HAVEN OF THE HAWKMEN

BEEP.

BEEP.

BEEP.

Jasmine Starr groaned, her eyes opening to cracks. Bleariness filled her – a strange grogginess far, far, far worse than any sleep she had slept before. She shifted in her seat, feeling a deep and abiding chill sinking into her bones. She mumbled to herself. “Claudette, put some more Blue Coal on the fire...” She shifted, then blinked, awareness that she was strapped into a heavy chair crashing into her. She swept her gaze around the cockpit and memory returned in a flash.

She was in a winged rocket, the very one she had stolen from the Domination days before – but something terrible had happened between her injecting herself with the ultra-sleep syringe and now.

For one thing...

The entire back half of the rocket was gone.

Jasmine gaped, momentarily dumbfounded, by the sight of her vehicle flying through space, without half its wings and without the main rocket engine on the back. There was just her sealed cockpit, the forward wings, the nose cone, the bristle of radar-scopes and communication ray emitters, and the vastness of space ... nothing more remained.

“Racing rockets, what happened?” she asked, but there was no one to answer ... she was alone...

Jasmine shook her head, clenching her jaw.

“There are two possibilities, Jas,” she said, quietly. “Either the ship was sheered in half – possibly by Vile and some of his weapons – in which case Claudette has been flung into her own orbit ... or...” She choked. The idea of her dear Claudette being blasted into atoms by the weaponry of the Empire of Space was too much, even for one as willful and ready to face danger as Jasmine Starr. And so, she choked back tears, forced herself to focus, and looked into the radio scope and the forward view panes.

Fortunately, whatever had struck the winged rocket had not imparted enough change in velocity to adjust her course towards Venus. And, in fact, her calculations had been dead on: The yellowish orb was already vast before her, growing larger every moment. Of course, she had been planning to decelerate using the atmosphere of the planet and her wings ... as it was, she had no such control, no way to adjust her entry angle.

“It seems I’m in a bit of a pickle...” Jasmine whispered to herself – but then her eyes fell upon the radar scope and realized the source of the beeping.

“I’m being radar scanned!” she exclaimed, adjusting the knobs and dials. Several radar beams were sweeping along her hull, as if distant vehicles were attempting to determine what and who she was. She adjusted her own radar scopes, following the beams back, and received the return signals of three rockets. Two were in formation with one another, in an equatorial orbit, and the other was by itself, and in a higher orbit – meaning that every time it orbited Venus once, the lower ships would have orbited it twice.

Jasmine frowned. “Well, now, let us see if I can still bluff ... just like back in Italy...” she picked up the communication wand that was attached to the forward control panel, then flicked it on. She put an imperious tone to her voice. “All ships, this is Jasmine Starr, consort-in-waiting to Emperor Aytan Zardo. I request immediate assistance – any who allow me to come to harm shall face the wrath of Zardo. Over.”

There was a short pause – short enough she was sure she was terribly close to Venus indeed for there was no delay for light lag communication. Fear prickled at the back of her neck ... was she too close to be intercepted and rescued? Then...

“This is Prince S’kye of the Hawkmen. Hold tight, Consort Starr. We are adjusting out orbit.”

Then-

“Aha! Fool!” This was coming from one of the pair of ships, Jasmine saw. “We would not risk confronting any feathered fool in a patrol rocket ... but the price upon your head, Prince Scoundrel, is worth our weight in Venusian diamonds!”

“Trust a faeman to look for profit at a time like this. Come at me, then!” Prince S’kye’s voice, even over the communicator, was a bassy, confident, male one – a deep contrast to the sneering whine of the ‘faemen’, whatever they were.

“Bold words for one about to become atomized vapor!”

The communicator cut off and Jasmine watched on the scopes as all three blips began to maneuver. At once, she saw that S’kye was a gallant fellow. He was angling his ship away from the two other bogies, despite the fact it was sure to make it harder for his weaponry to come to bear on them. The two faemen had just reached perigee – where they were closest in their orbit to Venus. Perigee and apogee (the opposite position in an orbit) were the most energy efficient times to adjust an orbit. But rather than changing their orbits, the two bogies kept moving ... but then...

