Battle Pod

-1-

Heydrich Hansen seethed with hatred against his fellow neutraloids and against the Highborn. He had a special hatred for Nada Pravda who had grossly tricked him. But deep in his heart, he hated Marten Kluge the most. Oh, yes, he remembered that awful shock trooper. Everything had gone sour at the Sun-Works Factory the day Marten Kluge and Kang had showed up in his bailiwick at the Pleasure Palace.

Heydrich Hansen wore a strange harness around his blue-tattooed skin. He used to be thin, with sparse hair and slyly cruel features. He had stark muscles now, with almost no body-fat. They were sinewy muscles, as hard as iron when he flexed, which was often. His blue-tattooed face had become harsher and thinner, and his eyes often bulged with the fierceness of his emotions.

He craved specialty foods and ate with animal gusto. Sometimes, secretions in his new body gave him abnormal speed and strength. Sometimes, post-hypnotic commands drove him to raging bloodlust. Then he killed normal humans for practice.

Now was one of those times. Hansen prowled through narrow corridors aboard the Julius Caesar, a Doom Star headed for Mars. He gripped a stun gun and bore a shock rod on his hip. Other neutraloids moved through other corridors. A headset like a sweatband was around his forehead. He could speak into a mike and had an implant in his right ear. They were supposed to coordinate their efforts and drive the ordinary humans into the main exercise chamber.

Unlike his old existence, Hansen now moved with silky grace. The Doom Star presently accelerated at one-G. It traveled to Mars, he had overheard. This was a Highborn fleet action. Hansen didn’t care anything about that. Ever since they had gelded him, tattooed his entire body and surgically put wonder-glands into him, his thoughts had metamorphosed. He raged with primitive desires that involved crushing, slashing, kicking, biting and stabbing.

He snarled, baring his teeth at a camera in the corner. The Training Master watched them. The Training Master graded their worth.

Hansen trembled with suppressed rage. He wanted to blow the camera away. He wanted to kill the Training Master, spread out his intestines and urinate over them. Something pounded in his head then—it was the post-hypnotic commands.

“I know,” he hissed in a softy, high-pitched voice. “I know. Kill the damn humans.”

Hansen groaned as punishment shocks zapped him. He yearned to rip off the harness. He had done that once, and he had faced horrible punishments afterward. His free hand flexed with his yearning. Then he endured the zap, zap, zapping that made him twitch with agony.

“You must capture the humans, Neutraloid Hansen,” he heard from the implant in his ear. “Not kill, but capture. There is a subtle difference.”

“Yes, Master,” snarled Hansen, as he hunched his blue-tattooed shoulders. He knew the Training Master mocked him. All Highborn did. Learning to answer the Highborn had taken weeks of grueling punishment and practice. Learning not to tiptoe at night and strangle fellow neutraloids, to awaken in the morning to hideous punishment shocks… that, too, had taken time.

Hansen chuckled evilly as he hunched his head. He hadn’t really learned not to strangle neutraloids. Those he had choked to death were Ervil and the others, the ones who had hated him worse than he had hated them. He had simply endured the Highborn shocks, the whippings, the slaps in the face and the brutally-enhancing until his old friend Ervil and the others were all dead. Only then had Hansen felt safe enough to sleep at night. The newer neutraloids feared him because they had seen and they had learned that Heydrich Hansen always got his revenge.

He’d heard one of the Masters say once that newer neutraloids were better because they could control their emotions to a higher degree. The Masters worked to ‘improve’ their surgically enhanced, hypnotically trained and always castrated berserkers.

Hansen stiffened and sniffed the air. A human was ahead of him. Hansen began to tremble in anticipation of killing the human. His head hurt with a stabbing pain between the eyes. He was supposed to call now and report to the others. Hansen was supposed to coordinate his actions.

“Human,” he whispered softly into his mike.

“What?” another neutraloid asked, the sound coming from the ear-implant.

“Human!” Hansen shouted into his mike. He roared with rage, sprinting down the corridor. Ahead, a thin man leaped up with a yelp from behind a bulkhead. The human had gun. With a shaking arm, the human aimed at Hansen. Hansen hurled his stun gun at the human. Wide-eyed, the human watched the gun. He watched it hit the deck with a clatter and slide. The human blinked stupidly and then he must have remembered Hansen. He looked up, aimed and fired. The bullet grazed Hansen’s ribs with a fiery pain. Shouting in a strangely high-pitched voice, Hansen closed the final distance. He didn’t pull out his shock rod. He simply leaped on the human, knocking him to the floor. Then he grabbed the man’s head.

“No, no!” the human pleaded.

“Die!” Hansen screamed, and he twisted with all his newfound strength, snapping the neck. Then he laughed with joyous mockery as the dying human jerked and thrashed under him.

Immediately, punishment shocks zapped from the straps Hansen wore. They zapped with numbing strength, toppling Hansen and soon rendering him unconscious.

Hansen awoke strapped to a table. The rest of the neutraloids stood there, glowering at him, muttering and shuffling their feet. Hansen turned his head. On the opposite side of the table towered the Lot 6 Highborn, the Training Master.

“You failed to use your stun gun, Neutraloid Hansen,” the Training Master said.

“It was a stinking human,” Hansen replied.

“Wrong answer,” the Highborn said, and he brushed Hansen with a shock rod.

The pain made Hansen’s muscles leap up starkly as he squealed with agony, jerking against the restraints.

“You failed to use your stun gun, Hansen,” the Training Master repeated.

“…I’m sorry, Master. I forgot.”

The shock rod brushed Hansen again. “Lying won’t help you, Neutraloid.”

“…master, the bloodlust came over me. I don’t know how to stop from using my hands.”

The Highborn studied him and finally addressed the others. “Listen closely. Hansen is foolish. He must learn control. If he fails to learn control, he will learn pain. Like this.” And the Highborn brushed his body seven times, even shocking the mutilated genital area.

Hansen’s voice was hoarse from screaming as he writhed on the training table.

“Soon we will be at Mars,” the Highborn said calmly. “Then you will face armed soldiers. You must use weapons or you will die. You will not throw them away or forget them. That is bad, very bad. Learn the lessons now, yes?”

“Yes,” the others muttered sullenly.

The Highborn smiled at them. Then he smiled down at Hansen. “You are worse than premen. You are animals. But even animals must serve the New Order. Next time you fail, Hansen, I will personally cut out your intestines and make a noose to choke you to death. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master,” Hansen wheedled, trying desperately to sound contrite. But in his heart, in his raging soul, he yearned to kill the Highborn, all of them, and piss on their corpses.

-2-

From the files of Grand Admiral Cassius: selected memorandums and notes. From: August 7 to August 11, 2351.

August 7

The Julius Caesar’s Training Master, Recommendation to Admiral Cassius:

After months of intensive training, I have reached what I must concede as now unalterable opinions concerning the Neutraloids. The creatures possess commendable berserker qualities, and their reaction times and strength compare favorably to the premen. However, they lack sustained self-control. Only a few among them—what I’ve come to consider as Neutraloid geniuses—have the minimal ability to operate guns or use vibroknives. No amount of hypnotic commands has changed this inability. Higher technical equipment operation is beyond their present capabilities.

