Battle at Zero Point by Mack Maloney

Author:Mack Maloney
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction, Action & Adventure, Fiction
ISBN: 9780441010967
Publisher: Ace
Published: 2003-07-14T12:00:00+00:00

14

Betavilie, Planet America, Home Planets System

FBI agent Lisa Lee returned to her office after lunch to find her secretary looking a bit flustered.

At first Lisa thought Gloria was upset at her because she'd failed to bring her back a Coke as she'd promised. Their office was on the third floor of the tiny Betavilie police station— Lisa was the FBI field agent for this part of Ohio—and even though they'd been here nearly eight months, a few kinks remained. Getting the soda machine on the first floor to work was just one of them.

While still a sleepy little town, Betavilie was also a very famous place these days. It was here that the three visitors from outer space first arrived almost a year ago. It was they who passed on the knowledge that Planet America, as well as the other thirty-five worlds in the Home Planets system, was really part of a long-neglected prison camp in the sky set up thousands of years before by the very evil Second Empire. This celestial prison was trapped inside a time bubble that retarded technical advancement but allowed the unknowing inmates to live a civilized if antiquated way of life. Planet America had cars and factories and highways and railroads. It had cops and firefighters, priests and politicians. Post offices, sports teams, grammar schools, high schools, and colleges could all be found here. The tiny planet consisted of one large landmass that began in the east with cities like Boston, New York, Charleston, and Miami, and went right across to California, where the other West Coast states also lay. Across a very narrow sea was New York again. It was an artificial world, recreated in the image of the place that its first inhabitants had been forced from 4,000 years before. The people of Planet America were the descendants of those original deportees from Earth.

The three visitors changed everything. Not only did they bring the news of the origin of the Home Planets, they defeated the prison guard army who'd been watching over the three dozen imprisoned worlds, then raised a space army of their own and sailed off to win Earth back for its rightful owners.

That army was called the United Planets Forces. The six ships they'd sailed on were known, on Planet America at least, as the First Fleet.

Those half dozen vessels had left nearly eight months before; nothing had been heard from them since. Forty thousand soldiers representing each of the thirty-six planets, flying under the Stars and Stripes of Planet America's flag, were out in the cosmos somewhere, fighting a great battle for all of them back here. They were gone but not forgotten. Indeed, American flags had been strung from every light pole, every front porch, every overpass, from the top of every high city building in the entire system when the fleet sailed. Those flags were still flying today.

That these young soldiers were so far away, fighting and dying for the people back home had not been forgotten here.

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