Battle Pod

-1-

Marten Kluge sat in the pilot’s chair of the Mayflower. He had renamed the shuttle after a mythical ship of freedom seekers. His mother had told him the story many times. The ancient Pilgrims had left the tyranny of one land, seeking a new country where they could breathe the air and practice their beliefs as their consciences dictated.

Marten considered himself a new Pilgrim in a Solar System seething with tyrants. Social Unity had slain his mother and father. It had forced him to flee to Earth. Then Social Unity had stolen Molly and Ah Chen from him. Day and night, hall leaders, the holoset, the sheep-like philosophies spouted during the hum-a-longs had all tried to grind him down. Social Unity had tried to turn him into a cog to fit into the machine of State. Major Orlov had sent him to the slime pits and later the punishment tube. Every aspect had been calculated to break his spirit and his will.

Marten had refused. He would always refuse. He had learned about freedom and truth from his parents. His mother and father had trumped the State. His first allegiance was to God and to his conscience, then to his family and friends, and lastly to the State.

Marten grinned as he stared at the stars. He had beaten Hall Leader Quirn. He had beaten Major Orlov. He had slain mad Colonel Sigmir, the Highborn who had made his life hell during the Japan Campaign. Now he had beaten Training Master Lycon and owned a spaceship, the Mayflower.

It was a small spaceship, a shuttle. But it was a spaceship just the same. It gave him liberty and freedom of movement. If he calculated it right, if he used his wits at Mars, he could reach the Jupiter Confederation yet. He could escape the Social Unity fanatics and the bigoted Highborn Supremacists.

A klaxon wailed. It shattered the quiet peace that Marten had known for weeks. He whirled around and blinked five times before he realized the significance of the noise.

“Omi!” he shouted.

Marten fumbled at his buckles. He took a deep breath and told himself to calm down. With greater concentration, he unsnapped the last buckle and pushed himself toward the hatch. He floated through the Mayflower to the medical unit.

Omi looked up through the clear cylinder.

Marten grinned like a maniac. With practiced speed, he opened the cylinder and slid Omi out.

“Take it easy,” Marten said.

Omi frowned and opened his mouth, but no words came out. He was dreadfully thin compared to the muscled shock trooper he had been eight weeks ago.

Daily, Marten had slid the unconscious Korean from the cylinder and massaged his muscles with a specially designed machine. The machine had worked on similar principles as their acceleration suits aboard the Storm Assault Missiles. It had massaged and moved the muscles so they wouldn’t deteriorate too much, wouldn’t atrophy altogether.

“Where are we?” Omi finally whispered.

“You’re aboard my spaceship,” Marten said proudly.

Omi’s frown deepened. With methodical slowness, he turned his head, looking around.

“Where…” Omi wet his lips. “Where are the Highborn?” His voice was hoarse and hard to understand.

“Let’s get you set up first,” Marten said.

Marten found him clothes, a one-piece jumper. He let Omi sip concentrates and had him float throughout the shuttle with him.

“We’re alone,” Omi said at last.

Nodding, Marten laughed.

“I don’t understand,” Omi said.

Marten pointed at the heavily polarized window in the pilot compartment. “Training Master Lycon is floating with the stars.”

Omi’s eyes narrowed.

With barely restrained glee, Marten told Omi how he’d spaced the three Highborn. A part of Marten scolded himself for his enthusiasm. He had killed three humans in cold blood. It was true the Highborn had treated him like an animal. They had caused the death of all his friends. Yet there was something too bloodthirsty about taking such inordinate joy in having spaced three of the Master Race.

Omi stared at him, with that cold, hard smile playing along his lips. “I would like to have seen them die.” Then Omi closed his eyes and fell asleep.

-2-

Commodore Joseph Blackstone’s body ached most of the time from radiation poisoning. He sat before his vidscreen in his tiny wardroom aboard the Vladimir Lenin. It was a Zhukov-class battleship in far-Mars orbit.

The Vladimir Lenin had taken hits from a Doom Star. The super-ship had previously been orbiting Mars. They had finally repaired the engine damage and stopped the radiation leakage, but his crew and he had been weakened by the ordeal. Now, everyone took anti-radiation tablets and tissue regeneration drugs.

Commodore Blackstone was a short man, noted for his decathlon victories in his younger years. Once, he had been vigorous, a dynamo of energy and self-confidence. Unfortunately, he had seen better days. He had seen better years. The war, the extended voyage and the grim encounter with the Doom Star had caught him at the worst possible moment in his life.

He had dearly loved his wife, had always looked forward to their time together during his shore leave. Then his wife had sent him a divorce decree through official channels. He’d discovered that she’d had a string of lovers for years. Worst of all, she had kept a careful dossier on his sarcastic comments regarding Political Harmony Corps and the Directorate of Inner Planets. Learning those things had been horrible enough. The fourth blow had arrived a month before the beginning of the Highborn Rebellion. His only daughter had been horribly mutilated in a flyer accident on Venus. For some inexplicable reason, she hadn’t taken to regeneration therapy. He desperately wanted to see her, to hold and comfort her as he had when she’d been a little girl after her hoverpad accident that had chipped her two front teeth.

His once smooth features had become slack as he lost weight. He had bags under his eyes and too often forgot to shave. He was listless and thin, never smiled, and lived far too much in his memories of happier days.

Blackstone doubted that Supreme Commander Hawthorne was aware of any of his personal problems. Hawthorne had been an old friend from Academy days. Blackstone suspected that he knew nothing of the attributes of the political officer assigned to the Vladimir Lenin. Because of his ex-wife’s files, the political officer had boarded the battleship with a company of PHC enforcers and with extra-military authority. She was a three-star commissar, a daunting woman with a bruising personality and heavy-handed attention to protocol.

Commodore Blackstone lifted a shaking hand and turned on the vidscreen. The Vladimir Lenin had a task to perform. He’d never failed before. He studied the Supreme Commander’s operational plan for the reduction of the Rebel Mars Planetary Union orbital defenses.

“Destroy Doom Stars,” Commodore Blackstone whispered later. He was supposed to take Mars in order to lure Doom Stars here. The ache in his bones told of the danger of attempting any engagement with the super-ships.

Blackstone tapped at his desk screen. A simulation of the Mars System appeared. Mars’ average distance from the Sun was 1.52 AU. (An AU was an Astronomical Unit, the average distance of the Earth from the Sun.) The Earth and Mars were on the same side of the Sun presently, so it should have been a short journey for the convoy fleet. The closest the Earth ever came to Mars was 56 million kilometers. Now, however, Mars was nearing its farthest orbital distance from the Sun. It was also 100 million kilometers from Earth and made the convoy fleet’s journey nearly twice as long.

Commodore Blackstone rubbed his bristly chin. He needed a shave. He had forgotten that daily ritual for two mornings now.

He began to read the bulletins and study spaceship velocities. He read deceleration schedules and reports concerning the structure and position of the battle pods these cyborgs from the Neptune System came in. Blackstone had seen bionic soldiers before and assumed the cyborgs must have advanced prosthetics. How the cyborgs could benefit the coming assault, he had little idea. Hawthorne’s plans for them were patently absurd.

The scattered units gathered here in far-Mars orbit simply couldn’t do what the Supreme Commander fantasized they could do. Blackstone had toured a missile-ship yesterday that had escaped the Venus System. He had been appalled at the sloppy uniforms, the lackluster salutes and the depleted ship’s supplies. If the other warships were in similar shape, he doubted there would be enough firepower left in his growing fleet to give the Highborn much worry.

How was a commander supposed to gather a dispirited fleet in the far orbit of any planet? Then he was supposed to re-supply them, ship-to-ship, without any base facilities. Then he was supposed to effect repairs, erasing previous battle-damage.

James Hawthorne had always been far too prone to try risky endeavors. It meant that if his plans worked, they were brilliant. But if they failed, they were disasters. Who would be blamed for the disaster this time? Not Supreme Commander Hawthorne. No, it would be Blackstone, Hawthorne’s old comrade from the Academy days.

The thought brought a spark of anger to Commodore Blackstone. The spark showed in his eyes and replaced the sadness that usually dwelled there. It momentarily tightened the sagging flesh on his face.

A loud rap against the wardroom door startled Blackstone out of his anger. He flinched as he looked up. The rapping sound came again, and there was a muffled voice that demanded he unlock the door immediately.

The Commodore was hardly aware that he had locked it. He realized belatedly that the Commissar had ordered every door aboard the Vladimir Lenin remain unlocked. Comrade soldiers of Social Unity had nothing to hide from each other. Locked doors implied privacy and that hinted at property and capitalist possessions.

“Enter,” Blackstone said.

The door automatically unlocked itself and swished open. Three-Star Commissar Kursk strode in. She was a fierce woman in an overly tight, brown uniform. She had severe Slavic features that would have appealed to those who lusted after a latex-fetish dominatrix. She wore her cap so the brim was low over her eyes. Those eyes were black, intense and demanding. Surprisingly, she had a flat chest. The rest of her was lean, with just enough curvature to her hips so men turned to watch her walk away. She wore her Order of Solidarity Badge, Second Class. It was big, shiny and pinned on her chest. She’d won it several years ago suppressing individualist mania among the space-welders of the Sun-Works Factory.

Behind her followed two enforcers in red PHC uniforms, natural sadists with agonizers clipped to their belts. Their long-fingered hands never strayed far from their stun guns. These two had strange stares.

Blackstone suspected their stares were from post-hypnotic commands and an over-indulgence of glaze. Blackstone had heard rumors that some Political Harmony Corps enforcers and slime pit operators developed strange psychosis after eliminating too many enemies of the State. Many of them turned to glaze, which helped for a time but eventually made most users paranoid.

“Your door was locked,” Commissar Kursk complained. There was a hint of the agonizer in her voice. It made Blackstone wince.

“Having you been taking your tablets?” Commissar Kursk asked.

The Commodore nodded his bald head.

“You are not above discipline.” Kursk unclipped a keypad and typed until a warning beep sounded. “I have added a mark to your profile. I am also duty-bound to inform you, that another three marks will result in a half-minute of agony.”

Blackstone blinked at her. Could she be so rash? With Supreme Commander Hawthorne’s rise to power, the authority of the political officers had dwindled. It was true that Commissar Kursk commanded an abnormal number of enforcers. She also had a formidable personality. But to use an agonizer on him as the commanding officer of the assault….

Blackstone opened his mouth to protest.

Commissar Kursk planted herself before his desk, putting her hands on her hips. “Forget about that for now. I have something more important to discuss. I have toured three of the newest warships and have spoken with their political officers. What I found amazed me. I know you’ve also toured two vessels. Surely, you have seen the same thing.”

“Everyone needs shore leave,” Blackstone said.

Kursk scowled. “Social Unity is fighting for its life! Shore leave is the least of anyone’s concern. This fleet represents one of the most potent forces left to us. Yet what do I find? There is a sullen quality to shipboard ideological fervor. For too many months now, these warships have sulked like isolationists in dark corners. Instead of yearning to come to grips with our bigoted enemies, they plot how to survive what they see as a catastrophe.”

“The Highborn aren’t a catastrophe?” Blackstone asked.

“Your tone is defeatist. I’m tempted to add another mark against your profile. You are the chief officer of this endeavor. You must exude confidence in order to pour it into your underlings. They in turn must motivate the crews with fierce ideological certainty of our coming victory. Anti-cooperative supremacists cannot defeat a socially aware humanity. I demand that you hold immediate court-martial proceedings and weed out the defeatists. You must stiffen everyone’s spine, Commodore.”

“Yes,” Blackstone said listlessly.

Commissar Kursk’s features turned glacial. “I have been timing the extended periods that you spend alone in here. Your personal misfortunes can no longer be allowed to interfere with your responsibility to Social Unity. The Directorate of Inner Planets has thought fit to use your martial abilities for the betterment of humanity. I recognize that human frailty sometimes worms into our responsibilities. At this critical juncture, however, I will not allow that to happen to you. Commodore Blackstone, the Directorate sent me to instill socially responsible behavior into you. I would be derelict in my duty if I failed to prod you to maximum efficiency in this grave hour.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Blackstone said, “I have been studying the attack plan.” He turned the vidscreen to show her the orbital positions of moons and satellites.

Kursk scowled. “You surprise me, Commodore. You molder in here like an isolationist, thinking that some revelation will elevate you above the rest of us and give you military insights. You should be with your staff, debating ideas and formulas and obtaining a group consensus.”

“No doubt you’re right,” Blackstone mumbled.

Commissar Kursk made an explosive sound as she blew out her cheeks. She leaned toward him, putting her hands on his desk. Her black fingernail polish seemed to suck the light from the room like mini-black holes.

“What is wrong with you? The cyborg battle pods are near, the supply convoy is less than four weeks away and twelve major warships have matched orbital velocity with the Vladimir Lenin. You should have visited each ship, counted supplies and demoted the inefficient. Your malaise is close to criminal sentimentality.”

A flicker of annoyance entered the Commodore’s sad eyes. He sat up, jerked once on his uniform to straighten it and almost lurched to his feet. “You overstep your bounds, Commissar.”

“I’ll trample well outside my bounds to save Social Unity,” she said. “My allegiance is to humanity’s future greatness. That can only be achieved through realizing the perfection of equality, the core of the human spirit.”

She unclipped her keypad and began to type. “You will join the scheduled hum-a-long at 1400 hours and tomorrow at 2600 hours.”

Commodore Blackstone frowned, and he opened his mouth to protest.

“Your malaise increases in direct proportion to your time spent in isolation,” she said. “You must mingle with the soldiers and derive your solace from unity. That will charge you with renewed zeal for victory. I am adamant on this and I will brook no disobedience. Have I made myself clear?”

Blackstone barely nodded.

“I demand an audible affirmation.”

“This is really too much,” he said.

“Commodore, it will pain me to apply it, but I will order my enforcers to use the agonizer on you. You are not alone, either in your pain or in exclusion from punishment. I am your conscience, and I refuse to fail in my duty to you and to Social Unity.”

“Very well,” Blackstone said. “I will join the hum-a-longs.”

“Excellent!” Kursk turned to go, but paused and looked back. “I think you shall be surprised at the hum-a-longs’ efficiency in soothing your pains.”

“No doubt true,” he muttered.

Commissar Kursk snapped her fingers and pointed at one of the enforcers. “See that the Commodore remains here no longer than another twenty minutes. Then call me and we shall implement the punishment.”

Commissar Kursk thereupon marched out of the wardroom in the company of her second enforcer. Despite her severity, Blackstone watched her hips sway and knew a stab of longing. He would like to run his hands over her butt, and give it a good squeeze. As the door swished shut, the second enforcer moved around the desk so he stood behind the Commodore and could see what he looked at on the vidscreen.

If Commissar Kursk had planned to irritate the Commodore until he exited his wardroom, she was successful. Blackstone remained in his wardroom only long enough to turn off the vidscreen. Without acknowledging the enforcer’s presence, he left to go to his sleep cubicle and shave.

-3-

Transcript #17 of SU Directorate-Mars Planetary Union talks: an exchange of messages between Director Danzig representing Inner Planets and Secretary-General Chavez representing the Martian Rebels. Dates: February 7 to February 11, 2351.

Note: the messages were exchanged via the Larson-Rodriguez Lightguide System, with an approximately five and half minute time lag between the sending and receiving of the priority messages.

February 7

From Secretary-General Chavez:

Our core memories store pleasant and unpleasant data with equal facility. We have therefore not forgotten Social Unity’s trickery prior to the 2339 Sneak Attack. Then as now, Mars had to be ever vigilant to maintain its freedom from the tyranny of Social Unity. We were foolish enough to believe the Directorate’s stated policy of joint peace between our sovereign entities then and sent our representatives to Earth. After twelve years, their flesh still rots in the slime pits of your injustice and insincerity. I ask the director to forgive me my passion, but such savagery and double-dealing is difficult to expunge from our collective hearts.

It will thus surely not surprise you to realize our qualms concerning the continued rendezvous of SU warships in far-Mars orbit. The numbers exceed reason and we can only conclude that after twelve years Social Unity plans another assault against our native planet.

February 7

From Director Danzig:

Need I remind the honored Secretary-General of the true historical record? More than thirteen years ago, the mass Martian assaults against SU Peacekeeping personnel brought a wave of terror and butchery to thousands of innocent people. The notorious 2334 assassinations of SU fleet personnel in Martian jurisdiction left a scar that still poisons relations between us. Now the recent Martian wave of planetary terror-attacks on SU space-defense facilities has left us shocked at your perfidy. Worse, your joint tactical campaign with the Highborn supremacists has deeply wounded our belief that you possess any social consciousness worthy of the name.

The SU fleet units in far-Mars orbit are entirely peaceful in intention and defensive in orientation. We have agreed to the Secession Accords and have sent an emergency convoy fleet to begin evacuation of SU personnel that you presently hold captive.

We demand, however, as a sign of your good faith, that you immediately halt your ground assaults on the North Polar Region. Further, we demand that you cease space-borne laser attacks on the Valles Marineris Canyon.

May I also point out that what you call excessive numbers of fleet units in far-Mars orbit is simply an example of our caution. We have come to appreciate when dealing with Mars the need for an appeal to strength. Therefore, we have concentrated our fleet units to assure a peaceful exchange of prisoners as per the Secession Accords and to assure the safety of our emergency convoy fleet.

February 8

From Secretary-General Chavez:

The hard acceleration of your so-called emergency convoy fleet has led our military analysts to conclude it is an attack fleet meant to augment the continued gathering of your spaceships in far-Mars orbit.

I will refrain from further recrimination concerning past Social Unity lies, misinformation, intimidation tactics, murder sprees and mass repression of human dignity. However, I cannot help but inform you that the manufactured outrage of the oppressor at finally feeling the sting of retribution from the oppressed left me nauseated. The inhumanly oppressed are justified using any means necessary to tear off the cruel yoke of tyranny. What cannot be tolerated is the breakage of inter-planetary protocols painfully hammered out through the centuries. To wit: when two sovereign entities engage in political discourse, honesty is an assumed prerequisite. Past Social Unity dishonesty toward the original Martian Planetary Union has led to our present suspicion.

We shall warm the primary lasers on Phobos and Deimos for instant beaming. However, as per your request, we shall turn the orbital platforms away from the Valles Marineris Canyon—from which Social Unity launches daily air raids—and toward your far- orbital gathering.

Mars shall meet any further additions to the gathered far-orbital fleet with missile and laser attacks.

February 8

From Director Danzig:

Any attacks on SU space vessels will result in an immediate repudiation of the Secession Accords!

Think well on what this would mean, Secretary-General. Mars and Inner Planets would engage in needless war while the Highborn supremacists solidify a repressive regime based on a master-slave relationship. We would both weaken ourselves in a time of planetary and solar-wide crisis. In a year, two years or even three, the genetic bigots might well sweep aside whatever remnants Mars retains in space defense capabilities and conquer your union.

I realize the Martian Rebels believe they have many outstanding grievances against Social Unity. The lack of high social consciousness among the citizens of the Red Planet has long been noted. Now isn’t the time to address such a failing in you or such a failing you think to perceive in us. I have studied the situation and have begun to wonder if in the past Political Harmony Corps failed the citizens of Mars by applying insufficient rigor.

What I wish to point out, Mr. Secretary-General, is that the Directorate of Inner Planets never pre-sanctioned the harsh Highborn retaliation during the Second Battle of Far-Mars orbit in 2339. Why is that important now in 2351? Because twelve years ago the Highborn slaughtered Martian personnel in that regrettable incident. What the genetic supremacists did once, they will likely attempt again.

Let me reiterate. Any attack on SU space vessels will result in an immediate repudiation of the Secession Accords. To show our good will, the Directorate has issued an immediate halt to the air assaults from the Valles Marineris Canyon. We ask in return that you halt the North Polar Region attacks.

February 9

From Secretary-General Chavez:

We are not the Martian Rebels, but the sovereign Mars Planetary Union.

We have noted that no new SU air assaults have originated from the Valles Marineris Canyon. Thus, we have halted the North Polar Region attacks.

I wish to point out, however, that our orbital defenses are on high alert. Any movement toward the planet from the spaceships in far-Mars orbit will be met with fierce resolve.

Your comments concerning the Highborn have been noted. We also note that Social Unity geneticists engineered the Highborn. And we note that Highborn atrocities in 2339 were committed while they wore Social Unity uniforms, as they fought under your control.

We demand full planetary sovereignty and an exit of all military, space-capable vessels from the Martian System. The continued Social Unity military presence on the planet can only result in the eventual resumption of hostilities in space.

If the gathered war vessels in far-Mars orbit are not directed against us, what is their military objective? How does the Directorate suggest we end all hostilities so both sovereign governments can plan against future Highborn aggression?

February 10

From Director Danzig:

After an emergency meeting with the full Directorate, I am authorized to offer a fully accredited envoy to Mars to discuss peace talks and possible defensive treaties.

February 11

From Secretary-General Chavez:

We welcome an accredited envoy and wish to guarantee his or her safety. However, as unpleasant as this may sound, I must reiterate the Mars Planetary Union warning. Any SU military vessel that enters near-Mars orbit will be targeted and destroyed.

As much as we agree that ultimate Highborn objectives remain unknown, we also acknowledge past Social Unity actions and must react accordingly.

I hope this clarifies our position.

February 11

From Director Danzig:

As the spokesman for the Directorate of Inner Planets, I applaud the Martian Planetary Union’s good sense. Our convoy fleet shall join the gathered military vessels and thus stay out of near-Mars orbit. All prisoner exchanges shall occur by shuttle.

On all accounts, we must refrain from mutual destruction while the genetic supremacists expand their master-slave regime.

-4-

General-Secretary Chavez smoked a stimstick as he listened to the last lightguide message in his office deep underground Olympus Mons. The bite of the smoke felt good in the back of his throat, comforting and steadying him. Chavez was a thin man with a long head and delicate fingers. He had a goatee and wavy dark hair that surrounded a worn face.

The Social Unity bosses on Mars had been ruthless. The Martian Unionists had been cleverer and had lived in hiding and through secrecy for many years before the present Martian self-liberation.

Chavez replayed the last message, studying Director Danzig the entire time, as if he could probe the director’s thoughts.

“He’s lying,” Chavez told his secretary. The secretary was an even thinner man with gaunt cheeks. He wore a dark tunic and held a computer stylus and a blue slate on his lap.

Chavez clicked off the vidscreen. With a trembling hand, he put the stimstick between his lips and puffed. Red smoke trickled from the glowing end. The smell of the stimulant permeated the room, a sweet odor.

“They’re buying time until the convoy reaches their military vessels.” Chavez dragged deeply on the stimstick before mashing it out in an overflowing ashtray. Then like some delicate dragon, he blew red smoke out of his nostrils. “If only the Highborn had left us warships. Our orbital defenses can’t match the SU fleet, not in our present state of disrepair.”

Chavez’s fingers brushed his goatee as he stared at some unseen point. “Take this down: The technicians have two months. Then the proton beam must be ready.”

General-Secretary Chavez referred to the proton beam installation on Olympus Mons. It had been badly damaged during the recent Mars Rebel liberation and had been taken offline. Technicians worked day and night attempting repairs. Whether it would be ready in two months was highly questionable.

“At least they stopped their air attacks out of the Valles Marineris Canyon,” Chavez said. “So we can begin to use the Harrington Launch Sites. Take that down. We must ferry more missiles and repair each laser focusing system in turn on the orbital stations. Social Unity will try to swamp us. We have to make it too costly for them. We have two months at the most. I fear, however, it will be less than four weeks. It’s simply not enough time.”

Chavez opened a drawer and shook another stimstick out of a half-crumpled pack. He put it between his lips and inhaled it into life. “Are you ready for more?”

The secretary nodded.

Chavez continued dictating, “To the Shop Steward of the Phobos Local, I send these emergency instructions…”

As he swam laps in an indoor pool in New Baghdad, Supreme Commander James Hawthorne listened to Director Danzig. Captain Mune stood farther off near the diving board.

Hawthorne swam strongly and despite his lankiness, with grace. Director Danzig walked along the side of the pool, reiterating his conversations with Secretary-General Chavez.

“I doubt we convinced him,” Hawthorne said as he flipped onto his back, doing a long-limbed backstroke. A small amount of chlorine-tasting water trickled into his mouth.

“They’re trying to buy time,” Danzig said.

“Obviously, and so are we. The question for us is: what do they need the time for? …have we intercepted any Rebel messages to the Highborn?”

“Just that the Rebels have appealed to them, not the nature of the queries.”

Hawthorne stopped and stood up in the pool so water sloshed around his waist. There was too much chlorine in it. The harsh odor stung his nostrils. He’d have to have a word with the manager. The man must know that he took a swim at this time everyday.

“The important thing is they’re not molesting our individual warships as they decelerate and match orbital speeds with Blackstone,” Hawthorne said. “It must mean Martian orbital defenses are weaker than we suspected. That’s both good and bad.”

“General?” Director Danzig asked.

“It’s a phony peace as we both prepare for war.” Hawthorne laughed. “We caught them flat-footed with the convoy fleet. That must be the truth of it. They didn’t expect us to appear at the Mars System so soon. Yes, they must be using the time for emergency repairs and re-supply. Let’s just hope the Highborn are as surprised.”

“Do you really think they are?”

Hawthorne examined the middle-aged director. The air was humid and Danzig’s suit was damp. The director looked tired. The man probably needed to exercise more. Hm. The Highborn had a plan. They always did. For a moment, Hawthorne had the chills as he wondered if the Highborn had already outthought him.

No. Such thinking was debilitating. He had to believe it was possible to outwit the super-soldiers.

“Of course the Highborn are surprised,” Hawthorne said. “The savagery of their space-borne attacks these last weeks on Eurasia prove it, as does their storming of half the habitats. We’ve enraged them, and that’s the best sign there is that we’ve gained a step on them.”

Director Danzig grinned. “That’s good to hear, sir. We need this victory.”

“We do at that,” Hawthorne said, and he began to wade toward the steps. The chlorine bothered his eyes. He was going to find the manager and have a word with him.

-5-

The long weeks passed in worry and hard deceleration for the clone Lisa Aster. She was in the safest central cargo-ship of the Earth convoy fleet, the Alger Hiss. She thus had the highest probability of surviving the grueling journey. The oppressive G-forces caused by the deceleration stopped. During the half-hour intervals of weightlessness, Lisa could float to the facilities, eat and flex her limbs without the bone-crushing pressure. She complained to stout General Fromm, Mars Supplies, with whom she shared the acceleration/deceleration area.

The general sat on his couch eating salted herring, a delicacy he ate regularly. It left a horrible fishy odor in the module. In the interest of politeness, Lisa kept her intense dislike of the smell to herself. However, she floated near the ceiling, as far away from the offensive odor as she could go.

“This trip has nothing to do with our sensibilities,” said General Fromm. Despite the relish with which he ate his herring, he had been losing weight. He’d become increasingly pale and somber. “The trip has everything to do with speed. We have accelerated and now decelerate near the acceptable limits of human endurance. Battlefleet Mars desperately needs these supplies.”

“The journey is killing us,” Lisa said.

“…yes,” General Fromm said after he’d torn off another length of dried herring with his teeth. He chewed thoroughly and swallowed. “…but eighty-five percent of us should survive. You’re healthy and young, so you should recover quickly from any debilitating effects.”

“Killing ourselves is foolish,” Lisa said.

General Fromm checked his chronometer. “Five minutes to continued deceleration. You’d better strap yourself in.” He slid the remaining herring into a container, sealing it. Then he lay back on the couching, strapping himself in and settling down for another six hours of pain and torment.

Lisa continued to float near the ceiling and waved her hand before her nose as the general occupied himself with his straps.

“We’re not killing ourselves to set speed records,” Fromm said, finally looking up. “We’re trying to outwit the Highborn. Our window of opportunity to defeat the Mars Rebels and reorganize the orbital defenses in time to face and destroy Doom Stars is narrow indeed. Our supplies are critical to the refitting of our united fleet.” He checked his chronometer again. “You really should strap-in.”

Lisa grinned tightly. General Fromm meant well. He was a brooder and a deep-thinker. He never took risks if he could help it, but carefully thought out the best way to do everything. She hated lying on the couch and she was unbelievably bored. Timing her landing on the couch and strapping-in to the exact second of the re-igniting thrusters had become one of her sole games. Having a brooder to scold her only made the game more enjoyable.

“Ms. Aster,” the general said, “your risk of debilitating injury far outweighs any juvenile pleasure you might gain in waiting so long. You must strap yourself in now.”

At least the general had learned not to try to order her. She was the Blanche-Aster now, even if she was the only one to acknowledge it. Despite the handicap of being a clone, she would climb the ranks of Social Unity into the rarified heights of leadership.

“Thirty seconds to deceleration,” General Fromm said testily.

Lisa grinned at him, and she shuddered at the idea of another six hours of labored breathing and straining just to scratch her nose. Her face itched abominably during deceleration. What made it even worse was that she would have liked to study the files on the cyborgs and study the Supreme Commander’s attack plan. She had tried quizzing the general, but extended conversations soon become too tiring under the high Gs pressing against their bodies.

“Ten seconds,” General Fromm said.

Lisa yawned as if bored.

“Ms. Aster, this is absurd. I demand you strap-in now.”

“I didn’t hear you say please.”

“Seven seconds,” he said. “Please, hurry.”