Split.

Now there were five bogies.

“Racing rockets, they launched something...” Jasmine whispered.

On the communicator, she heard S’kye’s chuckle.

“You think we can’t knock those slow A-bomb rockets out of the sky with our heat rays, faemen?”

“Oh, you can knock down one or two of our A-bombs, yes...” the faeman captain chuckled. “But, my dear prince, can you also protect Zardo’s pet whore at the same time? Heh ... now you must choose. Let the woman die, or allow your ship to be A-bombed into glowing slag! Ahaha!”

“Bilewind!” S’kye snarled – then a strange clack came over the communicator, as if he had gnashed his teeth. “You’re mad! Zardo will destroy all of Venus if-”

“He can destroy your fragile floating cities, Hawkman! Our tunnel cities have survived five hundred years of Venus. They can survive Zardo! All hail the dark!”

The communication stopped as Jasmine frowned, then touched her communication ray device – angling it so that the line of the ray would only land upon Prince S’kye’s rocket. “Prince, how many of their A-bombs do you think are on my trajectory?”

“Only one ... but one is more than enough. Your vessel is clearly disabled and unarmed.”

“Oh, is it now?” Jasmine murmured, to herself, her communication wand turned off so as to not confuse Prince S’kye. She flicked it on again. “Ignore the rocket focused upon me. Turn your death rays on the rockets aimed at you – I’ll handle this A-bomb.”

There was a long pause, then a low rumbling chuckle.

“I see, for all his personal faults, the Emperor has a fine taste in women!”

“Better than you can know, Prince of the Hawkmen.” Jasmine turned off her wand. She had work to do. She looked and found a latch that would open her own personal canopy of glass. She quickly donned the emergency star suit that was loaded into the compartment beside her, wriggling and squirming to get it onto her body in the confined spaces. Once she had done so ... she popped open the bubble. Air puffed out, rushing into space – but far less than she had expected. Jasmine supposed that the winged rocket used less than a full atmosphere of pressure ... reasonable, it would make it less likely to spring leaks and to be more easily filled with breathable air.

As it was, she was able to clamber out onto her remaining rocket. The boots of the star suit were automagnetic, allowing her to clamp onto the hull with ease, and that meant she could focus entirely upon what she wished to view most ... the communication ray emitter!

Jasmine had studied a great many things, and one of them included the theories of death rays as advanced by the scientific community. The idea was simple – somehow cause light itself to cohere and behave in a more rational, directed pattern than normal illumination would. This would create a beam of light, a ray of killing power that could be used to strike the enemies of whoever invented it first. Well, the Empire of Space had crafted these death rays ... such weapons had been used on her Atomo when she had faced off against the Dominion.

But did a death ray have to be the only use for such coherent light?

No!

This communication ray was nothing more than a death ray that had been put to the purposes of communication – like turning a machine gun into a semaphore station, but infinitely more elegant. Jasmine found a loose piece of metal at the edge of the tear between her cockpit and where the rest of the ship had been. Wrenching it free, she held it before the ray emitter, then activated it by the simple expedient of reaching back into the cockpit and flipping a toggle.

The metal flared and glowed at a single point and ripped from her hand. Jasmine yelped. “Racing Rockets! The beam melted the metal – turning the hull material itself into a kind of rocket, yanking it right from my very hand!” She switched the ray off – it was invisible in space, after all, and she didn’t want to forget and get hit herself.

“At a close range, even a simple communication ray can kill!” she said, rubbing her own helmet in thought. “But I need more range – an A-bomb, even in space, without atmosphere to transmit the blast wave, can kill, as easily with heat and radiation as it could with a blast and shrapnel. Think, Jasmine, think.” She turned to the communication ray itself, examining it.

The device itself seemed quite simple – once she had removed the cowling and looked at the pieces within...

