Their reports both startled and mystified the officers back at space traffic control. Red stars? Big, green, and with wings?
Not knowing what else to do, they ordered the space-fighters to blow it out of the sky.
The spacefighters hastily realigned into two attack formations, a pair of chevrons containing three planes each. The fighters were armed with nose-mounted single-blaster X guns, powerful weapons that lost some of their effectiveness at high altitude but were very deadly nevertheless.
The first flight approached the big green craft from about ten o'clock. The intruder was now about 7,000 miles above the surface of Saturn and still dropping fast. The first three fighters opened up about a mile off the green spaceship's gigantic tail. X beams traveled at several times the speed of light. This meant, to the human eye, a discharge and a strike on target looked instantaneous. But amazingly, the huge mystery craft banked hard left just before the first barrage of beams arrived, causing them to dissipate to no effect. As the SG pilots were contemplating this, they were astonished to see a stream of return fire heading back in their direction. It had come from weapons that had suddenly poked out of the side of the strange green spacecraft's wings. Before the three pilots could react, their spacefighters were hit by this return fire and evaporated in an instant.
Meanwhile, the second trio of SG spacefighters had swooped in from the west. They didn't even get a chance to fire their weapons. Hesitating just a second in the realization that their comrades were so suddenly gone, they, too, met the same fate: three instant beams, fired once again from the wings of the ship; three more spacefighters vaporized.
The big green spacecraft continued its plunge.
The SG officers inside space traffic control began to panic. They ordered every armed ship within 10,000 miles of the trouble zone into the area. Moving at crank speed — that being the fastest a prop-core ship could fly within the gravitational field of a planet — no less than 300 ships of all types and sizes were soon on the scene.
They set up an aerial gauntlet, stationing themselves at ten-mile intervals all the way down to the surface. These were mostly interplanet ships, not starships, cargo carriers packing a couple nose blasters at best. Still, 300 ships, firing two weapons each, represented a huge wall of destructo-rays that would be near impossible to avoid or survive.
Yet the big green spacecraft was doing just that. Its tail end was on fire, but it was clear now that was simply due to its extreme angle of entry into Saturn's atmosphere. The flames were doing nothing to affect the maneuvering of the strange ship. Indeed, its pilot seemed to know just when and where a beam blast was going to arrive a few seconds before it hit, giving him just the right amount of time to turn this way or that and avoid certain destruction. And while many of the attacking craft were following the intruder down, it was firing back at them wildly, vaporizing dozens of them with well-placed mystery ray weapons of its own.
It went on like this for nearly a half hour. It took that long for the huge craft to make its way through the atmosphere. Only when it was about five miles from the ground did those SG ships still tailing it see three figures exit the craft and glide toward the ground using an ancient escape technology known as a parachute.
The big green spacecraft crashed seconds later into a logistics staging area known as 054. It caused a huge amount of damage.
The three parachutes were seen landing in the vicinity of Warehouse 066.
Hunter was the first to reach the ground.
He'd been the last to bail out of the MiG, but by maneuvering his chute and shifting his weight forward, he was able to speed by Annie and Zoloff and land on an empty concourse in front of a huge rectangular warehouse that he hoped was 066.
He was waiting for Annie when she came down, catching her before she bit the ground. She was wearing a combat suit not unlike his own now, but still she looked gorgeous. She stayed in his arms as he made his way to the spot where Zoloff eventually came down. The Mad Russian landed just like a pro. Just like that, the three of them were on the ground.
They rushed to the front door of the warehouse, Hunter giving the hatch a pass with his quadtrol. Not only were there no security devices in place, the door itself wasn't even locked. Taking advantage of this huge break, the three of them hurried inside.
The warehouse was indeed a monster. It was impossible to see the far end; it looked to be at least a half mile away. The ceiling, too, seemed to be so far above them, Hunter wouldn't have been surprised to see clouds forming somewhere overhead.
But there was something very strange about this place. All of them got it right away.
"It's empty," Hunter said.
A huge building like this, in an area on Saturn where space was premium, and there were no bubblers containing information bits for personnel files, no storage of weapons or ion nails. Just one big open building that seemed to stretch on forever.
"This is weird," Hunter said. They'd heard some very nasty stuff was going on in here, and yet the place was barren.
"And why did no one follow us in here?" Zoloff asked.
Another good question. Certainly any local SG troops, though mostly electric pencil pushers, would have no problem corralling them in here. And all those many SG ships that had shot at them all the way down. Why did they cut off their pursuit and not shoot at them once they were on the ground? What was wrong with this place? It was ahnost as if the SG themselves didn't want to come near it.
Suspicious, Hunter did an interior quadtrol check. The environmental controls at the moment were OK. However, there were what the device called "unacceptable residues" lingering in chambers deep underneath the warehouse. "Do not go anywhere near them," the quadtrol warned.
Alarmed now, Hunter asked the quadtrol to define these residues and why they were so unacceptable.
It took the device a long time to answer — always a bad sign. Finally it replied, "The residues are from a super-toxin previously unknown in the Galaxy."
Hunter was stunned by the reply. So were Zoloff and Annie, looking over his shoulder.
But there was more: 'This toxin in large quantities can only be labeled an XWMD."
"XWMD?" Hunter repeated the term. "I've never heard of it."
Zoloff shrugged. "Nor have I."
Hunter asked the quadtrol to explain. The reply this time was chilling. "XWMD is an abbreviation for extreme weapon of mass destruction."
Hunter looked at Zoloff, and Zoloff looked at Hunter. They both grabbed Annie.
"This is not good," Hunter whispered. "And it also means we can't stay in here very long."
"Five minutes is an acceptable limit," the quadtrol replied with an unsolicited piece of advice. "After that, exposure levels will slowly rise to critical."
They began walking quickly. Now that they were here, they at least had to see if anything was afoot. After about a minute, they spotted several large piles of litter scattered around center of the huge floor. Neutron wires, electron torches, ion bolts — construction materials. There were also many sections of disengaged staging lying about.
Zoloff the scientist came to the fore. "What were they building here?" he asked.