But it had to be better than where he was.
That this was not a food and water stop was beginning to sink in to the crowd by now. Some of the women started wailing. Many of the elderly were already having trouble breaming. Sheez's own substantial stomach was aching badly. Worst of all, he was getting thirsty. And the sun would be up in a few hours. And that's when it would begin to get hot.
Very hot…
The unfortunates would have to face that heat without any kind of overhead protection. Again, a weak puff meant all kinds of cosmic rays were able to get to the ground. Some acted quickly, others very slowly. In any case, they were all deadly, and combined with the oppressive temperature, Sheez guessed a third of this group might be dead by noon. Maybe him included.
He checked the soldiers on the peaks again. A bolt from a blaster gun could be fatal at 300 yards.
Trouble was, there was nothing but open space for at least 400 yards or more before the cover of the small, ancient city. There was no way he could get away under these conditions. He was so big and slow, if he tried to make a break for it, he'd be shot down like a target in a shooting gallery.
He pulled his shirt over his head for cover and sank his head into his knees. Sheez was hardly a religious man. He had never prayed before in his life.
But he was praying now.
The question was, could anybody up there hear him?
The all-black Space Forces Starcrasher was named the XenoVox.
Officially it was an LRC, a long-range communications ship of the type that frequently accompanied SF fleets on long patrols. Unofficially, though, the Xeno belonged to a top secret SF unit called the Omega Force. And it was hardly just a radio ship.
The Omega Force was the SF's own version of a rapid deployment fleet. It was made up of the best soldiers and warships from the SF's five sectors, they being the Space Navy, the Air Service, Planet Forces Infantry, Space Marines, and the Orbital Bombardment Group. Unlike the Solar Guards Rapid Engagement Fleet, which consisted of thirty-six Star-crashers crammed with corps of Star Rangers, the Omega Force had 100 ships and three times as many soldiers, and those soldiers were good at doing many things. The unit was so secret, few people inside the Empire hierarchy knew it existed, including many inside the SF itself. On the other hand, everybody knew about the REF. There was another difference between the two outfits: once on the scene, Omega still took all its orders from SF headquarters. The REF always acted on its own.
The XenoVox was the forward eyes of Omega. It carried a crew of just fifty people and flew without weapons. Its role was to go into a trouble zone first and do vital recon, which was then flashed back to the fleet. But how could a ship that was nearly two miles long be able to fly near a flashpoint without being detected? Simple. The Xeno could become invisible. By engaging vast energy deflector screens, string comm dispersers, and a highly reflective opaque paint scheme, the vessel could not be seen on long-range scanning arrays, either coming from other space vessels nearby or from planets below.
In other words, it was a stealth ship.
The Omega Force had been deployed to this section of space near the edge of the Two Arm forty-eight hours before. The deployment had been done by the order of just one man, the Secretary of SF Intelligence himself. Without a doubt it was to be Omega's most classified mission.
Only Omega's half-dozen squadron commanders had been briefed on the very secret operation, and even they only knew what was going on up to a point. Essentially, the squadron commanders had been told two things: that no one knew how and when the fighting between the SF and SG would end, and that no one knew what the rampaging REF would do next. However, despite these two things, there was a good possibility that the fleet that invaded the Two Arm about five weeks earlier — the one that started all this trouble in the first place— still existed. That it hadn't been destroyed by the REF as the SG had originally claimed.
Omega's orders were to look for this rebel fleet, as it was thought it would soon turn up somewhere inside the Two Arm, near the place where it first disappeared. And what would happen if the mystery fleet was spotted? That's where the Secretary's order took an unusual twist: if the Omega Force did detect the rebel ships, they were to intercept and destroy them immediately, without waiting for any further instructions from SF Command. In fact, while the entire secret mission was going on, Omega was ordered not to have any contact at all with Earth or anyone else. They were to operate under a complete communications blackout. That's how sensitive this operation had to be.
To this end, the stealth ship XenoVox had been operating deep inside the No-Fly Zone for the past forty-eight hours. And it had seen at least a couple strange things so far.
Because the ship was, in effect, the ears and eyes of the Omega Force, most of its ultralong string devices scanned space at 360 degrees. Just two hours after arriving on station, the Xeno picked up a strange group of vessels, not inside the No-Fly Zone but apparently heading for it. This was not an organized fleet of any kind. They were all ion-ballast driven and seemed to be of all different types and sizes. But as they drew closer, it was obvious they did have one more thing in common: they were interstellar gunships, vessels that carried one or two big weapons and just enough people inside to operate them. In many cases, arms dealers themselves drove these, kinds of ships. These ships were rare in the Galaxy though, and it was odd to see more than two of them flying together. Yet here were more than a dozen.
But the strangest thing of all was the direction from which these ships were coming. Their combined subatomic wake traced them back to their point of origin: way, way over in the Five Arm. And it was a rare ship indeed that came to the Two Arm from that far away.
The Xeno had also been watching the strange events unfold on Doomsday 212. Sometimes flying no more than a half light-year away, they'd detected SG ships dumping millions of people onto the desolate, hazardous planet. People, it would soon be determined, that had come from the floating refugee camp at Andromeda Zee. More important, the SG ships doing the relocation appeared to belong to none other than the infamous REF. But why they were doing this was a mystery.
Even stranger, mere were faint indications that something else was going on either on the planet's surface or in low orbit just above it, something besides this mysterious delivery of innocents. Subatomic debris. Indications of huge blaster discharges. Excited but distorted comm messages. Was a small battle taking place somewhere on the dead planet as well? Or even a series of small battles? It was hard to tell, because the planet's weak puff actually hindered the Xeno's eavesdropping capabilities; there was not much air for the signals to bounce around in, so they could be quickly lost in space. And the stealth ship's commanders didn't want to get too close to the graveyard planet. But clearly something very unusual was going on down there, and it involved the infamous REF.
All this put Omega Force in a difficult position. With one call, the 100-ship fleet could have swooped down and engaged the murderous REF and at least put a dent in its activities.