And that was strange. Because he knew this place was actually ground zero for nothing less than the fall of the First Galactic Empire.
Joxx was finally able to lift his head as the wound-healer spray took effect.
He pushed the tousled hair from his eyes and saw they were looking west, across a blanket bog to where the edge of Kelly's Hollow began. He knew this meant that about 150 feet to his right was the larger, deeper bog where he and Hunter had thrown in the two bodies during the scenario before the last.
To his mind, this was a queer place to return to, especially with the utter devastation all around them. Only the trees surrounding Kelly's Hollow seemed to be left standing for as far as he could see. Why had it been spared? And the deep bog before them? It, too, seemed remarkably preserved.
Hunter, of course, was reading his mind; it was easy, as the same questions had come to him when he first took this part of the patched-together mind trip.
The answer to why they were here came down the road just a few seconds later. It was an armored column containing twenty-two tracked vehicles. Five were extremely large and were carrying huge, triple-barreled guns inside turrets in the back. Two more were lugging what appeared to be a very primitive type of sonic gun. The fifteen other trucks were carrying soldiers and other people who were wearing uniforms but carried no weapons. Hunter had determined that these men were engineers.
The small convoy looked like it had just driven through hell, which, in a way, it had. Hunter knew, and Joxx could tell quickly, that these troops weren't just engaged in local combat with an unseen enemy. They were being attacked from outer space. Their vehicles and the men themselves were battered almost beyond belief; they were also surrounded by a very faint yet detectable yellow glow.
"Cobalt decay," Joxx whispered woozily. He knew this from his immersion in ancient warfare; it was something that Hunter came to figure out after the first dozen trips.
Cobalt decay was the residue of an incoming bolt of energy fired from a cobalt-ray blaster. This very powerful weapon appeared sometime before the mid-twenty-eighth century. If you were close enough to get the cloud of yellow dust on you and were still among the breathing, this meant that you'd somehow escaped death by the narrowest margins.
"So this is an interplanetary war?" Joxx said, pulling the weeds from his mouth. "I mean, someone must be shooting at them from way, way off. Cobalt batteries were almost exclusively used for very long-range bombardment. Close in, they might even blow a small planet apart."
The last truck in the convoy was carrying not an enormous weapon of some kind. Instead, it was pulling a trailer on which a very large, very heavy object was tied down and covered by a frayed atom-weave tarpaulin.
The convoy stopped right at the edge of the high bog, and the soldiers and engineers quickly jumped out. They hurriedly directed the truck pulling the weighty object up to the bog itself. This done, all of the soldiers and engineers stared into the bog for a moment, almost as if they were deep in prayer. This was still curious every time Hunter watched it. The little ceremony quickly over, the soldiers put their helmets back on and frantically went back to work. They uncovered the object on the back of the trailer truck, all while the gunners remaining on the huge escort tanks were turning in their turrets, waiting for the next bolt from the blue to come crashing down on them. If they saw a cobalt fusillade coming in and acted quickly enough, they might be able to deflect it with zaser beams, a sonic blast, or even some aerial scatter bombs. It was the seeing it first part that was difficult.
The heavy object was finally uncovered. Now Hunter and Joxx could see that it was a huge chunk of pure star crystal, gleaming like a billion diamonds fused together. It was a magnificent object, twenty feet high, five feet wide, and cut in an elegant if irregular shape. It was so brilliant, its shimmering managed to light up the very gloomy surroundings.
The soldiers didn't seem that impressed with it though; it was obvious that they wanted to get their work done and then get the hell out of the area, so they didn't wind up as small piles of blue cobalt dust. Using huge two-man anti-grav devices, the engineers were able to coax the enormous jewel off the trailer and to the muddy ground below. But now came the hard part. The antigrav movers refused to budge the huge piece of gleaming crystal once it was set on the ground, reason unknown. So each man in the column who was able quickly moved in, and together they picked up the huge stone. This took much effort, but the group was able to move the stone about ten or so feet and place it upright next to the edge of the bog.
Then they started digging.
This began a very long section in Hunter's previous trips; he was able to cut out most of it, performing a kind of fast forward. Still, they watched the group of soldiers for quite a while as they hand dug a hole right on the edge of the bog to a depth of about ten feet. Then they pushed and pulled and somehow manipulated the huge gemstone to fall upright into this depression. They filled the hole back in, stamped down the edges, had another short prayer ceremony, and then jumped in their trucks. Indeed, they left the area with great haste.
Hunter and Joxx watched the convoy rumble back down the road, finally twisting around a bend and up and over the nearby hill. Hunter counted to five. That's when they saw an enormous cobalt bolt crack the sky and fall in the general direction the convoy was heading. Another two sec-onds passed, then came the thunderous sound of the convoy's guns firing back.
The firing went on like this for two minutes, before it finally died down, too.
Hunter knew they now had several minutes of isolation. He yanked Joxx up from the grass and without a word, they began splashing their way across the shallow bog, intent on getting to the deeper one.
On their arrival, Hunter let Joxx take in the surroundings. It was best that he get the next jolt of unreality on his own. The SG officer looked in all directions, drinking it in. Then his eyes fell on that part of the deep bog closest to the gemstone the soldiers had just erected.
That's when he first realized there was a hole in the water.
Literally…
It was probably two feet across. It went straight down into the dirty water, like an invisible shaft, creating a 360-degree waterfall with the rest of the bog water lapping over its sides.
Joxx gasped. "I've never seen such a thing. How could anyone manipulate Nature like that?"
Hunter shrugged. "Every era loses a few of its secrets before the next one takes its place. But more important, do you know what spot this place marks?"
Joxx was already nodding his head. "It is the exact place where we threw in one of those bodies. The first one. Michael. The older brother of Emperor Jimmy."
Joxx then dared to lean out over the edge of the bog and stare down into the hole in the water.
"Oh God," he gasped again. A great and horrible truth had suddenly come to him. "He's not down there anymore, is he?"
Hunter did nothing to indicate that Joxx was wrong.
"But we ourselves threw his body in here — more than a thousand years ago!"
Hunter said: "Take a look at that monument."
Joxx got back to his feet and scrambled over to the huge, recently planted gemstone. There was a plaque carved into it. Its words were both simple and clear.
It read: "On this spot, Emperor Michael was raised from the dead and thus the Second Empire began."
Joxx could hardly speak: "Raised from the dead? For real?"
"At least in the mind of the person who wrote this part of the ring trip," Hunter replied soberly.
"But, do you mean… a resurrection?" Again, Joxx could barely say the words.