The core contained a large glittering crystal tube that sat in the center of what appeared to be a collection of mirrors and lenses. But what was at the back was nothing more complex than a wire that led back into a heavy battery – even Jasmine could recognize the shape and design of a power conduit. She chuckled. “Ahh, I see! This crystal must focus the light ... transforming it from standard light into a ray!” She nodded. “I think I will only have but one shot for this.”

On the radar scope, she saw that the three rockets that had been launched were now curving upwards as they swung around Venus at inedible speeds. Two were arcing towards Prince S’kye’s rocket ... and one was accelerating straight towards her!

She first tapped at the controls – and the simple systems of the winged rocket responded.

COMMUNICATION ERROR! Flashed up on the screen as she attempted to tell the communication ray to send a message towards the A-bomb rocket that was racing towards her. Jasmine ignored it. She then started to rip apart the panel, assisted by the simple tool kit that was contained next to where the ultra-sleep injectors had been. She found every power cable she could, pulling them free, checking to ensure the magneto-calculator was still working ... and then dragged them out, tugging them loose from their housings.

Soon, she had a whole mess of cables that she used a knife on – parring their insulation down carefully, to expose the wires themselves. She got the wires very close to the communication ray ... and she noticed the ray was actually shifting in its gimbal’d mount.

It was angling towards the A-bomb rocket!

“This might just work!” Jasmine whispered.

She looked up...

And she realized she could actually see the A-bomb rocket’s fumes as it accelerated towards her. It was a cone of nearly invisible reddish mist, sweeping out in every direction away from the rocket’s nozzle – not the bright flare of a rocket on the planet Earth, but something considerably dimmer and more deadly.

Jasmine jammed her collected, frayed power cables into the power cable of the communication ray.

The ray exploded with a spray of sparks.

And in a distance, the A-bomb rocket’s plume went dead.

Jasmine tensed...

The A-bomb rocket whipped past overhead, nearly invisible save for a bright glowing scar along the side, streaking by her head like a close passing comet!

Then it was gone.

Jasmine breathed a slow sigh of relief.

The distant star-battle was hard to watch, considering her console had been entirely burned out by the enlarged electrical load that her eager engineering had brought through the vacuum tubes and wires within – several had melted, the cabling still glowing brightly through the dimmness of space. And so, Jasmine tried to judge what she could by watching the tiny flashes and streaks of light ... until she realized that a disk of Venus’ orange-yellow atmosphere was being occluded by a shape that was approaching her vehicle.

Lights sprang to life across it and Jasmine whistled to herself.

“Well, I’ll be,” she said, quietly.

If she had had any doubts about whether it was the Faemen or the Hawkmen who had come to her drifting rocket, the shape of the vessel before her was completely clear: It looked, for all the world, like two vast wings that spread away from a central spoke – each wing was carved and shaped to look precisely like the feathered wings of a hawk, and each wing glowed brilliantly with ruby red light as waste heat from the reactor was pumped through them. The central spoke itself reached forward and split into a pair of bands, which locked down onto the ‘hubs’ of a turned wheel, so that it looked as if the wings fanned around a discus, like the tire flaps on a model-T, only far more elegant and beautiful than that made it sound.

The wheel itself seemed to be made of segmented sections – eight sections, each one consuming forty five degrees of the three hundred and sixty degrees of disk shape. The sections themselves were all separated by a very thin gap, and each one was decorated with bird eye motiefs along the edges, so that it seemed as if a wheel of eyes, like an angel from the Good Book, was floating in space before her. The entire wheel spun at a steady rate ... and Jasmine snapped her finger.

“Of course! Centrifugal force!” she exclaimed. “What other way could there be to provide gravity within a rocket – other than acceleration ... ah! This ship must be either short ranged, a patrol boat never meant to leave orbit, and thus not likely to accelerate ... or it must be long ranged, designed to drift for many months between planets. Hah!”

Then she noticed the hubcaps of the wheel, both upper and lower, had turrets. Looking for all the world like the ball turrets on the super-fortresses that had leveled Hitler’s and Hirohito’s mad empires before they could complete their sinister schemes for total global domination, these turrets were different from the plucky American design in two ways: The first being the gold foil that was plated along the interior of the glass domes that served as viewing ports, likely to keep glare from the steely gaze of their astro-gunners ... the second being that rather than the dependable M2 Browning .50 caliber machine guns, these turrets projected the narrow emitters of the dreaded death rays that seemed common among most space fairing species in the solar system.