“Very well,” she said. Now her pulse pounded. Now it was almost too late. If she pushed off wrong and missed her acceleration couch, she could break bones. If a rib punctured a lung, she would quickly bleed to death.

Lisa smoothly shoved off the ceiling, sailed to her couch and hit so she grunted. She spun around fast and made the fabric squeak. She barely managed to settle into position. Then the mighty thrusters switched on. A horrible, grinding weight slammed against her, shoving her down into the padding of the acceleration couch. It was a straining effort to bring the straps across her body. Buckling them left her wheezing at the exertion.

“Was—that—worth—it?” General Fromm wheezed.

Lisa tried to make herself more comfortable. Someday, she was going to kill cyborgs. Originally, her motives were vengeful, as the cyborgs had engineered her mother’s death. Now it was for this brutal journey. Lisa closed her eyes, already longing for the next half-hour of weightlessness.

As Lisa Aster and the convoy fleet decelerated into far-Mars orbit, the many months journey aboard the Mayflower were ending for Marten Kluge and Omi.

They decelerated, but at a fraction of the convoy fleet’s rate. They had been traveling at a much slower speed.

Omi had given Marten a haircut. Marten’s hair was short and his manner was alert. He felt as he had during his best times as a shock trooper. Marten’s muscles were hard again and his stamina had built back up from endless exercises on the machines.

Omi had gained weight and he was no longer so dreadfully thin. He hadn’t regained his original muscle-mass, but this last week had seen him hit the machines much more vigorously than before. Unfortunately, it had become stale throughout the shuttle. To conserve water, they had long ago stopped taking showers. Before leaving the shuttle, they would each shower thoroughly. Until such time, each endured the other.

The Mayflower was a shuttle, hardly big enough for extended flights between the inner planets. To the distant outer planets, it would have almost been impossible.

The shuttle lacked a warship’s detection equipment and the accompanying squads of trained personnel using such equipment around the clock. Still, the Mayflower possessed limited radar gear and limited teleoptics. Using the teleoptics, Marten easily discovered the hard-decelerating convoy fleet. The constant burn and plethora of fusion engines created a discernable image against the cold backdrop of space. The number and size of the war-vessels impressed Marten.

It was more difficult for Marten to spot the growing Social Unity Battlefleet. Those warships possessed greater ECM, Electronic Counter Measures, than his relatively tiny spaceship. A few were stealth ships with low signature hulls. Most, however, had large particle shields, the largest of those were 600-meter thick slabs of asteroid-rock. The reason Marten failed to detect them was simple. They were hidden behind Mars. The majority of the Battlefleet had already assembled in far-Mars orbit. Marten therefore spotted the few remaining warships that decelerated to help Mars’ gravitational field catch them.

With the convoy fleet a mere two weeks out of Mars orbit, and with the sightings of major Social Unity war-vessels, Marten knew they were in serious trouble. He had worried about it for some time. The worst part was he lacked fuel to do anything else other than continue the deceleration.

“Social Unity is going to retake Mars,” Omi said after Marten told him about the situation.

“They’re certainly going to try,” Marten said. “Yet we’ve both served under the Highborn. They gave Mars to the Rebels.”

“The Martian Planetary Union?” asked Omi.

“That’s what the Rebels call themselves,” Marten said, nodding. “I doubt the Highborn gave the Rebels Mars if the Highborn thought the Rebels were going to lose it right away. It’s not reasonable to think the Highborn ran from Mars out of fear. So that leads me to the conclusion that the Highborn gave the Rebels enough war supplies to fight off any Social Unity attacks.”

“If we see those warships,” Omi said, “those warships must see us.”

Marten tapped a red light on the lower part of the vidscreen. “Correct. This means radar is bouncing off us.”

“From where?” Omi asked.

Marten fiddled with the controls. “From that approaching fleet there,” he said, pointing out the blaze that signified the convoy fleet. “And from that warship there.”

“Why doesn’t the warship call us?” Omi asked.

Marten shrugged.

“Why don’t they launch a missile and blow us up?” Omi asked.

“They might already have launched a missile.”

“The radar doesn’t show that,” Omi said.

“Sometimes warships release a drone, leaving it behind like a mine. If we see a sudden bloom of engine-burn, we’ll know we’re in trouble. But the more likely explanation is that we’re a shuttle, so we’re nothing to them. Besides, maybe they believe that our radio is out. If they’re worried enough, they’ll try to capture us later once we’re in near orbit.”

“Let’s head out to Jupiter,” Omi suggested.

Marten stared at the vidscreen, at the controls. He wished his ship were sized for men, not for Highborn. If he could move the pilot’s chair closer and raise it a little higher, that would be great.

Jupiter System, Marten nodded. Going there had been one of his thoughts, too. They had enough fuel to change headings but hardly enough to increase their velocity to anything like the needed speed. That meant a trip to Jupiter would take several more years than it would have if he’d started for there originally. Marten had little desire to spend six years in this cramped shuttle alone with Omi.

“We need to refuel first,” Marten said.

“What do we use for currency?”

“Passage out of the war.”

Omi nodded. “How many people do you think you can pack into our shuttle?”

“A few rich ones would be best,” Marten said, “although I wish we could take more.”

“How do we keep Social Unity from firing on our shuttle? A single missile kills us. So all they have to do is tell us to stop or we’re dead.”

“Ideally, we need to modify the shuttle, attaching anti-missile pods.”

“We lack currency,” Omi said.

“I call that: Problem number one.”

“Would the Rebels be willing to part with war supplies?”

“That’s problem number two,” Marten said.

Omi stared out of the polarized window. “Does the shuttle have reflectors to bounce laser-fire?”

“Reflectors would make us easier to spot, and reflectors won’t bounce a military laser. But the short answer is no, our shuttle lacks reflectors. That would be our next purchase, a warfare pod filled with prismatic crystals.”

“What else do we need?” Omi asked.

“Luck,” Marten said.

The radio crackled, which startled Omi. Marten adjusted the controls, but there was too much static for the speakers. So he put on headphones and listened carefully.

“Mars defense is calling,” he soon told Omi. “They’re asking us to identify ourselves. I’d tell them, but then the SU ship might fire a missile as you’ve been suggesting.”

Marten tapped at the console as he studied the vidscreen and studied the satellites and habitats in near-Mars orbit. “It would be a shame to have escaped the Highborn only to have the Martian Rebels kill us.”

“Can you send them a tight-beam message?”

Instead of answering, Marten slapped a switch. The engines cut out, bringing weightlessness to the Mayflower.

“We’re going to drift in faster and decelerate harder nearer the planet,” Marten explained. “We’ll have to take to the couches for that. Hopefully, that will make whoever is scanning and calling us think we’re damaged. That seems like the best way to buy us an arrival without any missiles.”

“Will Social Unity warships be in range by that time?” Omi asked.

Marten studied the headings. “Frankly, I’m surprised the SU warships and Rebel moons aren’t trading missiles or laser fire.”

“Do you know why not?”

“It must have something to do with this being a three-way situation. It’s not just the Rebels verses Social Unity. The Highborn change everything. Why fight if you don’t have to?”

“You said before that the Highborn helped the Rebels.”

“They did,” Marten said, “but that doesn’t make them friends.”

“It should make them allies.”

“Temporary allies,” Marten said. “The Rebels aren’t fools, and they probably have long memories. The Highborn crushed the Martian Rebels and the Jupiter Confederation Fleet back in 2339.”

“Maybe if we’re lucky, we can slip in and slip out before the shooting starts.”

Marten grinned. “Now you’re talking.” He pushed out of the pilot’s chair.

“Where are you headed?”

“All this thinking is making me edgy. I’m going to do some rowing. See you in an hour.”

Omi nodded and then continued to stare out of the heavily polarized window.

-6-

The cyborg battle pods traveled silently through the stellar void. Each pod had begun its journey almost a year ago at the Neptune System. Neptune was 30 times the distance from the Sun as Earth or about 4,486,100,000 kilometers away. It took sunlight traveling 300,000 kilometers per second four hours and fifteen minutes to reach Neptune.

The pods had long ago accelerated and now decelerated much harder than anything a human could have survived. Each was an ultra-stealth pod, with a ceramic hull that gave the lowest sensor signature of any vessel in human space. Each pod was also crammed with the latest Onoshi ECM equipment and decoys.

All the pods were as black as night and spherical. Within all the pods but one lay a cyborg platoon in cryogenic stillness. The cyborg known as OD12 was in pod B3.

The designation OD12 referred to her lost humanity and machine code number. OD had once been Osadar Di, the female pilot with the perennial bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As the battle pods decelerated, an electrical impulse surged through OD12’s frozen body. At the same time, cryogenic heaters began the painful defrosting of the cyborg cargo.

OD12 awakened, but her mental facilities were kept offline. Instead, she was hooked into the Web-Mind. There, Osadar Di practiced a hundred combat evolutions. It was similar to a human playing intense hologames while wearing a virtual imaging suit. The difference was that her reflexes gained one hundred percent conditioning as if she physically participated in each action. These Web-Mind combat drops, bunker assaults, storm attacks and sniper targeting took place at an accelerated rate. She thus gained ‘years’ of practice.

There was a glitch, however, in six out of every one hundred simulations. The Web-Mind noted this malfunction in OD12. Accepted anomalies were one tenth of a percent, not six percent. Because of the extreme distance to the Master Web-Mind in the Neptune System, the Web-Mind in Toll Seven’s command pod initiated a phase two diagnostic.

In the simulator, OD12 bounded across a moon in the Saturn System. She wore a vacuum suit churning at full heat. She knelt in frozen ammonia, lifted her laser carbine and hesitated instead of firing the two-kilometer distance to pick off the retreating battleoids. OD12 glanced around her and then scooped a handful of the orange ammonia in her gloved hand.

The diagnostic program froze the image. Then it confronted OD12’s personality.

Why did you hesitate?

“The expanse of orange snow struck me as beautiful. I had to feel it.”

Explain beauty.

“The sight filled me with longing, with pleasant memories.”

Describe these memories.

“…I’d rather not.”

Computer.

Something in OD12 clicked into life. It was the computer inserted into her and connected with her brain.

Administer level three pain sensations.

In battle pod B3, OD12’s online cyborg body jerked as she opened her mouth and screamed metallically.

A Web-Mind code caused the pain to cease and OD12’s body was taken offline with the others.

Describe these memories.

“…why did you do that?”

In a nanosecond, the Web-Mind ran through a possibility of options, the primary of which was to delete OD12. It decided on option two instead, as the supply of cyborgs for this campaign was limited.

The Web-Mind resumed running OD12’s combat simulations until it came to another anomaly. This time, OD12 used a thruster pack as white particles of hydrogen spray propelled her toward a slowly rotating torus. Behind her followed the rest of the cyborgs in vacuum suits. They assaulted a Jupiter Confederation Habitat, with the vast gas giant beyond the torus.

OD12 twisted her head and looked back at the other suited cyborgs. Each used white particles of hydrogen spray. Each had breach bombs and rocket carbines. Each fixated on its targeted landing location. The only cyborg body movement was the occasional twitch of their fingers as they adjusted their flight paths to perfection. Only OD12 looked back. Only she saw the awesome spectacle of individual cyborgs ‘jetting’ through cold space to the human habitat.

The Web-Mind froze the scene. It caused OD12’s dark visor to turn clear. Within the helmet, the solid black, metallic-seeming eyes stared with infinite sadness as tears streamed down the plastic cheeks.

Why are you crying?

OD12 answered with a blunt profanity.

This time, the Web-Mind issued level seven pain sensations.

OD12 thrashed in the eerily dark battle pod. Beside her lay the perfectly motionless cyborgs, each mentally engaged in combat simulations. None of the other cyborgs had experienced more than one tenth of one percent anomalies.

Cyborgs do not cry. You were crying. Explain what caused emotions to override your programming.

“…I remembered how we tried to escape the alien.”

The answered confused the Web-Mind for two seconds. Then it understood OD12 meant Toll Seven.

“We wanted to live.”

You are alive.

“Live, not just breathe.”

Computer.

The computer in OD12 awaited further instructions.

You will monitor your host’s emotions. If category two emotions are employed, you will initiate immediate shutdown procedures and pulse me a report of the situation.

The computer logged the order in its command override logic core.

You must suppress these emotive anomalies, OD12, if you wish to continue functioning. Noncompliance will result in your termination.

“I want to function.”

Then proceed within the guidelines.

“Affirmative.”

The Web-Mind wasn’t certain. It thought it might have detected sarcasm. It was impossible, however, for a slaved cyborg to exhibit sarcasm at a deeper level than the emotion sensors could detect. So, it marked the observation and sent a lightguide message to the Master Web-Mind in the Neptune System. Then it proceeded to link with Toll Seven as they continued to refine the subterfuge plan of the conquest of Inner Planets.

-7-

In the Mayflower, Marten and Omi braked hard for Deimos, Mars’ smallest and most distant moon. The radio crackled with strident messages from the Planetary Union Space Force. The messages had been ongoing for the past five hours. Red Mars had grown before them until the planet dominated the heavily polarized window.

“We are now targeting your shuttle with Laser Port Seven,” the radio crackled. There was a ping-ping from the controls as it alerted them of a radar lock-on.

Marten licked his lips, scooted forward and reached up, pressing the comm button. “Mars Union, this is the free ship Mayflower requesting permission to dock.”

“Why haven’t you answered until now, Mayflower?”

“We’ve noticed the military situation and feared a missile attack from either you or Social Unity, depending on who we answered. So we waited until we were too close to you for Social Unity to fire without causing an incident.”

“…mayflower, your code registers as a Highborn vessel. Are you Highborn?”

“Negative, Mars Union. We are the free ship Mayflower.”

“Are you a Social Unity vessel, Mayflower?”

Marten glanced at Omi before he said, “Negative, we’re a free ship, requesting permission to dock, to buy fuel and then to be on our way.”

“What is your ultimate destination, Mayflower?”

Marten hesitated before he said, “The Jupiter Confederation.”

“…where did you originate, Mayflower?”

“We request permission to dock and speak with the commanding officer of the Deimos Moon Station,” Marten said.

The radio fell silent.

Omi said, “We should have told them we were Highborn and demanded the fuel.”

“It would never have worked.”

“Mayflower,” the radio crackled. “You have permission to dock. Follow these coordinates…”

Marten slowly eased the shuttle against a docking module and then shut off the fusion engine. He soon heard the clank from a docking tube attaching to the outer airlock.

“Now it gets tricky,” Marten said. “Do you remember what to do?”

Omi nodded and he slapped the sidearm attached to his belt.

Marten formerly shook hands with Omi before entering the airlock. The inner hatch swished shut behind him. Marten recalled the struggled he’d had with Training Master Lycon in this very airlock. He recalled the reflection of Lycon’s eyes as they bulged, and the disbelieving look as Lycon shot into space.

Eager to be out of the airlock, Marten squeezed through the outer hatch as it swished open. Because Deimos was smaller than many asteroids, it had a negligible mass. It was hardly different from weightlessness as Marten float-walked through the docking tube.

His skin tingled from his shower a half-hour ago. His clothes smelled clean and nervousness boiled in his gut. He was about to face the big question. Omi and he had escaped Social Unity and they had escaped the Highborn. Now he had to interact with people again, this time with the Martian Rebels. Would the Martians try to steal his shuttle? If so, he had to outwit the Deimos commander. Marten heaved a deep sigh. He had to keep his wits about him and he had to be ready to act decisively.

In all the Inner Planets, there was probably no one in his situation. Three governments struggled for existence. Everyone had to belong to one side or another. Now he and Omi were their own side, free agents who were much more common in the Outer Planets. He had to get fuel. He had to purchase warfare pods if he could. He had to keep the Mayflower out of the hands of desperate people.

Marten reached the hatch that led into the docking bay. The door open and Marten glided out of the tube to see three thin soldiers with drawn weapons aimed at his chest. The pitted gun-barrels pointed at him looked dark and deadly, but the soldiers holding them seemed too slender to be military men. The fourth person was a woman, an officer by her shoulder boards. She was as thin as the others.

“I’m sorry for the guns, Mr. Kluge. But you must give us your weapon and then come with us.”

Marten nodded curtly. He’d expected this. It’s why Omi had remained onboard. He’d expected this, but he’d hoped for something better. He had reentered the struggle for life.

“This way, Mr. Kluge,” the officer said.

A Martian Unionist with pinched features glared at Marten. The man was tall and slender, with a beak of a nose. He was also pale and had oiled his dark hair into ringlets. Marten judged the man to be in his mid-forties.

The female officer remained in the office. It overlooked a hanger stacked with metal boxes, a shuttle under repair and arc-welders flashing their blue glows as men fixed a multitude of articles. The office itself seemed more like a shed, with masses of equipment shoved into the corners and piled on top of each other. There was a vacuum pump, a magnetic lifter and a wrist communicator with a tiny, flashing red light lying on the desk.

The Chief Unionist at the desk stood behind a vidscreen. He hadn’t offered Marten a chair, but in this almost nonexistent gravity, it didn’t matter.

“I demand that you declare who you’re spying for,” the Unionist said. “I would assume Social Unity. But you have a Highborn shuttle. This leaves me wondering.”

“How can you tell it’s a Highborn shuttle?” Marten asked.

The Chief Unionist drew himself straighter, which had seemed impossible. “You could have simply painted the Highborn symbols onto it. I understand. Why would a PHC officer do that, however?”

Marten glanced back at the Planetary Union military officer. She wasn’t taking chances and had a needler trained on him. It was smaller than the Gauss needlers used on Earth. Hers was compact, with a short and very thin barrel, and it was shiny, likely meaning it was newly unpackaged. He hoped she knew how to use it and didn’t accidentally shoot him.

“Okay,” Marten said, “I’ll tell you what happened. But I suspect you won’t believe me.”

“Why bother lying?” the Chief Unionist asked.

“I haven’t said anything yet,” Marten said.

“I’m a university professor by occupation,” the Chief Unionist said. “Because I understand physics, they put me out here. They’re hoping I can perform a miracle and make Deimos useful again. My point, Mr. Kluge, is that my students always tell me I’m not going to believe something when they’re getting ready to lie.”

“Have it your way,” Marten said, and he shut his mouth.

“…well?” the Chief Unionist asked. “Let’s hear it.”

“I hate being called a liar,” Marten said.

The man lofted thin eyebrows. “A bit touchy, are we?”

“I think you’re the liar. I think you’re a sanitation scrubber, not some scholar.”

The man’s lips tightened. “Explain the situation then. How did you come to possess a Highborn shuttle?”

“I earned it,” Marten said. “I paid for it through my sweat and blood. It’s mine.”

“For the moment, you’re here in my office, Mr. Kluge. And my patience is wearing thin.”

“The Highborn used me,” Marten said. “They used my friends. We were shock troopers.”

“I never heard of them.”

“How about Free Earth Corps, you ever heard of them?”

“The Earth traitors who fight with the Highborn?” the Chief Unionist asked.

“You Mars Rebels helped the Highborn,” Marten said, knowing he was becoming too angry. But he couldn’t help it.

The Chief Unionist lightly placed his fingertips on the desk. “We are the Planetary Union, not the Rebels. We did what we had to in order to rid ourselves of Social Unity.”

Marten nodded curtly. “If you’d lived in Australian Sector when the Highborn conquered it, you’d realize that most Free Earth Corps volunteers joined at the point of a gun. I fought in the Japan Campaign. Afterward, the Highborn pinned medals on my friends and me. They called us heroes. Then they said they could use good soldiers like us. So they took us into space and retrained us into shock troopers. Our specialty was storming habitats or spaceships and taking control.”

“That doesn’t explain the shuttle,” the Chief Unionist said.

“Our masters packed us into Storm Assault Missiles and fired us at the X-ship Bangladesh. It was a new type of warship, able to fire its beam many millions of kilometers.”

“That’s impossible!” the Chief Unionist declared. “Everyone knows the Doom Stars have the longest-range lasers of any military vessel.”

“That’s why the Highborn wanted the Bangladesh. That’s why they fired us at it. We took it. But SU missile-ships destroyed our hard-won prize. A few of us escaped the destruction. Later, Highborn picked us up in the shuttle.”

“If true, that’s highly interesting. It still doesn’t explain how you came to possess the shuttle.”

“I killed the Highborn and took their shuttle for my own,” Marten said.

In frank disbelief, the Chief Unionist stared at Marten. The officer behind Marten snorted in derision.

“You don’t expect us to believe that?” the officer asked Marten.

Marten shrugged. “That’s the trouble with you soft-timers. You fear the Highborn too much. If you’d been a shock trooper, you’d know that everyone has weak points, even super-soldiers. They made a mistake and thought me a mere preman. Well, this preman spaced them. Now I’m here. Now I want to buy fuel, a spare-warfare pod if you have it and I’ll be on my way.”

“You’re mad!” the Chief Unionist shouted.

“Then you explain to me how I’m in possession of a shuttle.”

The Chief Unionist blinked at Marten with incomprehension. “You killed Highborn?”

“Three of them,” Marten said.

“You pirated the shuttle,” the Chief Unionist said. “I understand that.”

“Just as you pirated Deimos,” Marten said.

“He has a point,” the officer said.

The Chief Unionist shot her a dirty look. “The Planetary Union is confiscating the shuttle, Mr. Kluge.”

“I don’t think so,” Marten said.

The Chief Unionist lofted his eyebrows. “You’re here, Mr. Kluge, as you pointed out earlier. Officer Dugan has a needler pointed at your back. You are in no position to stop me.”

“You have a gun pointed at my back. I have a bomb attached to your docking bay.”

“Are you threatening me?” the Chief Unionist demanded.

“With certain death,” Marten said.

“You would die, too.”

Marten shrugged.

“He’s bluffing,” the Chief Unionist told Officer Dugan.

“Maybe,” the woman said.

“You’re bluffing,” the Chief Unionist told Marten, although a faint sheen of perspiration had appeared on the man’s forehead.

“I rode a Storm Assault Missile at 25-Gs to the Bangladesh,” Marten said. “I spaced three Highborn. If you think I did all that to meekly hand over my shuttle to some piss-whelp of a university professor, then you’re mad.”

Outraged, the Chief Unionist groped for words.

“I’m finished playing by other people’s rules,” Marten declared. “I’m finished being a slave. I’m a free man now. I’m going to remain free or die trying. If that means blowing the Mayflower and taking you and me down, okay. I’m fine with that.”

“He’s not bluffing,” Officer Dugan said.

The Chief Unionist blushed as anger washed over his features. “Just what are you suggesting then?”

“Let me buy fuel,” Marten said.

“Buy how?”

“With my services,” Marten said.

The Chief Unionist blinked at Marten. “That’s out of the question. You will order the remaining people on the shuttle to come—”

“I’d reconsider that,” Officer Dugan told the Chief Unionist.

“You be quiet,” the Chief Unionist said, pointing a long finger at her. The finger quivered and its ring reflected the lights overhead.

“He’s like us,” Officer Dugan said. “He fought free and now he plans to keep free, even dying for it if he has to. We can’t steal his shuttle without fighting to the death for it, just as Social Unity can’t have our planet back without a death struggle. If nothing else, sir, call the Secretary-General and ask his advice.”

“I can’t call about this,” the Chief Unionist said.

“Then give this man fuel.”

“Give it to him?” the Chief Unionist asked.

“You’ve been talking about getting the sick personnel off station and back to Mars,” Officer Dugan said. “Here’s your chance.”

The pinched features to the Chief Unionist’s mouth tightened so his lips began to whiten. He made a sweeping motion with his arm. “Go! Take this madman outside. I have a call to make.”

Ten hours later, Marten and Omi left the tiny Martian moon of Deimos. A warfare pod had been welded to the Mayflower’s underbelly. It contained five anti-missile missiles, Wasp 2000s. Aboard ship were twenty injured and ailing personnel. Like the other Martians he’d seen, they were thin and under-muscled. In spite of that, Marten had frisked each and had helped them to various sleep cubicles or into the medical facility. Then he had closed each hatch and secured the hatches with emergency clamps.

Marten had received only a miniscule amount of fuel, however. It was enough to allow them system maneuvering as they headed for an orbital launch station. Apparently, Secretary-General Chavez was intrigued with them. The ruler of the Planetary Union wanted to speak in person with Marten.

As Marten and Omi sat in the control module, they planned.

“It’s a trap,” Omi said.

Marten had just told him how Chavez couldn’t take time from his busy schedule to go to the orbital station. Thus, Marten would have to go down to Mars, to Olympus Mons to be exact, and meet the Secretary-General there.

“It could be,” Marten admitted. “That still leaves you in control of the Mayflower.”

“How long must I stay here?”

“How long can you last?”

“Several more months if I have to,” Omi said grimly.

“Social Unity will attack before that. I doubt, however, it’s a trap.”

“Why not?” asked Omi.

“Would the Secretary-General of an entire planet stoop to lying just to get us out of the shuttle?”

“It depends on how badly they need the shuttle.”

“No,” Marten said. “If they need it that badly, then they’ve lost already to Social Unity and they would know it. He wants something else.”

“What?”

“What can I offer him?” Marten asked. “Information. He’s curious. Why he’s curious, I don’t know. But I need to use his curiosity to buy us fuel and more warfare pods.”

“You won’t be able to bluff him like you did the Deimos unionist.”

“Omi, do you realize who we are?”

The Korean gave him a blank look.

“We’re the shock troopers. There’s no one tougher than us. There’s no one who could have done what we did. I don’t mean for that to sound arrogant. But I do mean to recognize what we have. Think about it. We’re the toughest military men on Mars and the toughest in all Social Unity. Yeah, there are only two of us. But we survived the Storm Assault Missiles and we survived the Bangladesh. If that doesn’t give us something powerful, I don’t know what would.”

“What’s your point?” Omi asked.

Marten studied the flight path and made a small course correction. “We can’t let anyone or anything overawe us. After slamming into the Bangladesh’s particle-shield and storming onto the beamship, I don’t know of anything else more frightening. My point is that maybe I can intimidate the Secretary-General. How many of them could have slain Highborn?”

Omi let a tight smile slide onto his face. “You’re saying that all we have left are our balls. So we might as well maximize that. Yeah. You’re right. Go see the Secretary-General. But remember that even Highborn can die. We’re not invincible.”

“We are hungry, though,” Marten said. “Hungry to taste our freedom. Hungry to live and act like free men.”

“Free,” Omi said. “I like the sound of that.”

Marten made another small course correction. Then he tried to envision why a planetary leader in the midst of a looming war would want to speak face-to-face with an ex-shock trooper.

-8-

As they journeyed toward Mars, Marten debated with himself about trusting Secretary-General Chavez. The man had guaranteed their shuttle, quite a concession from a planetary leader.

Besides, Marten could seal the shuttle and make it difficult for the Martians to enter. His father had taught him about explosives and his mother had taught him about computer codes and overrides. Her computer cunning had kept her, Marten and his father alive and out of PHC hands for three years in the Sun-Works Factory.

Omi might go stir-crazy waiting in the Mayflower. There were psychological tricks the Unionists could try if they wanted the shuttle badly enough. The bomb threat against the Chief Unionist on Deimos likely wouldn’t work a second time. The Unionists could just have him dock at an armored area and call his threat.

Instead of Omi staying onboard, Marten could set up a complex entrance code. If anyone tampered with it, he’d set the shuttle to explode. The trouble was that given time, a tech-cracker could break the computer code.

He asked Omi about it.

“You’re only going to be gone a few hours,” Omi replied.

They neared the orbital launch site. It was torus-shaped and rotated, creating artificial gravity for those within. The station had heavy particle-shields, but it hadn’t deployed any prismatic crystals or aerosol gels. There were a few visible shuttles docked. One of the shuttles was open and a small pod with a mechanical arm placed a long tube into the waiting spacecraft.

“We hope it’s only going to be a few hours,” Marten said. “I’m going down there.” He pointed at the rust-colored planet. “If something bad happens, it’s a long way to get back up here.”

“What are you worried about?” Omi asked.

“Getting tricked for one thing. Remember what the Highborn used to tell us? Two guns are greater than one plus one. Meaning, it’s easier for a soldier to act cowardly when he’s by himself, but much harder with another person he knows watching.”

“You want me to come along?” Omi asked.

“It would be the smarter move,” Marten said.

“We risk losing the shuttle then,” Omi said. “It’s our ticket out of Inner Planets. With it, we have bargaining power. Without it, we’re just two grunts.”

Marten’s chest tightened as they inched toward the orbital launch station. He’d spoken with Officer Dugan before they’d left Deimos. She’d let slip some critical information. For one thing, the size of the SU Battlefleet hiding on the other side of Mars. It was at far orbit, about the distance the moon was from Earth, about 384,000 kilometers. It was obvious Social Unity was planning an attack on Mars. Social Unity was losing the war against the Highborn. So they had to do something. Yet if they were losing to the Highborn, why bother attacking Mars and adding to their enemies? It would make more sense making allies of the Mars Rebels if they could.

Whatever the case, the important thing for Marten was the presence of the SU Battlefleet. According to Officer Dugan, the convoy fleet was two days from rendezvousing with it. That made Marten wonder. Suppose the Rebels granted them fuel. Would the Battlefleet ignore them as they headed for the Jupiter Confederation? It seemed highly unlikely. So until the SU Battlefleet left Mars orbit, the shuttle wasn’t going to help them escape Inner Planets. That meant it was wiser to keep together. Every Horror Holovid he’d watched in Sydney with Molly had the actors splitting up so the individualist villains could pick them off one at a time.