There has been talk of lessening the hate-conditioning. But I doubt that will alter the situation. Such conditioning gives them their only redeeming quality: berserker rage against the universe. On a primitive planet, such creatures would have innate terror value. On the technological battlefield, however, they are a liability.

Therefore, it is my stated view that for the present Mars Campaign, that each Doom Star’s complement of Neutraloids should be destroyed.

August 7

From Grand Admiral Cassius:

Training Master, Julius Caesar, I am dissatisfied with your recommendation. I scanned the attached report on your training methods. Let me remind you of the obvious. The Neutraloids are clay in your hands. They are beasts. Beasts react to pleasure and pain. Heighten both until the achieved result is obtained.

August 8

From Training Master, Julius Caesar:

All Highborn stand in awe of your military achievements, Grand Admiral. The lesser races quiver at the mention of your name. Your strategic and tactical insights are like rare wine, consumed at the risk of intoxication.

However, regarding the Neutraloids, they are a risk to ship personnel. Fear of us only minimally restrains their hatred, their feral desire to kill us. The greatest battle of the war approaches. I consider the possibility of their running loose, in the unforeseen event of a Doom Star sustaining hits, as an unneeded danger. Respectfully, Grand Admiral, my recommendation stands.

August 8

From Grand Admiral Cassius:

Your literary skills left me cold, Training Master. Your fawning praise only served to emphasize your inability to obey my orders.

All that said, your recommendation is noted and recorded. Cage your beasts so they do not run loose during battle. In the unlikely event of serious Doom Star damage, you have permission to kill the beasts.

Let me point out, however, that their strategic and tactical value does not lie as shipboard marines. The Praetor’s desire to replace premen shock-troopers with Neutraloids is an unqualified failure. You have already pointed out, Training Master, that their use as terror troops is their sole strength. On your recommendation, their combat role has changed. In the remaining time left you, retrain your animals as terror troops. They will be inserted as needed into underground Martian cities, to help create panic so the Rebel populace will gratefully accept Highborn security forces to restore order.

August 8

From Training Master, Julius Caesar:

Please allow me to say, Grand Admiral, that this is a precise decision. It is the perfect use of gravely flawed creatures. I have already reevaluated my training tactics. As terror troops, especially against poorly armed premen, the Neutraloids will excel. I can almost pity the Martians.

August 9

Top Secret Memorandum: The Grand Admiral’s Strategic Assessment for the Mars Campaign:

The critical battle for the Inner Planets is about to take place. I refer to the finding, fixing and the annihilating of the Social Unity Space Fleet. As long as Social Unity possesses a credible Battlefleet, we must garrison each planet with strong space forces. That weakens us at the critical points of military conflict.

In order to put overwhelming strength at the critical point, I deemed it necessary to coax Social Unity to fix its space forces at one locale. Then I ensured their hardened resolve to defend their conquest. The premen will need this resolve as they see the Julius Caesar, Hannibal Barca and the Napoleon Bonaparte majestically head for Mars, the place of their recent conquest.

Some have questioned this overwhelming display of force, the use of three Doom Stars to annihilate the premen Battlefleet.

Firstly, let me add that more than three Doom Stars head to Mars to inflict this punishing defeat. Concerning that, the individual admirals will soon learn the extended details.

Secondly, too often in wars past, commanders have tried to maintain strength in all areas of conflict in order to hold onto all territorial gains. That is a strategic error of the first order. One of the most fundamental rules of war is that battles entail risk. A corresponding maxim is that one can never be too strong at the point of decision. The Mars Campaign will be our point of decision. Therefore, we cannot be too strong in our head-to-head fleet battle.

Thirdly, this gathering of Highborn strength into one point means a lessening of Highborn strength in other important areas. I have ordered the Doom Star from Venus and the last Doom Star remaining at the Sun-Works Factory to immediately head for the Earth System. The space platforms around Venus will continue to harass the enemy. The defenses of the Sun Works are in good repair, especially in lieu of the fact that the SU Battlefleet is at Mars. The critical junctions at this point are firstly to maintain control of the Earth System, secondly the Sun-Works Factory and lastly Venus. To gain massive strength for Mars, we are accepting a possibly dangerous lowering of strength at Venus first and then the Sun-Works Factory second. That is a risk. But it is a risk we must accept in order to gain the crushing victory needed at the point of maximum gain.

Fourthly, as superior as Highborn innately are to the inferior premen, I urge none to think this victory is preordained. Nothing in this universe is free. Few things die willingly. We are two million supermen among thirty-eight billion, seething, hating and fearing subhumans. They possess courage, stamina and cunning. They will fight. They will have obtained a secret weapon and they will have devised clever tactical dispositions.

Fifthly and lastly, we are the Highborn. We are born to conquer and born to rule. It is our burden to bring order and rationality to the Solar System. This is the critical fight for that rule. Once the Inner Planets are ours, we shall expand throughout the Solar System and in time seed the stars. This test of our valor, our resolve, guile and brilliance will go down as the most glorious feat of arms in the annals of military history.

Because of that, I have decided to lead the fight in person. The Second Battle of Far-Mars orbit saw my elevation to supreme command among the Highborn. Social Unity and the Martian Planetary Union have fought the Third Battle of Mars Orbit. In a few weeks time, will begin the last battle for Mars Orbit. I expect nothing but the best from all of you, which means the best that anyone can give in this chaotic Solar System.

August 10

From the Praetor:

I have two questions, Grand Admiral. When will you order the breakout? We sicken and die at this miserable post beside the Sun. I have read your memorandum and seen the tactical displays you broadcast. Three Doom Stars accelerate at a leisurely pace for Mars. We groan here. We suffer intensely while the rest of you float in lazy serenity. That is intolerable.

My second question is this: do you deliberately conceal the use of the Thutmosis III? Do you deliberately attempt to conceal our glory? We die here in order to achieve massive victory for the Highborn. It is only right that you broadcast our role. This is insufferable, Grand Admiral. If I did not know you better, I would consider this treachery against a possible rival for high command.

August 10

From the Grand Admiral:

My dear Praetor, your paranoid ranting shows me that you and your gallant crew are under fierce stress. A lesser Highborn could not have endured what you have. I endure these slurs against my character out of sympathy for your plight and for your willingness to have put yourself in harm’s way for the good of our united greatness.

I have kept your role secret out of dire need. Social Unity spies are clever and numerous. Premen nature dictates their slyness. Spies are sly. Therefore, they excel at the nefarious game.

Rest assured that my records and diary have within a constant stream of wonderment regarding your suffering.

Let me add this, and I hope its importance sinks in, Praetor. A surprise always has greater effect when it is sprung suddenly and completely. That few know about your hazardous duty and the deadliness of the Thutmosis III will only help them remember your deeds when they suddenly appear. It will galvanize the Highborn. Your name will sprout from every lip. Highborn will ask questions, wanting to know more about you.