Those turrets, fortunately, were not aimed at her. Jasmine breathed a sigh of relief as her star suit radio crackled and the warm, confident voice of Prince S’kye reached her.

“Need a lift, honored consort?”

Jasmine chuckled. “I hope you didn’t have too hard a time of it, Prince of the Hawkmen...” She pursed her lips as the rotation of the wheel brought to bear a faintly glowing scar along the outer hull – slashing one of the eyes in half.

“Just a few ray kisses,” S’kye said, as casual as if he faced it every day. “Nothing we can’t fix in astro.”

An airlock, mounted just ahead of the upper turret opened and two figures emerged, giving her a sense of scale – and Jasmine’s eyes widened as she realized the wheel had to be at least five hundred meters wide along the diameter. The ship was almost the same size as the imperial war rocket that had plucked her from Earth orbit – and the people who flew it were nearly her size. However, she had never seen star suits so obviously flamboyant. Like the winged hussars of Poland’s imperial past, these Hawkmen took their hawk aesthetic to entirely new heights: Their suits had large articulated wings that swept from their backs, and...

“Ah, they have reaction control thrusters built onto those wings,” Jasmine said, standing – or at least, assuming the position of someone who was standing, considering there was no gravity for her to stand again – and waving at the Hawkmen as their reaction jets hissed and puffed silently in the vacuum, using their spurts of cold gasses to accelerate them towards her. Both helmets had conical faceplates (an odd shape, but she put it from her mind) that were entirely opaque. However, brusque, authoritative voices she recognized from soldiers throughout Earth came onto her radio.

“Your arms, madame Consort, if you’d be so kind.”

“Such gentlemen!” Jasmine said, lifting her arms.

The two Hawkmen took her arms and their wings hissed and spurted more of their cold gas – and they were swept away into space, then down upon the central axis of the Hawkman ship. The airlock hatch was open wide and Jasmine swung herself in, feet first, the two men following afterwards. The hatch shut and the atmosphere within the airlock hissed inside. The instant the telltale above the door – a bright red light – flicked to green, Jasmine took hold of her helmet, twisted, then slid it off, sighing loudly.

“Ah it is a relief to be out of that space blasted helmet,” she said as the airlock doors before her – really, blow her, as she was currently angled with her feet towards them – opened. “I ... thank...” She trailed off, her eyes widening as she pushed against the ceiling to right herself.

Prince S’kye of Venus floated in the bubble-room that made up the central point of the Hawkman warship, the nexus that the whole wheel spun silently around.

He was...

Jasmine blinked a few times.

Beginning at the feet – which were bright gold and scaled, with thick claws that tipped three flexible looking, gripping ‘toes’ that seemed more at home with a bird of pray than a humanoid male – and sweeping up the muscular thighs – furred and dark black-blue, with the glossy coloration of a raven or corvid – up to the sleek white toga that was expertly swept around a chest so broad and muscular that she was sure she could have used his entire body as a bed, but while it was muscled, it was still furred and feathered, the tufted feathers at the shoulders giving him the build of someone in a cloak without needing to wear a cloak at all ... and his fur and flesh were the same blue-black as his thighs. His arms, long and powerfully built, shifted smoothly from dark blue-black to bright gold scaling, to his fingers, which were all tipped with sharp claws. His neck was sleek and elegant and ended with the head of a bird of prey – right down to the bright golden hued eyes, the wickedly curved beak, and the feathered hair that swept out and down along his back.

He clicked his beak and his eyes showed he was smiling better than lips ever could.

“Welcome aboard the Bird of Prey, honorable Consort,” he said, then executed an elegant microgravity bow – one that showed off the elegant grace of his powerful body, and the fact that the ‘cloak’ he wore was actually a pair of powerful wings. To her left and right, Jasmine heard hisses and clicks – glancing, she saw the two astros who had emerged to escort her in were revealing that, beneath their star-suits, they were the same fusion of human and hawk, and that the decorative wings of their suits were actually pressurized protections of their very own wings.