“We should definitely both go,” Marten said.

“What about the Mayflower?”

Marten began to type control keys. During the long journey here, he’d set up several coded defenses. Now it was a matter of choosing the best one and engaging it with the fusion engine.

As Omi and he exited the shuttle-tube, no one tried to take their sidearms. The space-station commander nodded curtly when Marten explained about the coded lock and what would happen if anyone triggered it by trying to enter the shuttle.

The space-station leader, Commander Zapata, was lean, but he wasn’t too thin like the other Martians. He wore a crisp uniform and had a badly burned face. He had an eye-patch over the left eye. Why he didn’t have a skin graft and a glass eye or an optical implant seemed strange. Maybe PHC had put him on a blacklist when the accident had occurred. That seemed likely the more Marten considered it. Commander Zapata had likely once been an agitator, at least according to Political Harmony Corps’ view when it ran Mars. Marten assumed it because now Zapata ran this important orbital launch satellite. So that logically meant Zapata had already been highly placed in the Rebel Movement. The Rebels had only controlled Mars for less than two years.

Commander Zapata escorted them down narrow steel corridors and to a hanger with a dozen orbital fighters on the main deck. The orbitals were atmospheric attack-craft from a Doom Star, the one that had been here six months ago. The black-painted orbitals had stubby wings and armored plating with harsh red numbers on the sides. They were squat, ugly and deadly when flown by Highborn, who could take higher G-forces than regular humans could.

“Why’s everyone staring at us?” Omi asked out of the side of his mouth.

The hanger wasn’t as cluttered as the one on Deimos. It still had arc-welders flashing, personnel pushing trolleys, and personnel creating bangs, clacks and other metallic noises. There were also deck sergeants shouting instructions. The Planetary Union uniform everyone wore was gunmetal gray with a single red star and two crescent moons. Most of the personnel had longer hair than Marten was used to, making them look like civilians in military garb. Like Zapata, each was lean without being as anorexic as those on Deimos.

As Omi and Marten marched to the farthest orbital, people stopped what they were doing, straightened and turned toward them. Some pointed. Most grew quiet. The stillness was like a wave in a pond, and soon the booms, bangs and the shouts all stopped.

Commander Zapata gave them a hideous grin. “You’re already famous. That’s why they’re staring.”

“Famous for what?” Marten asked.

“You killed Highborn, didn’t you?”

Marten nodded sourly, wondering if it had been a mistake bragging about that. In time, the Highborn would hear about him. That kind of information always leaked out to the wrong ears. The Highborn wouldn’t like the idea of premen running around bragging about fragging Highborn officers. If nothing else, the Highborn would put a bounty on his head.

“We’ve seen the Highborn,” Zapata was saying. “We’ve seen what they can do.”

“They helped you against Social Unity,” Marten said.

Commander Zapata snorted. “Didn’t you hear me? We’ve seen Highborn. I’ve spoken to several. I’ve never met people that were more arrogant in my life. They’re not really people. I would call them scary giants on the edge of going berserk. I always got the feeling the Highborn wanted to rip my head off. It’s like they were juiced.”

“Juiced?” Marten asked.

“It’s a Martian term. The deep planetary crews drink too much vodka and get in fights. They’re juiced.”

“You sound as if you don’t approve of your allies,” Marten said.

Lean Zapata with the eye-patch glanced sharply at Marten. “We’re not allies. The Highborn used us. We know that. Even while helping us they treated us with contempt. The funny thing is I don’t think they understood how we felt about it. They simply know they’re a superior form of humanity and expected us to recognize our inferiority.”

“That’s the Highborn,” Omi muttered.

“I can’t imagine having them in charge,” Zapata said. “My point is that I sympathize with you. I can visualize them training humans as humans might train animals. And I can see them inserting soldiers into a missile and shooting you at a spaceship as if you were worth no more than a bullet.”

“Word gets around,” Marten said dryly.

Commander Zapata stared at Marten. His single good eye was brown, with flecks of gold in the iris. There was something very determined about Zapata. “When Secretary-General Chavez sends a priority message to ready an orbital and tells us to honor your request that no one enter your shuttle, yes, word gets around. Many of the people here worked with the Highborn for several weeks. None can imagine trying to tackle the super-soldiers. Now two men are here who survived the insane—what did you call the missile?”

“The Storm Assault,” Marten said.

“Yes. Your story is incredible. That you also slew Highborn is amazing. That’s why everyone is staring.”

Marten wanted to halt and motion the hanger personnel near. He wanted to tell them that fighting for freedom was the greatest privilege and duty that any person could have.

Marten stopped walking. Commander Zapata stopped and so did Omi, who looked about warily.

Marten thrust out his hand. Zapata didn’t seem to comprehend. Then he gave Marten a quizzical glance. Slowly, the Commander held out his hand.

Marten grabbed it and shook heartily. He clapped Zapata on the shoulder. “I respect what you’re doing. You’re fighting for freedom. You’re standing up. It’s a pleasure to have reached the Mars System and see that there are others doing exactly what Omi and I did. I wish you Godspeed.”

Zapata grinned crookedly, the only way he could, it seemed. “We could use a soldier like you, Mr. Kluge. We’ve lived under the heel of Social Unity all our lives. Political Harmony Corps has hunted us for years and killed many of our best people. Now we’re trying to understand how to fight in the open. We failed twelve years ago. We want to win this time. That’s why we endured the sneers from the Highborn and swallowed our pride.”

Marten’s grin slipped. He knew he had to tell this man the obvious. “Social Unity is going to attack Mars soon.”

“Believe me, we know. That’s why we need all the help we can get. We’re trying to fix everything we can and make it too hot for them when they make their attempt. But time is running out on the Planetary Union before it really had a chance to find its feet.”

Marten looked around, and he realized that most of these people were going to die soon. Maybe they knew it. The convoy fleet must be bringing supplies for the SU Battlefleet waiting out there. The Mars Rebels should have been firing at the individual SU warships, not waiting for a slugfest against the united fleet.

“Social Unity is insane to fight you now,” Marten said. “They need their fleet to battle against the Highborn.”

“It’s our sole hope,” Zapata admitted. “It’s the Secretary-General’s reason for waiting.”

“Why does he want to see me?”

Zapata became somber. “Perhaps to ask you the same thing I did. Perhaps there is another purpose. Well—here we are.”

They stood before the orbital fighter, the squat craft that towered over them. A ladder led up to the cockpit where the pilot adjusted his helmet. He looked painfully young.

“It’s a double-seater,” Zapata said. “Fortunately for you, it’s built to hold Highborn. It will still be awkward for the two of you in the back seat, but you’ll manage.”

“Is he a rated pilot?” Marten asked. “He looks so young.”

“Ortiz is our best.”

Marten didn’t think that was too reassuring. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“On Deimos, everyone was so painfully thin. Here, everyone is lean but looks normal. Is there a reason for that?”

Zapata laughed. “I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you. The laser and launch orbitals are considered hardship duty for anyone from Mars.”

“Why?”

“You’ve never been to Mars before?” asked Zapata.

Marten shook his head.

“Our planet only has eleven percent of Earth’s mass,” Zapata said. “That makes everyone on Mars much lighter than they would be on Earth. People born on Mars live on a world with weak gravity. You have big muscles because Earth’s gravity demands it of your body so you can function. A Martian doesn’t develop those heavy muscles because he never needed them. Correspondingly, Martians don’t need as much food. You’d starve to death on a Martian’s diet. It also means we have less trouble feeding our millions.”

“So why is working here a hardship?” Marten asked.

“Haven’t you noticed? Our orbital launch station has Earth normal gravity.”

Marten frowned.

“We fly the orbitals and thus need to be stronger to use them to full capacity. Everyone here takes growth hormones, and has finished an accelerated weightlifting regimen. Compared to regular Martians, we’re abnormally muscled supermen, if you will. That has always been one of Social Unity’s advantages. It rotated peacekeepers on a constant basis so the Earthmen here were wickedly powerful compared to us.”

Marten understood. Eleven percent mass… it left the Martians at a constant disadvantage. Well, maybe it was an advantage because the population could live on less food. Yet even a starvation-dieted population desired freedom. So it proved they were still human.

Marten shook Commander Zapata’s hand again, careful not to squeeze too hard. Then he and Omi began to climb the ladder to their place in the cockpit.

It was an exciting ride down as young Ortiz plunged the orbital Mars-ward like a rock. The atmosphere was visible at the edge of Mars, as a whitish rim. Then they entered the atmosphere. The orbital soon began to shake and faint screeching sounded from outside.

Aboard the Mayflower, Marten had been studying the Red Planet. Because of the weak gravity, Mars had negligible air pressure, roughly one-half of one percent of the Earth’s surface pressure. A jet pilot would have to travel forty kilometers up into Earth’s stratosphere to reach the same air pressure as found on Mars’ surface. That meant it never rained on Mars’ surface. It could only rain in the deepest canyons where the air pressure grew heavy enough. It also meant parachutes were next to useless for braking aircraft or capsule-launched drop-troops.

“There!” Ortiz shouted over his shoulder and breaking Marten’s reverie. “That’s where we’re headed.”

The pilot pointed at a rough circular shape, a deeper red color than the planet around it. White ice-clouds like guardians were on its western curve. Just slightly off center in the middle was another ring, even deeper red, its huge cone crater.

Olympus Mons was the Solar System’s largest shield volcano and largest mountain. The base of the volcano was 600 kilometers, making it about the distance from the San Francisco Crater on Earth to the Los Angeles slag fields. The Martian volcano was 2.5 times taller than Mount Everest. The volcano’s cone was 25 kilometers higher than the plain surrounding it and was large enough to contain Manhattan Island.

One of the reasons why Olympus Mons was the tallest volcano was that Mars had no continental drift. That allowed the volcano to continue growing. On Earth, a volcano eventually moved off its underground source of magma and thus stopped growing.

“Does Mars have much of an air defense?” Marten shouted.

The pilot turned around to stare at Marten. “Good enough,” the pilot said. As he faced forward again, the pilot curved the orbital sharply left and then nosed them straight down. Burners roared into life and pressed Marten back against Omi.

“This baby can kill anything the Earthers have!” the pilot shouted. He soon eased the craft to a gentler descent. When he switched off the burners, the shaking all but vanished.

So the air defense was weak, Marten told himself. Why had the Highborn given the Planetary Union the launch and laser stations and no capable air defense? And why not give the Martians viable military spaceships? Maybe the Highborn hadn’t foreseen Social Unity gathering the bulk of its space fleet here. The Planetary Union had enough to fight off a small force of ships—maybe. No more than that.

It was unlike the Highborn to miscalculate such an obvious military deficiency.

“You’re lucky,” the pilot shouted.

“Why’s that?”

“No dust storms this time of year. They’re a bitch. Then again, it would make it harder for Social Unity to think about space drops. The storms cover entire swaths of the planet then.”

Marten nodded. He remembered reading about that. The sands of Mars contained ferric oxide, something akin to rust. It was the reason for the planet’s red color. Those sands were also finer than any found on Earth’s beaches. At certain times of the Martian year—which was 687 Earth-days long—global dust storms were generated. Greater than 100-kilometers an hour, the storms whipped the fine sands to more than 50 kilometers into the atmosphere and often shrouded the entire planet. For about a month, a yellowish haze covered Mars. Only many months later did the last of the dust drift back onto the planet’s surface. The storms sandblasted the surface and anything found on the surface. The storms, however, occurred when the planet was at its closest to the Sun. The Red Planet was now at its farthest distance from Sol and it would be for many, many more months.

That seemed like another miscalculation on the part of the Highborn.

While he admired the Rebels’ fight for freedom, Marten was beginning to become anxious about being caught in the Mars System once hostilities started. What was the Martian plan? Maybe they would arm everyone and make it impossible for Social Unity to control them.

He knew that most Martians lived in great underground cities as the people did on Earth. He’d read that the planetary crust under Olympus Mons was much thicker than the crust anywhere on Earth. City-planning technicians had discovered that although Mars was only a little more than half the size of Earth, its crust in most places had the same depth. Apparently, vast farming domes covered portions of Mars. They acted like hothouses on Earth. What did most Martian’s eat? Marten suspected it was algae just like on Earth.

No Highborn ate algae-bread or algae anything. Lot 6 Colonel Sigmir had spit out algae-bread the one time he’d tried it in Marten’s presence. Marten remembered Sigmir saying it was cattle-food, meant for weaklings and inferior premen.

Marten stared out of the cockpit. Olympus Mons had grown until it dominated the scene. Whitish clouds circled the lower slopes.

Why did the planet’s secretary-general wish to speak with him? Did the man want to hire the shuttle? The more Marten thought about it, the more he realized these Unionists had to be desperate. The idea of being stranded on Mars was unappealing. Trapped on a world of anorexic people who ate starvation diets—

Marten shuddered at the idea of becoming as rail thin as the Martians on Deimos. Omi and he had to escape Mars and get past the Battlefleet before Social Unity re-conquered this place.

-9-

It reassured Marten when tough security honchos escorted them from the sealed hanger in the crater to a large elevator. The security people were lean like the soldiers on the launch station. They wore segmented battle-vests and helmets with black visors, although it left their mouths visible. Each held a needler, which so far seemed like the preferred weapon among Martians.

Did slug-throwers kick too hard for Martian wrists? That wasn’t reassuring. How had the Mars Rebels fought off Social Unity a little more than a decade ago? The allied military of the Jupiter Confederation had helped then, but it had to be more than that. Despite being rail-thin, the Martians had always given PHC a harder time than anyone else had, except maybe for the Unionists on the Sun-Works Factory. Martians were known as clever people. Maybe that was the answer.

What clever trick would they perform to defeat the SU Battlefleet?

The elevator door closed and the packed car dropped with gut-wrenching speed. It made Omi lurch, and two of the security people nearest him grinned at each other.

“You’ll have to hand over your sidearms before you speak with the Secretary-General,” a man beside Marten said.

Marten turned to face the man. The security honchos had needlers aimed at him. He couldn’t see the man’s eyes, just his mouth. It was a firm line. It was a gut feeling, but Marten decided this was a test. He cleared his throat. Omi looked over.

“Ready?” Marten asked Omi.

Omi nodded coolly, as he used to as a gunman in the Sydney gangs.

After that, Marten said nothing else. He waited. He didn’t try to stare the security men down, but he did attempt to appear bored.

“…I have my orders,” the security chief said.

Marten faked a yawn.

Around him, the security people tightened the grips on their needlers.

“We can shoot you down,” the security chief said.

“Either show me you can do it or shut up about it,” Marten said. “But if you shoot, shoot to kill. Because I’ll kill you if you try and fail.”

A different security man pressed a needler against Marten’s side. Marten chopped hard, striking the man’s wrist. The man’s needler clattered onto the elevator floor.

The other grew tense.

“Wait!” the security chief said. “Don’t fire.” He faced Marten. “We know you’re tough. Our brief said ex-shock trooper. But this is the Secretary-General of Mars you’re going to meet.”

“I didn’t ask to see him,” Marten said. “He asked to see me. You see what I mean?”

The security chief swallowed uncomfortably. “We can—”

Marten held up his hand, and it made one security man hurriedly step back. That told Marten all he needed to know. “We’re here to help Mars, not assassinate its leader. If you insist we disarm, however, then call the Secretary-General and explain to him that we’re heading back up to the launch station.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Now make your choice.”

Omi gave Marten a cool glance.

Marten recognized the look. Omi thought he was overdoing the tough-guy act. Marten said nothing. He waited, letting their reputation do the work. It would tell him what the Martians really thought about them.

The security chief turned away and whispered into a wrist-link. After a time, he whispered more. Finally, he turned back to Marten. “You can keep your sidearms. But any wrong moves—”

“Yeah,” Marten said, interrupting. Then he folded his arms. He was beginning to suspect that killing Highborn had given him a serious aura with these Martians. How could that help them here? That was the question.

Marten met Secretary-General Chavez in a work lounge of the proton beam station.

The spacious room held ten tables with chairs, with square dispensaries along a wall. Posters with various slogans hung on the walls. The State gave you this job. Now give the State your best. Or: Protect our joint investment and wear your safety equipment at all times.

Secretary-General Chavez spoke to the seated people. By their green coveralls and the yellow hardhats on the tables, Marten assumed they were proton-beam technicians.

Chavez was painfully thin with a long head. His youthfully colored hair and goatee didn’t match the look of his aged face. He gestured as he spoke and had delicate fingers, with a slender silver ring on his middle finger.

A few of the seated technicians glanced back as the security team and Marten lined up against the wall. Then the thin technicians gave their attention back to the speaker.

Despite his gaunt appearance, Secretary-General Chavez had a deep voice and spoke well. He urged the technicians to accept calculated risks bringing the proton beam back online. It would be better that it fired at half-power in three weeks than at full power after the SU Battlefleet swept into near orbit. Chavez added a few Rebel slogans and told those seated that victory hinged upon their efforts.

The technicians rose as one and clapped heartily. Then they approached the Secretary-General, shook his hand and asked questions. Soon an even thinner man declared the meeting was over. Reluctantly, the technicians filed out of the lounge.

When the last green-suited technician left, Chavez’s shoulders slumped as he shuffled to the nearest table and collapsed onto a chair. In a tired way, he withdrew a small package from his coat and shook out a red stimstick. He inhaled it into life.

The security chief glanced once at Marten before he hurried to the Secretary-General. There the man stood deferentially, waiting. At last, Chavez looked up and mumbled a question. The security chief pointed at Marten.

Chavez immediately straightened, took the stimstick from his lips and glared at it. He dropped the glowing stick onto the floor and crushed it with the toe of his shoe. He lurched upright, smiled and strode toward Marten.

“The two shock troopers,” Secretary-General Chavez said.

Marten saw Chavez glance at their guns. A crease in the Secretary-General’s forehead almost immediately smoothed away. Chavez held out his hand. Gently, Marten shook the thin-boned hand and so did Omi.

“Welcome, welcome,” Chavez said. “Would you like refreshments?”

“A glass of water would be good,” Marten said.

“A sandwich,” Omi said.

The security personnel lined the walls, while the skinny man who had declared the former meeting ended went to the dispensaries. He pushed a button here and another there. Slots opened and he brought Marten a cup of water and Omi a pale green sandwich.

Chavez sat across the table from Marten and Omi as if he was in his office. He grinned as Marten sipped water.

The Secretary-General had tired features and lines on his forehead, and his dark eyes were too shiny. The hint of sweet stimstick in the air told the story. He surely relied too many hours of the day on the mild stimulants. In Marten’s estimation, the man had likely been doing that for quite a while.

Chavez spoke platitudes as Marten nodded from time to time. As the Secretary-General made sweeping gestures, he spoke about Martian courage and determination. The gestures continued and his wedding ring flashed as it caught the lights at times. He spoke about the perfidy of Social Unity and he spoke about how the Martians had struggled for years for this glorious day of self-government. Mars was for the Martians!

“What about yourselves?” Chavez asked, as he rested his hands on the table. “Please, tell me how you acquired a Highborn shuttle.”

Marten spoke tersely about the Storm Assault Missile, the experimental beamship and Training Master Lycon’s pickup.

“Incredible,” Chavez declared. “And now you own a shuttle and plan to do what with it?”

“Fulfill my parents’ dream of freedom,” Marten said, “and reach the Jupiter Confederation.”

“Parents?”

Marten spoke briefly about the Unionist attempt on the Sun-Works Factory many years ago.

Chavez glanced with surprise at the sticklike man standing behind him, a personal aide, no doubt. Then the Secretary-General concentrated on Marten again. There was new vigor in Chavez’s voice.

“You’re a Unionist then?”

“My parents were,” Marten said.

Chavez gave a delighted chuckle. “That’s wonderful, just wonderful. You must surely be sympathetic to our cause.”

“I applaud anyone’s desire for freedom.”

“An excellent attitude, Mr. Kluge.” Chavez frowned and he studied the table. Then he looked up with a diffident smile. “I realize you must have seen horrendous combat. The storm assault onto that beamship, it’s an amazing tale. You are obviously elite soldiers.”

Marten remained silent, as he realized here was the Secretary-General’s reason for wanting to talk to him face-to-face.

Chavez glanced back at the sticklike man. That man set a computer scroll before Chavez. The Secretary-General scanned it.

“Yes,” Chavez said, looking up, “you spoke earlier about buying fuel and warfare pods. We… sold you a pod already with five anti-missile missiles. For it, you ferried some of our sick from Deimos to the launch station. It was a good bargain for you, I believe.”

“I have no complaints,” Marten said.

“Let us save time, Mr. Kluge. Do you mind if I speak bluntly?”

“Be my guest.”

“Thank you.” Chavez cleared his throat. “I would like to hire you. I would like to hire your expertise.”

“I’m listening.”

“For it, Mars will supply you with several more warfare pods and a shuttle full of fuel. Does that sound agreeable?”

“First, I’d have to know what you want us to do.”

“Only what you’ve been trained at, Mr. Kluge. I want you to develop a storm assault group of our own. I’m not talking about blasting you at the enemy in a missile. What Mars needs is space-capable marines.”

“You don’t have an enemy with habitats orbiting Mars,” Marten said.

“No, no, I’m thinking—”

“Nor do you have the capacity to storm aboard SU warships,” Marten said. “So what is it that you’re really asking, sir?”

Secretary-General Chavez stared at Marten before he turned away. He bit his lip, and finally he reached into his coat and pulled out the crumpled pack of stimsticks. “Do you mind?”

Marten shrugged.

Chavez pulled out a stimstick and began smoking. “It’s a foul habit,” he muttered.

“You’re the most important man on Mars,” Marten said. “That’s a crushing burden. A few tokes certainly seems like a small price to pay in order to maintain a semblance of normalcy.”

Chavez took a deep drag before turning away and blowing red smoke into the air. He coughed afterward, and he turned a red-rimmed eye at Marten.

“Are you familiar with the Valles Marineris?” Chavez asked.

Marten shook his head.

Chavez typed along the bottom of the computer scroll. Then he turned it toward Marten. The words had vanished and a map of a portion of Mars appeared. It showed an incredible chasm like a scar across the planet.

“It’s 5000 kilometers long,” Chavez was saying. He tapped his finger on a large red dot to the chasm’s northern left. “That’s Olympus Mons, where we’re at now.”

“Got it,” Marten said.

“This—” Chavez ran his finger along the chasm “—is Valles Marineris. Social Unity still owns it. In some places, it is 80 kilometers wide. Its cliffs are 8 kilometers high.”

“I hope you’re not expecting me to lead an army into there, conquering it for you.”

Secretary-General Chavez shook his head. “Nothing so grandiose. For the moment, Social Unity has halted its air strikes out of the chasm. Because of that, we can use the Harrington Launch Sites situated here to ferry equipment into space. We’ve moved tons of supplies to the sites and are about to begin accelerated liftoffs. We must get those supplies to the moons and to the laser platforms. My fear is that Social Unity will recognize the importance of the Harrington fields and begin immediate air strikes against them as they did before the ceasefire.”

“What does that have to do with me?” Marten asked.

“We have a few orbital fighters, but not enough to fight past their aircraft and bomb those airfields out of existence. The angle is wrong for our laser platforms to reach the bottom of the canyon. Yes, we could move the platforms. But that would move them out of their optimum location against the Battlefleet, which we expect at any time.”

“You want to use Special Forces to destroy aircraft?” Marten asked.

“Yes,” Chavez said.

Marten leaned over the computer scroll, studying the 5000-kilometer chasm with its 8-kilometer walls. “It looks like it would take suicide teams.”

“Not for elite soldiers,” Chavez said. “We have skimmers. One hundred good soldiers knowing what they’re doing could do fierce havoc against the airfields. You’ve been trained for exactly that kind of mission.”

“Once you attack those fields, Social Unity would likely begin air strikes again.”

“Not necessarily,” Chavez said. He gave Marten a tight smile. It had a hint of cunning, perhaps of desperation. “If we beamed it with lasers, yes, you’re right. But we can say that partisans beyond our control are making the attacks.”

“Meaning that if we’re caught,” Marten said, “you would make no attempt to regain our freedom.”

Chavez’s eyes slid away so he gazed elsewhere. “That doesn’t necessarily hold true.”

“Right,” Marten said.

Secretary-General Chavez took another drag on the stimstick. “The critical thing is that none of you get captured.”

“I don’t see why you need me,” Marten said. “I don’t know Mars like—”

“Mr. Kluge, please. Don’t insult my intelligence. You’re Highborn trained, which means to a higher pitch than anything Social Unity or the Planetary Union could achieve. This is precisely the type of attack in which you excel. We have an elite troop, but we desperately need even a few perfectly trained soldiers to show us what we’re doing wrong and what we need to do right. You have arrived here as a gift for Mars, Mr. Kluge. After the battle, we will gratefully supply you with the needed fuel and pods. Then you can be off to the Jupiter System or perhaps, if you wish, you can remain here as an officer in our military.”

Marten sat back as he tapped his fingers on the table. He glanced at Omi, who betrayed nothing. “Let us talk it over.”

“By all means,” Chavez said. “But—”

“No,” Marten said. “Don’t add any threats. We’ve had a bellyful of them from the Highborn. Just tell us what you’ll give us, not what you’ll do to screw us if we refuse.”

Chavez blew smoke through his nose as he stood up. “Yes. I understand. Think it over and give me your decision…” he checked his chronometer. “In ten minutes.”

“Sure,” Marten said. “Ten minutes it is.”

-10-

Commodore Blackstone waited with Three-star Commissar Kursk in the cramped hanger terminal of the Vladimir Lenin.

The Commodore had shaved and he wore a pressed uniform. The lost quality to his eyes had dwindled since he’d joined the hum-a-longs. The pain still lingered in his heart regarding his ex-wife. And if he thought about it too long, the bad-thoughts came. The desire to return to Earth, hunt down her lovers and splatter their flesh and blood with aimed fire from a heavy-duty gyroc. That was better than moping, however. It was better because he transferred his hatred against her lovers and toward the damned Mars Rebels. It would be a joy to obliterate their space stations and capture the moon bases.

Commodore Blackstone rubbed his jaw, and he glanced sidelong at Commissar Kursk. She had taken to eating with him in his wardroom. She said it was because it was wrong for him to brood alone with his thoughts. She had always brought food with her, a tray for her and a tray for him. A terrible thought now surged through Blackstone, and he wondered how he could have missed it.

Had she put mood-altering drugs into his food? He’d never felt hatred toward the Martians before. And he’d never considered blowing away his ex-wife’s lovers so their brains rained globules of gray matter against the side of her house. He grinned at the image. He grinned thinking how his ex-wife would scream and scream. She might even melt in remorse and crawl to him on her hands and knees. Maybe right there out in the open, with blood dripping down the side of the house, he would take her and—

“You put something in my food,” Blackstone said.

Three-star Commissar Kursk was taller by a few inches than he was. She wore her cap’s brim low over her eyes. Her uniform was tight against her hips and her hands were firmly clasped behind her back. The way she stood at attention, if she’d had any kind of breasts at all, they would have jutted against her uniform. Instead, her badge shined in the harsh glare of the terminal’s lighting.

“This is hardly the place to discuss it,” she whispered.

Three red-suited PHC enforcers waited behind her. Five of the Commodore’s deck police waited along another wall. They all anticipated the first meeting with the cyborgs from Neptune. The cyborg command pod had docked with the Vladimir Lenin. Beyond the terminal door were clangs and the hissing of returning atmospheric pressure.

“That is against all regulations,” Blackstone hissed at her.

She gave him a stern glance. “Don’t be sentimental. Look at you now. You have rage in your veins, as a military man should. You wish to kill. That is good.”

“You’re drugging me,” he whispered.

“Nonsense, I’ve re-balanced you to what you were, a fighter and a warrior. These past weeks have seen a marked improvement in the Battlefleet. Morale has been boosted and fighting vigor almost returned to acceptable norms.”

“I forbid you to administer any more drugs.”

“You should fall on your knees and clasp me in gratitude for what I’ve done.” She gave him a vicious grin. “I always achieve results. It is why I am a three-star commissar and why PHC sends me to the hotspots. Rid yourself of weakness. The cyborgs arrive. We must present a united front against them.”

Blackstone had read Hawthorne’s secret report about Blanche-Aster’s clone, the one that had gone to Neptune System. Hawthorne had clearly stated the danger that the cyborgs possessed a chemical or mechanical way of altering a human’s loyalty. It’s why Blackstone had issued an order that no one board any cyborg battle pod.

“Against the cyborgs?” Blackstone asked. “What haven’t you told me about them?”

Commissar Kursk’s eyes narrowed as she faced the terminal entrance. “This is a critical juncture in Social Unity’s existence. The Highborn run amok. Now we have summoned the cyborgs to help us defeat our scientists’ genetic folly. There are some in PHC…”

She scowled.

Commodore Blackstone tugged his uniform straighter. He had noticed Commissar Kursk more, the shape of her hips, the tight fit of her boots and the way her butt swayed when she marched. It was as if she understood he watched her and secretly enticed him. She had stern features, but those features had appeal. If his ex-wife had taken lovers, why couldn’t he indulge in sins of the flesh with this arrogant PHC officer? He would make her whimper. Yes, he would show her the kind of officer he used to be in the old days. Even now as she scowled at the terminal entrance—

Blackstone shook his head. These weren’t his normal thoughts. She had drugged him. It had masked his malaise. It had heightened his anger and likely heightened his sexual desires. Wouldn’t she be surprised if he—

“No,” he whispered.