I applaud you, Praetor. Please, keep your paranoia in check a few more hours. Then I shall order the breakout. Then you will fly for Mars at terrific velocity and inflict in the next few weeks, punishing, even horrific damage to the enemy.

All Hail the Praetor!

August 11

From the Praetor:

We sicken and die and you spout platitudes. Order us out now. End this bitter existence.

Let me also add this: I have recorded our conversations and will hold you to every golden promise.

August 11

From the Grand Admiral:

I have glorious news, my dearest Praetor. Begin breakout procedure now and head for a flyby of Mars.

I, too, have recorded these messages and I, too, will gladly play them for all to see what noble deeds you have preformed. From every Highborn everywhere, I wish you the greatest luck. Kill the enemy, Praetor, and win the laurels you so richly deserve.

-3-

Several weeks after the victory of the SU verses the Rebels in near-Mars orbit, Commodore Blackstone yearned to rub his tired eyes. He floated at the end of a docking tube. He wore a vacc-suit as a precaution, with a bubble helmet. He had just completed a whirlwind tour of Deimos, Phobos and each of the major warships of the Battlefleet. A bit of good luck had occurred as another straggling battleship had joined them a week ago, replacing the lost Ho Chi Minh. Unfortunately, the straggling ship was in a terrible state of repair.

He now had eleven battlewagons of the Zhukov-class, big ships with immense firepower and the heaviest particle-shields of any known spacecraft, including Doom Stars. Until the construction of the first Doom Star, the Zhukov-class battlewagon had been the largest and deadliest spacecraft in the Solar System. Once, there had been many more than a mere eleven of them. The First Battle of Deep Mars Orbit in 2337 against the Mars Planetary Union and the Jupiter Confederation had seen the death of too many SU battleships. Twelve years later at the beginning of what had originally been known as the Highborn Rebellion had seen the worst slaughter of battleships. Then the Doom Stars had turned on fellow fleet vessels, destroying them before fleet personnel knew they were in a war to the death.

Blackstone shook his head. Past glories were best forgotten. Eleven Zhukov-class battleships was still a powerful concentration of fleet units. They were the heart of his Battlefleet. En masse and while their particle-shields held, they could dare match Doom Stars in a slugfest. To complement the battlewagons, he had nine missile-ships. Each of them was equally as large as a battleship. But missile-ships by nature were raiding vessels, not stand-up spacecraft to smash through the guts of an enemy fleet. Heavy lasers beamed at the speed of light, approximately 300,000 kilometers per second. Missiles and drones traveled at a tiny fraction of that speed. Thus, a missile-ship usually launched drones and missiles and then hurried elsewhere, monitoring the battle from a safe distance.

The Highborn had been particularly adept at luring the remaining SU missile-ships into traps and obliterating them. It was the reason the Battlefleet only had nine.

The ECM vessels, the troop transports, the orbital launch ships, the minelayers, the stealth ships and the recon vessels and probes added another twenty-eight spacecraft to the Battlefleet. Hawthorne’s Earth convoy added another forty-nine. Each of the transports became decoy vessels as the supplies in their cargo-holds poured into the warships and onto the two moons.

Within his bubble helmet, Commodore Blackstone grinned tightly. Phobos and Deimos were going to be the first grim surprise for the Highborn. General Fromm’s people worked overtime, massing the moons with point-defense emplacements, merculite missiles and repairing every heavy-laser cannon. There were also extra laser cannons being added, a new one every three days.

These past weeks since the victory over Martian space defenses, General Fromm’s people had swarmed the moons. Social Unity lacked Doom Stars. Yet as big as a Doom Star was, even two tiny moons like Phobos and Deimos dwarfed them. Fromm’s sweating and harried technicians slept three hours a cycle. They were hyped with stimulant so they worked like automatons. Unfortunately, the moons had precise and known orbits, which weakened their combat uses. But they had much greater mass then the Doom Stars and could theoretically absorb much more punishment. If given enough time, they would become bristling fortresses.

From his original plan, Supreme Commander Hawthorne’s meant to use the moons to break the Doom Stars. Blackstone would cluster the Battlefleet around the fortress moons. If the Doom Stars went after the Battlefleet first, the moons would pound the enemy craft. If the Doom Stars tried to take out the moons first, the Battlefleet would maneuver and overwhelm each Doom Star one at a time.

Within his bubble helmet, Commodore Blackstone’s grin slipped. The problem with the grand plan was it required time to set up.

The Highborn likely had communication with the Mars Rebels. The past few weeks had surely proven that. As the Battlefleet had mopped up Martian space resistance, it was now known that the gargantuan warships had circled the Earth many times, building up velocity. Even as the drop-troops and cyborgs had captured Olympus Mons, three Doom Stars had broken out of Earth’s orbit and accelerated toward the Red Planet.

Radar and teleoptic scopes had discovered that the Doom Stars no longer accelerated, but used their velocity to travel the 100-million kilometers between Mars and Earth that presently separated the two. The enemy had traveled three weeks and at present speeds could pass Mars in a flyby in four more weeks. It was more than possible, however, that the Highborn planned to decelerate hard to match orbits with Mars. In that case, the Highborn million-kilometer ranged lasers would need another four and a half weeks before they could reach the SU space defenses.

Blackstone thought carefully. If the Highborn planned a flyby, wouldn’t the Doom Stars continue to accelerate to reach here even faster? A flyby seemed unlikely, however, for the simple reason that it would take the Highborn much too long to decelerate later and head back for Mars or for Earth. If the Doom Stars sped past the Red Planet in a flyby, it might behoove Social Unity to stab with every spaceship it had for Earth and drive off whatever Doom Star defended the mother planet.

Blackstone’s gloved fingers twitched with his impatience for the hatch to pressurize.

Would the Highborn begin to decelerate soon? Would it be four weeks or four and a half weeks until the battle started? This battle would likely decide the fate of the Solar System. Would it be a slugfest as Supreme Commander Hawthorne and Toll Seven envisioned, or would the Highborn attempt something completely different that would confound everyone?

Blackstone chewed the inside of his cheek. Three Doom Stars filled with Highborn—even with two bristling moons and nearly four-fifths of the remaining SU war-fleet at his disposal, and with a planetary proton beam—

They had to get the proton beam online! That beam was amazingly deadly. The brutal and astonishingly quick death of the Ho Chi Minh had proved the planetary proton-beam’s worth.

Eleven battlewagons, two fortress moons, a massive support fleet and sundry other vessels could still lose to three Doom Stars. That’s what made the proton beam so important. Yet they could only use it at near orbit. Its range was so pathetically short in space combat terms. That’s why they would need Toll Seven’s battle pods and stealth packs. Their planned use was a revolutionary tactic, and the cyborgs were perhaps the only troops able to pull it off.