Prince S’kye lifted his head and chuckled. “I am Prince S’kye, of Venus. As I believe you know. That was a nice trick with the communication ray – but I suppose Emperor Zardo is well known for his exceptional taste in all things...”

Jasmine chuckled, huskily. “Oh yes. Yes he is.”

Prince S’kye offered his arm – and Jasmine took it, but her concerns for Claudette came roaring back to her. She bit back her first question, and instead let Prince S’kye lead her towards the hatchways that lined the equator of this orb. He opened one, revealing a smoothly moving surface, until the a yellow line appeared. “That line is painted to indicate that there will be an opening soon,” he explained. “The ring section spins once every minute – slowly, but it has more than eleven million space pounds of force behind it. If you are caught in the gap, you are in trouble.”

“That’s rather dangerous, isn’t it?” Jasmine asked.

“It is. Hear that faint scraping noise? That is because we have engaged the breaks. When there is little time, or we only have trained astros aboard, we prefer to keep it spun up ... but no sense taking risks with you, no?”

The yellow line turned green, the paint shifting as the outer ring spun, and then a doorway came into view and the whole ship let out a quiet groan as the wheel locked home. S’kye showed her how to swing in, and soon, she was sliding along a ladder that ran ‘down’ from the central orb. When she emerged from it, she found herself standing in what appeared, to her perspective, to be great curved hamster wheel. She floated there, but she could already hear the low groaning of the ships internal systems ... and slowly, the sensation of gravity returned, her feet pressing into the floor.

S’kye stepped from the ladder, his claws clacking softly on the metal floor, and he clicked his beak with approval. “More comfortable than that little winged rocket you were. We detected you on our telescopes almost two weeks ago – no one was sure what you were, but both the Faemen and Hawkmen wanted to see what you were, exactly.”

Jasmine nodded. She couldn’t wait any longer: “My ship, it was intact when I went into ultra-sleep...”

“We guessed that was what was going on,” S’kye said, sighing. He led her along the corridor. There were doorways every few meters, leading into rooms where other Hawkmen worked complex consoles and devices. In the age old tradition of all sailors, be they astro-sailors or sea-sailors, the sight of a woman, even a woman still clad in a shapeless emergency star suit, caused them to crane their heads away from what they were doing to watch her walk by. Jasmine rolled her hips a bit, enjoying herself as she walked. “But we admit, we were at a loss as to why Imperial robot rockets would attack their own-”

“It was ... that’s what happened?” Jasmine asked, a cold stone growing in her stomach.

S’kye nodded.

They came to the bridge of the Bird of Prey. It was a circular chamber, with curved edges to the walls. The center of the bridge was dominated by a large sphere that contained a kind of sophisticated multi-lensed projector, which projected glowing images on the inner edge of the sphere, creating an illusion of the space beyond. The sphere itself was marked with dozens of inky lines, drawn on by rulers and notations, indicating information about the surrounding area of space that the hawkmen crew had thought important. Right now, it displayed Venus, and the drawn lines on it indicated the orbits of what had to be dozens of different ships, as well as black dots on the surface that were each labeled with...

English letters?

Jasmine wondered at that, even as she saw dots labeled Sky City and Tunnel Town.

S’kye, though, led her to another one of the consoles, where a sleek Hawkwoman was sitting. Unlike the men, she had no beak. Her face was entirely humanoid, and her hair was long and bright red. The only indication she was of the same species at all was that she had brown feathered wings, and some light feathering around her wrists, and black claws instead of fingernails. She lifted her head up.

“Scannerwoman S’hira,” S’kye said, pointing with his claw. “Bring up our radar scan of the winged rocket over the past forty days.”