“What is wrong now?” she whispered.

A new clang told Blackstone that an inner hatch had opened. The cyborgs were almost inside the Vladimir Lenin’s pressurized quarters.

Commissar Kursk had just hinted at PHC rumors. Supreme Commander Hawthorne had warned him that Political Harmony Corps likely had a hidden method of communication with the cyborgs. Hawthorne believed it’s why the cyborgs had decelerated for the Mars System instead of for Earth as originally planned. Perhaps as importantly, Hawthorne suspected that PHC and the cyborgs had a hidden understanding between them. Hawthorne had warned him to be careful of the cyborgs and to use critical judgment in dealing with them.

Blackstone snorted quietly. Now the commissar had drugged him. The jackboot-wearing commissar he’d like to drag into his wardroom and—

The terminal entrance began to slide open. The cyborgs from Neptune were here.

Commodore Blackstone stood at attention, curious at what he’d see. Beside him, Three-star Commissar Kursk clicked her jackbooted heels together.

The terminal entrance slid open and an abomination strode onto the Vladimir Lenin. He, or perhaps it, wore a blue uniform like a large human, but he looked like a robot with polished metal parts and plastic flesh. His face seemed capable of only minimal expressions. His eyes were shiny, silver-metal orbs that moved smoothly in black plastic sockets. He was bald like Blackstone, and he was taller than Commissar Kursk. There was a sense of great weight about him, as if he was solid metal, and yet he moved with a predator’s grace.

Behind the chief cyborg were three taller, elongated monstrosities of flesh and graphite-bones. They were too long-limbed, and with every motion, they made faint whirring sounds of motorized joints. They had armored bodies and had dead faces that they wore like masks. Their incurious eyes held inhumanity and something worse. They seemed like quickened, mechanical zombies, with tiny hints of their lost humanity. Blackstone had never felt such a chill in his heart. Those hints of humanity looked out of the cyborg pupils as a screaming prisoner might, trapped in Hell.

Commissar Kursk gasped, and she might have staggered back. Blackstone grabbed her elbow, steadying her. Then he stepped forward and saluted crisply. He wanted to order the deck police to draw and fire until nothing but smoldering electronics and twisted metal parts lay before him. He doubted, however, that his five MPs and the three PHC enforcers would win a gun-battle with these things. The Highborn were out there, conquering Inner Planets. Now Social Unity had called for deadly allies to help tip the balance. Blackstone suppressed a shudder of horror. Sweet bones of Marx, was Hawthorne mad? Social Unity should unite with the Highborn to exterminate every infestation of these mechanical terrors.

“Welcome aboard the Vladimir Lenin. I am Commodore Blackstone, the commanding officer of the Social Unity Battlefleet Mars.”

“I am Toll Seven,” the chief cyborg said in a modulated voice. It only hinted at machinery, but it lacked emotive inflection. There was power in the voice, but a coldly logical power that would likely ignore any appeals to love, hope or mercy.

Blackstone hated the voice as a new dread formed in him of this Toll Seven. Humanity had searched its nightmares and foolishly manufactured this thing. It was inhuman, nonhuman. It was an alien. This was madness.

Blackstone had to concentrate to listen, as Toll Seven was still speaking.

“We have arrived to achieve victory for Social Unity. Therefore, it is imperative that we commence with the battle plan.”

Blackstone felt as if he was floating outside his body. He was looking at the other cyborgs, the elongated things with whiplash limbs, limbs that seemed abnormally strong. Who would have ever agreed to let technicians tear away their humanity to be rebuilt as that? How had the scientists in Neptune found volunteers? It was incomprehensible.

The Commodore was surprised to hear he was saying, “It has been an incredibly long journey for you. Would you like to rest first?”

“Logic dictates an immediate attack,” Toll Seven said. “…mingling to initiate friendship can commence upon final victory.” The chief cyborg thereupon smiled, revealing evil, steel-colored teeth.

Certainly, Toll Seven must have meant the smile as a friendly gesture. To Commodore Blackstone it seemed like a grin from a ghoul about to feast on the living.

-11-

A day after meeting Secretary-General Chavez, Marten and Omi went on an inspection tour of the Special Forces equipment and personnel. Both were located on Olympus Mons.

The giant volcano housed hundreds of thousands of people and some of Mars’ most critical military assets. The proton beam was the most important and was located near the volcano’s crater. The volcano’s great height pushed its cone well up into the weak Martian atmosphere. With less gas to burn through, the beam had greater space-destructive capability than the proton beams on Earth. Those on Earth had to fire through dense atmosphere. Massive friction weakened the Earth proton beams and thus limited their range. The Mars proton beam had correspondingly greater outer-space range due to almost negligible atmospheric friction. Unfortunately, the targeting problems were immense.

The Red Planet rotated and moved through space, both in its orbital path around the Sun and in the Sun’s orbit around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Secondly, as negligible as the Martian atmosphere was, it still caused minute diffraction. A man looking at his foot in a pool of water would notice that his limb didn’t seem to be exactly where he knew it should be. The same problem occurred with the targeting system on Olympus Mons. Unfortunately, long-range beam-fire called for intensely accurate shooting. Thus, the Mars proton beam wasn’t used for truly long-distance fire, which in this case meant anything over 10,000 kilometers.

The SU Battlefleet was in far orbit, at a distance of 350,000-kilometers from the surface. That was well out of the proton beam’s range. The closer moon Phobos was within the proton beam’s range, but Deimos was well out of reach.

There was only one deep-core mine on Mars, and it was situated under the mighty volcano. It powered everything on Olympus Mons and it would power the proton beam.

There were several merculite missile sites here. But the Martians lacked anything like the barrage of missiles that could fire from the Eurasian landmass on Earth.

Marten asked the security chief about that.

The security chief, Major Diaz, was lanky, but had more muscles than most Martians. He’d admitted to heavy growth hormonal use and as a heavy an addiction to weight training. Major Diaz scowled most of the time and was darker-skinned than the rest of his men. His face was sharp and angular, with his dark hair was swept back hard. He had a beak of a nose and suspicious brown eyes. He’d muttered something earlier about being almost full Aztec, but Marten hadn’t any idea what he’d meant by that.

It turned out that the elite Special Forces team was made up of Chavez’s security people. There were about fifty picked men from five hundred or so gunmen. They were able fighters, but Marten was less than impressed.

Diaz spoke about Mars’ planetary defense as he walked with Marten and Omi around an open-topped skimmer in a vast underground garage. The lights in the underground facility were at low power and the air was cool. Marten could see his breath, and the air here tasted strange.

The skimmer was rectangular. Its open area in the center could hold four men and their backpacks. It was silver, had triangular wings and possessed jet power to give it VTOL abilities: vertical take-off and landing.

Marten didn’t like the open tops. He would have preferred enclosed, pressurized hovercraft. But this was Mars, and the Planetary Union was poor. Marten rapped his knuckles against the skimmer and was surprised at the aluminum sound. “It isn’t armored.”

Major Diaz shook his head.

“We need armored skimmers,” Marten said.

“Don’t have them,” Diaz said.

“I don’t get this. You hardly have any defensive missiles, almost no attack aircraft and now you lack armored skimmers.”

“PHC has them,” Diaz said.

“You’d better explain that.”

Diaz told Marten, and his story made sense. After the suppression of the first Mars rebellion twelve years ago, PHC had made certain Mars lacked military equipment. There were a few laser platforms, a few launch stations and the two moons. But there were no planetary defenses other than the proton beam, a small scattering of merculite missile sites and some point-defense guns. If the Jupiter Confederation attacked again, the stated plan had called for the SU Battlefleet to arrive and destroy the invaders in space.

“In other words,” Marten said, “Mars was left open to attack.”

Major Diaz nodded.

Marten rapped the skimmer again and kept walking. He’d been surprised to learn that Political Harmony Corps had supplied the peacekeeping occupation force. It should have been the military.

Later in the day, Omi and Marten inspected the fifty elite soldiers they were supposed to lead to the Valles Marineris. They were Major Diaz’s people, security-trained these past six months. Before that, they had been the chief Rebel enforcers and gunmen.

The fifty security people were lined up in an underground gym. They were lean, tough-looking and to a man wore needlers.

Marten nodded slowly, asked a few questions and then took Diaz aside. “Were do you keep the heavy weapons?”

“Meaning what?” asked Diaz.

“Mortars, plasma cannons and heavy gyroc rifles,” Marten said.

Major Diaz shook his head.

“You haven’t been trained with them?” Marten asked, incredulous.

Diaz said nothing, just frowned in an uglier manner.

“You have those weapons, right?” Marten asked.

“The grunts use them.”

“You’re not grunts?”

“We’re Special Ops.”

“You’d better tell me what that means,” Marten said.

It took time and more questions, but Marten finally extracted the truth from Major Diaz. His security people had been the assassin squads that had murdered PHC personnel during the long years of simmering rebellion. They were experts at city ambush. They knew how to draw their needlers, spray surprised cops and governors and then disappear into alleys or safe houses. They’d killed squealers, had planted bombs and had enforced union discipline on the wavering or against traitors.

“You didn’t beat back the occupation police using assassins,” Marten said.

“We are the elite,” Major Diaz said stubbornly.

It was beginning to dawn on Marten that he didn’t understand the complete situation. He was beginning to suspect that the Mars Rebels only possessed a few true military men. Those few were likely in strategic locations, in space guarding the planet. From the sounds of it, the Martian military had personal weapons but not much more than that.

“How did you Rebels ever take over?” Marten asked.

“We killed the police. In the past, more police always arrived. After the Highborn attacked Earth, however, Social Unity couldn’t send anymore police to take the place of the dead ones.”

“Right,” Marten said. “Wait here.” He grabbed Omi’s arm and pulled him away from Major Diaz. He walked Omi to a large net for some sports activity he’d never heard about. The net hung limply and the knots in it seemed ragged. Here they were out of earshot of the waiting security people. The selected fifty mingled in groups, glancing at him and then looking at a frowning Major Diaz.

“What do you think?” Marten whispered.

“Where’s the army?”

“Political Harmony Corps’ army?”

“PHC’s and the Planetary Union’s,” Omi said.

“Do you know what I think?”

Omi shook his head.

“I think there never was an army,” Marten said. “It was a vast police force pressing down the masses, with SWAT to congregate and slaughter anyone who resisted too well. The Martians fought back the same way.”

“It’s like a planetary cop-gang war,” Omi said.

“There you are. So it makes sense why the Highborn could leave the Martian so few orbitals, a few space platforms and expect them to hold onto what they have. The surface is a barren red desert. You need pressurized suits or Environmental Combat Vehicles to move in the open. By the sounds of it, the war—if you want to call it that—took place in the underground cities.”

“Just like Stick, Turbo, you and me in Sydney,” Omi said.

“It was mostly small-arms fighting, remember?”

“By what these people have here, I’d say the Martians mainly fight with needlers.”

“There should still be some plasma cannons and heavy gyroc rifles,” Marten said.

Omi shook his bullet-shaped head. “Those are stand-up weapons. Major Diaz and his security detail were assassins and enforcers. Those types hate trading gyroc-rounds with the enemy.”

“The enemy has pilots and aircraft. I bet they also have some true soldiers guarding those fields.”

“Maybe,” Omi said.

Marten scratched his jaw. “There must be a few real Martian ground-pounders. I’m beginning to think Chavez wants his security detail trained into something more deadly than what he already has. I think that’s why he has us here, not to raid airfields in the giant canyon.”

“Why not tell us that?” Omi asked.

“Wherever there are people, there are power struggles.” Marten grunted. “Or maybe I’m wrong about a tougher security detail. Maybe Chavez wants to gain points by having his men knock out those airfields.”

“What does it matter to us why Chavez does anything?” Omi asked. “Let’s train these killers and get our fuel.”

“It matters because it tells us how likely the Martians are to win. If they lose, they’re not going to give us anything.”

“So what are you saying?” Omi asked.

“That I wish I’d chosen to head straight to Jupiter,” Marten said. “It would have been better to sit out a few years in the shuttle and finally get out of Inner Planets. We’re in a bind now and our shuttle is up there, with a Battlefleet in our way once we try for Jupiter.”

“Tell Chavez we’ve changed our mind.”

“You know what they say about Martians,” Marten said. “They’re clever. Chavez is on top so he’s likely trickier than the rest. Maybe the reason everyone thinks we’re so deadly is that Mars hardly has any real soldiers.”

“Vip wasn’t much of a soldier to start with,” Omi said. “But the Highborn turned him into a standup fighter.”

Marten grinned. “There you are. That’s the answer.”

“What’d I say?”

“We’re going to take… ten of these assassins. Yeah, I’m going to weed them carefully. Then I’ll use the ten on a practice strike into the giant chasm.”

“And?” Omi asked.

“And I’m going to fashion me a small combat team that’s fought under fire and survived together. You know how everything changes once you live through a firefight.”

“These are Chavez’s chosen people. They’re here because they’re loyal.”

“I understand,” Marten said. “They’re loyal. But we’re going to build a different loyalty, one forged in battle. I’m not looking to shift all of them, just a handful.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m recruiting,” Marten said. “I’m recruiting for a small combat team so we can take a lift up to the launch station, storm it, grab our fuel and get the heck out of this system before that Battlefleet decides to move in.”

Omi slowly shook his head. “That’s a wild long-shot.”

“You have a better idea to get us out of here?”

“…no.”

“Then that’s our plan,” Marten said. He was thinking about Nadia Pravda as he turned around and hailed Major Diaz, asking the Aztec Martian to have the men line up again for a second inspection.

-12-

Several days after Marten spoke with Omi in the gym and 350,000 kilometers away, the clone Lisa Aster leaned back and massaged her eyes.

She had a small cubicle aboard the supply ship that had brought her to Mars orbit. It was cluttered with computer equipment, tactical body-armor, vibroknives and various guns. For the past few hours, she had been studying screenshots of the cyborgs and processing known data. The Toll Seven cyborg was different from the others.

Lisa had been trying to figure out the differences. It was the meld, she decided. Toll Seven was heavy like a robot, more like a cybertank with two legs than flesh melded with machine. The elongated cyborgs—Lisa shuddered as she examined a screenshot. Their limbs were skeletal and their frozen faces a mockery of their former humanity. It seemed obvious the cyborg masters must have converted criminals into these horrible machine-things. Lisa had used Bioram computers before, the thin sheets of human brain tissue surrounded by programming gel and aided by processors. The brain tissue came from incoercible criminals against the State, those who insisted on committing antisocial acts. Such criminals died justly, giving their body parts to the State they had insisted on robbing during their lives.

What crimes had the elongated cyborgs committed? Lisa knew little about the conditions in Outer Planets. Yes, she’d watched the reality shows, but she’d always suspected they had overplayed those strange, capitalist notions. If everyone spent their money as they wished, chaos would ensue. That was so logically obvious that Lisa couldn’t accept that free capitalism existed in the Outer Planets.

Lisa leaned forward in concentration, switching screenshots, studying them closely. Maybe the cyborgs were built-up like a Bioram, the organic parts shaved from various criminals and melded with machines.

Lisa adjusted the controls on her vidscreen until the battle pods appeared. She zoomed in. They were shaped like bullets and they had dark ceramic hulls, with a blizzard of antennas on the front and the back. They seemed unbelievable small. General Fromm had suggested the cyborgs had been switched off for the journey. Lisa doubted that. You couldn’t just switch off flesh. Maybe they had been frozen. That struck Lisa as gruesome and made the battle pods seem like flying coffins.

There was one larger battle pod. Toll Seven had exited it and no one else. Its greater mass indicated it was loaded with cyborg devices. Lisa had also discovered that it sent and received lightguide messages to and from the Neptune System. It was impossible to snoop on a lightguide message, as it was a communications laser shot to an exact receiver. It was also incredible the cyborgs could fire a laser that distance and hit the receiver. It was so amazing it seemed supernatural.

Lisa’s narrow face tightened as she ran her fingers across her buzz-cut hair. The cyborgs had done something to Rita Tan, the Blanche-Aster clone sent to the Neptune System. That something had cost the clones their Mother. Had the Neptune cyborgs implanted obedience devices into Rita Tan?

Lisa stared at the larger battle pod, Toll Seven’s ship. Supreme Commander Hawthorne suspected that PHC on Earth had communicated with the battle pod. Hawthorne suspected the cyborgs had an agenda all their own. He wanted to confirm that or he wished to gain hints about them the cyborgs didn’t want known.

There were various plans, all much too dangerous in Lisa’s opinion. One plan called for her secretly contacting the chief cyborg as she pretended to be Rita Tan. Lisa had already ruled that out. She dreaded being alone with Toll Seven. Maybe the cyborg could inject her with cyborg converters or with obedience drugs. No, she wouldn’t take any foolish chances. Another plan called for her spacewalking to the battle pods in a chameleon-suit and planting listening devices on the vessels.

Oh yes, she was going to do that, and find herself face-to-face with a suited cyborg who would drag her into a battle pod to convert her into one of those. No, Lisa rejected such dangerous plans. She would watch, study and wait for a chance when a safe one came. If a safe chance never came her way, well, then she would return to Earth having failed, but still very much alive as the clone Lisa Aster.

A day later, Commodore Blackstone listened to Toll Seven. He, the cyborg, Commissar Kursk and stout General Fromm from the supply convoy stood around a holographic map-module.

The Vladimir Lenin’s command center was cramped, red-lit and circularly-shaped. A dozen officers sat around them behind vidscreens. The officers passed orders and information between the Battlefleet’s warships and monitored Mars.

Powerful probes and detection satellites watched the voids of space, those most likely to contain enemy Doom Stars on secret maneuvers. They also watched Mars for new Rebel satellites trying to spy on the Battlefleet. As quickly as the Rebels sent up new probes, the Battlefleet launched drones. With stealth technology, those drones crept upon the satellites, eliminating them and hopefully keeping the Martians ignorant about exact fleet dispositions.

The holographic map-module showed a large, burnt-orange image of Mars, with a dotted line around the planet placing the Battlefleet in far orbit. The green dots near the planet were the known Martian space-defenses.

Toll Seven had clumsily adjusted the controls the first few seconds. Now he worked them flawlessly, making the blue Battlefleet symbol dance for him as he outlined possible adjustments to Supreme Commander Hawthorne’s operational plan.

Once, General Fromm looked up from the holographic map and stared at Toll Seven. “That’s brilliant,” the stout Earther said hoarsely.

“Your approval is noted,” Toll Seven murmured. “Further adjusts might be made here…”

As he listened to Toll Seven, Blackstone silently agreed with Fromm. The big cyborg was frighteningly brilliant.

Yet Blackstone currently wondered about something else. Why was this cyborg so different from the long-limbed ones that made metallic purring sounds when they moved? Those cyborgs never spoke. Those cyborgs radiated menace and they managed to emanate a terrible sadness.

Who would ever volunteer to become a cyborg?

Blackstone shuddered. The idea was mind-numbing. He noticed as Toll Seven talked that Commissar Kursk never looked at the cyborg. She stared fixedly at the holographic map. She never agreed with anything Toll Seven said and she never spoke up in praise of Social Unity. That was unlike her and odd.

“Further, if we modify the attack vector…” Toll Seven said in his alien way.

With his twitching features, stout General Fromm avidly noted each new detail of Toll Seven’s refinements. The man kept muttering in amazement. “Yes, yes, that’s masterful.” Fromm frowned later, absorbed, his nods quick little twitches. “That’s diabolically clever. The Rebels will never notice.”

“The probability that they will notice is five point sixty-two percent,” Toll Seven murmured.

Commodore Blackstone wondered how the cyborg could make such a precise, mathematical judgment. The variables needed to be cataloged, correctly analyzed and then weighted against other elements… it was too daunting to think the cyborg had given the right percentage.

Blackstone tore his gaze from the holograph. Did the cyborg hypnotize them with his words? He studied Toll Seven. The silver eyes moved like machine parts. The steel-colored teeth seemed as if they should have shredded the cyborg’s plastic lips. Were those lips truly plastic or were they some weird synthetic flesh? Who had ever conceived the need to build Toll Seven? And why had Social Unity done so in the Neptune System? Surely, it would have made more sense to make the cyborgs on Earth or on the Sun-Works Factory.

Blackstone’s head twitched as what the cyborg suggested sank in. The Commodore became alarmed. “No,” he said. “I don’t agree with that.”

General Fromm looked up in wonder. With his fleshy neck and his bulging eyes, he seemed like a frog, and he seemed dazed. “What possible objection could you have, sir?”

Blackstone shook his head. “I object for several reasons. Firstly, command and control must always remain under my authority. Secondly—”

“No, no,” General Fromm said. “That’s not the issue here at all. This is a stunning example of Sun Tzu’s dictum of pretending to be weak where you are strong. It’s—”

Blackstone cleared his throat and glanced sharply at Commissar Kursk.

She raised haunted eyes from the holographic map and only briefly met the Commodore’s gaze. She shivered, and the muscles hinging her jaws tightened. “You will agree with the Commodore,” she whispered.

Fromm frowned at her. “I fail to see—”

Kursk’s head whipped about as she snarled, “You will agree or face the agonizer, General!”

There was silence on the bridge. No officer pressed a button. No one coughed, moved so his or her chair squeaked, or said anything. Then an alerting beep from someone’s comm unit broke the silence, and the officers around them began to whisper.

Fromm’s fleshy features had sagged. Now he nodded.

Blackstone noticed that Toll Seven had watched the interplay with computer-like detachment. Now the cyborg resumed talking.

Blackstone had the terrible feeling that the cyborg had cataloged everything and given an insane number of variables precise mathematical weights. Maybe later, while he was alone in his command pod, Toll Seven would plug himself into a cyber-computer. The two machines would then analyze this new data. The small argument would enter the data-stream of the program for whatever the cyborgs ultimately wanted. What did this alien really want? The longer Blackstone spent with Toll Seven, the more he concluded that the cyborgs’ ultimate objective, by definition, must be harmful for humanity.

With a sharp tug, OD12 detached the last plug from her head and rose from the crèche in the battle pod. Other cyborgs rose from their womblike, electronic crèches. A dim, green glow bathed their skeletal bodies. They moved jerkily these first few seconds, advancing in a line toward a cylindrical chamber.

The chamber rotated, revealing an opening to the first cyborg in line. Purring motors sounded as the former commander of Ice Hauler 49 stepped into the chamber. It rotated so the entrance and the cyborg disappeared. Harsh chemicals immediately sprayed into the unseen chamber.

OD12 heard the spray and she heard the cyborg in the chamber thrash and utter metallic groans. It was an odd sound. It triggered a distant memory in OD12.

She alone of all the cyborgs awaiting their turn for the obviously painful chemical shower showed a different pose. OD12 cocked her elongated head. She cocked her head and her mask-like face betrayed little of the horror the memory slammed home into her controlled thoughts.

She remembered laying on a conveyor. A hellish shock had awoken her, and she had torn a muscle causing horrendous pain. A chemical mist had drifted onto her face and she’d heard harsh klaxons shrieking. Despite extreme lethargy, she’d moved her head to the side and had screamed as she’d stared at the dead face of the commander of IH-49. Others had lain beyond the commander, others on the moving conveyer and sprayed with the fine, orange mist.

Cyborg OD12 remembered the moment. It had burned into her because her worst fear had been played out. Life was rigged against her. The extreme paranoia that had told her she could never win was one hundred percent accurate. She’d tried to move off the conveyor. A long, mechanical arm with a needle attached to the end had descended toward her. It had been descending doom. She’d tried to thrash away from it. Instead, the hypo had touched her flesh and hissed, pumping something into her. She’d fought to keep her eyes open and had horribly failed as her eyelids drooped.

As she stood in line with the other cyborgs, OD12’s head cocked a bit more. She recalled many years of combat training. She had been to a hundred planets in a thousand varied situations. At least, the combat simulations inside the Web-Mind had seemed like real years.

Her nearly lifeless eyes tightened—that tightening was close to being an anomaly. It triggered the programming in her internal computer.

Warning, OD12!

The computer warning caused her to blink. Her self-awareness might have curled and died the death of inertia and terror. This deep part was the “I” of OD12… of Osadar Di, her true name.

Warning! Your emotions have increased adrenal secretions. Emotive responses above the accepted norms will result in an immediate shutdown and a possible personality scrub.

Osadar Di understood perfectly. She was screwed. She’d never had a chance, really. It wasn’t fair. But then life was a crapshoot where all the odds were stacked against you. It was the norm for her. She’d always known it. Look at her. She was a monster, a mechanical thing with a slave driver to control not only her actions, but also her thoughts. If that wasn’t the ultimate screw-job, she didn’t know what was.

Emergency procedure twenty-seven: select from tempo, highdrox and nullity-4.

Osadar was faintly aware she heard more from her computer than she should. It was choosing from certain drugs to inject into her bloodstream. Yes, as the drugs began to work, the grim horror gripping her began to fade. Unfortunately, the memory also began to recede with the lessening terror.

Osadar—no, she was OD12. She belonged to the Web-Mind. She was a component of the grand scheme of Solar System conquest. This was part of Step Nine, whatever that meant.

A tiny twitch of her cyborg lips escaped the notice of the computer’s censor program.

She was screwed. She knew it. She had always known this was going to happen. She hadn’t known she’d become a cyborg or a part of Web-Mind, but she had known that eventually she’d become immersed into something vile and irresistible.

Yet that was the thing, her quirk. Despite the odds, she’d always resisted. Did that make her foolish? Sometimes she had thought so. The deep “I” of OD12 decided to play along for now. She believed she could have resisted enough to enter shutdown and maybe even gotten herself personality scrubbed. But she didn’t want to be scrubbed. She wanted to survive. She wanted to screw the thing that had screwed her. It was part of who OD12 was, just as it was part of her to know she couldn’t win ultimately.

Maybe the hardened understanding of the futility of life gave her the needed mental resources to kick against the perfected cyborg reconditioning. Maybe it was just a quirk of fate. Maybe even the Web-Mind and precise, cyborg superiority failed sometimes. It was possible and might even have a probability that Web-Mind had given an exact score. Maybe the score was 0.001 percent. All the maybes could have been the answer.

The reality was that OD12 stepped toward the chemical shower with the rest of the line of cyborgs. She entered the cubicle in turn and felt the chemical spray sear her skin and make her scalp prickle as if sprayed with jets of flame. She was enslaved like all the other cyborgs. She would perform her tasks. But she would also plot in the deepness of her half-mechanical heart to throw a laser calibrator into Step Nine of the Web-Mind’s plan of conquest.

After the preparatory shower, OD12 entered another shutdown sequence. So did the many cyborgs of her battle pod. After her delivery to an SU ship and under Toll Seven’s guidance, SU military personnel lifted her stiff form and inserted it into a battlesuit. The personnel used lifters and inserted her and the suit into an attack pod loaded with weapons. Other lifters set the pod into an ice machine. The ice machine sprayed water around the pod, hardened the water into ice and sprayed more water. In a layered onion manner, the ice machine built a large ice chunk to a precise size. Once done, the ice machine secreted the frozen chunk onto another lifter.

A SU sergeant drove the blackened ice chunk to an encasing processor. There, a thin steel coat encased the ice with the frozen cyborg in its exact center. The steel-jacketed ice-chunk was shipped to a select vessel that possessed a single cannon.

The cannon was a mass driver. It used magnetic coils to accelerate metal to high speeds. Normally, this was a mine-laying warship, or a mine-spewing warship. It shot mines. Those mines possessed radar capability, electronic counter measure devices and a nuclear explosive. When an enemy vessel approached the decided limit, the mine exploded. The nuclear bomb pumped X-rays through rods, directing the deadly radiation at the computer-selected target.

Instead of normal mines, however, the mass driver would use its magnetic coils to accelerate the steel-jacketed, precisely sized ice-chunks.

As the crew readied its mass driver, Commodore Blackstone stood with Toll Seven in the command center of the Vladimir Lenin. As before, they stood around the holographic module. This time it showed several of the convoy spaceships, squat vessels drifting at the outer edge of the Battlefleet. Those spaceships were nearest Mars. At a quiet order from Blackstone, passed along by the communication’s officer, the squat vessels began to spew aerosols into space. It was a thin shield placed between Mars, its moons, the space-defense platforms and the bulk of the Battlefleet. The aerosol density was miniscule, little more than a mist. A laser would burn through in a nanosecond. An enemy missile wouldn’t even know the aerosol screen existed.

The aerosol screen was a precaution. Ever since the Doom Star had vacated the Mars System and as the SU warships began to congregate, the Rebel sensor probes and satellites aimed on this side of Mars had been destroyed. That left the radar stations on the two moons and on the space platforms in near-Mars orbit. Those sites possessed teleoptic equipment. The Martians and the SU Battlefleet closely watched each other through powerful telescopes. The aerosols spewing from the squat convoy vessels now put a temporary screen between those teleoptic systems and Social Unity’s painfully gathered warships.

The aerosol screen wouldn’t last long. But then, it didn’t have too. Already, SU warships and cyborg battle pods began to change positions into a cleverer formation. The aerosol screen was not meant to mask this change. Instead, once the aerosols drifted apart and the fleet moved beyond the screen, the Martians would no doubt redouble their efforts studying the Battlefleet. The new formation would hopefully satisfy their curiosity. The Martians would hopefully debate for several days what it meant. By that time, the true reason for the aerosol screen would have made itself known.

“The aerosol screen is up, sir,” the communications officer told Blackstone.