Blackstone shook his head. Much depended on the Highborn. Would they use their long-range lasers and slowly devour everything in Mars orbit? At present, Social Unity lacked a million-kilometer weapon. Therefore, the Doom Stars standing off seemed like the wisest enemy strategy. It seemed like it at first blush, but it wasn’t. The Earth convoy fleet had brought enough prismatic crystals to absorb extended laser fire, and the plants on Mars churned out more and more defensive crystals. If the Highborn remained at long laser range, it would give them extra time to fix the moons and bring online their own million-kilometer ranged lasers.

The Highborn were impossibly clever concerning tactics and strategy. That meant the three Doom Stars might bore into close orbit, using prismatic crystals and aerosol-gel screens to shield them. Three Doom Stars massed together, all pouring laser fire at one target at a time, chewing through everything fast and annihilating ship after ship—

Sweat prickled Blackstone’s face. He hoped Supreme Commander Hawthorne knew what he was doing. Was this all simply a mad gamble? Were the Highborn invincible? It made Blackstone’s stomach churn just thinking about it.

Commodore Blackstone finally heard hisses from the other side of the hatch. A green light flashed. With a gloved hand, he touched the switch. The hatch opened and he climbed through into a pressure chamber with his security detail following. They waited, and soon the inner hatch slid open. Blackstone led the way into a larger chamber with vacc-suit racks and emergency breathing masks dangling from hooks.

He noticed Commissar Kursk. She stood with her arms crossed and as she tapped the toe of her jackbooted foot.

As Blackstone unclasped his helmet, he wondered idly what it would be like to pull off her cap and muss up her hair. Then he would grab her face and force a passionate kiss on her. It was the least he could do before he died in battle. A man deserved a woman before he risked his life for victory.

“Ah, breathable air,” Blackstone said. He pitched the helmet to one of his security detail. Then he rubbed his eyes. That felt so good. He was so tired. His ex-wife used to rub his shoulders at times like this. Would Commissar Kursk consent to rub his shoulders?

“Where have you been?” she snapped. She sounded angrier than usual. Now that he looked, he noticed she glowered.

Blackstone sighed. He needed a nap, not an angry PHC Commissar. “Will you walk me to my quarters?” he asked.

“I need to speak to you now.”

“This is hardly the place. I’m tired. I’ve been shuttling back and forth for the past four days and now I need—”

“Did you grant Toll Seven the use of Olympus Mons for his continued interrogations?” Kursk asked.

Blackstone stared at her. Why did it always have to be about Toll Seven? Irritated, he shrugged.

“The proton beam is a primary weapon,” Kursk said. “Now you’ve installed the cyborgs there and have effectively given them control of it. What if the cyborgs decide to blackmail us at the critical moment?”

Blackstone became cross. “We are all part of Social Unity. That’s why they won’t. They need us.” He wondered if that was true. Did the cyborgs need anybody? “I desperately need a nap, Commissar. I’m exhausted. So what I’m going to do now—”

“If you’re wise, you’ll head straight to Olympus Mons with a regiment of drop-troops,” she said.

Couldn’t she even let him finish a sentence? “I’m not drop trained,” he said tonelessly.

“Use fast shuttles,” she said.

Blackstone glanced at his security chief. The man stonily stared into space. Blackstone rubbed his neck. He hated these vacc-suits. He hated living in a battleship for months on end. Three weeks ago, they had won a brisk battle and now three Doom Stars headed for Mars. He didn’t have time for the commissar’s imaginary worries.

“I’m taking a nap,” he said. “Write a report if you think it’s so important.”

She took a step closer, and now worry replaced her anger. “Toll Seven has become too secretive. He’s doing something down there that—”

“Did you send operatives to Olympus Mons? I know you were talking about it.”

“…I did.”

“And?” he prompted.

Commissar Kursk licked her lips.

Blackstone found it stimulating. He wished she would do that under more pleasing circumstances. Perhaps it was time to arrange that.

“My operatives have reported that everything is well,” she said.

A dull headache throbbed into existence so Blackstone rubbed his eyes again. Kursk was unhinged concerning the cyborgs. He hated them, too. But the Battlefleet had to use what fate had given them. He attempted a smile as he said, “Don’t tell me you think Toll Seven has suborned your best operatives.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t think that,” she said, “But I do. Their reports… there was something odd about them that I can’t quite decipher.”

“Do you want to go down to Mars yourself?” he asked.

Fear put lines on her face. Blackstone wondered about her age, if she was older than he suspected.

“…I’d only go down with a full regiment of your best combat troops,” she said.

Commodore Blackstone raised his eyebrows. “The cyborgs are our best hope for victory against the Highborn. So I hardly think that now is the time to anger Toll Seven. I’m going to take a nap. Once I’m awake, talk to me again. Until then, I can’t even think straight.”

Blackstone floated past her, and the security detail followed. He heard her garments rustle as she turned, probably to watch him. He felt her eyes on him and wished it were her hands running over his skin. He grinned. It felt good to have put her in her place. Maybe he needed to do it more often.

Down on Mars within Olympus Mons, Toll Seven oversaw the secret installation of a mass cyborg-converter. Most of the equipment had come down the past weeks in heavy orbital shuttles under General Fromm’s command. During the massive shuttle flights between the warships and the cargo-carrying vessels from Earth, the converter equipment had been carefully ferried from several battle pods and to the Alger Hiss. The entirety of that crew was finally jacked into Web-Mind. Their chaotic minds had been systematically reprogrammed to the extent free bio-forms could retain such programming.

Toll Seven paced along the length of the converter. It was in a vast garage, deep inside the volcano, near the bottom. Heaters labored to raise the temperature to an even 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Conversion demanded a warm environment. Cyborgs worked like ants over the garage-sized machine, using drills, sonic screwdrivers, laser-welders and micro computing-cubes. It created a bedlam of electronic whirls, air-compressor hisses, clacks and metallic clangs.

Toll Seven had already rerouted the magnetic lifts that led to this garage. No one could enter the area without a complex code-sequence given at cyborg speeds.

The working cyborgs never looked up to watch him or each other. Each was controlled by preprogramming inserted by Web-Mind. They moved fast and with cyborg precision, and still this was taking too long.

Toll Seven used a visual-imaging handscanner, checking the calibration of delicate machinery. He needed more cyborgs, and he needed them now. Drop assaulting the volcano had damaged far too many prime units. He hadn’t even recovered all of them yet. OD12 was still missing and so was KR3. Reviewing Web-Mind, he suspected that KR3 might have committed self-destruction. It was irritating to realize, but such anomalies happened.

Toll Seven used inner nanonics to dump chemicals into his brain’s irritation centers. The bio-chemicals struggled to dampen his unhappiness. He needed clean concentration more than ever. The great enemy came: the Highborn, the genetic super-soldiers. They moved three of the hated Doom Stars toward Mars. The giant spacecraft were the ultimate in warship design and construction. Web-Mind had calculated for two, but had accepted the possibility of three.

