heavy lifting had been completed; now it was time to do his brain work. Among other things, the thought drop he'dingested back on Earth contained a secret file filled with memory images and dossiers on a very unusual group of people. Bonz sipped his cocktail, then leaned back in his squeaky flight chair, closed his eyes, and began access-ing this file. Hawk Hunter was the first image on the memory string. There was little information on the dashing yet enig-matic pilot that Bonz didn't already know. Indeed, at one point two years ago, Hunter was the best-known person in the Gal-axy, next to the members of the Imperial Family. It seemed back then, everyone knew everything about him. Bonz cer-tainly didn't have to dwell on him now.
Next in the synapse line were two pilots named Erx and Berx. Famous officers of both the SF and the X-Forces, they were middle aged and looked like human boulders with arms, legs, and extremely long mustachios attached. These were the men who'd rescued Hunter from the isolated planet called Fools 6 and eventually brought him to Earth. They'd been sent back out to the edge of space about a year ago by Princess Xara to find Hunter again after he'd so mysteriously disap-peared, but they hadn't been heard from since, either.
Next came Petz Calandrx, the well-known space hero turned poet, who was both a personal friend of the Emperor and win-ner of the Earth Race more than a century before. He was a real oldster, rapidly approaching his fourth century. At one time, however, he'd been a brilliant soldier, and for a while, a regular on the Specials' ultraexclusive party list. He'd been sent with Erx and Berx on Xara's mission to rescue Hunter, only to go missing as well.
Then came a character named The Great Klaaz. Apparently a hero in the outer regions of the Fringe, this stooped and craggy old man was practically unknown to Earth's intelli-gence services. As he was approaching his sixth century, he seemed an unlikely candidate for what was afoot. Yet he, too, had apparently fallen in with Hunter and his band and was ¦ow wanted for questioning as well. After him came a short, mysterious, middle-aged man who went by the name Pater Tomm. Though he claimed to be a priest—and in the fuzzy mage provided to Bonz on the mind drop, he was sporting a long cassock and bowl haircut similar to those worn by those |«f a religious bent—he hardly looked the part. Tax enforcer land knucklebreaker was more like it. The last member of this Igroup was named Zarex Red, a gigantic individual with mus-Ides bulging everywhere and a costume that looked like some-thing out of a viz-screen movie. He was approaching his 150th year, Bonz estimated, and was known both for running weap-ons and discovering new or lost star systems out on the Fringe. He always traveled in the company of a huge robot.
Who were these people? They were as strange a collection of space rogues as Bonz had ever encountered, and most not so short on the tooth. Yet the SF3 believed this unlikely group was responsible for the mysterious invasion of the Two Arm and an equally mysterious disappearing act soon afterward. And because the people of the Empire were obsessed with putting a name on everything, a habit that was not discouraged inside the intelligence services, they had been christened by SF3 as The Hunter-Calandrx Gang, for their two most famous members.
In addition to his primary mission to the No-Fly Zone, Bonz was also supposed to look for this gang—or, more accurately, look for signs of them. Life clues, DNA debris, those sorts of things, anything that could place them at the scene of the crime, so to speak. He would also be searching for any clues to Princess Xara's whereabouts, and those of the Imperial Jan-itor, Vanex, though Bonz couldn't imagine them all being in the same place. No matter; it was all fine with him. Among his many undercover talents, he was also very adept at tracking down fugitives.
If it was his job to find them,