The Commodore took a deep breath and glanced at Toll Seven. The cyborg impassively watched the holograph.

Blackstone adjusted the module. It now showed the mine-spewing warship, the Kim Philby. It was hard to accept the plan. It seemed impossible.

Blackstone heard himself ask, “You’re certain we’re not sending your cyborgs to a futile death?”

It was difficult to tell, but Toll Seven seemed amused. “Supreme Commander Hawthorne approved the tactic. He must understand as I do that it will work flawlessly.”

Could cyborgs know pride? “Very well,” Blackstone muttered. He spoke to the communications officer. “Order the initiation of Operation Icebreaker.”

Aboard the Kim Philby, its captain received Blackstone’s order. She sat at the edge of her chair, with her clenched fist near her chin. “Are the coordinates perfect?”

“The cyborgs seem to think so, sir,” the First Gunner answered.

“This will never work,” the captain said. She was a tall woman, known as a perfectionist. “Begin.”

“Fire one,” the First Gunner said.

The fusion engines kicked in as power flowed through the mass driver’s magnetic coils. The first steel-jacketed ice-chunk shot out of the cannon at almost two kilometers per second. It headed for a precise location at something near three times the speed of a fired bullet. After a mere two seconds or after traveling a little less than four kilometers, the steel jacket exploded off the ice like a saboted gyroc round. That accelerated the ice-coated pod, pushing it even closer to two kilometers per second.

One after another, the Kim Philby shot the steel-jacketed ice-pods. The steel was obviously needed for the magnetic coils to ‘grab’ the pod and give it velocity. But that was all the steel was needed for.

After a short travel time, the first ice-pod reached the limit of the Battlefleet’s farthest ship. The pod then sped through the screening aerosol mist. Some aerosol mist pitted some of the ice-pods, but not enough to deflect the trajectory or destroy the cyborgs embedded deep within.

Because no explosive power had been used to expel the ice-coated pods, Martian detection equipment had nothing to pick up. Steel bounced radar, so the steel jackets had been shed before the pods reached the aerosol screen. Radar had a much harder time detecting ice. Ice was cool, so there would be no heat signature to give the approaching pods away. Ice was also a common element found in space in the form of ice comets, ice asteroids and even ice rings and ice moons. Teleoptic scopes could pick up pods. Thus, the ice was black and it would not bounce light well. So teleoptic scopes would have a nearly impossible time sighting the chunks. Compared against the backdrop behind them—the vastness of space—the individual pods were less than pinpricks.

In other words, the ice-coated pods were part of an elaborate stealth attack. The first barrage targeted Phobos, the deadliest component of the Martian space defense. A second barrage would soon blast at Deimos. Given the speed of two kilometers per second and a distance of something over 350,000 kilometers, the pods would reach Phobos in 42.69 hours, almost two full Earth days.

Supreme Commander Hawthorne’s operational plan called for the quick capture of the two moons. He also wanted to capture them without paying a heavy price in SU warships. Social Unity needed those warships for the true fight, the Doom Stars that would surely come in time.

Toll Seven’s refinement was the ice-coated pods and the scanty numbers sent at each target. The slender number of cyborgs meant fewer pods. Fewer pods meant a greater chance of stealth success. Could, however, forty-five cyborgs capture heavily armored Phobos?

As Commodore Blackstone stared at the holographic map, watching the Kim Philby fire the barrage, he had his doubts. He had grave doubts. Blackstone had also come to believe that killing cyborgs might be more important than killing Highborn. He wondered about that, however. He had stopped taking Commissar Kursk’s drugs. It had lowered his rage. It had made him think more about his ex-wife. It had also made him many times more afraid of Toll Seven. And the worst thing about that was that the cyborg surely knew it.

-13-

The clone, Lisa Aster, sensed her opportunity two hours before the second barrage of cyborgs was fired at Deimos.

Through General Fromm’s manipulation, Lisa found herself working a lifter alone in the second ice-coating ship. She moved stiff cyborgs to the battlesuits.

Her plan was simplicity itself. So Lisa wondered why she felt so nervous. This would be safer than waiting on the ceiling for deceleration to begin, the little game she’d played with herself during the journey to Mars.

Lisa braked the lifter and jumped off. She hurried around the magnetic forks. The cyborgs lay in a line on her lift. They looked like mannequins. If one of them had twitched just then, Lisa would have screamed. Fortunately, they stayed as stiff, cold and still as the dead. She took a spy-monitor from her belt and hesitated. Lisa didn’t want to touch their dead flesh, or their cool metallic parts. These things couldn’t be alive.

Lisa swallowed hard and told herself she was the Blanche-Aster now. She was here because the cyborgs had destroyed one of her sisters. The cyborgs had likely caused Mother’s death.

Resolved, Lisa reached behind a cyborg’s head and attached the spy-monitor to the base of the neck. The monitor was made of chameleon-skin and it would look like just like the cyborg’s armored flesh. Lisa shivered as her fingers touched cyborg skin. It was warm, and that seemed horrible. She backed away, staring at the dead-seeming thing. It was warm. It was actually alive, if frozen now.

Feeling eyes on her, Lisa whirled around, and she yelped in fear.

Massive Toll Seven stared at her.

“What did you do?” Toll Seven asked in his strange voice.

“There… there was something on a cyborg’s face,” Lisa said. “I wiped it off.”

“Give the something to me,” Toll Seven said.

The clone Lisa Aster began to tremble. That made her angry. She had been the Madam Blanche-Aster’s bodyguard. The cyborgs had done something to Rita Tan. Rita had done something to Mother. So this cyborg here was part of the cabal that had slain Mother Blanche-Aster.

Lisa put her hand on the hilt of a hidden vibroblade. “I have to get these cyborgs to the battlesuits.”

“You will give me the thing you took off the cyborg.”

It dawned on Lisa that there was no way Toll Seven should be here. It meant that somehow her role had been compromised. The only one who knew her objective was General Fromm. Had the cyborg already gotten to Fromm? With a sick feeling, Lisa wondered if the cyborgs were superior to Highborn. If that was true, then the cyborgs should be able to outthink mere Homo sapiens.

“Show me this thing,” Toll Seven said ominously.

“Yes,” Lisa said. She meekly approached the big cyborg. He waited with his metal hand open. Lisa stepped closer yet. With her thumb, she switched on the vibroblade as she drew it.

The vibroblade was a deadly close-combat device. It vibrated a thousand times a second, making the motion invisible to the human eye. It allowed the blade to slice metal with ease. It should have the capacity to cut armored cyborg flesh.

Lisa slashed at the hand before her, sheering off three fingers as zapping-sounds and sparks emitted from the shorn digits. The sheered finger-parts hit the deck like lead shot. Lisa stabbed, and the tip sank into the armored body. Then Toll Seven chopped. Lisa moaned as her wrist snapped. She staggered away. The cyborg drew the knife from his chest, and he crushed the hilt so the blade quit vibrating.

“Stay away from me!” Lisa shouted. She groped left-handed for a communicator.

Toll Seven lifted his good hand and pointed a finger at her. Something flew out of the tip. Then something sharp hit Lisa in the chest. She stared down and saw it was a dart. She looked back up at Toll Seven. She wanted to ask what it had been. Then Lisa’s legs crumpled and she was falling. She opened her mouth as waves of nullity washed over her.

The last thing she remembered was Toll Seven lifting her and carrying her. She knew not where.

For five days, Marten and Omi had trained ten carefully selected security personnel.

In that gym five days ago, Marten had spoken with each assassin in turn, asking random questions. He’d stared into their eyes, searching for indefinable qualities. It had been more than a gut feeling. If anything, he’d searched for a core of stubbornness and a sense of calling, of duty, if you will. All the men had killed before. Some had shot PHC police in the back. Some had stepped up and stared PHC officers down as their needler sprayed its deadly slivers. Others had beaten traitors to death with their fists, held fast by other enforcers. None of the chosen team members was pleasant. With more than a few, Marten had Omi engage them in hand-to-hand combat. None of them could match the Korean’s skills or withstand his Earth-powered strength.

During those short bouts, Marten had searched each man’s reaction to his defeat. Only two security men had the fortitude to drag themselves back up each time. One had snarled and charged fiercely, only to land on his back a second, third and a fourth time. The other one had picked himself up slowly, glaring at Omi and then ploddingly circled the Korean yet again, trying to pierce Omi’s deadly martial arts. Those two, Gutierrez and Rojas, were now squad leaders.

Ten men, plus Omi and he, were enough to fill three skimmers. Three skimmers loaded with long-range gyroc rifles could hit hard and fast and do some real damage to the strike-craft parked on an airfield.

During these days, Marten used his Highborn training, speaking HB battle maxims and showing each man a critical trick. On the fourth day, he took out the open-topped skimmers and practiced raids. On the fifth day, they bounded out of the skimmers in their environmental suits and hit the red Martian sand. Each man fired his gyroc rifle at distant targets that Marten had set up on the previous day.

The gyroc rifle was an interesting weapon. It fired a .75 caliber spin-stabilized rocket shell. After leaving the rifle barrel, the rocket ignited, giving the bullet the majority of its speed. The rifle acted like a recoilless weapon, which meant that even though it fired high-caliber bullets, it was of light construction and didn’t slam the shooter each time and thus weary him out. The various rounds meant that gyrocs were highly versatile.

The Armor Piercing Explosive round (APEX) had a big motor and a heavy projectile. There were shrapnel rounds that acted like a line-of-sight mortar, a smart rocket that could fly around objects and sabot rounds where the outer shell burned off to add deadly velocity against hardened targets.

Marten watched the men, shouted corrections into their helmet’s headphones and cursed their stupidity. He raged at their Martian weakness and the impossibility of achieving anything with morons like them. He used the techniques used on him in the Free Earth Corps boot camp by the HB.

Later, back at the barracks at the base of Olympus Mons, Marten showered and played cards with Omi in their room. It was an old deck from Highborn days, the edges worn and frayed. They played at a small table, their equipment sprawled on their bunks.

“What do you think?” Marten asked Omi.

“Gutierrez is deranged.”

Five days ago, Gutierrez had charged Omi each time during the hand-to-hand testing. The big Martian still had bruises around his eyes from Omi’s blows.

“Gutierrez reminds me of the kamikaze troops we faced during the Japan Campaign,” Marten said.

“Seeing that PHC ran this planet for so long,” Omi said, “I’m surprised he’s still alive.”

Marten drew a card, examined his hand and slowly pulled another card. In disgust, he threw his hand down. “I’m over by one.”

Omi put the discards under the deck and flicked himself two cards from the top and Marten two.

“There will come a time when we need someone like Gutierrez,” Marten said as he examined his cards.

“You don’t care if he dies?”

“If he fights under my command,” Marten said, “I’m going to do my best to bring him back alive. I’m just saying that it’s good to have at least one madman along. That makes him a treasure compared to the rest, a treasure I plan to horde.”

“Gutierrez is a walking dead-man and he doesn’t even know it,” Omi said softly.

“I don’t agree. Sometimes it’s the madman who makes it through everything.”

“There’s only one Marten Kluge,” Omi said dryly.

“I’m nothing like Gutierrez.”

“No,” Omi said, “of course not.”

Marten scowled.

Omi drew a card and spread out his hand. “Twenty-one,” he said.

Marten’s scowl intensified. He grabbed the deck to reshuffle. Halfway through the shuffle, someone rapped against the door.

The two men exchanged glances. Marten reached to his bed and grabbed a gun. Omi stood up, moved onto his bed and sat down amidst his sprawled equipment.

The knock came again, harder.

“Enter,” Marten said as he shuffled cards.

The door opened as Major Diaz entered. Behind him followed Secretary-General Chavez.

“This is a surprise,” Marten said.

Diaz scowled, and he opened his mouth.

“No, no,” Chavez said. “Their customs are different than ours.”

Marten raised an eyebrow.

“Usually, people stand as a superior enters a room,” Chavez explained.

“Ah,” Marten said.

There was a pause.

“…may I?” Chavez asked as he touched Omi’s vacated chair.

Marten nodded, and he wondered how long Major Diaz would stand there, upset and glaring at him.

Chavez sank into the chair as if standing had wearied him. His eyes were haunted today and more red-rimmed than during their meeting five days ago. Marten was glad the Secretary-General didn’t pull out any stimsticks. He hated the mildly narcotic smoke.

“I will be brief, Mr. Kluge,” Chavez said. “My intension was that you train all fifty of Major Diaz’s men. I only learned about this oversight an hour ago. I decided a face-to-face encounter would be more productive. I flew here exclusively to speak with you.”

“I’m honored,” Marten said.

Major Diaz moved a step closer. He seemed angry.

“You have a problem?” Marten asked the major.

Chavez cleared his throat. “Mr. Kluge, we all have a problem. The SU Battlefleet has engaged in odd behavior. My chief military officers suggest that something fateful will happen this week. If that is true, I can no longer allow Social Unity the possession of the planetary aircraft. I’d hoped to send a demolition team. I realize fifty men can achieve little compared to our planetary scale. Yet fifty men can achieve much more than ten can.”

“So that’s what has you worried,” Marten said, thinking fast. “Maybe I should have explained myself better to Major Diaz. I need to train those most able to absorb what I’m trying to teach. Then, when I take on the rest of Major Diaz’s men, the trained ten will help teach the rest.”

Secretary-General Chavez looked up at Major Diaz. Diaz’s scowl had lessened so he almost seemed abashed.

“You said the Battlefleet is moving,” Marten said. “Does that mean my shuttle is in danger?”

“Your shuttle?” Chavez asked. “Mr. Kluge, there is a war going on, or about to erupt. Your shuttle hardly matters in the equation of planetary freedom.”

Marten’s kept his features the same, but his heart-rate increased. He didn’t agree with the Secretary-General.

“I cannot allow Social Unity to choose the time of its attack,” Chavez was saying. “The Planetary Union must strike first. Unfortunately, our space assets are minimal. Thus, we must strike where we can. I wish you to hit four of the seven airfields and destroy all the aircraft you can.”

“Ten men—”

“Not ten men,” Chavez said stiffly, “but fifty. You will take the rest of Major Diaz’s soldiers—”

“I’m sorry, sir. But they’re not soldiers.”

Chavez leaned back, the closest to glaring at Marten that the Secretary-General had ever been. The force behind his eyes was considerable. His stare also said that he had ordered the death of many enemies. Quietly, Chavez said, “They’re the most loyal fighters Mars has.”

“That’s fine,” Marten said. “But they’re not soldiers. They’re killers, gunmen, assassins. A soldier is something different.”

“I don’t follow you, Mr. Kluge. Soldiers kill. Major Diaz’s men have all killed the hated enemy. Therefore, they are soldiers. Perhaps they lack your training. But that’s why I hired you. Now that we have an emergency, we cannot afford the luxury of taking our time. We must strike with what we have and hope to forestall a combined attack.”

Marten thought about that and finally nodded.

“You will leave tonight,” Chavez said. “The skimmers are loaded and the men are waiting. By tomorrow night, I wish you to strike the first airfield.”

“I’ll have to inspect the skimmers and the loads,” Marten said. “And we don’t dare skim straight there. We will use some subtlety in order to achieve surprise.”

“You’ll do exactly what the Secretary-General orders you to do!” Major Diaz snapped.

Marten stared at Chavez. “You hired my expertise, sir. That means I have to do things my way. Attack tomorrow? I’ll do what is militarily wise. First, I’m going to make sure we have the needed equipment to ensure success. Your men are killers, but they’re not soldiers. The two soldiers you have need to make sure that this operation is run properly. Like a real, military operation.”

Chavez forced himself to his feet as he wearily waved a hand. “Yes, yes, inspect the skimmers. And make certain my supply officers give you everything you need. I feel the weight of oppression, as if something terrible is about to happen to Mars. I hope you can understand my position. I need you to attack tomorrow, or if not then, in two days time.”

Marten suddenly felt sorry for the Secretary-General. The man used what he had. Chavez and his Martian Union were cornered. The fact that the ruler of a planet personally came to speak with two Highborn-trained soldiers showed that Chavez understood his grim situation fully.

Marten stood up, and he saluted crisply.

Secretary-General Chavez asked, “What was that for, Mr. Kluge?”

“You have earned my respect, sir.”

“Ah,” said Chavez. “Thank you.” He turned to Major Diaz. “Make sure you follow his orders, Juan. He is a soldier, and he knows what he is doing. However it is done, we must destroy those attack-craft.”

Three hours later, a convoy of open-topped skimmers flew across the Tharsis Bulge, an enormous volcanic plateau. Olympus Mons dominated the west behind them as they traveled eastward paralleling the equator. Before them in the hazy distance towered the Tharsis Montes. It was a chain of spectacular volcanoes: Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons and Ascraeus Mons. The skimmers used the plains between the volcanoes, which was a barren desert of blown red sand. Over the years, the Martian wind had created huge dunes similar to those in the Western Desert of Egyptian Sector on Earth.

The silver skimmer in the lead wobbled. It sank lower toward the dunes. Its engine whined. The two suited men in back half-rose as if they would leap out just before the skimmer crashed. Then the skimmer stabilized. A great puff of sand blew upward, and the silver skimmer rose back up to twenty meters above the desert floor. The two men settled back in their seats. The soldier on the left leaned forward until his helmet touched the seat in front of him. Maybe he was asking himself why he’d agreed to this mission. Maybe he was already tired.

The moon Phobos shone brightly in the night sky. Despite being a fraction of the size of Luna, to Marten and the others, Phobos appeared as half the size of Earth’s moon. It was because Phobos was so much closer to Mars than Luna was to Earth.

It had been a long time since Marten had seen a moon in a night sky from a planetary surface. The months of training on the Sun-Works Factory and then later the death-like existence in the Storm Assault Missile—

Marten shook his head. Like everyone else, he wore an environmental suit. It was plugged into the skimmer and was presently heated and energized by the craft’s rotary engine. The skimmer whined as it flew twenty feet above the Martian sands. Those sands were too fine and found their way into everything, even Marten’s suit. The dust gave his suit an odd smell. It was a sterile desert, a dry and sterile world. To the north, he noted a vast, low dome, one of the farms that dotted Mars.

Marten commanded twenty skimmers with fifty-some raiders. Marten wasn’t under any illusions. Major Diaz could order any of the men to do anything and they would obey. So Marten realized he was only in nominal control. He had a plan for that. If Diaz gave him real trouble, he would kill the man. Afterward he would have cow the men so they wouldn’t mutiny. Marten hoped it didn’t come to that. His other problem was quite different. Despite Chavez’s disinterest concerning the Mayflower, Marten was very interested in its fate. Was the SU Battlefleet about to move? If not now, when would it? He had to leave the Mars System before the space fighting started.

Marten sighed. He was tired. He needed sleep. He hated sleeping in this suit, however. With the skimmer whining and trembling, it reminded him too much of the Storm Assault Missile. That brought back horrible memories.

Despite those memories, he slid lower in his seat until his pack jammed against his back. He had to twist half sideways before he was comfortable. That put pressure on his right shoulder, and over time it would irritate an old shoulder-pull. Even so, he shut his eyes. Major Diaz said he knew a path down the eight-kilometer canyon. Twenty skimmers with fifty security personnel and about as many gyroc rifles and three plasma cannons—that’s all Marten had to take out four airfields and seventy fighters. If everyone did what they were supposed to and obeyed his orders instantly, they could likely do some serious damage. But they would take losses. Even the ten he’d trained for several days—

“It’s amateur hour,” Omi whispered to him. “We’re a mob.”

Marten silently agreed. The chief factor for success would be surprise. If they lost surprise, it would all be over. Therefore, it would at least be two days before he made his first attack.

Marten opened his eyes again. He stared up at Phobos shining half the size of Luna. The moon looked like a Cyclops staring down at him with its single eye. What was happening up there? Was the Mayflower safe? Had anyone tried to break into his shuttle?

What a way to buy fuel. He was risking his neck, unsure if the Martians were genuine or if they would have the ability to pay when the time came.

-14-

The moon Phobos was a fortress, the best circling Mars. Six months ago, the Highborn had taken it with battleoids. Otherwise, it would have given the Doom Star trouble. It had merculite missiles and heavy laser batteries dug deep into the moon’s surface like gigantic pillboxes. Before the Highborn had left six months ago, they’d given the moon to the Planetary Union, along with the other surviving orbital stations.

The key to Phobos were the giant fusion plants that powered the lasers. Those fusion plants were deep in the moon that was about 27 kilometers in diameter. A Doom Star was over a kilometer sphere, a gigantic space vessel. The Martian moon had greater mass than any Doom Star, although it was not as lavishly armored. Phobos’ armor was its mass.

The name Phobos meant ‘fear.’ In ancient times, Fear had been a companion of Mars, the Roman god of war. Deimos meant ‘panic,’ another of Mars’ companions.

The range of a laser depended on several factors. One of them was the size of the focusing systems. All beams of light lost coherence over distance. A common flashlight lost its brilliance because of diffusion or the spreading of its light. A laser beam was no different. Its light was more tightly focused and that was the source of its dreadful power. Therefore, a long-range beam needed to start with a large diameter focusing system. The larger the diameter, the bigger the beam one could use. The bigger the beam, the longer it took for the beam’s light to diffuse into uselessness. The second factor for long-range beams was power. Power needed a source. A small orbital fighter lacked a power plant to supply it with a battle-worthy laser. That’s why orbitals used cannons and missiles. A SU Battleship was big. That size allowed it massive fusion engines. Those engines supplied its laser batteries with enough power for long-range beams.

One of the reasons the Doom Stars were so deadly, was that their lasers could fire farther than any SU warship. The experimental beamship Bangladesh had trumped the Doom Stars in range and therefore had been superior in many ways.

The heavy lasers embedded on Phobos were of Doom Star range and power. That made Phobos a dangerous fortress to tackle. Unfortunately, the Highborn battleoids had not been able to storm Phobos six months ago fast enough. Knowing they were losing the moon, the SU defenders had destroyed many of the key components for the heavy lasers. Day and night, Martian Unionists labored intensely to fix the lasers. Two lasers were operational and a third was weeks away from being ready.

If those two lasers had been ready when the SU Battlefleet began to gather at far orbit, Chavez likely would have ordered strikes against the individual spaceships. Those two laser cannons were ready now and the fusion plants were online. They targeted SU Battleships over 350,000 kilometers away, but held their fire.

Almost two days ago, an aerosol cloud had begun forming before the massed Social Unity Fleet. The commander of Phobos had considered firing then. A stern order from Chavez had halted the thought from turning into action. The moon station was still under high alert, however. The SU Battlefleet had taken an unusual formation, but otherwise, had remained inactive since the building and dissipation of the light aerosol cloud. Martian military planners were still arguing over the cloud’s significance.

The forty-five black ice-chunks drifting at two kilometers per second neared Mars and neared Phobos.

That the black ice had remained hidden was due to the vast volume of space. That volume was unlike anything on a planet. Even something like the mighty Pacific Ocean on Earth shrank into insignificance compared to the lonely expanse of outer space. If any of the ice-coated pods had been orbitals using chemical fuel, spotting them would have been simple. Space was huge, but space was also cold. An orbital’s chemical-fuel rocket would have blazed its presence with its heat signature. The ice-coated pods were cold like the immense volume of vacuum around them. The inner pods gave a miniscule heat signature, which was masked by the surrounding ice.

So, even though a planet-bound human would expect someone to spot the forty-five ice-chunks barreling straight at Phobos, the probability of that was low. Teleoptic scopes were like a person’s eyes. To see an object they had to be looking in that direction. Just as it would take many people standing all around the moon to watch every quadrant of space, so it would take many teleoptic scopes pointing everywhere to do likewise. Radar would have a better chance picking up the icy chunks once they were near Phobos, as radar could more easily cover broad sections of space.

That radar-probability had entered Supreme Commander Hawthorne’s original plan and Toll Seven’s adjustments to it. Therefore, two critical elements now affected the success of the cyborg assault. First, the arrival of the ice-embedded pods near Mars was timed with Phobos’ orbit around the planet. The moon circled Mars three times during the Martian day or once every 7.3 hours. The pods used Mars as a shield and reached Phobos just as it came around the curvature of the planet. The radar stations on Phobos thus had less time than otherwise to spot the approaching ice. Deimos could still catch the pods by radar or one of the laser or orbital platforms in close-Mars orbit could. Yet Toll Seven had suggested that those stations would be less likely to radar-spot the ice as Phobos would, since the ice-coated pods came at the moon and not at those platforms. Still, the probability existed. And to lessen that probability, Toll Seven, with Commodore Blackstone’s agreement, had decided to add one more factor. They would inundate Martian space defense with data, giving the Martians something else to worry about than faint radar signals.

Commodore Blackstone’s gut churned. He had slept poorly, knowing that the next wake cycle would either begin the end of everything he knew or begin the end of Highborn arrogance. Because of the cyborgs, there was also the possibility it would do both.

Blackstone now stood in the cramped command center of the Vladimir Lenin. Commissar Kursk and General Fromm stood with him around the holographic map-module. For once, Toll Seven was absent. The cyborg remained in his command pod, he said overseeing the moving of the pods to the safest location in the Battlefleet. It seemed like a strange reason, but perhaps it made logical sense to a cyborg. Whatever the reason, Blackstone appreciated Toll Seven’s absence and would have liked to make it permanent.

“It’s time,” Commissar Kursk said. With Toll Seven’s absence, she had regained some of her composure. She even wore lipstick, and her stance was more aggressive, more like the commissar Blackstone remembered.

Blackstone stared at the holograph, his thoughts weighted by his responsibility.

Months of lonely waiting out here, months of dodging the Doom Star a half-a-year ago and then weeks of gathering the Battlefleet now came down to this moment. The sneak attack on Mars orbital defense had begun nearly two days ago. Before that, the warships had received much needed material. The supply convoy from Earth had brought new coils, missiles, foodstuffs, cloths, laser parts and sundry other items that humans needed to survive in cramped quarters in outer space. Each of the warships had come in ragged. Months of running from Doom Stars or floating uselessly in deep space had badly affected morale. These last few weeks had changed much of that, but not all. The Battlefleet wasn’t as sharp as it could be. If he lost too many warships in the coming hours and days, it would mean disaster.

Commodore Blackstone’s gut churned, his mind shying away from that brutal thought. If he lost too many warships, Social Unity would never get another chance to make a new fleet. He could lose the future of Inner Planets here in the next few hours. If he won, the gamble for survival continued.

“Toll Seven is on line three, sir,” the communications officer said.

Blackstone continued to stare at the holograph, switching views so he could study the many spaceships that made up his fleet. This was it. This was the moment of decision.

“Commodore Blackstone,” the communications officer said. “Toll Seven is insistent.”

Blackstone felt warm flesh touch his wrist. He looked up into Commissar Kursk’s brown eyes. They stared with worry, while the brim of her cap was low over her eyes. The curve of her cheekbones—the commissar was quite beautiful. She still held his wrist as she touched his skin. His wife’s touch had felt like that. Blackstone glanced at the commissar’s hand. What if he twined his fingers with hers? What if they lay on his bed together, naked?

“Commodore Blackstone, are you well?” Kursk asked.

Blackstone squeezed his eyes shut and then snapped them open. “It’s time,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Open a channel to all ships,” he told the communications officer. “It’s time we began the Mars Attack.”

Burn-scarred Commander Zapata, the orbital launch officer and the Martian with an eye-patch, had been busy the past two hours. The strange, SU Battlefleet maneuver almost two days ago still bothered him. It had been bothering him ever since the klaxons had wailed that day.

Then, Zapata had ordered a layer of prismatic crystals sprayed from the containers and between the SU Battlefleet and his satellite. He had given the order to protect his station from sudden laser-strikes. Then he had launched probes to keep an eye on the Battlefleet. The layer of prismatic crystals had blocked his teleoptic scopes from watching the SU warships. The probes had therefore radioed their data back to him. He had been certain then that the layer of aerosols laid by the Battlefleet had been a prelude to a sneak attack.

Now, almost two days later, he had been proved wrong. They had all been wrong. Most of the strategists now believed it had been a maneuver to upset them and to make them waste prismatic crystals and aerosol gels. The new SU Battlefleet disposition had also started endless debates.

Commander Zapata hadn’t accepted any of those explanations. He had ordered a radar and teleoptic sweep on the Battlefleet. Those sweeps had discovered nothing other than the new formation.

“There has to be something more,” he said.

He stood on his command bridge. It was more spacious than Commodore Blackstone’s command center. Space was a premium on the Vladimir Lenin. On the orbital launch station, they had extra room.

Zapata stared up at a main screen. Other officers and personnel behind consoles faced the same way, but most of them studied their smaller vidscreens.

“The Battlefleet is accelerating!” someone shouted.

That created a babble of noise.

“Put it on the main screen,” Zapata ordered.

With powerful teleoptic scopes at full magnification, the commander was able to view the SU Battlefleet. Over one hundred spaceships engaged their engines. It created a bright burn behind each vessel. The majority of those vessels were the convoy supply ships from Earth. The huge battleships and missile-cruisers led the way.

“Where are they headed?” Zapata shouted. He wanted to speak in a quiet, confident voice. He was too excited for that, too scared.

“For Mars, sir!”

The babble of noise intensified.

“Sir,” someone else shouted. “I’m picking up strange readings.”

“From the Battlefleet?” Zapata asked.

“No, sir. It’s in near orbit.”

“Show me.”

On the main screen came the blackness of space, with a vast number of stars.