This was the delicate moment. Web-Mind still needed Social Unity, or more precisely, Social Unity’s fleet. It wasn’t possible to suborn the rest of the Battlefleet in time. The Highborn came on too quickly and he hadn’t brought enough neck-jacks nor set up a facility yet to make new ones. It would have been so much easier if they could have reached the Earth System and landed amongst the Homo sapiens. With PHC eager for help, it would have been simplicity to set up a processing center in one of the vast cities. In several months, hundreds of thousands and maybe even millions of cyborgs could have emerged from that city and swarmed the Eden planet.

This was the critical juncture. He had a foothold on Mars, but he lacked a large populace to convert. He would have to visit the Olympus Mons prisoners again and weed out the culls, those too damaged to convert. Once the Highborn threat had been dealt with, however, then it would be time to assist Social Unity re-conquering the Martian underground cities. Web-Mind would choose a city and begin turning the masses into cyborgs.

Toll Seven studied the handscanner. He turned around and took several steps back. He adjusted the scanner. The skin-chopper with its many blades that removed human epidermis—ah, he saw the problem. He had misplaced a decimal in his configurations. He adjusted and reread the scanner. Then he continued down the line.

He needed cyborgs down here and he needed them in space, ready to implement the stealth-attack tactic that would win them the Battle for Mars. If only there was some manner to speed up converter construction—but there wasn’t now. Later—

His inner nanonics dumped more chemicals, keeping stress out of his system. He needed to send a message to Earth soon, to Chief Yezhov of Political Harmony Corps. That particular Homo sapien had been invaluable with his warning. The original ploy to assassinate James Hawthorne had not only failed, but had also alerted the general to the real danger. If not for Yezhov’s timely lightguide message—

Toll Seven halted and his silver eyeballs swiveled in their plastic sockets. Reminiscing would not improve his efficiency. He must concentrate and extract every ounce of effort from himself during these critical weeks.

Against the Highborn—

Toll Seven longed to plug into Web-Mind and reconfigure the statistics one more time. He would have to use the half-cyborgs, the ones converted in his command pod. It was yet another risk in this daring stab for Solar System-wide conquest. With three Doom Stars approaching, the odds were 62.34 percent in cyborg favor.

Those odds would fall fifteen points, however, if the bio-forms of the Battlefleet discovered that key Homo sapiens had been jacked into the Web-Mind. If only he could capture Commissar Kursk or even better, Commodore Blackstone. The time might come, but so far, they had each proved too cautious by training or by instinct. They would soon make an error, however, for that was the way of free bio-forms. Once he gained control over those two, the odds for space-battle victory would increase another 3.22 percentage points.

-4-

Marten Kluge felt trapped and was depressed, as if he had never escaped out of the punishment tube in Sydney, Australian Sector. It felt as if the blue water still gushed over his head as he pumped and pumped the red handle.

He had lived as a meaningless cipher in an underground megalopolis on Earth. Now he lived again in a sprawling subterranean city, but this time on Mars. Only this time the city was a titanic slum compared to Sydney.

A little over three weeks ago, they had skimmed from Olympus Mons and had made it to New Tijuana, 343 kilometers away. That was much too near the giant volcano, too near the terrifying nest of cyborgs.

Marten tightened his back muscles so they wouldn’t quiver. He and Omi were in an underground firing-range, practicing with genuine Gauss needlers. Others of his commando troop practiced here. Secretary-General Chavez had given him permanent command of them.

Marten hefted what Major Diaz had called ‘a combat needler.’ It was bulky, but light. He suspected it would prove useless against cyborgs or against battle-armored drop-troops. Marten settled a pair of goggles over his eyes, lifted the needler and sighted the human-shaped target one hundred feet away. He fired a burst, listening to the cracks of noise and listening to all the other cracks from the other compartmentalized lanes. The hit area glowed red, showing dots on the target’s forehead.

“Let me try,” Omi said.

With his thumb, Marten flicked the safety, set down the weapon and stepped back. Omi picked it up and fired burst after burst. The glows showed in the head, the chest and in the genital area. When the needler clicked empty, Omi slammed in another clip and methodically emptied it, too. He picked up a third clip.

“That will do for now,” Marten said, putting a hand on Omi’s shoulder.

Omi whirled around, and there was something dangerous in his dark eyes. That something settled down as Omi seemed to realize who touched him and where he was.

“It’s getting to you, too, eh?” Marten asked.

Omi took a deeper breath than normal and gave a minimal shrug. “Is this why we escaped the Highborn?”

“Meaning?”

“To die on Mars?” Omi asked. “It’s only a matter of time before they unleash those cyborgs on us.”

“Right,” Marten said. It was as if Omi’s words had flipped a switch in him. Marten knew what he had to do. He’d been playing the long shot for a long time now. Until they were free of the Inner Planets, there was no sense in trying to play it safe.

“You’ve finally thought of something,” Omi said.

“What gives you that idea?”

Omi made a softly deprecating noise. “I’ve seen that look on your face before. You’re psyching up to charge through a wall. But whatever you’re planning, I’m in.”

“Good,” Marten said. “I’m going to have a word with Major Diaz. Then we’re off to see Chavez.”

Major Diaz continued running the commando troop through the target-practicing drills. In the lobby, Marten and Omi donned bulky spylo-jackets and hurried onto the cold street.

There were on the tenth city-level of New Tijuana. Instead of high-arching levels with bright sunlamps and well-modulated temperatures like Sydney, the Martian city had a claustrophobically low ceiling a mere twenty feet high. Many of the glass buildings reached that high, making it seem even more cramped. Instead of sunlamps on the ceiling to simulate sunlight, streetlamps provided dim lighting. Worst of all, both men could see their breath as the cold seeped into their bones.

Martian children ran screaming past. They wore sythi-woolen caps, spylo jackets and ragged shoes. They chased a bouncing ball, and theirs were the only bright faces. The adults all looked haggard, were amazingly thin and moved with slouched shoulders. They all shuffled out of Marten’s way and avoided making eye-contact, treating him as if he were some escaped beast.

Omi had complained before that wherever he went, he felt eyes staring into his back like needles.

The Red Planet was closer to Luna’s density than to Earth’s density. What it came down to was that Mars lacked a large, molten core like the Earth. It also lacked the richness in metallic ores. Although it was a shorter distance to drill a deep-core mine here, the type of planetary mantle and other factors had mandated against planet-deep drilling. Too, the Social Unity government had never granted the necessary funds for such work. Thus, the Martian cities used nuclear fusion plants to power everything. That meant they needed sufficient fissionable ores to feed the hungry reactors. That meant mines and in the past, it had meant importing massively from the Jupiter Confederation. Mars also lacked sufficient water. The Jupiter cartels and the Martian Water Corporation had combined to scour the Jupiter System for ice asteroids and to import from Saturn. Saturn’s rings contained a treasure in movable ice, one that had been mined for decades.

These and other factors had contributed to Martian squalor, at least in Earth terms. Marten felt constricted in New Tijuana and at times found it difficult to breathe. Until reaching New Tijuana, Marten and Omi had received a false impression about Mars. As Marten had said, “We only saw the best, the military people and the defense facilities.”

