Once in open space, the Kosmo's crew did a last check of their flight systems, then set their controls to the outer part of the One Arm, where the two fleets of SG and SF ships were facing each other. A long-range forward scan of the area confirmed what the spy already knew: that many planets in this part of space had been evacuated long ago. Few Imperial vessels other than those belonging to the SG were permitted to fly within this corridor, and indeed, tens of thousands of SG supply runners could be seen shuttling between the trouble zone and the Pluto Cloud.
As for civilian vessels, none were allowed within a thousand light years of this very crowded piece of space.
They reached the edge of the One Arm less than an hour later.
Even from a great distance, the enormous double line of warships seemed to stretch to infinity. The spy had been in the service of the Empire for nearly two hundred years, still a young man by contemporary standards. (If you were lucky enough to have some of the life-prolonging Holy Blood in your veins, as did many in the very-extended Imperial Family, you could live nearly four times that long these days.) The spy had seen many strange things in those two centuries of undercover work. The aftermath of endless wars. Entire planets vaporized. The stars themselves turned upside down.
But he'd never seen anything like this.
On one side, that being the direction roughly pointing toward Earth, were hundreds of thousands of Space Forces warships, gleaming blue and white. On the other side, facing in the opposite direction, were the similarly numbered SG ships, sinister in their dark gray. They were separated by only a few miles in some places — not the hundreds the spy had envisioned for some reason. In fact, it was almost frightening just how narrow the separation between them was, especially when most of the warships facing each other were Starcrashers, two miles long themselves.
Early on, someone had dubbed this celestial front line the Star Trench. It was a good name.
And it was into the heart of it that the Imperial spy now had to go.
Because the KosmoVox belonged to the Earth Guard, neutrals in this fight, it was allowed, however grudgingly, to move through the SG lines and into the Star Trench. The pilots slowed their speedy craft to a crawl and flew the very narrow space separating the two gargantuan forces. The spy had his nose pressed up against the scout ship's bubble canopy now, his huge floppy spy hat curled back, his jaw dropped in astonishment as he eyed the warships on both sides of the Trench, side by side, almost entangled in one another.
He was struck by the same thought as anyone who'd been able to view this bizarre front line: all it would take is one crew member, on one ship, to make a mistake, or go mad, or misinterpret an order and launch a weapon. Cosmic brownout or not, the resulting volleys back and forth would destroy every ship along the Trench and kill the billions of crew serving inside them. One shot… and both fleets would be subatomic ash in a matter of minutes, and almost two-thirds of the Empire's warships would be gone. And that would mean the core of the Empire would be vulnerable for a very long time to whatever outlaw horde chose to attack it.
So the potential for disaster up here was nothing less than colossal.
Though he was astounded by his tour of the Star Trench, it was not the reason the spy had come out here.
The real purpose of his trip was a very secret meeting that had been arranged on a planet nearby. The name of the planet was Toons 20. It was an M-class world about the size of Earth's sacred moon, Luna. Like many bodies inhabiting space between the One and Two Arms, it was mostly rocks, valleys, and mountains. A very desolate place, it had no rivers, no ocean, no seas. It was also empty of its inhabitants; they'd been forcibly evacuated by the Solar Guards weeks ago.
There was a small city located just north of its barren equator called Tiny Toon. A collection of gambling halls and saloons mostly, one boarded-up barroom here was called Bozzy's Botsy. A place once notorious for gunrun-ning and illegal drug sales, it had a back room that, in the distant past, had been electronically soundproofed by way of a hum beam. This made it impervious to any kind of eavesdropping, either by human ears close by or super-string scanning ones bounced from a very long distance away. The room also had several means of access and exit, in case a quick getaway was in order. Such things were occupational hazards for the people who used to do business here.
Sitting at a table in the middle of this small room now was a man dressed in an indistinct one-piece spacesuit and a skully cap. Short, pudgy, with very dirty hands, he was nervously stirring a large mug of slow-ship wine, the opiate liquor that could be found just about everywhere in the Galaxy. At exactly midnight, there was a bright green flash in the corner of the room. An instant later, the Imperial spy was standing before him.
"I was getting worried," the man at the table said. "I thought you might not show up this time."
The spy threw half his black cape over his shoulder and pulled his huge floppy hat farther over his eyes. An Imperial spy never revealed his face, and that was certainly the case here. The man at the table saw only a shadow under the big hat.
"You never have to worry about me not keeping one of our appointments," the spy told him. "The Empire would fall first."
The man at the table frowned and took a long swig of his drink. "Best not to joke about such things, my friend," he said. "I fear the day of the Empire's decline is finally upon us."
The mild rebuke stiffened the spy. This was not an idle comment made by an ordinary citizen. This man was Jak Dazz, a well-known high commander of the Solar Guards and ten-stripe officer in the SG's elite 101st Space Combat Division. Devious and ill-mannered, Dazz had nevertheless served as a secret informant for the spy for years, exchanging bits of information about the SG in return for money and privileges back on Earth. It was he who requested this latest meeting, their first since the war broke out.
The spy took a seat and waved his hand over the table. A glass of slow-ship wine appeared. The spy rarely imbibed, preferring to get high on star music. But this night, he needed a little extra buzz.
"Considering what's going on up in that Star Trench, you took a big risk coming here," he told the SG officer. "It must be important."
Dazz nodded glumly. "The tension up on that line is unbearable. Everyone's on edge. I've been a military officer for nearly three hundred years. I much prefer battle to waiting for battle.
The spy tipped his glass in the SG man's direction. "I agree with you there," he said.
"And I see no way of preventing a catastrophe," Dazz went on dolefully. "Not just up on the Star Trench but elsewhere. We have some fanatical people at the top of the Solar Guards — people who can't be controlled by me or my superiors and frankly not by the Emperor, either. They're highly unpredictable. And some of them, rather unstable."
Again, the spy was taken back. Disparaging anything, in any way, having to do with the Emperor or his armed forces was considered highly verboten in the Fourth Empire. People were given painful brain wipes or even executed for such things, be they high military officers or the lowest of citizens. This was why hum-beamed rooms were so popular around the Galaxy.
"These fanatics will not back down," Dazz went on. "They are bent on carrying this fight through, this stupid war, however it started, by devils I suppose…"
The spy almost laughed. If only the SG officer knew just how accurate his last statement might be.