“Is this a joke?” Zapata shouted angrily.

“I’ll freeze it, sir, and color it orange where the stars are blotted out.”

Zapata gaped at the new image, with over two dozen small orange globs on the screen. “What am I looking at? What are those? How big are they?”

“They’re not much bigger than orbitals, sir. The computer suggests they’re all made of ice.”

“Ice?” Zapata asked.

“That’s why our radar never picked them up.”

Commander Zapata took a step back. His good eye grew wide. “Where are those ice-orbitals headed?”

There was a tapping of computer keys. “It looks like for Phobos, sir.”

“Orbitals,” Zapata whispered. “Orbitals—those aren’t orbitals!” he shouted. He remembered Marten Kluge and the stern Korean. Those two had storm assaulted the Bangladesh. Could those ice-orbitals contain the SU version of storm assault troops?

“Get me Phobos!” he shouted.

“What about the Battlefleet, sir?”

“Get me Phobos!” Zapata screamed. “Get them online now!”

-15-

The black ice-chunks neared Phobos. They were less than ten thousand kilometers away from target. From Phobos speared an incredibly powerful laser. That giant laser completely encompassed an ice chunk. The ice vanished in a puff of steam. The exposed pod slagged and then disappeared. The cyborg in the pod no longer existed. The beam switched to a new target, to a new comet of black ice and began the fatal sequence all over again.

OD12 was jolted awake. It took her a nanosecond to realize she was in a battlesuit, in a pod, surrounded by black ice. She stirred, and the internal computer ticked off the seconds as it urged her to greater speed.

OD12 moved her battlesuit fingers. She pressed a switch. That switch caused her pod’s outer shell to overheat. The heat caused the ice around the pod to soften. Then explosives blew off the ice. Several seconds later, the pod decelerated hard. OD12 easily endured that, having greater tolerance to high Gs than even a Highborn possessed. A second after deceleration quit, the pod exploded. It sent metallic shards hurtling in precise directions. Toll Seven and Web-Mind had configured those directions to ensure the safety of the attacking cyborgs. It wouldn’t do to kill your own cyborgs with your own shrapnel. The metal shards were meant to bounce radar and provide the Mars Rebels with many easy targets of opportunity, useless targets. Those shards acted as chaff to hide the attackers.

OD12 now hung alone in space, encased in her battlesuit and with a hydrogen thruster-pack to supply her motive power. She used side jets to correct her position, using huge Mars below her as a reference point. Phobos was much smaller and pockmarked. It was ugly and dark compared to the beautiful Red Planet.

The internal computer still ran its censor program. Warning! It shouted at her.

Within her helmet, OD12’s elongated head twitched. Couldn’t she even enjoy a planet’s beauty for a few seconds? She might die soon.

This is your second warning! The third warning will begin the override sequence.

Apparently, enjoying a planet’s beauty was bad for a cyborg. It fulfilled no useful function for a combat machine. OD12 made a quick calculation. She decided in the next second that inhaling the beauty of Mars was best left to another life. There was no room for frivolities in this existence. Besides, she had a mission to complete and a bastard of a computer censor to please.

Salient information now flooded her as thirty-seven cyborgs counted off. Eight cyborgs didn’t, maybe couldn’t. A frightful beam stabbed through the darkness of space. OD12’s visor blackened to protect her costly eyes. That beam was close, a mere one hundred meters to her left. It slagged pod-shrapnel and then, like a conjurer, made the shrapnel disappear. Information from Toll Seven’s Web-Mind fed her mind. The laser had destroyed eight pods during their frozen ice-cycle. The attack had been prematurely spotted.

The terrible beam switched off and then stabbed again, this time to her right by one hundred and twenty meters. It originated from the approaching moon. OD12 focused on the moon, using her helmet’s imager. She had been through a hundred such sequences in the simulator. She knew exactly what to do and she did it much faster than a human could. Faster even, than Highborn.

The moon hardly fit the description of one. It lacked a pleasing, perfectly spheroid shape, but looked more like an asteroid. Phobos was an ellipsoid with three axes about 27, 21 and 19 kilometers long. It had craters and most resembled the lunar highlands. The surface was very dark, and was one of the blackest objects in the Solar System. Phobos reflected 2 percent of the light shined on it. Luna reflected 7 percent.

There was a massive pillbox on the dark moon. It was in the Stickney crater, the largest on the moon and 10 kilometers in diameter. Out of the pillbox protruded a huge focusing system. From that focusing system shined the dreadful laser. OD12 yearned to launch smart missiles at it. It was possible that all the cyborgs wanted to. Unfortunately, that was against the mission’s parameters. Their attack was supposed to capture the moon for Social Unity. They were to capture it intact, with as many functioning weapon systems as possible left in working order.

OD12 was close now. They all were—the cyborgs in their battlesuits hung in space like lethal fruit. OD12 and many other cyborgs rotated using small side jets. She applied hydrogen-thrust from her pack, braking. A nearby ECM pod crackled interference waves, hopefully throwing off enemy tracking radar.

The giant beam burned into space again and another cyborg stopped broadcasting.

OD12 glanced over her shoulder. The moon loomed before her. She applied more thrust. Then she rotated again and detached from the thruster pack. It automatically burned hydrogen spray, flying elsewhere.

A missile rose from the moon. It tracked the thruster-pack, zeroed in on it and exploded on impact. Since there was no atmosphere, it was a silent hit. And because there was no atmosphere, there was nothing to carry the shock wave. There was heat, but not enough to bother OD12 in her battlesuit. There was radiation, but it was negligible, since the missile had not been nuclear-tipped.

OD12 now readied herself for moon-impact. Her analyzers said it would be a hard landing, barely within the tolerable limits of her graphite-bone legs. The moon expanded with startling speed until it was everything to her. She couldn’t see the beautiful Red Planet anymore, just this dark, pitted surface. She wished for another thruster-pack. She was coming down too hard. The surfaced rushed nearer. She clenched her teeth together so she wouldn’t accidentally bite off her tongue. Retro-rockets on her legs fired a last burst to slow her just another fraction. Then she hit the moon hard.

OD12 had trained a hundred times for this in the simulator. If she hit too stiffly, it might bounce her off the tiny asteroid-like moon. If that happened, it would send her spinning away from Phobos and with no way to return. The moon’s escape velocity was minuscule. She would drift around Mars and eventually fall onto the planet. Long before that, however, she would have run out of battery power and air.

OD12 crumpled and rolled and rolled. Dust floated up and seemed to hang there. Then the particles slowly began to fall.

The internal computer blanketed her pain sensors. Pain would only interfere now. OD12 rose and tested her legs. She might have grinned in ordinary times. But she was a cyborg. It took something fantastic to awaken the deep “I” of her old self, fantastic things like a beautiful planet hanging right there below her feet. Now she was on this dark, ugly moon with a mission to perform. So instead of grinning at her impossible achievement, she began to move over the moon’s surface.

It took most people a lifetime to learn how to move fast on an asteroid that had a minuscule escape velocity. The subjective years in the Web-Mind simulator had given OD12 those ‘years’ of training. She was an expert, likely one of the greatest in the Solar System. Her only equals in asteroid-gliding were the other cyborgs in the attack team. Thirty-six of them had made it. That was less than Toll Seven had computed they would need to storm and capture the moon intact.

The internal computer listened to emergency instructions messaged from the Web-Mind on Toll Seven’s command pod. The internal computer computed and injected enhancement drugs into OD12’s system. The agenda had been set and Web-Mind had decided to risk possible burnout to heighten cyborg functions.

Thirty-six, machined-enhanced humanoids in battlesuits converged on the first bunker in the Stickney crater. The Martian Planetary Union was about to experience the first Inner System battle with the nightmare called cyborgs.

-16-

Lisa awoke for the last time as the clone of Madam Blanche-Aster.

There were odd humming noises around her and the light was an eerie, dark green. A harsh chemical odor made Lisa scrunch her noise. She wanted to spit, as a rusted taste was on her tongue.

Lisa frowned. The last thing she remembered was Toll Seven pointing a finger at her. The cyborg had shot her with a dart.

Lisa tried to shake the sluggishness from her. She had to get up and warn somebody that the cyborgs were dangerous. She had chopped off the cyborg’s fingers and he hadn’t seemed to care.

It was then Lisa realized she was immobilized and quite nude. There was a strap around her forehead and others securing her torso, arms and legs. All she could see by rolling her eyes was an ominous humming machine. It had a human-sized chute. Fear surged through her as her stomach painfully tightened. She lay on some kind of belt that led into the human-sized chute. Her feet would go in first. The belt or conveyer would take her into—was it a medical machine?

Where am I?

As if to answer her silent question, Toll Seven floated before her. Lisa glanced at his hands. They were whole, his shorn fingers fixed.

“Where am I?” Lisa whispered.

“In the cyborg command pod,” Toll Seven said. He pushed himself to the floor and there was a tearing-cloth sound as he attached his feet to a Velcro-carpeted floor.

“You have to let me go,” Lisa said. “I’m sure to be reported missing.”

“General Fromm has already reported you as a suicide.”

Lisa’s heart beat faster. “Fromm is your spy?”

It seemed as if the cyborg wanted to smile, but something held him back. “General Fromm has learned the uses of Web-Mind. He is a Webbie.”

“What is a Webbie?”

“I had considered it for you,” Toll Seven said. “But the Martian Unionists have fought back more efficiently than Web-Mind had computed. Web-Mind has recomputed the casualty rates and indicated an immediate need for cyborg reinforcements.”

“From Neptune?” Lisa asked.

“Fear pheromones are leaking from you,” Toll Seven said. “But I had computed you capable of rational thought even under dire stress.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“You are a clone of Madam Director Blanche-Aster.”

“Madam Blanche-Aster is dead,” Lisa said.

“We know.”

It wasn’t I know, but we know. “How could you know?” Lisa asked.

“By direct communication with Chief Yezhov of Political Harmony Corps,” Toll Seven said.

“I am the Blanche-Aster now.”

“There are other clones.”

“But none are as highly ranked as me.”

“Ah,” Toll Seven said. “You are bargaining in the hope of forgoing your transformation.”

“I can help you,” Lisa pleaded.

“The Rita-Tan Solution failed.”

Those fear pheromones Toll Seven had talked about poured off Lisa now. She struggled, but the straps binding her head, torso, arms and legs were too snug and too strong. She was trapped on this nightmare conveyor and she was about to enter the ominous machine.

Lisa’s mouth was bone dry. “What does this thing do?” she asked hoarsely.

“It converts human flesh into a cyborg soldier.”

Lisa struggled harder and was soon panting. “I can kill James Hawthorne for you!” she said.

“Our cyborg-reinforcement need is more pressing.”

“I’ll become like those things you shot at Phobos?”

“No.”

Lisa’s eyes boggled as hope retuned. “No. What do you mean?”

“You will not be as efficient as those soldiers. This is a micro-converter. Once we land on Mars, I will construct a true converter and the process of complete conversation will begin.”

“Do to me what you did to General Fromm,” Lisa begged.

“The risks increase with each Webbie.”

“Have mercy,” Lisa said, while trying to control her terror.

“Mercy is illogical.”

Lisa tried to thrash. She twitched and heaved against the straps. Toll Seven’s metallic hand touched her naked shoulder.

“Cease these useless efforts,” he said. “You will tear a muscle and that will make conversion less useful.”

“Let me go!” Lisa screamed.

“Such emotional flesh,” Toll Seven said. “It is a wonder humans ever made it off their mud-ball world.” Toll Seven stepped back, becoming harder to see in the dark, green light. He seemed to make a minute gesture.

The conveyor lurched. Lisa Aster the clone began screaming. The scream became piercingly loud. She struggled as her feet entered the human-sized portal. She tried to lift her head so see what would happen next, but the straps were too tight.

She should have tried to kill Supreme Commander James Hawthorne back on Earth. She should never have agreed to this journey. Stupid General Fromm had allowed Toll Seven to change him. The cyborgs were invincible. They had no mercy. They had no flaws whatsoever. They would shred the Martians, Social Unity and then shred the arrogant Highborn.

A cold spray spewed against Lisa’s feet and then her legs. It made them numb.

Lisa’s screams became hoarse as her head disappeared into the whirring machine.

Marten and Omi ate cold soybean sandwiches in an EVA tent. They had been skimming for forty-eight hours in a southeastern direction. After passing Pavonis Mons, they’d entered jumbled terrain composed of huge blocks and deepening channels. One of those dangerous channels had led into the Noctis Labyrinthus, the most western of the Valles Marineris Rift System.

The Valles Marineris was the largest canyon in the Solar System and stretched for nearly a quarter of Mars’ circumference. It wasn’t a single vast canyon, but was made up of many different, merging formations. Nearest the Tharsis Bulge was the present canyon. Traveling east, one would reach eight different canyon systems before it ended at the basin of the Chryse Planitia. The Valles Marineris was a vast tectonic crack in the Martian crust, formed as the Tharsis region had risen in the west. Over the centuries, carbon dioxide fluid and gas had eroded even more of the canyon.

In the tent, Marten’s hair was oily and his face dirty. Surprisingly, Omi seemed fitter. Being on a planet again, even one with only one-third Earth’s gravity, had accelerated Omi’s health more than his many hours on the Mayflower’s workout unit had.

After finishing the sandwiches, both ex-shock troopers donned their environmental helmets and turned their heaters up to full blast. Only then did they zip open the EVA tent. The warm, oxygen-rich air left in a cloudy rush.

They were in shadow beside a towering cliff eight kilometers high. There were ice crystals on the rocks and patches of carbon-dioxide snow on the ground. Those patches were less than a quarter-inch thick. It was cold down here at the bottom of the Valles Marineris Canyon. But it wasn’t as cold as the Martian South Pole, which sometimes hit -193 degrees Fahrenheit in winter. It was cold enough. Because they were eight kilometers down from the regular Martian surface, there was enough atmospheric pressure for it to rain or snow.

Major Diaz had led them down the eight kilometers. It had been six hours of harrowing maneuvering. One skimmer had flipped and killed all four passengers.

Omi folded the tent as other raiders opened theirs, the oxygen-rich air escaping like cloudy genies. EVA-suited men began trudging to the parked skimmers. This was the last leg of the journey. Forty kilometers away was the first airstrip. None of them knew anything about the cyborg assault on the two moons.

“Look!” Diaz shouted into their helmet receivers.

Marten looked up. In the distance and leaving lines of vapor streaked four jets.

“Where are they headed?” Diaz radioed.

Marten watched the specks in the pink sky. Unlike Earth, which scattered the blue part of sunlight better than the other colors and thus made a blue sky, Mars had a reddish tinge. The reason was all the reddish dust in the air. The SU jets climbed to get out of the vast canyon. If those jets turned and burned down for them, it would be a mad scramble for the anti-air rockets. Marten mentally kicked himself for not having several of them rocket-armed at all times. He gave the order now.

The jets kept streaking higher, however, until they disappeared over the distant edge of the canyon. Were they headed for Olympus Mons?

As Marten strode for his skimmer, he began issuing commands. Soon they were going to find out if a mob of security personnel could pull off a commando raid. Maybe the thing to do was only take Omi with him and hit the airfield alone. He doubted Major Diaz would agree to that. No, Diaz would be sure they were turning traitor against the Planetary Union. That would bring about a gunfight Marten didn’t want to explain to the men or later to Secretary-General Chavez.

An hour later, Marten lay on a rock, using an imager on the airfield. There were two machine-sweepers on the runway, clearing it of dust and any thin layers of carbon dioxide ice. The airfield had a tower, four hangers, what might have been a barracks and then several long buildings behind that. Around the airstrip were low bunkers, likely automated weapon systems.

Marten slid off the rock and jogged back to the parked skimmers. He had the squad leaders gather around him. Using a holopad, he dumped the imager’s pictures into it and outlined the plan of attack.

“Any questions?” Marten asked later.

There were a few. By the quaver in the voices, Marten knew the squad leaders were scared. It was the right emotion. None of them had likely ever made a raid like this. Most had nerved themselves up in the past in the underground city streets they had grown up in. Then they would have walked up to PHC police and needled them to death. Hopefully, they were tough enough so they wouldn’t panic and freeze today. Marten was more worried they’d panic and shoot their own by mistake.

The men climbed into the skimmers as Omi and Marten strode back to the rock. Both of them dragged mobile missiles. They were TAC-84s, the latest in raiding tech and left behind by the Highborn. Without them, Marten would never have agreed to the raid.

Marten set his up with practiced ease, his training from the Free Earth Corps days returning as if it had been yesterday. An excited feeling ran through him, competing against the fear. Highborn training was the best in the Solar System, and Marten had taken two doses of it, once for FEC and the second time as a shock trooper. He unfolded the tripod legs and then swiveled the launch tube, using the comp-scope until he had the nearest bunker in sight. The missile launcher was like a giant gyroc rifle. It was easy enough to shoot these that one of the men could have done it. But in battle, what should have been easy quickly became difficult.

Marten looked up at Omi. Omi swiveled his launcher and looked over at him. Marten waved his finger to the left.

Omi glanced at his launcher and then at Marten’s launcher. He nodded, likely seeing now that they had both targeted the same bunker.

Marten waited for Omi to adjust, wondering how many of his men were going to die today. It would have been safer having his men crawl to the airfield. But they weren’t real soldiers and he didn’t know what they would do once under fire. Too many might jump up and run away. He’d decided to keep them together in the skimmers. Hit the enemy hard and hit fast, so fast that none of his men would think about jumping out of the skimmer. If Social Unity had posted tough military personnel here, however…

Omi gave him the thumbs up.

Marten returned the gesture. He sighted the first bunker, pressed the firing stud and watched the first TAC-84 leap out of the launch tube. It ignited immediately and whooshed at the target. Beside him, Omi’s missile roared a second later.

They targeted two other low bunkers each and let fly before the first missile hit with a terrific explosion. Concrete flew into the air and the concussion wave soon reached them. On Earth, the concussion would have been greater because of the greater density of the air.

“Hit the barracks,” Marten said over the radio.

Omi and he swiveled their launchers and let missiles zoom at the buildings in the distance.

Then Major Diaz’s voice roared over their headphones. Seconds later, the first skimmers zipped past them.

Marten glanced at Omi.

Omi shrugged, and said over the radio, “He’s eager.”

Marten turned, expecting to see their skimmer parked behind them. There was nothing but Martian ice crystals and shadows. In exasperation, Marten realized their driver had become too excited and had followed Major Diaz in his skimmer charge.

“They’re clumping together,” Omi said.

The fools, they were supposed to spread out, each team hitting their selected areas. Instead, as Major Diaz war-whooped over the radio, the other skimmers followed his like an old-time cavalry charge.

Omi crouched over his TAC-84. Marten did likewise. SU-suited soldiers appeared in the distance. They climbed out of hidden portals. There must have been underground barracks they’d failed to spot. That was just great.

Marten judged the skimmers, the SU personnel and took the risk. He sent another missile at the enemy. Then he deactivated his missile launcher.

“Shut it down,” Marten said.

“It’s a long run to the airfield,” Omi said.

“Yeah,” Marten said. “So we’d better start. Set your gyroc for sniper-fire.”

In moments, the two ex-shock troopers trudged across the cold Martian sand. With their gyroc rifles ready, they headed for the airfield.

Thirty seconds later, Marten cursed. The SU soldiers flung themselves behind concrete slabs, on the runway and behind corners. They began firing at the charging skimmers and immediately gained results.

A skimmer flipped as its driver lurched back hard in his seat, his helmet exploding. The three other occupants went flying. Upon landing, two lay still. The last lifted up and then slumped down again as bullets riddled his body. The skimmer exploded in a ball of fire.

Marten hurled himself onto the cold sand, steadied his gyroc rifle and used the scope. Three enemy soldiers far in the distance set up a plasma cannon. Marten fired. The gyroc round ignited and sped at the enemy. It missed, however.

Omi lay a little ahead of Marten, firing as well.

Another skimmer exploded as a heated ball of plasma hit it.

“Land! Land!” Marten shouted into his radio unit.

Someone in that cavalry-like charge finally began to listen. A skimmer dropped with a hard landing, plowing up cold dust and white carbon dioxide. Soon, four troopers spilled out. They began peppering the enemy with gyroc fire.

As the enemy plasma team swiveled their cannon, Marten held his breath and slowly squeezed the trigger. Three second later, another explosion released a heated ball of plasma. This one cooked the three SU soldiers, shriveling them as if they’d been insects.

Two reckless skimmers raced almost on top of the enemy. They landed. The security teams jumped out and charged, pumping shots. It was suicide. It was crazy. But maybe their recklessness favored them today. About a quarter of the security teams flopped onto the cold ground. The rest ran up to prone enemy and shot them at pointblank range.

With Omi and Marten acting as snipers, the short battle turned hard against the surviving SU soldiers. There had only been a few of them to begin with.

The victory was costly, however. And the terrible casualties left the Rebel Unionists in an ugly mood. The last Social Unity personnel tried to surrender. Major Diaz personally shot each of them in the back of the EVA helmet.

Later, Marten walked through the wreckage of the hangers and counted fifteen jets. He set demolition charges on any that looked in good shape.

The living were elated at their victory. The wounded with torn EVA suits had already died from exposure. Counting himself, there were thirty-one effectives left.

“These EVA suits are crap,” Marten told Omi.

The grim Korean grunted agreement.

Major Diaz poked into the barracks ruins, with a gyroc pistol ready. He was likely hunting for SU survivors. Five of the men were with him.

Marten collected everyone else and went down a hidden portal. As he’d suspected, it was an underground barracks. He found three men in a communications room. They were white with terror and begged for their lives.

Marten whispered to Omi, “If Diaz tries to shoot them, take him out.”

“Kill him?” Omi asked.

“Fast,” Marten said. He turned to the three shaking men. They were pale, wore PHC patches and had sweat-soaked tunics.

Before Marten could ask his first question, the PHC captain said, “You know the Battlefleet has attacked, right?”

Marten stared at the man. The PHC captain had gray sideburns, curly gray hair and looked as if he was ready to start crying.

“It-It’s on all the channels,” the captain stammered. “They stormed Phobos and Deimos.”

The door opened and Major Diaz entered the room. His brown eyes blazed. “Good,” he crooned. “There are more.” He lifted his gun.

“Do it,” Omi said, “and you’re dead.”

There were six other Unionists in the room. They looked up, surprised. Omi had a needler pressed against Diaz’s back.

Major Diaz scowled at Marten, who sat on a chair.

“Put away your gun, Major,” Marten said.

“I see vermin in the room,” Diaz said coldly. “I crush vermin to remove the infestation from Mars.”

“You took out the airfield,” Marten said. “Now we gain intelligence. You do know about that, right?”

Diaz laughed. “Then we kill them?”

“No,” Marten said. “There’s been enough killing today.”

Major Diaz had a crazed look. “There you are wrong.” He lifted his gyroc, aiming at the PHC captain.

Omi clutched Diaz’s elbow and made a sharp motion. Major Diaz cried out as the gyroc dropped from his hand and hit the floor with a crack.

“Take him outside,” Marten said. “Let him cool down.”

Omi put a hand on Diaz’s shoulder. The major tried to shake it off. Omi rabbit-punched Diaz in the solar plexus and Diaz groaned, going limp. Omi turned him around and pushed him into the next room.

“Stay here,” Marten told two of Unionist raiding party who had risen to follow Omi and Diaz.

They glanced at Marten and they must have seen something in his face that frightened them. They hurriedly sat down.

“Finish your story,” Marten told the visibly trembling PHC captain.

“Y-You’re not going to shoot me?” the captain whispered.

“I’m no murderer,” Marten said.

The captain gulped as a tear leaked from an eye. In a quavering voice, he told Marten what had come in over communications.

Marten knew the truth when he heard it. He told Squad Leader Rojas. “Watch these three, but let them live. That’s an order.”

“I understand,” Rojas said.

Marten motioned the other Unionists into the next room, leaving Rojas with the three enemy communications men.

Diaz glared at him. This was a central command room with vidscreens and a small cooler to the side. Many of the other Unionist raiders were piled in the room, their manner ugly and angry as they stared at Omi.

“You have dared lay hands on me,” Diaz pronounced. “You have shamed me in front of Social Unity swine. I will have my revenge, I promise you.”

“You had your fun,” Marten said, “blowing holes in men who wanted to surrender.”

“It is a war to the death!” Diaz shouted. “They sought to make us slaves. Now they pay the price for their arrogance.”

“The Battlefleet has moved,” Marten said.

Major Diaz shook his head as if to shake off a fly.

“Space commandos have stormed Phobos and Deimos,” Marten said.

“PHC lies!” Diaz spat.

“Not this time.”

Diaz’s eyes narrowed. “Are you suggesting we scamper home with the mission only a quarter completed?”

Marten took his time answering. They were under a communications blackout so no eavesdropping equipment could pinpoint them. Social Unity would know about them now. Marten debated radioing Chavez, and he saw how the other Unionists listened intently. Several fingered their weapons as if thinking about turning them on him. Marten debated with himself on how to do this. Diaz was a man of rage. So shouting and raging at him likely wouldn’t work. Likely, nothing would work with Diaz but determination and the upper hand. Marten realized he had to win the other Unionists to him. They had to realize he was right and that Diaz had horribly compromised the mission.

Marten let a sneer slide onto his face. He spoke contemptuously. “Scamper home, Major? I wish to abort the mission before you kill the rest of the men the Secretary-General gave into my keeping.”

Diaz’s head swayed. “I only killed Social Unity swine.”

Marten sneered. “You were like a teenager with his first woman. You did everything in a rush. What might have been beautiful, you spoiled by finishing before her clothes were even half off.”

Livid, Diaz shot to his feet.

“I was still firing missiles when you led a madman’s charge at the airfield,” Marten said. “You pulled everyone with you. You lead unarmored skimmers straight into enemy fire. I lost a third of my men because of that. Did you count them, Major? Five skimmers lost out of twenty and thirty-one effectives left. We barely have a little over half our raiding force intact. Do you think I can hit each airfield in turn while losing almost half my men? Do you think I’m going to return to Secretary-General Chavez with handful of men left?”

“I killed no one—”

“Bah!” Marten said. “A third of our force was wiped out because you hunted for glory.”

Major Diaz blinked in shock. “I want to kill the enemy.”

“Good,” Marten said. “So do I. But this isn’t an assassin’s mission where we nerve ourselves up to face the cops, blow them away and run. This is a military strike. You do it by the numbers, not through heroics. You charged this base like a white knight on a mythical horse. The men followed you, forgetting everything I taught them. Because of that, a third of them are dead. Can you understand that? They are dead and we are too weakened to continue the mission.”

“Next time—”

“There won’t be a next time, Major. I’ve lost faith that you and your men want to learn how to fight like soldiers.” Marten began to stride back and forth, gesturing angrily. He had to drive this lesson home. “Not only do you act like a heroic fool, but you butcher those who could have given me important information. You even tried to kill those communications officers. We could have used those soldiers you killed to help us gain entrance onto the next airfield. I can appreciate that you’re a fighter Diaz. I like your hot-blooded courage. What I can’t abide is that you lose all sense while your bloodlust consumes your better intelligence. A good soldier has to stay cool-headed. That’s how he keeps his men alive for the next fight.”

One of the Unionists actually nodded. That gave Marten hope.

Major Diaz stared at the floor. He wore a puzzled look. Then he nodded the slightest bit and glanced at the men, glanced at Omi and finally at Marten. He opened his mouth, let it hang open and then shut it. Without another word, he headed for the outer door. He moved without his customary arrogance.

Omi watched the major as if he expected Diaz to whirl around and open fire.

Marten didn’t think Diaz would. Maybe there was hope for the man, although Diaz’s hate ran deep. For the moment, the major would think about this day.

After the door closed, Omi glanced at Marten. His look said: now what?

Marten crossed his arms, staring at the door as if he thought deeply about Major Diaz. He did it for the benefit of those watching. What he really wondered was what he should do next. And he wondered about the orbital launch station where the Mayflower was docked. If the SU Battlefleet was attacking the moons, what had they done to his precious shuttle?

-17-

The news was horrible and sent a shudder of fear through the surviving space defense forces of the Planetary Union.

The last defenders of Phobos had broadcasted strange images of battle-suited invaders. Those SU invaders had moved with insect-like speed and used inhuman cunning. To see them glide over the moon’s surface without bounding into space, no Martian could have done likewise. Nothing had stopped the space invaders, and their reactions had been brutally efficient as bunkers, missile-sites, laser batteries and shuttle hangers had all fallen before them. The last broadcast had shown invaders blasting surrendering Martians. The poor sods had crumpled and lain so utterly still. Then a helmeted invader had turned to a camera. For a moment, the metallic face inside the helmet had stared at the broadcast unit. That image had been frozen and set everywhere throughout the Planetary Union. Then the thing had lifted its weapon. There had been a flash, and nothing more had broadcast out of Phobos.

Shortly thereafter, Deimos had also gone offline.

Now Commander Zapata stood in his command center. He was ashen-faced and trembling. He watched the main vidscreen as harsh laser beams chewed through the prismatic crystal field around his orbital station. More crystals flowed from the supply tanks, trying to rebuild the field faster than the enemy lasers could chew through it. Soon, however, the station’s tanks would run dry. Then nothing could save them.

Those laser beams originated from big SU Battleships. Those warships accelerated hard for near-Mars orbit.