With fusion plants instead of deep-core mines, the need to import water and the struggling food domes, the Martian economy wavered on permanent disaster. Likely, the constant rebellion had heavily contributed to that. Too many glass buildings in New Tijuana had blast holes that had never been repaired.

“I’d hate to see the slums here,” Omi had said their first day down.

“Mars is the slum of Inner Planets,” had been Marten’s observation.

The two ex-shock troopers now showed their special passes to the elevator police and rode a lift up two levels. Then the lift stopped and police in black-visored helmets asked them to step out. Levels one through seven were the best lit and the best heated. They contained the government buildings and the homes for the highest ranked in the Planetary Union.

Only after placing a call through to the Secretary-General’s office did the police grudgingly let them enter the prized levels.

Marten might have grumbled to Omi about it, but both of them knew the lifts were monitored. They knew because Major Diaz had warned them about it. Soon, the two hurried down a cleaner street. And here, all the broken streetlamps and buildings had been fixed. In time, Marten and Omi waited in a plush office, each half-sunken in a soft chair.

A little over three weeks ago, they had fled from Olympus Mons with the cyborg in their skimmer. None of them had trusted her, if such a thing could be called female. Marten had used several opportunities to talk with Osadar Di. The one fact that had stuck in his mind was that originally she had been from the Jupiter System. She had been a pilot that had escaped to Saturn and then to Neptune. She used to be human. Someone named Toll Seven had captured her and her ice-hauler crew, and on a Neptune habitat, she had been turned into a cyborg. It was a horrifying tale.

As Marten sat waiting for Chavez, he realized that Osadar Di had been trapped worse than he ever had been. No one had ever ripped his humanity from him. Yet the more Marten thought about it, the more he wondered if that was so. She wasn’t like Blake, the Bioram Taw2. Blake’s mind had been sliced and rearranged. It sounded as if Toll Seven had left Osadar her original mind, reprogramming it in certain ways and vastly changing her form. But if she had her brain, wasn’t she still Osadar Di, still the human from the Jupiter System? It was hard to decide. The interesting point was this: She knew the Jupiter System. She had lived there before escaping to the Neptune System where the cyborgs had caught and transformed her. He knew nothing about Jupiter, or almost nothing. If he was ever going to find Nadia Pravda there, he could use a native Jovian. But if he was ever going to reach his shuttle, the Mayflower—

Marten’s head twitched. He didn’t even want to think about that right now. It was his secret. He hadn’t even told Omi.

There was a truth about secrets. If you told them to someone, others soon learned about them. The only way to keep a secret was to keep it secret. And that meant to tell no one. Marten knew that, and he was the only one who needed to know about the secret—for now. Besides, he couldn’t make a stab for the Mayflower just yet. Mars orbit swarmed with a Social Unity Battlefleet. The fact there hadn’t been any space bombardments or city invasions or food-dome invasions meant the rumor must be true. Major Diaz had told him about the rumor a day ago. The Highborn were heading to Mars with three Doom Stars.

As Marten sat waiting, he brooded. Three Doom Stars would keep the Battlefleet busy.

His mood shifted and Marten lurched to his feet. He hated slouching in the soft chair. He began to pace. A plush carpet covered the floor and strange, no, bizarre paintings hung on the walls. He could feel Omi’s eyes on him. Marten wondered if hidden cameras recorded his actions.

Marten needed Osadar Di. He needed the cyborg because what he planned was madness. Getting the cyborg out of Unionist hands would be hard, however, if not impossible. The Unionist scientists had taken Osadar Di and according to Major Diaz had run her through a battery of tests and asked her thousands of questions. Also according to Diaz, the cyborg had become stubborn and now remained silent.

Would Chavez continue to feel grateful that the cyborg had saved his life? Marten was grateful. Maybe as importantly, he sympathized with Osadar’s extraordinary resolve to gain freedom. Despite the metallic quality of her voice, the few times he’d talked with her, he’d felt connected. He’d understood her. Marten suppressed a shudder. If Osadar Di hadn’t killed the other cyborgs, would Omi and he now be cyborgs? The thought was terrifying. Whatever else happened, Marten knew he had to get off Mars. He had to get out of the Inner Planets. Cyborgs verses Highborn verses Social Unity—the Inner Planets might become cinders before such a war ended.

When faced against overwhelming odds, one either had to fight for honor or run away. It was time to run away to live to fight another day. But to do that, he was going to have fight better than he ever had in his life. He could have used Kang, Vip and Lance. He would have loved to see Stick or Turbo again and hear their voices.

The door opened. Marten whirled around. A stunningly beautiful woman stood there. Her hair was done up in an appealing style and her lips were glossy. She wore a wraparound dress, the hem all the way to the floor, even hiding her feet.

“The Secretary-General will see you now,” she said. “But he can only give you five minutes. So it will have to be brief.”

“I understand,” Marten said.

She gave him a quick study, nodded pertly and said, “If you would follow me, please…”

“That’s insanity,” Chavez said, “pure insanity.”

Marten and Omi sat in low chairs before the Secretary-General’s huge desk. Red smoke drifted through the room. The walls held a hundred plaques, photos and more of the bizarre paintings of swirls and thick ink. Chavez leaned back in his swivel chair, a stimstick dangling from his lips. Several bronze busts of old Unionist leaders rested on his desk. Outside the door to the spacious office waited a five-man security team.

Chavez took a deep drag on his stimstick. “We have one cyborg. One! The scientists need it for study.”

“She saved our lives,” Marten said quietly, trying to keep calm.

“Did she?” Chavez asked.

“Do you remember being tangled?” Marten asked.

Chavez snapped forward and placed his elbows on the desk. He mashed the stimstick in an ashtray, and from his greater height, he looked down at Marten sitting low in his chair.

It reminded Marten too much of Hall Leader Quirn, and that made his stomach queasy.

“The scientists have postulated an interesting theory,” Chavez said. “Did the cyborgs plant a spy among us? Did this Osadar Di destroy the other machines in order to win my gratitude?”

“They’re not just machines, sir, but living things.”

“They were living things,” Chavez said.

“They still have brains.”

Chavez frowned. “I’m not here to argue with you, Mr. Kluge. Your five minutes were up some time ago. I appreciate all that you’ve done for us, but—”

“Tell me this,” Marten said. “Why would Social Unity put a cyborg spy in your midst?”

Chavez’s frown deepened. “The answer is obvious.”

“Mr. Secretary-General, from what I’ve seen of your military, you have nothing that can stand against the cyborgs or against a full military attack. The only reason you won your freedom before was that the Highborn defeated Social Unity for you.”

“That is quite enough, Mr. Kluge.”

Marten stood up. He hated sitting in that low chair. He hated looking up at the skinny Secretary-General.

“Where are your military weapons?” Marten asked. “My commando team has Gauss needlers. Those are a joke.”

Looking stricken, Chavez sank back in his chair. “The enemy has already defeated and retaken our military equipment. I refer to the space stations, the orbitals and the proton beam. All we have left are the needlers, a few gyroc rifles and some plasma cannons. It stings our pride, but the truth is the Highborn freed us the first time, as you said. Now we’re depending on them again to free us.”

