" he asked in an angry whisper.
Joxx's eyes went twice as wide as before.
"The Earth Race," he was able to say. "You're the last winner. The maccus… Hunter…"
"That's right," Hunter told him. "I'm also the guy who just stole your ship and made you look like a fool back on Megiddo. Now, if you don't do what I tell you, I'll cut your head off and send your ship into the nearest sun."
Joxx was still reeling from the two blows to his head. Where was he? How did he get here?
"Have you implanted something in my brain?" he cried out at Hunter. "Something to create such a hallucination?"
Once again, Hunter slapped him across the face. "Listen to me, pretty boy," he said through gritted teeth, "these other guys are not exactly our friends. They will kill us as soon as look at us. Now just keep your mouth shut and let me explain something to you."
Not five hundred feet away, the first armored car had reached the bottom of the hill. It was now entering the wide curve that eventually led right past the ditch. Hunter didn't have much time.
"You are in a mind ring trip," he told Joxx quickly. "What the hell do you think that is wrapped around your head? If you try to take it off, I can guarantee you, your skull will explode. That's the way I programmed it."
Joxx's shaky fingers went to his forehead, feeling the ring hidden beneath his perfectly mussed hair.
"A mind ring trip!" he gasped. "By what perversion have you brought me into something like this!"
"Because you have to see what I've seen," Hunter told him harshly. "My friends and I have started our campaign against the Fourth Empire because it is guilty of crimes against humanity on the grandest scale. We bested you at Megiddo and at Thirty Star Pass. And because you have such an inflated opinion of yourself, I could have kicked your ass all the way back to the Pluto Cloud. But that would not have served our purposes. So I've taken you into here, so you can see for yourself just what your relatives back on Earth have done, what they've allowed to happen. What they've allowed to continue—"
Joxx almost laughed. "You're mad!" he said. "You can't possibly get away with this. And who the hell do you think you are, assuming you can educate me on such things?"
Hunter looked up, the first Saracen armored car was now just three hundred feet away. He began talking even faster.
"Ever hear of the Home Planets?"
Joxx numbly shook his head no.
Hunter gave him a very abbreviated history of the isolated prison star system. He told him how the people living there were the original inhabitants of Earth and how he'd seen for himself the degradation they'd suffered getting thrown off their home planet — all via the mind trips he took on Xronis Trey.
"When I went into my second trip, I was able to break into a vault containing thousands of mind rings taken from the people being deported from Earth. These rings included historical scenarios, private memories, correspondences; many went back hundreds of years. It took a hell of a long time, but I was finally able to reduce the most vital information onto just one ring — and then I copied it. That's the one you have around your head. We will experience the same things in here, together, at exactly the same moment. So get used to it; this is going to take a while."
The armored car was now just two hundred feet away. The men farther down the ditch were readying their weapons, their faces both grim and grimy.
"Now, only my own good conscience forces me to tell you this," Hunter went on quickly. "What I've pieced together here isn't exact history. Instead, it's what happened, in bits and pieces, as told through the memories of many, many people. Not everything you will see in here will make sense. Not everything you see in here is even true, not at first, anyway. Just as a story whispered by one person comes out distorted and unrecognizable once it's passed through a hundred lips, so, too, is the situation in here.
"But in the end, it does tell a story. The story of how the first two Empires came and went. And how the sins of those who have finally passed on are still being committed by those in power today. So take everything you see with a grain of salt, but the conclusion will make some kind of sense. That much I can guarantee."
Joxx tried to spit in his face but missed.
"You're a cartoon!" he hissed at Hunter. "And a disgrace to any honor you somehow managed to win. The Empire is the greatest thing since God lit off the Big Bang. To not realize that is the height of stupidity. Look at you — you were once a galactic hero, on the same level as me, for heaven's sake. You were in for tons of money and fame. Now, you're a joke! A bandit! And a fake!"
Hunter just smiled back at him. The armored car was slowly rolling closer.
"Fake enough to knock off a few sleazeball planets and get you shaking in your boots," he said acidly. "That's all it took, smart guy. No huge fleet. No millions of men under arms. Just word of mouth to cause that stampede and a dope like you who bought into it so easily, the guy who was working for us on the inside had a hard time keeping a straight face anytime he talked to you. So I ask you now, who's the genius?"