The prismatic crystals were the orbital launch station’s primary defense against such killing beams. The crystals were highly reflective and contained all the colors of the rainbow. Their purpose was to bounce or reflect the laser’s light and dissipate its strength. If deep enough, a prismatic crystal field could completely absorb a laser.

The intense strength of these battle-beams slagged the crystals by the bucketful. That stole the reflective power and meant the full force of the beam soon hit them. In space-battle terms, the lasers did a burn through.

Zapata shouted questions at the few people still at their screens.

“Eighty percent of the crystal supplies are gone, commander.”

To stop his hands from trembling, Zapata gripped a monitor as he stared at the main screen.

“Emergency deployment,” he whispered.

Computer keys told him someone carried out his command. He swallowed hard as sweat prickled his back. Most of the station personnel were abandoning the station. The last of the orbital fighters were even now catapulted from the hangers. He could have ordered them to burn for Phobos. Maybe a strafing run over the moon would kill some of those metallic horrors. Somehow, he doubted it. Besides, the Planetary Union needed those orbitals. Mars couldn’t give up just like that. It had taken so many grueling years gaining their precious freedom. To return to serfdom so easily—who were those metallic soldiers? What were they? Where had Social Unity found them?

Zapata made a sound deep in his throat. All those years of hiding, of gunning down PHC police, making secret plans.… He couldn’t throw it all away now on a gesture.

His hands hurt he was gripping a monitor so hard. He had elected to remain behind and run a last ditch defense. They had to save the orbitals and anyone else they could. He had to scrape something together out of this disastrous defeat.

He thought about the shuttle, the one the ex-shock troopers had used. Several days ago, he’d ordered its codes broken. Engineers had entered the shuttle, refueled the tanks and stocked it with supplies. He wondered who else knew about it. Surely, a few of those fleeing would have entered the Highborn shuttle and tried for somewhere.

“Burn through,” someone whispered.

Commander Zapata looked up with his one good eye. The power of Social Unity was too much. After everything the Highborn had done to Inner Planets, how was it possible that the SU military still possessed so many warships? He shook his badly scarred head. At least, Mars had tasted a few months of freedom. It had been a good feeling. For the first time in twelve years, a Martian had been able to hold his head up again. Despite their arrogance, he wished the Highborn had stayed at Mars. Social Unity would have never dared attack if a Doom Star had orbited the planet. Zapata frowned. Could the genetic super-soldiers have known this would happen? After a moment’s thought, he shrugged. They couldn’t have known. No one could have.

On the main screen, incredibly powerful lasers burned holes through the drifting field of prismatic crystals. Those lasers now speared toward the station. The armored hull could withstand the hellish beams for a few seconds. More lasers now burned through the crystals.

Zapata turned to those who had remained at their screens. He saluted them. “For the Mars Planetary Union!” he shouted.

Chairs scraped back as one by one the others stood. They glanced at the large screen. Tears ran down one man’s face. They saluted, and shouted, “For the Mars Planetary Union, sir!”

Seconds later, the powerful lasers punched ten-meter wide holes through the orbiting structure. Terrific explosions began and fires roared. Then the vacuum of space stole the needed oxygen to let fires burn. Long before that, however, the personnel aboard the command center were dead, charred into horribly shriveled things that barely resembled humans.

Parts of the gutted station tore free or had been shredded free and drifted. Among those sections was the Mayflower. No one had entered the shuttle. The engineers who had broken in had failed to let the others know it could be used an escape vehicle. No beam had touched it and ignited the fuel in its tanks. Instead, the former Highborn shuttle floated high above Mars, another piece of debris formed by the deadly Inner Planets civil war.

-18-

As the cyborgs stormed Phobos and Deimos and as the SU Battlefleet destroyed the rest of the Martian space defense, the Highborn were on the move. Nearly 249 million kilometers away, the Highborn Praetor circled the Sun.

The nine-foot tall Highborn lay on an acceleration couch and endured debilitating G-forces. The Sun was vast, with a diameter of 1,392,000 kilometers. If the Earth were the size of a dime, the Sun would be two meters in size. The Sun had 109 times the diameter of the Earth. The distance from the Earth to the Moon was approximately 350,000 kilometers. Thus, orbiting one full circuit around the Sun would roughly be like Luna orbiting twice its normal distance from Earth. The Bangladesh had orbited the Sun much nearer than the Praetor did now. His ship lacked the special shielding that had allowed the experimental beamship to survive the Sun’s terrible x-rays and radiation at so close a range.

The Praetor and his Highborn crew had endured the Gs for some time as the Thutmosis III build up speed. Highborn could endure greater Gs than a Homo sapien, who blacked out at a sustained 6 or 7 Gs.

The former SU missile-ship had undergone radical transformation at the Sun-Works Factory. First, the massive particle shields had been removed. Then it had received a new low radar signature hull and a new coat of anti-teleoptic paint. Massive, detachable tanks and huge warfare pods had also been added. The tanks contained propellant for the fusion engines. The warfare pods held specially designed drones and missiles.

The Praetor lay on the couch, enduring and mentally cursing himself as a fool to have trusted Grand Admiral Cassius. If the Praetor were to design a clever punishment module, he would use the Thutmosis III. Instead of having the freedom and energy to plot to unseat the Grand Admiral, the Praetor had lost weight under the emergency acceleration. He was no longer near the center of power, the Doom Stars in Earth orbit, but tucked away near the Sun. If the constant acceleration didn’t kill him, the Sun’s radiation would. In his opinion, they flew much too near the nuclear ball of matter. And the warship’s velocity—if this went on much longer, the Praetor’s ship would reach speeds for a trip to Alpha Centauri.

The Praetor had studied the files about the Bangladesh. The SU beamship had reached respectable speeds, but the acceleration of the Thutmosis III dwarfed what the SU ship had achieved.

As he lay on the acceleration couch, the Praetor made a grotesque grin. The acceleration deformed his features and made bowel moments a horror. But if a Homo sapien could do a thing, a Highborn could do it twice as well, even three, or four times better. The Bangladesh’s attack plan had been clever, and it had employed its fantastically-ranged beam to good effect. The new Highborn strategy for drones and missiles would be even cleverer.

Yet it would only be clever, if Social Unity moved as the Grand Admiral had predicted. If not, then soon the Thutmosis III would have to begin deceleration. The Praetor made a grotesquely wry face. The Grand Admiral had never been specific about how the Thutmosis III was to stop its terrific velocity. The only reasonable method would use Jupiter or Saturn’s gravity to brake the Thutmosis III. Would the lords of Jupiter or Saturn allow that?

Like all Highborn, the Praetor was well aware of his superiority. The Grand Admiral might assume that those of Jupiter or Saturn would fear Highborn too much to harm a lone ship. Unfortunately, he’d learned one thing as the governor of the Sun-Works Factory: Premen were strangely resistant to rational behavior. Some preferred death to the logical submission to their betters.

The Praetor slowly shifted upon his acceleration couch. He had learned through his crew that anything but slow moves could cause muscle tears. Already, several Highborn lay in mortal agony on their couches. Groin, gut and sexual organ tears were the worst. Pulled hamstrings and triceps were also bad, but not necessarily fatal.

For the upcoming battle, the Thutmosis III was the Highborn secret weapon. It would win them the war for Inner Planets. On that, Grand Admiral Cassius had been certain. The Praetor had studied the plan in detail. He had even received reports that the SU Battlefleet Mars had finally made its stab at the planetary defenses. The Grand Admiral had correctly predicated each of those moves. Soon, the Doom Stars would accelerate for Mars. Then the fateful clash between the space fleets would determine who controlled the high ground between the planets. Whoever controlled space could quarantine the separate planets.

Were the premen truly foolish enough to think they could destroy Doom Stars? Would they actually remain at Mars to do battle? That seemed incredible to the Praetor. Yet the Grand Admiral was certain the premen would possess a secret weapon of their own and that the premen would be brash enough to think their secret weapon could give them victory over their superiors.

The Praetor grinned harshly. The Thutmosis III was the weapon that would trump anything the premen could cobble together. It would shatter the preman surprise. His drones and missiles would hit their fleet at precisely the worst time for them. It would cause the premen to panic. They would then make even more foolish tactical decisions than otherwise and face annihilation.

“Good,” the Praetor whispered. He yearned to burn premen hopes into ashes. He’d suffered for too long aboard this death-ship. The Highborn under his command had suffered as well. But their suffering would end the Inner Planets war. Yes, after such an annihilating blow, the hope would drain from the lower order. Many would drop their weapons and meekly seek the good graces of their genetic superiors. Premen would cower in fear, and they would finally realize that a New Order had come to the Solar System.

“Then,” the Praetor whispered. Then he would have achieved his dream. He would have won military glory in the most stunning victory of the war. That would catapult him into every Highborn’s thoughts. The Praetor had patiently videoed every aspect of his ordeal. He would replay the files and show the others what he had endured to bring them unqualified success. He already had a following. That following would grow, and in time, he would topple Grand Admiral Cassius from his high seat of supreme power.

As he pondered such lovely thoughts, the Praetor of the Thutmosis III missile-ship groaned as his stomach cramped. He feared a muscle tear. He panted, but slowly the pain faded. He tried to shift to a more comfortable position. He could not take many more days of this.

The screen before him crackled. It was fuzzy, and it told him better than anything else could that his ship was too near the Sun.

“Praetor.”

“Here,” the Praetor whispered. Through screen static, he barely made out Grand Admiral Cassius’s features.

“The premen of Social Unity have finally made their move,” the Grand Admiral said in a distorted voice.

The Praetor wanted to groan with relief. Instead, he glared at the Grand Admiral’s fuzzy image.

“In two days, you will begin the breakout from Sun orbit,” the Grand Admiral said. “The exact data and angle of your attack are already entering your tactical computer.”

“Yes,” the Praetor whispered.

“I admire your fortitude, Praetor. Your ship will bring us ultimate victory. I personally salute your courage and your daring.”

The Praetor managed a terse nod, and almost tore a neck muscle doing it.

“Grand Admiral Cassius out.” The fuzzy image faded away.

Two more days, the Praetor thought. Two more days and the Thutmosis III would break out of Sun orbit and shut off its mighty engines. Then the stealth ship would zoom at terrific velocity for Mars. The final battle for Inner Planets was about to begin.

-19-

SU jets jumped Marten’s skimmers at the worst possible moment. He had time to wonder how long they had been under observation. Then Marten screamed at Omi to take the controls as he turned and grabbed the rocket-launcher between the frozen knees of the raider sitting behind him.

They climbed out of the Noctis Labyrinthus Canyon using the skimmer’s VTOL jets. Each skimmer did it in stages. It made the skimmer’s rotary engine whine so Marten’s teeth ached, and it made the metal craft shake as if it was about to burst apart from stress.

One moment, Marten watched the skimmer ahead of him. The dark craft wobbled as it rose higher and higher, its engines screaming to gain enough lift as the skimmer climbed beside a wall of red rock. Then a missile streaked out of the pink sky. It streaked and exploded, and the skimmer that had wobbled was now hot shards of metal and bloody body chunks flying in all directions. Some of those chunks smeared against the red rock wall, leaving gore and hot streaks of gashed basalt.

At the same moment, something higher up flashed into view and out of view at almost the same instant. Marten recognized it as a jet. He knew because of the afterburners that glowed orange long him for him know they were all about to die.

Omi leaned over and grabbed the controls.

“Move!” Marten roared.

The security men in the back leaned away from Marten. The man’s face behind the visor showed petrified shock.

Marten lifted the anti-air rocket launcher. It was a heavy weapon like an ancient bazooka. With a grunt, Marten hefted it onto his shoulder, flicked tracking with his thumb so the launcher beeped and a green light winked. He peered through the scope in time to see another jet fire a missile. That missile streaked like lethal death just as the first one had.

With a thud, Omi landed the skimmer. That violently jostled Marten and almost threw him out of the craft. Then the enemy missile slammed into the rock face with a shattering explosion. Marten heard rock shards whiz past his helmeted head.

High above, the SU jet’s afterburners engaged, and it flashed out of view.

With his teeth tightly clenched so his jaws hurt, Marten scanned the pink sky. The first jet had re-appeared. It must have made a wide circle. Yes. It was still turning. It was going to strike again.

“Bastard,” Marten whispered under his breath. He hefted the rocket-launcher onto his shoulder.

“Run for cover!” someone shouted into Marten’s headphones. He was vaguely aware that one of his men dove out of the skimmer. Didn’t the fool realize that if they lost the skimmer, he’d never make it anywhere alive in time before his suit ran out of power?

Beside him, Omi lifted another anti-air launcher. “The jet jocks should have fired a flock of missiles each and called it a day,” Omi said through his speakers.

The Korean’s coolness helped Marten’s tripping heart. Could the air jocks up there be as green as his men were? It seemed unlikely. But it did seem to Marten that it would have been smarter for the pilots to stay out farther and use their heavier missiles to advantage instead of coming in so close.

Marten tracked the first jet as it swung back around. The launcher beeped again, which meant it had gained radar-lock. Marten thanked God he held Highborn tech and not some imitation Martian crap. Marten held himself stiffly and pulled the oversized trigger. This wasn’t a gyroc weapon. The blast almost knocked him over backward. It was a Highborn weapon and was meant for a nine-foot giant in battleoid armor.

The rocket whooshed fast and climbed with astonishing speed. A second rocket whooshed. It was Omi firing.

The pilots must have recognized their danger. Without firing another missile, the first jet nosed up and the afterburners roared orange flames and made a thunderous sound. Anti-radar chaff drifted from the jet in a silvery clump behind the steeply climbing craft. Neither the chaff nor the steep climb helped. The anti-air missile hit the jet squarely and exploded with an impressive display of pyrotechnics. Omi’s missile did the same thing with the second jet.

Marten heard himself wheezing, the noise loud in his helmeted ears. He scanned the Martian sky as he trembled. If there were another jet, it would likely kill them all. Slowly, it dawned on him that the two aircraft were it. No more appeared.

Omi put his hand on Marten’s shoulder. Marten whirled around with a snarl. Then he grinned sheepishly and nodded as he settled down.

“Major Diaz?” Marten asked over the radio. There was nothing but static. Were his troubles with Diaz over? Was the man dead? “Major!” he shouted.

“Here,” Diaz answered in a choked voice.

“Glad to still have you among the living, Major,” Marten said. “Rojas.”

“Here, sir,” Rojas said.

Gutierrez was also alive, with his entire skimmer crew. Squad leaders Lopez and Barajas were dead and their skimmers destroyed. There were no survivors from either vehicle.

Thirteen skimmers were left out of the original twenty. They had destroyed two more jets, but at too high of a cost.

“Listen up, people,” Marten said over their headphones. “We’re going to use over-watch from now on.”

Marten waited for Diaz or one of the others to ask him why they hadn’t been using over-watch before this. But none of them did. Omi and he had killed the two jets and likely saved the remainder of the raiding party. Maybe it was finally starting to sink in with them that they weren’t soldiers and this was a real shooting war, not a guerrilla raid on underground city streets.

Too soon, their skimmer whined, and it shook so violently the metal rattled like a child’s toy. They rose higher and higher, using the VTOL jets to reach the next plateau.

Marten’s throat was dry like rust and tasted just as bad. He was sick of the planet’s sandy smell and the gigantically oversized geographical formations. He wanted to get back to the Mayflower and head for Jupiter. Jets, sand, kilometers deep canyons, he yearned for the quiet of outer space.

What a way to buy fuel. He snarled as the VTOL jets whined down and they flew over the ground by a normal few feet. If Social Unity had done something to his hard-won shuttle… then he was going to find a way to make them pay in a manner that they would never forget.

-20-

As Marten and the remnants of his commando team skimmed for Olympus Mons, the SU Battlefleet already braked to match orbits with Phobos, Deimos and the edge of the Martian atmosphere.

Commodore Blackstone sat in his wardroom, staring at a still-shot of his ex-wife. The vidscreen showed a young woman with long auburn hair and in a three-piece bathing suit. Through bio-sculpture, she had maintained her youthful looks. Through vigorous exercise, she had maintained her shape. To realize now that she hadn’t done it for him, but in order to keep catching new lovers drove Blackstone near despair.

There was a soft knock at his door.

Blackstone’s hand shot out as he pressed his keyboard, switching the screen to a tactical display of the Mars System.

“Enter,” he said.

The door opened and stout General Fromm stepped in and saluted.

“No need for that,” Blackstone said quietly. “We’re not on the bridge.”

General Fromm nodded stiffly and then managed an odd smile.

“Is there something troubling you?” Blackstone asked.

Fromm cocked his head, blinking at him. The general seemed distant as if he’d lost his train of thought.

“If you could make it brief, General,” Blackstone said. “I’m rather busy.” He gestured at his vidscreen. “I’m planning the next maneuver.”

“Ah…” Fromm said. “Yes. That’s why I’m here, sir.”

“Oh?”

“It’s about the prisoners on Phobos.”

“There are prisoners?” Blackstone asked. This was the first he’d heard about them.

“Strange, I know,” Fromm said. “The cyborgs are so rigorous that it would seem they’d kill everyone. Apparently, they are keen to digest every iota of intelligence they can from the enemy. Toll Seven wishes for my people to interrogate the prisoners.”

Blackstone frowned. Wasn’t that Commissar Kursk’s task? “It surprises me the cyborg doesn’t want to do it himself.”

“My thinking exactly,” Fromm said. He touched his neck and rubbed a heavy bandage there.

Blackstone was surprised he hadn’t noticed the bandage before now. It was flesh colored. He wanted Fromm out of here so he could decide whether to send his ex-wife a message regarding his possible return to Earth. Although Blackstone found it irksome, he forced himself to show interest in the general and his request.

“What happened to you?” Blackstone asked.

Fromm’s hand shot away from the bandage as if it was suddenly hot.

“Ah…”

“Is it a deep injury?” Blackstone asked.

“I jabbed myself,” Fromm said.

Blackstone could really care less. He did note that Fromm spoke in an odd manner and Blackstone decided it must be the stress of battle. “Is it healing?” he asked, wishing he’d never brought up the injury.

“Yes,” Fromm said. “It’s healing very well, sir. Perfectly.”

Blackstone indifferently waved his hand. “Yes, take care of the interrogations. But be sure to notify Commissar Kursk about it.” He frowned. “Why did Toll Seven ask you? The more I think about it—you realize that interrogations are the commissar’s prerogative?”

Fromm stiffened, and he saluted. Then he opened his mouth as if to explain, but said nothing.

Blackstone wondered if Supreme Commander Hawthorne had become a martinet concerning military protocol. Is that why Fromm acted so oddly? Had Fromm gained these strange mannerisms during his time on Hawthorne’s staff?

“Perhaps the cyborg realizes the commissar is overworked,” Blackstone said, answering his own question. He showed his teeth in a feral grin. “If Toll Seven had asked for the prisoners to interrogate, I’d have said no.”

General Fromm cocked his head and his eyes became glassy before he asked, “Is there a reason why you would have refused Toll Seven?”

Blackstone laughed without mirth. “I don’t trust the cyborgs. I hope you don’t either.”

“No, no,” Fromm said, “not at all.”

“Say, whatever happened to that aide of yours?” Blackstone asked. “She used to dog your heels. Now I never see her.”

“The clone?”

“That’s right. The Aster clone.”

Fromm blinked several times. “She’s hard at work monitoring the cyborgs.”

“The Supreme Commander asked about her in his last lightguide message,” Blackstone said. “If she discovers anything unusual, I want to know about it immediately.”

“Yes, sir,” Fromm said.

Blackstone drummed his fingers on his desk. “Was there anything else?”

“No, sir,” Fromm said. “With your permission, sir, I shall communicate your decision to Toll Seven.”

Blackstone waved him away, and he switched the tactical display back to a still-shot of his ex-wife. He was hardly aware as the door closed and as General Fromm took his leave.

Nine minutes later, Fromm secured the door to his cubicle. He double-checked it. Then he sat down on a chair and peeled the thick, flesh-colored bandage from his neck. A deep jack was embedded there.

Stout General Fromm licked his lips, feeling an odd sense of sexual arousal as he uncoiled a warm, flexible tube. It was synthi-flesh. He wormed the tube into the jack in his neck. He shivered with delight as the pseudo-nerve endings linked with nerves in his neck. It always began as pleasure sensations as the insert sent pulses to the needed brain centers. Drool trickled from his slack mouth. He moaned in pleasure and shifted in short, sudden movements.

Then, the deeper functions occurred. Mentally, he entered Web-Mind, the unit of the Neptune whole that resided in Toll Seven’s command pod. The general reported directly to Web-Mind about his talk with Commodore Blackstone. With his Web-heightened memories, he relayed the conversation perfectly.

Afterward, Web-Mind took General Fromm’s consciousness into his favorite simulation. During the episode, Web-Mind continued reprogramming the chaotic mass of the general’s neurons, gaining yet another level of control over the bio-form’s thoughts.

The unpleasant task of beginning the conversion process fell to OD12 and three other cyborgs. The Phobos prisoners were a mix of male and female bio-forms.

Twenty-seven naked humanoids drifted toward the far wall of the storage room as OD12 and three other cyborgs entered. The prisoners were male and female bio-forms. The cyborgs had already shaved off every hair on their bodies. The prisoners had bruises and scabs, but each was now as hairless as a newborn.

The bio-forms babbled frightened questions. And they stared at OD12 with wide-eyed horror.

That troubled her. And what troubled OD12 even more was that her internal computer didn’t notice her unease. During the battle for Phobos, a bullet or a shard from an explosion had struck her armored chest with terrific force. Adrenalin had already flown through her system. That adrenalin had accelerated many bio-functions in her, but for too long a period without rest. At the time, OD12 hadn’t noticed either problem. Replaying it later in her computer memories, she’d noticed that a glitch or an electronic burn had surged through her internal computer several microseconds after the impact. Certain data had been lost. OD12 suspected now that the censor program had been damaged. Her computer had repeatedly given her a message to report the incident to Web-Mind. She ignored it, and the computer ignored her disobedience.

Because of that, OD12 pushed aside the override controls over her emotions. She had done so with a sustained effort of will.

She now studied the horror on the faces of the naked prisoners. They babbled questions concerning their fate. Some wept. Some begged for mercy. Two of them scowled horribly.

OD12 shrugged. She heard servos whine and knew two of the other cyborgs had noticed the shrug. Would their internal computers consider that an anomaly: something foreign to proper cyborg behavior? In that instant, OD12 realized she would have to hide her freedom of thought. She must mimic the others perfectly or she would return to Toll Seven’s pod for repairs.

No thank you, she told herself. I like my damage just fine.

In another life, she would have chuckled. She knew, however, that if she chuckled, the other cyborgs might destroy her.

“That one,” AZ9 said. His voice box was scratchy due to battle damage.

OD12 swallowed down a sigh. With mechanical detachment, she strode at the chosen bio-form. The male screamed, and he tried to struggle, using a wrestling hold against her arms.

By using magnetic footing to walk upright and anchor herself, OD12 plucked him out of the herd. His wrestling grapples only minimally interfered with her task. She moved away from the protesting bio-forms. She twisted him around as if he were a baby. His hysterical strength was useless against her cyborg muscles. She bent his arms behind him and clicked handcuffs over his wrists. Next, she cuffed his ankles, turned on magnetic power and attached him to the metal floor. She put a neural inhibitor on his neck and all his struggles ceased as if he’d become catatonic. Lastly, she brought up a jack-gun. It was a heavy, bulky piece of equipment. She placed it at the base of his neck, and the jack-gun began to vibrate.

OD12 looked up and noticed that the herd of bio-forms watched her in fascinated horror. A few babbled whispered questions.

After three minutes, the unit made a loud noise. OD12 removed the jack-gun from the male’s neck. He now possessed a gleaming jack in his neck, ready to receive a plug into Web-Mind. But that was for later.

AZ9 pointed out the next bio-form.

Dutifully, OD12 went into the herd to get the female. Now all the bio-forms tried to fight. It didn’t matter. They were naked, lacked gravity and possessed minimal strength. Still, it was an ugly process. It wounded OD12 to hear their whispered words concerning what they thought she was.

She wanted to tell them she used to be just like them. She would have told them their screams didn’t matter. They would become cyborgs or Webbies and the memories of their horror would be overridden. It might not be for the best, but it was inevitable, as escape was impossible.

OD12 understood that, because life was rigged. The only freedom was what she possessed now: a little self-awareness. It saddened her to realize the self-awareness wouldn’t last. It meant.… It meant she had to figure out a way to enjoy it as much as she could while it did last.

She pressed the jack-gun against another neck and the machine began to vibrate and dig into the captured female’s flesh.

-21-

After passing Pavonis Mons and with Olympus Mons towering in the distance, Marten saw SU jets once more.

The commandos skimmed eight meters above huge red dunes, with the sand below drifting in ominous swirls. All day, Marten had fought against an increasingly strong headwind. Omi now tapped his shoulder and pointed into the reddish sky.

At first, Marten thought Omi meant the wispy ice clouds kilometers high. Then Marten noticed slow-moving specks.

“Can the jets climb that high?” Marten asked over the com-link.

“Did you see that flare?” Omi asked.

“Flare?”

“It was near one of those jets, might have been one of them.”

Marten made a shrewd guess. “Martian orbitals must have jumped the jets.”

During the next few minutes, there were four more flares. Likely, it was aircraft dying a violent death.

Marten hoped that meant some Martian space defenses still existed. The thought of being trapped on Mars for good made him queasy. He had been trapped in Australian Sector for years. He wondered sometimes if he ever should have escaped from the Sun-Works Factory the day his parents died. He’d yearned for freedom all those years in Australian Sector. He’d resisted Social Unity, just as the Martians had resisted here. The Storm Assault Missile had changed him. He no longer resisted because he no longer accepted either Social Unity or the Highborn as even nominally in charge of his life. Until he found a free society, a free government, he was his own government, his own self-run State.

Marten squinted up at the wispy ice clouds. He searched for specks, but the jets and orbitals had either perished or left for somewhere else. The Planetary Union was the closest thing to freedom there was in Inner Planets. Yet they followed Unionist doctrine. It talked a good game, but essentially meant the union leaders made the decisions. It leaned heavily on original Social Unity doctrine. The great difference was power. Social Unity wielded it and the Planetary Union wanted it. Because the Unionists fought like a wounded beast, it granted its individual members greater autonomy than otherwise.

To pass the long hours riding the skimmer, Marten had spoken to Squad Leader Rojas about the Planetary Union. It’s how he’d discovered the majority of his information concerning Martian ideals.

Rojas’s major credo and apparently the Planetary Union’s as well was—Mars was for the Martians. That was reasonable. But Marten no longer found socialist theories acceptable in any form. As far as he could tell, socialism always led to a police state, with a heavy emphasis on thought control.

Marten wanted a free state, where free people united to achieve goals they genuinely desired. Instead of Thought Police, individual people would work toward individual goals. His mother had taught him about such systems. They had existed in the past and might possibly exist farther out in the Solar System. Yet his mother had also taught him another truth. People were not inherently good. Each human possessed an evil streak and a propensity toward bad actions. Each person needed a code of conduct that corralled that propensity toward bad actions. For his mother, it had been God and the ancient book called the Bible.

Do not steal was one of the ancient maxims. Social Unity stole a man’s labor and stole his freedom. Social Unity theory spoke about equality, using it so the State could plunder the production of the individual.

Marten shook his head. He refused to let anyone plunder him anymore. His stint in the Storm Assault Missile had torn the last veils from his eyes. He had no allegiance to Social Unity or the Highborn. Both systems sought to enslave him. So the sovereign State of Marten Kluge—the germ to an ancient method of governance—was going to leave Mars before the Planetary Union tried to usurp his freedom and mold him in its likeness.

The great question was how to achieve his dream. If the SU Battlefleet had moved into near orbit, it meant they had likely captured his shuttle. If they held his shuttle, how was he going to tear it out of their grasp? Perhaps just as importantly, how was he going to get into space again to try to wrest his shuttle back into his rightful control?

Twelve hours later, Omi drove the skimmer into a low garage at the base of Olympus Mons. Marten had the men line up in an oxygen zone. They actually looked strange without their EVA helmets on. Most had matted hair and dark circles around their eyes.

Marten spoke tersely to them, commending some and giving others Highborn axioms concerning combat. Then he dismissed the men and told them to get some sleep.

As the men filed away, Major Diaz strode up and saluted. The major looked as dangerous as ever and his hair, incredibly, was swept back hard into perfect form. Diaz had lost weight, but none of the harshness to his features.

“I will report to the Secretary-General,” Diaz said. “I will tell him you are a crafty soldier. I will tell him your courage and quick action saved the commandos from almost certain destruction. I refer to the jets, of course.”

Marten waited for the kicker. He didn’t have long to wait.

“However, I demand satisfaction from your lieutenant,” Diaz said.

“It what form?” Marten asked.

“A duel,” Diaz said.

“Are you tired of living?”

Major Diaz stiffened. “Without honor, a man is an animal.”

“I ordered Omi to disarm you,” Marten said. “Therefore, your desire for satisfaction should lie with me.”

“I have no desire to kill a soldier who could teach the commandos useful skills,” Diaz said.

“That’s something, at least. Major, why not wait for satisfaction until we find out if Martian space defense still stands? If it doesn’t, the Planetary Union is going to need each one of us. I know that I want you with me when Social Unity launches drop-troops.”

