And the vessel in front of them?
It was the flagship of Brother Michael's Fleet.
It was hubris that ultimately led to Michael's demise.
For millions of miles around this, the First Battle of the Pluto Cloud, space was filled with thousands of starships locked in mortal combat. Had Michael chosen to ride on a typical rebel craft, he would have stayed completely anonymous. The chances of the disguised 36 Q-ship finding his vessel would have been, well, one in thousands.
But the ostentatious flaming color scheme, the tacky gold leafing, the bright lights around its cockpit dome made the deposed Emperor stick out like a supergiant star suddenly going nova.
He'd drawn attention to himself at the worst possible moment.
And that was the beginning of the end for Brother Michael.
There were five other streams of space soldiers being ejected by the Q-ship. Like the string Hunter and Joxx were following, they were all making fast for the hole in the side of Michael's flagship. It had been hit, Hunter had learned, by five pinpoint cobalt bolts fired by a gunship hidden deep in Saturn's rings, a place where Michael's forces had never thought to look for it amidst the confusion of the battle. The Q-ship was but a light-year away when the five blasts struck home. It was on the scene before anyone aboard Michael's flagship even knew what hit them. The flamboyant rebel ship was, for the moment at least, crippled and lying dead in space.
Hunter had his big blaster rifle up and ready. It was an act of pure instinct that always kicked in at this point. His jet pack reignited automatically, and he was suddenly thrust across the last few miles of open space that still separated the two ships.
Joxx was right on his tail, screaming a hole in his lungs, zooming in and out of control as the rest of them closed in on the gaping wound in Michael's ship. They reached it so quickly that, before Hunter could even think about it, he and Joxx were streaming through the perforation and were suddenly flying inside the giant vessel itself.
They found themselves inside the ship's huge main cargo bay. There was a swarm of Michael's troops in here, but half were frozen in place, so startled by the sudden appearance of enemy soldiers they couldn't even raise their weapons. The other half already had their hands up in surrender. It didn't matter. The Coalition soldiers were moving too fast and their mission so great, they didn't have time to slow down and sort out who was who. Their blasters went off and everyone got torched, hands up or not.
The Coalition soldiers never stopped moving. They flew up and out of the cargo bay and went zooming down the gigantic causeway that led to the nose of the huge ship. Every few seconds, a clutch of the vessel's defenders would appear and display a token of resistance, but they were blasted to nothingness by the vanguard of the heavily armed Coalition raiding party.
They reached the head of the ship and blasted right through the doors, which led into the control section, the brains of the gaudy monster. There was a small army of defenders in here as well, and the next minute was filled with a sharp, electric battle that saw many killed on both sides. But the Coalition troops never slowed in their advance. That was the key; just don't stop. Just keep going. And they did. Just as Hunter and Joxx were flying into the vast control room, the last of the ship's guards had been incinerated. Just like that, the ship was in their hands.
But where was the real prize? Here, on board certainly. Hunter knew the Coalition special ops troops knew this. But where?
The swarm of 36 Coalition soldiers resumed its flight. They broke up into squads of six and began a quick, systematic search of every command compartment. Hunter relished what came next. In earlier attempts, the mind ring sometimes cut out at this point. He'd fixed that glitch, and so, once again, his heart began beating loudly. He and four other Coalition soldiers zoomed into what had once passed as this ship's chapel, Joxx trailing closely behind. They each took a side and wall of the dark compartment, but Hunter knew this was not necessary. They would not find their quarry up here in the crannies of the church.
They zoomed through the auxiliary hatch into the compartment next door. It was the officers' latrine, a filthy place. The four real soldiers went in first. Hunter screeched to a stop and pushed Joxx through the hatch in front of him. He wanted the SG officer to see the next few seconds of the trip as up close as possible. He also wanted to stay far in the background. It was always better that way.
So, it was the four real soldiers who finally cornered the prize. Cowering in the deepest corner of the shitta, his protectors and bodyguards either killed or deserted, was where they found Brother Michael himself.
The soldiers hovered over him for several long moments. He begged them for mercy, a strange request from an immortal man. Hunter eyed Joxx; what he was doing at this moment would give a good indication as to how his education was going. It wasn't hard to tell. The SG officer looked like he could have sent a blaster shot through Michael's head himself. The adrenaline was pumping so forcefully through Joxx's body, the sides of his battle suit were bulging. Out of breath, sweating behind his mask, he was so deep into the moment, it would have been hard to convince him that he was, after all, still just inside a mind ring trip.
Finally, the Coalition soldiers yanked Michael to his feet. Bizarrely, he still had one silver cross sticking out of his chest It was a telling sign. No blood, just swelling around the pure white wound. Later on, the poets would claim the cross had gone right through Michael's heart, and here he died.
But this was not the truth. Michael's enemies would not make the same mistake twice.
This time, it would be different.
"You sir," one soldier said to him, "are now the prisoner of the 36 Coalition."
Flash! The battle was over. The remaining ships of the 36 Co-alition were lined up in formations that stretched for thousands of miles across the orbital plane of Pluto.
Far off, there were faint explosions dotting the background of space. These were ships of Michael's forces being destroyed.
There was no ceremony aboard the Q-ship. The top officers of the 36 were lined up in the cargo hold; Brother Michael was stripped before them. A machine was brought in that had the ability to encase things in burned glass, the exact same device that had trapped Emperor Jimmy. But turning Michael into a twenty-second piece of pyrotechnics was not the plan here. His fate would be worse.
They began the encasement process. Michael was clearly terrified.
"What did he promise you?" he screamed as the glass was wrapping around his feet.
"Only what is ours," one officer told him. "The thirty-six original regions of Mother Earth, our homes before you came on the scene. We just wanted our planet back. He's given it to us."
The encasement process was sped up, and Michael was quickly surrounded by the crystal prison. The plan now was to simply open the loading door and give him a push, via an ion-depleted high explosive. He would be sent on a trajectory leading into a particularly empty part of space, through which his glass coffin would travel for eons, with him trapped inside, alive, for eternity.
But even as he was being shot out of the spaceship, it was clear that Michael was laughing — and shouting something, but no one on hand could make out just what.
No one except Hunter. He and Joxx were standing nearby.