“That’s what I’m trying to change,” Marten said.

Chavez stared at him. “Your plan is suicide.”

“Freedom only comes at the price of blood,” Marten said. “The Highborn paid last time. I know. You’ve fought a guerilla war against PHC for years. And that meant you had pride because many of your noblest fighters had fallen. The pride allowed you to man the space defenses and fire the proton beam. Just like last time, you can’t solely rely on the Highborn. You must hurt Social Unity. You must help the Highborn and thereby stake your claim to freedom. Otherwise, sir, the Highborn might decide to remain as your masters.”

“That would be intolerable,” Chavez said. “We would fight for a thousand years to prevent that.”

“Then you must show the Highborn and Social Unity that you still have fight left. As importantly, you must show them that you can still hurt your enemies.”

Chavez folded his thin hands on the huge desk, and something seemed to leak out of him. His eyes become hollower and there was that Martian slouch to his skinny shoulders.

“What happens if Social Unity begins to beam our food-domes? What happens if they unleash the cyborgs on us?” Chavez wearily shook his head. “We must wait for the Highborn to appear.”

Marten stepped up to the huge desk and planted his knuckled fists on it. He learned toward Chavez so the Secretary-General leaned back in his swivel chair.

“I can understand that,” Marten said. “At the same time, you can still allow me to train the commandos. And now I’ll have time to train them in unit tactics. If they’ll fight as a team, they’ll be five times as deadly.”

“You’re talking about pitting men in EVA suits and gyroc rifles against cyborgs.”

“Yes!” Marten said.

“That’s suicide,” Chavez whispered.

“Not if we learn what the cyborgs can and cannot do.”

“That’s what the scientists are finding out.”

“In the lab,” Marten sneered. “What we need to know is in the field where it counts. Even better, Mr. Secretary-General, you will be honoring the woman who saved your life. Despite what your scientists tell you, unless Osadar Di had showed up, you and I would be cyborgs now.”

With a trembling hand, Chavez opened a drawer, tore open a new pack and popped another stimstick between his lips. He took a deep drag, inhaling it into a red glow. He began to cough and blew out a stream of smoke.

“The men fear her,” Chavez whispered.

“That’s another reason I need her for training,” Marten said. “I need to accustom my commandos to them.”

“Why do you want to throw away your life?” Chavez asked.

Marten straightened. He turned away. Mars was doomed one way or another. Was that something you could tell a man? Could he lie to Chavez? Marten sneered at himself, glanced at Omi and faced Secretary-General Chavez.

“I’ll tell you why, sir,” Marten said. “Then you can decide whether to let me attempt this. Mars is doomed. But I think you already know that.”

“Doomed?” Chavez whispered.

“You saw the cyborgs. You’ve seen the Highborn. The time of man… maybe our era is over.”

“You believe that?”

“I don’t know,” Marten said. “Maybe. Does that mean I’m going to accept it? No. But it means I know when to run.”

“There is no place to run,” Chavez said.

“Not for an entire planet, no,” Marten said as he began to pace before the huge desk. “Look. I’m going to be honest. I’m not going to lie to you. I wanted to bypass Mars. But I couldn’t. I needed fuel. We bought fuel with our service. Now I want to get to my shuttle and head to Jupiter.”

“Your shuttle has been destroyed,” Chavez said.

Marten stared Chavez in the eye. “You can give me diplomatic power. I’m willing to represent you. I’ll go to the Jupiter System and see if I can drum up support. If terror of the cyborgs can’t unite humanity, nothing can. We need a fleet of freemen to face… these aliens.”

“Your shuttle was destroyed,” Chavez said.

“No,” Marten said. “I sent it a coded signal a week ago and received one back, just one single beep. My shuttle is up there, floating like debris. You said Zapata filled the tanks with propellants. I plan to reach my shuttle and head to Jupiter.”

“How can you reach your shuttle?” Chavez asked.

“I’ll need an orbital fighter.”

“You can fly one?”

“Osadar Di can,” Marten said.

Chavez blinked at him. “And you think there are orbitals at Olympus Mons?”

Marten nodded.

“You want me to loan you Martian commandos so you can flee and stay alive?” Chavez asked in disbelief.

“You buy my service by providing me a service,” Marten countered. “I hit the enemy for you when the Highborn attack. I show the Highborn and the cyborgs that the Planetary Union can still strike. Your men provide me with my one chance of returning to my spaceship. In return, I train your men to the best of my Highborn-training. That training is more valuable to your Union than plutonium.”

“We attempt to take out the proton beam and help the Highborn,” Chavez said thoughtfully.

“You give them something they can really appreciate.”

Chavez swiveled around and stared at one of the bizarre paintings. He slowly shook his head. “We must fight like men if we hope to be treated like men.”

“That’s part of it,” Marten said. “The other is that you kill your oppressors.”

“Or run away,” Chavez said.

“Give me diplomatic credentials and it might turn my going away into drumming up human reinforcements and allies.”

“Does that ease your conscience, Mr. Kluge?”

“Maybe,” Marten said. “It also gives me a worthy goal.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I saw the cyborgs. I’ve been a slave to the Highborn and I’ve worked like an ant for Social Unity. I want to make the Solar System a place where people like me can thrive. That means I need a side, and a side that can win. Maybe that means I’m a seed that begins to link the free human outposts into a grand alliance to save all of us.”

“That sounds like megalomania,” Chavez said.

“That’s better than waiting to die.”

A wintry grin spread across the Secretary-General’s narrow face. “Diplomatic credentials, eh? Yes. I agree. It is a gesture, if nothing else. It says that I believe Martians will always fight to be free.”

“I’ll need the cyborg.”

“You’ll need more than that, Mr. Kluge, much more.”

-5-

Two weeks after Marten’s meeting with Secretary-General Chavez and many millions of kilometers away, the Praetor’s pink eyes glowed with fierce hatred. His sharply angled face was taut with the unholy zeal that filled him. His thick dark hair was cut short to his scalp so it seemed like fur. He sat in his command chair, a giant of a Highborn, fourth-ranked in the competitive world of super-soldiers. At other consoles sat other Highborn. Like him, they were strapped in. Like him, they had regained their health during their weightless period of flight.

Five weeks ago, the terrible acceleration around the Sun had ceased. For weeks, they had hurtled through the empty voids of space. The Grand Admiral’s Doom Stars had a much shorter distance to travel to reach Mars, 100 million kilometers. From the Sun, it was almost 250 million kilometers to Mars, since the Red Planet was at aphelion, at its farthest orbital distance.

Out of all the planets in the Solar System, Mars had the third most elliptical orbit, a 9 percent variation. At perihelion, at its closest point, Mars was approximately 208 million kilometers away from the Sun. It was a difference of 46 million kilometers between the two extremes. For comparison, Earth had a difference of 5 million kilometers between perihelion and aphelion.