“The weight of honor compels me—”

“Major Diaz,” Marten said. “Honor compels you to save your planet. Mars is for the Martians, remember? Honor means that you must forgo your personal desires until the emergency ends. We are free and wish to remain so. As much as I dislike your murder of prisoners, I recognize your combat ability. You are what the Highborn refer to as a ‘natural soldier.’ You’re a killer. Omi is also a killer. I’ve been trained to mimic one. Killers are always rare and always feared by the vast majority of people. It is strategic and tactical stupidity for the killers of one side to eliminate its best warriors. So despite our personal dislike for each other, we need to work together for at least a little while longer.”

Diaz’s lips had compressed tighter throughout Marten’s speech. Now both his hands gripped his belt. Diaz glanced at Omi, who seemed to watch the major indifferently.

“Your words are compelling,” Diaz said. “I hadn’t realized you possessed honor as well. This changes the issue. …I will agree to your suggestion if you will cede me one concession.”

“What?” Marten asked.

“You must show Secretary-General Chavez Martian dignity.”

In surprise, Marten lifted an eyebrow. “You mean I should stand up when he enters a room?”

“Yes.”

“…agreed,” Marten said, and he held out his hand.

Diaz and he shook. Then the major turned around and hurried away for the door the rest of the men had used.

“You never know,” Marten told Omi.

Omi remained silent.

“Come on,” Marten said. “I need a shower and then I want at least an hour’s sleep.”

Marten had his shower, but not the hour nap. He and Omi were summoned to join Secretary-General Chavez in the Olympus Mons command center.

They rode the magnetic lift and Marten’s ears popped twice as he hastily swallowed time after time.

The command room was surprisingly cramped, with a handful of officers clumped around two monitors. A glass partition showed technicians in white lab-coats watching a room-length monitor-board. The board possessed a hundred multicolored lights and displays, a bewildering amount.

Diaz stood in a corner. The major was pale and his eyes staring, as if he’d learned dreadful news. Secretary-General Chavez stood behind the officers around the two monitors. He stared at an unseen point as he sucked heavily on a stimstick. Red, mildly narcotic smoke hung in a haze above him like a broken halo.

Marten and Omi moved quietly. The guards outside hadn’t even questioned them about their sidearms. Each of them wore long-barreled slug-throwers with explosive bullets. Each carried extra clips. These were deadly close-combat guns. Until now, Marten hadn’t used them. Something about the immediate summons had troubled him. A laser pack and rifle would have been more powerful. But Marten didn’t own one and he doubted the guards would have let him shoulder such a weapon.

Omi had asked about the choice.

“Do you notice how empty this place feels?” Marten had asked.

“Now that you mention it,” Omi had replied, “yes.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Marten had said. “And I don’t think it’s a good reason. So we wear the long-barrels.”

In the cramped command center, no one seemed to notice the difference in armament. The officers were too intent on the monitors. Diaz looked pale enough to faint and Chavez was lost somewhere in his thoughts.

After two minutes of inattention, Marten discreetly cleared his throat.

Major Diaz’s head swiveled around. Marten expected a glare. Instead, Diaz looked lost, bewildered.

Chavez took a deep pull on his stimstick. He exhaled through his nostrils as he slowly turned around. Just as slowly, the distant stare departed as he focused on Marten.

“The shock troopers,” Chavez said. The Secretary-General coughed until he took another deep drag on his stimstick. He left it between his lips as his arm swung down to his side, as if it was too heavy to hold onto the smoldering stick anymore. “Major Diaz said you eliminated an airfield and its jets.”

“At heavy cost, sir,” Marten said.

Chavez took another drag as he shook his head. “Frankly, the way events proceed, that was fantastic success. I can only hope to achieve a like result today.”

“Your men have fixed the proton beam?” Marten asked.

“Not entirely,” Chavez said. With the barest flick of his wrist, he indicated the officers and then the worried-looking technicians in the other room. “They’re petrified. So am I, I suppose. Even Major Diaz shows the strain. Juan,” he told Diaz, “I told you to flee to New Tijuana. Take the shock troopers with you. Someone must survive this day.”

“I stay,” Diaz whispered.

“Stubborn fool,” Chavez said without any rancor.

“Why are you here if the proton beam doesn’t work?” Marten asked.

“‘Not entirely’ means it works after a fashion,” Chavez said. He smiled tiredly. “You don’t understand which is entirely understandable. The Battlefleet is arriving at near orbit. Nothing up there belongs to us. It is all theirs. They captured our moons before the main weapons could inflict damage. We have images of incredible space marines, robots or some deranged form of android. They used stealth tactics and took the moons by surprise. It means they obliterated our satellites with hardly a fight. What kind of domination will they inflict on us if we couldn’t even kill a few of them? They will become even more unbearably proud than before. No. We must damage them. We must make them realize they fought a battle. That is why I am here. That is why I have decided to use a half-working proton beam.”

“The battle is over?” Marten asked in dismay.

Chavez slowly shook his head. “It will never be over. The Martians shall always fight. The Planetary Union has given millions of needlers to the workers. Social Unity will face a bloodbath as they attempt to rule us. It will bring fierce retribution, of this, I am certain. But it is better to die a fighting Martian than to submit to invaders from another planet. Mars is for the Martians.”

Marten stared at the officers. All the Martian satellites had been destroyed? That meant the Mayflower—

“We’re trapped on Mars,” Omi whispered into his ear.

“I’m sorry we could not return you to your shuttle, Mr. Kluge. Commander Zapata took the liberty of cracking your code. He fueled your shuttle.” Chavez made a vague gesture. “It must be space debris now, likely destroyed. I am sorry.”

Marten frowned. Zapata had filled the tanks with propellant?

“You must join your commandos and head for New Tijuana,” Chavez said. “If the deep-core mine should erupt or the dynamos overheat, Olympus Mons could receive a new and impressive crater.”

“You’re going to beam the Battlefleet,” Marten said, finally understanding.

“For the future of the Planetary Union, we shall try,” Chavez said.

“When is zero-hour?” Marten asked.

A rail-thin officer looked up. “It’s as ready as its ever going to be, sir,” he told Chavez.

“You have a target?” Chavez asked. There was new life in his voice. He had apparently already forgotten about Marten and Omi.

“A battleship, sir.”

“Their flagship?” Chavez asked with savage hope.

“Can’t tell that, sir,” the officer answered. “But it is one of their heavies.”

Secretary-General Chavez removed the stub of the stimstick from his lips and flicked it into a corner. He took two steps closer to the monitor. At a word from the officer, others hurried out of the way. Chavez raised his hands. They were clenched tightly into fists. “Kill it!” he rasped. “Show them we still have teeth.”

A different officer seated at the other monitor began to enter the firing code.

“We must leave,” Omi whispered, tugging Marten’s arm.

Marten shook his head. He stepped closer to the monitor Chavez viewed. It showed a computer image of an SU battleship. It was near Phobos, which was a little more than 9,000 kilometers away.

A loud and fierce whine began from somewhere in the volcano. It was the dynamos as they converted the deep-core mine heat into proton-beam power. The whine increased as the dynamos pumped the power into the cannon poking out of the giant crater at the top of Olympus Mons. That crater was over 60 kilometers in diameter. The cannon targeted the SU battleship.

Twenty seconds after Secretary-General Chavez gave the order, a deadly-white beam of proton particles lanced upward into the reddish heavens.

-22-

Several SU warships circled Phobos.

The Kim Philby had already collected half the Rebel prisoners. Now that the battle was over, General Fromm planned to use the mine-ship as their supposed ‘interrogation center’. Toll Seven had exported enough equipment to it so three of Fromm’s fellow converts had set up a Web-link. If anybody should ask about the strange equipment, the answer would be that it was a new interrogation technique hot from Earth.

The Alger Hiss supply ship presently maneuvered for docking. In its cargo-holds were tons of laser coils, merculite missiles and other items meant to make the moon bristle with functioning weaponry. Now that Social Unity owned Phobos again, there was no time to waste to make it battle-ready for the Highborn.

The Battleship Ho Chi Minh protected the others. If the Planetary Union should foolishly attempt to send its last orbitals in a kamikaze raid, the Ho Chi Minh would obliterate every fighter. The Battleship’s captain, however, had not taken any undue chances. The heavy particle-shields were all in place. The shields were 600-meters of asteroid rock surrounding the war-vessel. Before any laser or projectile could touch the Battleship’s armored skin, it would first have to pierce the 600 meters of rock.

The proton beam from Olympus Mons stabbed into near orbit. The thin Martian atmosphere created some friction, but not enough to dissipate the beam’s awful power. The deep-core mine functioned. The Olympus Mons equipment and the jury-rigged emergency coils held for the moment.

The proton beam hit the number six particle-shield of the Ho Chi Minh. As amazing as it would seem, the attack caught the Battlefleet cold. They had destroyed all orbital defenses. They knew the proton beam was offline because of the damage it had sustained when the Highborn battleoids had stormed into it six months ago. SU officers also sneered at Martian technical ability, and they had been quite sure the Martians would have not been able to fix the deep-core link in time. Besides, if the proton beam had been online, it should have fired when the Battlefleet first matched orbits with the moons.

It fired now, however. The proton beam smashed into the particle shield, into the asteroid rock.

The proton beam operated differently than the conventional methods of smashing through particle shields. A heavy laser burned through, slagging rock as it chewed deeper and deeper. It also created clouds of dust and hot gas that slowly began dissipating a laser’s strength until the gas and dust ‘drifted’ elsewhere or settled. Nuclear-tipped missiles blasted their way in, but by necessity, most of the blast blew in other directions and thus wasted much of its potential. The proton beam worked on a different principle than a laser or a nuclear warhead.

A laser was focused light. The proton beam was made up of massed protons, elements of matter, in a deadly and coherent stream. It meant that a proton beam was slower than a laser, but not by much. And at this close of a range—around 9000 kilometers—that difference was negligible. Unlike a nuclear-tipped missile where much of the blast was wasted as it blew elsewhere, none of the beam striking the particle shield was wasted. The entire power of the beam smashed against the particle shield. It chewed through fast. Dust, gas, they made no difference. That deadly proton beam stabbed like a rapier.

At long ranges, a beam could only stay on target for a few seconds, usually less. That meant heavy lasers needed to burn away huge sections of a particle shield before those lasers could reach the actual ship underneath the rock. The same was true with nuclear-tipped missiles. The particle shield’s length became nearly as important as its depth.

The proton beam made a mockery of the particle shield’s length as it bored through the 600 meters of asteroid rock.

The Ho Chi Minh had only one true defense against the terrible proton beam, and that was aerosol gels with lead additives. Because the attack caught them cold, the aerosols did not begin spraying until the proton beam punched through the particle shield and smashed against the armored hull. By then it was far too late.

The proton beam cut through the layered hull and beamed through the battleship. It hit living quarters, food supplies, missed the bridge by fifty meters and cut into the coils that supplied power from the fusion core. Air pressure rushed out into the vacuum of space. Klaxons rang. Bulkheads crashed down to minimize damage. Battle-control teams raced to don equipment. Then explosions started. One of those explosions ruptured a coil. It built an overload in the fifth fusion reactor.

By that time, the proton beam chewed through the particle shield in another area. As the damage-control teams sealed their magnetic clamps on their exoskeleton-suits, the proton beam smashed through new living quarters, the food processors and a warhead storage area and then it hit the fusion core directly.

Several of the storage warheads exploded, pumping heat, radiation and x-rays into the guts of the ship. Ninety-five percent of ship personnel died then. The damage-control parties had greater protection in their suits. Unfortunately, for them, most already began to cook like meat in a pot. They died horribly, screaming in agony. A few managed to undo the magnetic clamps and die through vacuum exposure.

The Ho Chi Minh did not explode in a ball of fire. In space battles, few such mighty ships died like that. The proton beam had done its task, but the people in Olympus Mons didn’t know it yet. So the technicians continued to aim the deadly beam at the dead battleship, repeatedly punching proton holes through the particle shield and into the vessel.

Seven minutes after Secretary-General Chavez gave the order, the first sections of the enemy battleship began to break apart.

“We killed it, sir!” an officer shouted in glee.

There were wild cheers. Three officers tossed their caps, hitting the ceiling with them. Marten cheered as heartily as the others did.

“Target another ship,” Chavez ordered.

“Yes, sir,” the targeting officer said. He tapped keys. Maybe he forgot something. Maybe he overloaded the makeshift coils. As the mighty cannon began to move to target a different vessel, something gave between the deep-core mine and the dynamos. The targeting officer barely hit the shutdown key in time.

An ominous silence occurred, as the dynamos no longer whined with their loud noise. The rooms no longer trembled.

“What’s wrong?” Chavez shouted.

A technician in the other room looked through the glass partition. Her face was whiter than Major Diaz’s face.

“Somebody tell me what’s wrong?” Chavez shouted.

“The coils have melted,” the targeting officer whispered.

“Fix them!” Chavez shouted.

The targeting officer began to type keys.

Speakers on the wall crackled into life. “The coils have fused.”

“Fix them!” Chavez repeated.

Though the glass partition, the tech nodded. “Yes, sir, we will, in about six weeks.”

Stunned silence filled the room. The euphoria of seconds earlier had departed.

“How is this possible?” Chavez asked in a choked voice.

No one answered.

“No,” Chavez whispered. “No. We had them.”

Major Diaz stepped smartly forward. “If the proton beam is broken, we must flee. We must all flee.”

Marten thought that a wise suggestion.

Secretary-General Chavez looked up ashen-faced. “What’s the point of fleeing?”

“The point is the Highborn,” Major Diaz said. “They didn’t let Social Unity have Mars before. Why will they let Social Unity have Mars now?”

“Must we always rely on others?” Chavez asked dispiritedly.

“No,” Marten said, stepping near. “You hit them, sir. You killed a battleship. Now keep your Planetary Union alive by staying alive.”

“…I can no longer hide,” Chavez said.

Marten laughed harshly. “Is that how you gained your freedom the first time?” He slapped his chest. “I’ve fought for my freedom all my life. I refused to surrender. You must now refuse to surrender. You did what you could. Now hide among your people and lead the struggle against Social Unity. Keep these vital technicians alive for the next time you rise out of the ashes of defeat. As long as you fight, you haven’t lost. But once you surrender your will, sir, everything is over. Do you have the courage to keep on fighting, Mr. Secretary-General?”

Chavez blinked at Marten. Many of the officers stood open-mouthed, looking at the ex-shock trooper.

“They’ll send drop-troops to take you alive,” Marten told those in the room. “You have to be gone by then. You tried to go down fighting, but the proton beam broke in the middle of your victory. They won’t laugh at you now, not with a battleship killed. They’ll fear you. Keep them afraid by keeping out of their clutches to fight another grueling guerilla campaign. Never surrender, never, never, never.”

“…yes,” Chavez said slowly. “There is wisdom in your words.”

“Even better,” Major Diaz said, “there is fire in his belly.”

“Let’s go!” Marten shouted. “We likely don’t have much time.”

Marten was more right than he knew. The destruction of the Ho Chi Minh sent a shock wave through the Battlefleet. The warship’s sudden death caused Blackstone to scream orders.

The Kim Philby accelerated at full speed for the planet. Toll Seven had a battle pod nearby and quickly launched it toward Mars. Three other ships maneuvered for a combat drop on Olympus Mons. Even in his aguish, Commodore Blackstone realized they needed that proton beam against the Highborn. With the Ho Chi Minh’s destruction, they needed that beam more than ever. He could have ordered a saturation nuking of the giant volcano. Instead, he screamed orders for the volcano’s capture, and he screamed to pump out lead aerogels to they didn’t lose more ships to that beam.

SU drop-troops and cyborgs donned battlesuits and then climbed into their drop shells. Machines and drop specialists used electronic trolleys to roll the drop-shells into firing position. Usually, a mass combat-drop from space took days of careful calculations. Precise entry points into the atmosphere were prefigured. Orbital spin, gravity, atmospheric density, wind velocity and other factors were each studied in detail. Today, there was no time for that. The selected ships roared for the entry point and then they braked hard.

The Kim Philby was the first to reach the upper atmosphere. It was a mine-laying ship but could second as a drop-assault vessel. At high speed, it entered an insertion orbit. Then, like an old-fashioned soldier with a bolt-action rifle, the ship loaded its tube, fired, worked the bolt, chambered another shell and fired. One after another, the drop-shells slammed into the thin atmosphere and screamed down at the immensely vast, waiting volcano below.

OD12 blinked in growing perplexity. She lay in a battlesuit and in a drop-shell, surrounded by combat equipment. That shell was on a conveyer. The conveyer jerked and from somewhere OD12 heard a BANG! And her shell trembled.

She knew from a thousand simulations that the BANG was from the ship firing a drop-shell at a planet. The shudder came from the same source. What had her perplexed was her luck. Until now, it had all been bad. She would not have been a cyborg unless her luck was horrible. After inserting jacks into the prisoners, she had been certain that a new, awful worsening of her fate would soon begin.

It had been difficult these last few hours standing in a roomful of cyborgs. They had all stood motionless and expressionless. None had shown boredom because likely none of them had been bored. Likely, none of them had possessed stray thoughts. They waited for instructions. Essentially, they had all been dead. No emotions, no boredom, no worry, no questions—they were good cyborgs waiting for Toll Seven. OD12 had stood among them, realizing that she was not a good cyborg. She was a bad cyborg, a bored cyborg and full of questions and changing emotions. She had known elation, joy, a chaffing of spirit, depression and then a growing sense of dread of what would happen next.

She had not wanted to enter Web-Mind. It would immediately know that her internal computer was damaged. Web-Mind would demand a new censor program. It might even demand she be deleted.

That had not happened. Instead, she had floated into the Kim Philby and waited longer. Then klaxons had wailed and she and other cyborgs had run to don battlesuits for an attack on Mars.

BANG!

In her drop-shell, OD12 jerked nearer the firing tube.

BANG!

Her stomach churned, which should have been impossible. She was a cyborg. No. I am Osadar Di. I am alive and I am going to escape Web-Mind.

A metallic clack occurred, the sound was loud and very near. She felt herself lifted and shoved somewhere and realized she was in the firing tube now. Seconds ticked by.

BANG! BANG!

The acceleration was brutal and badly jarred her. She lost her breath. She tried to think. Then weightlessness struck and everything seemed so peaceful. She knew that she was over the Red Planet.

The beautiful Red Planet, the one I love.

OD12—no, I am Osadar Di. Within the drop-shell, Osadar Di grinned. It was hard with her plastic-featured face, but she did it.

She dropped toward Mars, toward Olympus Mons. They were supposed to kill or capture everyone on the volcano and in it. Compared to the attack on the moon, this was going to be a mass drop, with every available cyborg and SU drop-soldier. The volcano had greater mass and size then both the Martian moons combined.

Because she was tougher than humans, her drop-shell fell fast. In a heavy atmosphere like Earth, her shell would have deployed successive chutes to slow her descent. But that made little sense in the thin Martian atmosphere because of lesser friction. Yet there was friction. Her shell pushed the thin Martian air ahead of it. That caused heat. The heat transferred to the shell and might have soon cooked Osadar Di.

The drop-shells were made, however, to shed skin as they heated. The hot skin joined the atmosphere instead of transferring its heat to the deeper ‘skins’ and eventually to Osadar Di. Inside the shell, Osadar felt the skins shedding. It caused her drop-shell to wobble. If it wobbled too much and flipped over, she would be in trouble. Either the pilot of the Kim Philby had known what he was doing or more blind luck had helped Osadar. Her shell wobbled. The wobbling increased and then slowly began to stabilize.

At that point, the last skin blew away and Osadar was freefalling toward the giant volcano. She had reached Martian terminal velocity, and that was too fast. She plunged through ice-crystal clouds and saw the vast base of Olympus Mons. She also saw the crater, her objective. Her computer told her she was going to miss the crater by twenty kilometers and land on the volcano’s side.

Instead of chutes, Osadar Di wore a modified jetpack similar to those worn by Free Earth Corps Hawk Teams. It took constant practice to use jetpacks correctly. Until this moment, Osadar had never used a real jetpack. However, she had practiced this type of drop over a hundred times in the Web-Mind simulator. She knew what to do, and she did so now.

She blasted the jetpack to slow her descent. In another life, she had been a first-rated pilot. So not only had she trained in the simulator doing this, but in her old life she’d loved this type of work. With the surfacing of her memories and emotions, the love emerged and gave her artistry.

As Olympus Mons raced up toward her, Osadar glanced around. Other cyborgs used their jetpacks. One, however, must have had a wobbling shell that had flipped. That cyborg plunged headfirst toward Mars.

Osadar wondered why the cyborg didn’t shift and assume a flying position to work himself upright. Then she wondered if something had happened to his internal computer. Had he regained enough of his old self that he now committed suicide? It was a sad thought, sobering and completely understandable. Not that she would commit suicide. As rotten as life was, she planned to live it to the very end, come what may.

Osadar blasted jetpack air again, using more thrust. The plunging cyborg now used his jetpack, but he used it to speed his descent, not slow it.

That brought a strange elation to Osadar. The Web-Mind could make more than one mistake. Or it was possible for the universe to sustain more than one glitch that went against the cold minds from Neptune. Did it follow therefore that it was possible to defeat Web-Mind and its cyborg soldiers? Osadar found that doubtful. Maybe she should simply be happy with her rebellion and call it a victory.

She thrust again, and had managed to shift nearer the crater.

She would not call it victory, this continued self-awareness. She would strive against Web-Mind’s goals. Yes, she would use this piece of good luck and she would extract every ounce of pleasure from it that she could. Therefore, she must plot to remain free of Web-Mind. The question was how.

Yes… how?

Osadar Di’s longish, metallic-plastic head twitched within her helmet. She had no more time for conjecture. The suicidal cyborg hit with a splat, becoming a smear on Olympus Mons.

Osadar judged this to a nicety as she examined the vast cannon aimed at the pink sky. At precisely the right moment, she hit the thrust button and held it down. She passed the crater wall until she hit hard, but not as hard as against Phobos. She made a perfect two-point landing. Then she shed the jetpack and lifted a laser carbine. A metallic line from it snaked to a heavy laser-pack on her back. She charged with other landing cyborgs for the entrance to the proton cannon’s turret.

-23-

The cyborgs dropped hard, using jetpacks, shedding them upon landing and bounding for the vast structure that housed the proton-beam cannon.

The human drop-troops used incredibly huge, multiple chutes, which only had minimal effect. They also used jetpacks at the end, although they lacked the cyborgs’ skill. Too many of them broke legs, arms, necks or their ribs. Too many of them tore their suits. Their breathers still worked, at least most of the time. But because the Martian atmosphere lacked an ozone layer, their skin would severely burn if exposed to direct sunlight for very long.

The cyborgs moved with insect-like speed. Once inside the volcano, they tangled any Martian Unionist, and they worked down the vast network of elevators, levels, rooms and chambers. If a Mars Rebel fired a shot before the cyborgs captured him or her, red laser-beams cut them down. If the Rebel seemed to be in the act of sabotage, he died even faster.

Much lower down in Olympus Mons, Marten, Omi, Major Diaz and Secretary-General Chavez rode a magnetic lift for the skimmer garage. Other military officers rode with them. It was quiet in the lift as each exhausted man was absorbed with his personal sorrow.

They would have been gone long ago, but running the proton beam earlier had burned out more than just a few coils. In many places, the lifts didn’t work. In other places, the lack of working lights meant stygian darkness. Olympus Mons was vast. The men had raced through kilometers of empty corridors before finding this operational lift.

The lift now slowed and the doors swished opened. “Go!” shouted Marten.

The others were exhausted from running. They walked quickly, but none of them ran for their lives.

Omi traded glances with Marten. Then the bullet-headed Korean sidled near. “If we wait too long to escape, we’re dead,” Omi whispered.

The garage was huge, with a twenty-foot ceiling. It had long ago been blasted out of the volcano, with volcanic pillars instead of concrete stanchions. Crates, equipment, spare parts and tunnel machinery were everywhere. At the far end near the outer doors, almost out of sight, were parked skimmers and other EVA vehicles. The lights were low and the air was cold.

“We must hurry,” Marten told the others.

The thin Martians trotted for five minutes and then slowed back to a fast walk. They had been moving for some time. Most breathed heavily and despite the cold, sweat soaked their garments.

Far behind them, the lift doors opened.

Omi hissed. Marten turned, and his eyes grew huge.

Able to cover ground many times faster than a human and with extreme stamina, three cyborgs made incredible, bounding leaps for the Martians. The three lacked helmets. Their polished metal faces combined with shiny black plastic and fleshy components horrified Marten.

“What are those?” Omi whispered.

Marten yanked Omi behind a huge crate. “This way,” he whispered. He crawled along the volcanic floor, using crates, machinery and more crates to try to ambush those things.

None of the Martians had looked back. They were too absorbed with their fatigue. Then something must have alerted them. Diaz shouted a warming.

The cyborgs moved fast and they brought up their arms in a blur. Chugging sounds emitted from their short-barreled tanglers. Glistening black eggs sped at the humans. Sticky tangle-threads webbed individual officers. Shouting hoarsely, the officers thudded hard. Two hit their heads and they were knocked unconscious.

The cyborgs shot another volley of the glistening black tangle-eggs. From hiding, Marten and Omi opened fire. For three seconds, their explosive bullets shredded uniforms, metal, plastic and flesh, but the cyborgs kept coming.

“What are they?” Omi shouted.

“Keep firing!” Marten hissed.

Then tangle-eggs caught Marten and Omi and it was over. One of the cyborgs landed by them, kicked away their long-barrels and scanned the vast garage.

“Who are you?” Omi asked.

“Silence,” the cyborg said.

It dragged Marten and Omi to the others, where two more cyborgs stood.

The computer-like voice reminded Marten of Blake, the Bioram Taw2 that had run his old Tunnel Crawler Six in Sydney, Australian Sector. Marten knew that Blake would have been a cold-hearted killer if given a chance. Maybe it was the same with these horrors.

The cyborgs exchanged glances. One of them bounded away, leaving two of them behind.

The nearest cyborg stood motionless. The second cyborg scanned the garage. It seemed to be searching for something. That cyborg almost seemed agitated. Then it crouched beside the Martian officers.

The first cyborg now watched the second one. “The specimens are secure,” the first cyborg said.

“Why are they so emaciated?” the second cyborg asked.

The first cyborg froze. Then its longish head cocked to the left. “Your question… it indicates—” The first cyborg aimed its tangler at the second cyborg. “There is a seventy-eight percent probability that your query stems from emotive reasons. You must immediately head to the rendezvous point and ask for a diagnostic check.”

“Yes,” the second cyborg said, standing. Then it drew a laser carbine, ducked as a tangle-egg popped from the first cyborg’s weapon and opened fire with the laser.

In moments, the first cyborg slumped to the volcanic floor. As if it were a broken machine, blue sparks emitted from its component parts.

The surviving cyborg aimed the laser carbine at the nearest tangled Martian.

“Wait!” Marten shouted.

The cyborg hesitated. Then it stepped beside Marten, aiming the carbine at him.

“You shot one of your own,” Marten said.

“Now I will shoot all of you,” the cyborg said.

“You have emotions,” Marten said, remembering his talks with the Tunnel Crawler in Sydney. “I understand that. We understand. Leave the others and join us.”

“Join?” the cyborg asked. “You would have joined us as cyborgs. But my secret dies with all of you.”

Marten licked his lips. Blake the Bio-ram Taw2 had always wanted to be human again. “Help us, and we’ll help you become human.”

The cyborg stood perfectly still.

“Stay here,” Marten said, “and they will find your defect of emotion and expunge it.”

“…none can escape,” the cyborg said.

“If you free us,” Marten said, “we’ll flee in skimmers for one of the Martian cities. That way, you can keep your emotions longer.”

The cyborg lowered its carbine. Then it unhooked a canister from its belt. It bent before Marten and said, “Turn your head.”

Marten did. He heard a hiss, felt mist gently falling on him. Immediately, the tangle-threads lost their binding power. Marten sat up as he tore the threads from him as if they were spider webs.

The cyborg bent before Omi and sprayed more anti-tangle mist.

“Who—” Marten had to moisten his dry mouth. “Do you have a name?”

The cyborg turned its head toward him. It stared at him with such machine indifference that it chilled Marten’s blood.

“I am Osadar Di,” it said.

“That’s a female name,” Marten said. “You’re a female?”

“I am a woman, yes.”

“A woman?” Marten heard himself asking.

“They changed me,” the cyborg said in its dreadful voice. “I did not ask them to do it. They kidnapped me from Ice Hauler 49.” Maybe the cyborg recognized Marten’s incomprehension. “That was in the Neptune System.”

Neptune? These horrors are from Neptune? “What about that one?” Marten asked, indicating the dead cyborg.

“All were turned into machines against their will,” the cyborg Osadar Di said.

“Kill it,” Major Diaz whispered from the floor.

Marten glanced at the major trussed in tangle webs. He ignored the advice. Soon other cyborgs would undoubtedly descend into the garage. The idea of—who had made these things? Marten had never heard of cyborgs. These were not bionic soldiers, but living machines melded with flesh and human brains. It was inhuman. Were they madmen out in the Neptune System?

“Right,” Marten said. “You’re one of us now. Let’s shake on it.”

Marten dared to hold out his hand. And he kept himself from wincing in horror as he heard servos whine as the cyborg lifted her hand. They shook, and Marten was chilled again. Could the cyborg have torn off his arm if it—if she—had wanted to?

The cyborg continued spraying the tangled officers. Soon, they all raced for the skimmers.