It hit the largest tower an instant later, impacting on the top floor, which had been occupied just minutes before by Zarex and his electronic entourage. The resulting explosion was so spectacular, it set off a minor quake beneath their feet. The three of them stared in astonishment as the tall tower was vaporized, and the remains of the missile plunged deep into the mountain behind the resort, driving an enormous hole into the layers of solid rock.
It took nearly a minute for all the echoes of the blast to finally fade away. Through it all, Zarex was speechless.
"It must be the Bad Moon Knights again," he finally mumbled. "I mean, it has to be them. Every once in a while they take a shot at me — over some past disagreements. But an LS/ SDBM? That's a bit much."
Zarex turned back to Hunter and Pater Tomm. Things had changed.
"Well, it now appears that I owe you my life, and I need a new place to relocate," he said. "So, I'll point you in the right direction of the Home Planets, provided just one thing…"
"What's that?" Tomm asked. "Our bag of money?"
"No," Zarex said. "I want to come with you on the journey. Me and a friend of mine…"
"One of those holo-girls, you mean?"
"Hardly, Father," Zarex replied.
He reached into his case and took out not a holo-egg but a Twenty 'n Six box. After checking out the surrounding terrain, he activated the intradimensional device. The usual cloud of green mist appeared, and after a flash of light, they found a huge robot standing in front of them. It was at least ten feet tall.
"He's not only my best 'bot," Zarex told Hunter and Tomm, "but he's my bodyguard as well. I have found him extremely useful in the past. I would like him out of his box and at my side for the entire journey ahead. He might even come in handy for what is before us."
Hunter studied the robot standing just a few feet away. He was a danker, that is, a robot who had two arms, two legs, one head, and a body in the shape of an average man, but who made no pretense of looking like a human being, as some other more upscale robots did.
This danker's ID was 33418. Bright gold in color, he had an eerily blank face, a small speaker for a mouth, and a thick red visor that served as his visual system. He looked old and slow, and if the gun-shy explorer wanted him out 24/7, someone who would take up a lot of space, especially in flight.
"I'm not sure about this," Hunter started to say. "We can use your help where we are going, but—"
"He is an excellent pilot," Zarex said of the robot.
Hunter shrugged. "But my space craft is unique; I'm afraid I am the only one who can figure its controls."
"Well, he is also an outstanding navigator."
Hunter motioned to Pater Tomm. "The padre is one of the best. I would hate to see both their talents wasted by an overlapping of duties."
"But he's also a mechanic, a translator of odd tongues…"
Hunter just shook his head. "I can fix my own aircraft, and Pater Tomm speaks in many tongues."
But Zarex was determined. "At the very least, let me give you a demonstration," he said.
Finally, Hunter relented.
Zarex flashed a brief smile of victory, then snapped his fingers. A tiny control panel materialized out of nowhere. It was wobbly on arrival. Zarex touched the main bus, and the rest of the control panel lit up. Another panel touched, and the robot suddenly blinked to life. His arms tensed, the visor covering his mechanical eyes narrowed a bit. A soft whirring could be heard coming from its chest.
"Behold, my friends," Zarex said, pressing the first of the control panel's trio of red lights.
A small storm of sparks erupted beneath the robot's big metal feet. There was a loud bang and a mighty puff of smoke. Then, suddenly, the robot lifted off the ground and shot straight up at eye-blistering speed, deep into the very blue sky. The robot quickly reached a height of nearly two thousand feet, then very slowly turned over. Arms now tucked into his sides, his jaw sticking straight out, he began a dive so fast and so steep, he cracked the sound barrier, registering a boom that reverberated off the nearby mountains. The robot zoomed right past them, banked hard left, then leveled out about four feet above the ground. An instant later, he pulled up again and did a kind of power loop over the remains of the recently destroyed resort, very noisy, very smoky, but also very, very quickly. The robot was moving extremely fast, yet was taking turns and cutting angles with incredible finesse.
Zarex pushed the second red button and in a flash, the robot looped again, came screaming down at them, pulling up at the last possible instant before coming to a stop in the exact position and on the exact same spot he'd left just seconds before. Zarex pushed the third red button. Suddenly, the robot's head turned and his eye visor lifted up, revealing a deeply glowing red lens beneath. An incredibly bright beam of purple red light burst from the lens, traveled across the valley, over the resort's shattered wall to another rugged mountain range beyond, a distance of at least five miles, where it exploded just below the top of the highest peak.
Hunter looked at Tomm, then at the robot, and then at Tomm again. Their jaws were hanging open. They were simply astonished.
"On second thought," Hunter said to Zarex. "Let's take him."
7
Despite the great distances involved and the profusion of uncharted or lost planets in between, there was a strong tradition of oral myth among the peoples of the Five-Arm.
Almost all of the epics passed down through the centuries involved wars fought along the Fringe or up and down the Five-Arm itself. The greatest myths always involved the classic duel between hero and villain. Sometimes the conflict was between two planets, sometimes between entire star clusters, or even clusters of star clusters. But no matter how big or how small, the moral of the story, always hiding right below the surface, was that even in conflict, honor wins out. Not only do the good guys always triumph, they are always magnanimous in victory and quick when it came time to forgive their foe.
This was an odd song to sing in this fragment of space, where at any given moment as many as a million wars might be in progress. The absolutely forgiving nature of the mythical warriors was a universal mystery; such a code of honor certainly didn't exist on any grand scale in real life here. Those scholars who chose to ponder such things always came to the same conclusion: that the idea of people treating each other with honor was a notion that had been practiced sometime back through the ages, and was now ingrained, if obviously repressed, in every soul on the Five-Arm. This was proof, the great minds said, that sometime during a history now long past, things had been better for the human condition. Respect and dignity must have prevailed.
By far, the most oft-told story, the classic myth of honor, was the legend of the Great Michael. It always began with a small planet in a small, very isolated star system. As the story went, this planet, sometimes called Myx, was a world that had been fought over for centuries by two rival planets, usually called the Whites and the Grays. Myx was said to be thick with jewels, aluminum, the so-called good stuff, and both planets claimed it belonged to them. In the legend, the Whites were always the nobler of the two planets; they simply wanted to mine Myx just enough to keep their people fed, healthy, and happy. The Grays, on the other hand, wanted to rape the planet, using the money to buy weapons so they could overcome smaller, defenseless planets nearby and create an empire for themselves.
So many wars had been fought over Myx, eventually all the good stuff had been blasted away. Yet the wars continued simply because the animosity between the two rivals was so strong, the cycle could not be broken. Even though they were literally fighting over nothing, even though the aggressive Grays always lost, the conflicts went on. Millions would die, a temporary peace would ensue, only to end when the Grays attacked the Whites again a generation later.