“Yes, my prince,” S’hira said, tapping her fingers on the controls. The screen showed various options on her magneto-computer, and she punched in the right one to cause a chattering sound to emerge from the console. She pulled out a series of freshly printed punch cards, stood, then slotted them into the side of the projection globe in the center of the room. Mechanical arms swept out, wiping away the ink writing as the projection globe flared black. New mechanical arms swept out – hemispheres of thin metal, with pen-tips on tracks, which could be controlled by the mechanical arms to draw elaborate notations, far better than any human hand could – and then drew out a series of courses in white.

S’kye pointed with his claw. “This is where we detected you, with three robot rockets in pursuit.”

Jasmine felt a lump in her throat. She had had no idea...

It looked as if they had reached her halfway through their flight.

“A-And ... the rest of the ship?” she whispered.

S’kye’s eyes narrowed and his feathers dipped in what she intuited as a frown. “It ... was destroyed by the robot rockets. Why?”

Jasmine’s hands clenched. “C- ... Could there have been any survivors?” she whispered.

S’kye turned to S’hira. The sensors operator shook her head, quietly saying: “Those robot rockets carry two point five centimeters cannons, firing contact fused flak shells. Honestly, you’re lucky they merely took out your aft. There ... there is no chance your passenger survived. I’m sorry.”

S’kye looked to Jasmine. Jasmine trembled, and her hands tightened. She slammed her fists into the projection globe, despite herself, then looked to the heavens. It came, roaring up her throat, without her being able to stop it.

“ZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Mark had to admit.

As a reward for retaining his control in the face of Star Princess Zella’s idea of fun, a state function was not exactly what he had been expecting. When the Princess had returned to her chambers, to find him gnawing on a pillowing and trying his best to not dry-hump the blankets, she had had an unexpectedly serious expression on her face and had immediately manipulated the silver gauntlet that she wore. The intense lustful pleasure that her collar had been burning into his nerves since she had left cut off, and before Mark could ask a single question, she had said: “Get dressed. My father has called ... for an execution.”

Mark had felt his blood go cold.

It had gotten a bit warmer when he had seen what the Princess had thought had been a reasonable state of dress for him.

Now, he stood behind her, trying to not hunch over, as he looked out at the dignitaries and masters of Zardo’s vast interstellar dominion. The fact most of them wore almost as little as he did did not exactly fill him with excitement – as he was currently wearing just barely enough fabric to stretch over his groin, a golden belt, and a leash that ran from his collar, to the Princess’ hands. They were in a large chamber of preposterous imperial splendor. The walls were plated in shimmering gold, the ceiling was studded with glowing lamps of some sophisticated electrical bulbs, and the floor itself had a large rectangular window cut into it, showing the shimmering stars of space that swept by beneath the world – as if they were in the bottom of a large, spinning boat.

The far end of the room contained Zardo’s throne, where the bald, mustachioed master of malevolence himself was seated, listening quietly to one of his advisors. The rest of the chamber was dominated by a dizzying array of ... well...

“And I thought that Normandy had a lot of weirdoes,” Mark muttered as he watched a man that was one part hawk, one part man, walk by while chatting to a curved, sinuous snakeman, a cobra’s hood flaring to either side of their triangular, pointed head, with glittering golden eyes pausing for only a moment to glance his way.

“Shush, pet,” the Princess said, biting her lip as she fidgeted.

“Why so nervous?” Mark asked. “You’re not the one who’s getting the chop, are you?”

“Hm?” the Princess looked him. “No! Of course not, do not be absurd, pet. It’s just...”

“What?”

A loud clang sound rang out – and everyone who had gathered quieted down as Emperor Zardo stood from his throne. His throne was situated a good distance higher than the rest of the room, and allowed him to sneer down at the guests and dignitaries that had come. The evil emperor of the solar system was dressed in a set of red robes that stretched down to his feet, with a high collar that swept to either side of his head, and a golden circlet around his bald head, with a red gemstone set above the middle of his brow, like an imperial diadem back on Earth. His hands were clad in leather gloves, and when he lifted his arms and spread them to draw even more attention, his robes parted to reveal his whipcord lean body beneath: Clad in a kind of military uniform, complete with medals and honors, and what appeared to be a sword hilt (sans sword, of course) hanging from his belt.