For five weeks, the Thutmosis III had sped at over two and a half times the speed of the Grand Admiral’s Doom Stars. That calculated out to over five million kilometers per Earth day.

In several hours, the Thutmosis III would catch the Grand Admiral and pass the Doom Stars.

The Praetor slipped VR goggles over his eyes and slipped on twitch gloves. He used outer video cameras and carefully examined his stealth-ship. It was as black as the voids it hurtled through, with heat shields and an anti-radar coating. For weeks now, Highborn had hunched over their consoles, listening for radar and other detection pings sent by the enemy. To spot the Thutmosis III with teleoptic scopes should be nearly impossible until the stealth-ship was right on top of Mars. And that was something the Praetor had no intension of doing. The engines were silent so there was no telltale engine burn. Since leaving the Sun’s orbit, they’d moved on velocity alone. Since no enemy probes or vessels had been anywhere near the Sun, it was impossible that Social Unity even knew the Thutmosis III had circled Sol to build up speed.

Until they fired missiles, fired the engines or lasers, it was unlikely Social Unity would ever realize the stealth ship was there.

The Praetor twitched his fingers, using his VR goggles to peer through the ship’s teleoptic sights. Mars was brighter now than any other object in the scopes except for the Sun, which was presently at the Praetor’s viewing back. At Mars waited the last SU fleet worthy of the name. In a little over two weeks, as the Doom Stars neared to within 1-million kilometers, huge prismatic-crystal fields would begin to spew into existence at Mars, along with aerosol-gel clouds. Those fields and clouds were supposed to protect whatever needed protecting from heavy lasers or possible Highborn proton beams.

The Praetor’s lips peeled back to reveal strong white teeth. The false smile concealed his nervousness. Because of its stealth-mission, the Thutmosis III would not send any radio or lightguide signals until the very last minute. Despite its impressive size, the stealth-ship was less than a tiny mote in the voids of space. As an almost microscopic speck, it still held life, energy and missiles. Compared to the planets, the stealth-ship was next to nothing. Compared to the SU warships, its stealth-missiles and drones would hopefully be thunderclaps out of the blackness. Yet because of the nature of his mission, the Praetor now had to wait for the next critical move.

If the Grand Admiral had miscalculated—

The Praetor let out a hiss, sounding like an angry snake. The Grand Admiral had calculated it to a nicety. The Doom Stars’ engines burned brightly and massively ahead of the Thutmosis III. The gargantuan warships poured out energy and began hard deceleration. That should conceal his actions.

Immediately, the Praetor spoke loudly but calmly to his command crew. It would not do at this recorded moment to show emotion. He must present the picture of the perfect soldier. From his command chair, with the VR goggles firmly in place, he struck a martial pose and gave the order.

The Praetor hid his smile as the command crew began to move with practiced ease. The Praetor used the VR goggles to watch through a recording device to see how they all looked. He and the crew had literally gone through a hundred and seventeen dry runs of this procedure. They were Highborn, the greatest soldiers in the Solar System. They, however, would not rely just on their excellence, but on dedicated training.

Huge stealth-missiles and drones were now magnetically ejected from the ship’s tubes. For the next twenty minutes, every warhead must exit the ship. Time passed, and everything went off perfectly. The Praetor gave another calm order. Highborn ran their big hands over various controls. Magnetic coils cooled down and firing tubes closed.

Each of the stealth drones and missiles were cold black objects, difficult to detect until the last moment. They would reach the Mars System as the Doom Stars reached the one-million kilometer range. Because of the angle of the approaches, as the stealth weapons reached the Mars System, the Thutmosis III would already be flying past Mars, no longer toward it. The Praetor’s ship would thus be able to use its teleoptic scopes to see behind whatever prismatic-crystal fields and aerosol-gel clouds the enemy had. It could lightguide and radio-message that targeting data to the Doom Stars. Just as importantly, the Thutmosis III could send targeting data to readjust the flight of its drones and the stealth-missiles so they struck the most militarily worthy objects.

It was the Grand Admiral’s surprise stroke, and it would likely open the Last Battle for Mars.

Pride surged through the Praetor. They had much to do in the coming two-and-a-half weeks. For now, however, each Highborn of his command had done splendidly.

“We have them,” the Praetor said, using, he thought, the perfect pitch in which to say it. He spoke toward a video-recorder, knowing that his words were something that future Highborn would likely replay on files for generations to come.

-6-

The new cyborg LA31, once known as Lisa Aster, climbed into a stealth capsule. She was different from the tall cyborgs with the skeletal limbs. She still had a fleshy human face, although with a steel dome in place of her former bone-skull. Bionic parts had replaced her arms and legs, and her spine had been reinforced with graphite rods. A Neptune-made cyborg could likely defeat any four emergency-made cyborgs from Toll Seven’s command pod. Still, these models fulfilled a needed function, at this, the most critical hour of the Inner Planets assault.

LA31 had undergone speed programming. She had less hardware governing her emotions or actions than Neptune-made cyborgs. Thus, as she settled into the stealth-capsule, a prearranged command forced her to jack a plug into the slot for her brain. Immediately, a lightguide laser linked her to the controlling Web-Mind. Toll Seven and the Web-Mind had decided that it—the Web-Mind—should remain in the command pod instead of coming down in sections and being rebuilt in Olympus Mons. That would happen later as Mars received its Web-Mind Master.

LA31 jacked the plug into the slot for her brain. She frowned for a moment. She’d had a mother once, someone very important. She shrugged. She couldn’t remember who that had been, although she did recall that she’d been a clone.

LA31 went rigid as a training reprimand surged through her. The plug into Web-Mind caused chemical reactions in her bio-form brain. Her face contorted and tears leaked from her eyes. Unknown to her, she had received a harsh emergency brain overlay. It sought to expunge old memories and lay down new ones, false ones generated by Web-Mind.

LA31 groaned and her throat became unbearably dry. Pain made her head throb, and it almost caused her to open her eyes. Another impulse-surge went through the prong in her jack. It caused soothing chemical reactions in her brain, along the nerve endings.

LA31 twitched once. Then she relaxed. She would sleep now as an SU stealth-ship carefully maneuvered her capsule into position. Her capsule contained a modified vacc-suit, hand weapons and an abundance of ammo. The capsule’s outer skin was asteroid rock. Soon, the capsule would float alone near Mars, as if the Red Planet had long-ago captured a piece of space flotsam. There were more like her, and they would be sprinkled at strategically and psychologically reasonable locals. They were the secret cyborg weapon, the one that was supposed to defeat the Highborn.

LA31 knew nothing about that. She sighed, remembering a happier time as a cyborg dropping on Triton, a moon of Neptune. It was a false memory. Most of her old ones had been chemically raped away. Like a mental vulture, Web-Mind watched for any resurgence of them, ready to expunge the last of the personality of the clone Lisa Aster.

-7-

The next week rapidly passed as Marten Kluge trained the commandos on the sands of Mars. Osadar Di practiced with them. She demoralized the men with her amazing bounding leaps like a Highborn battleoid, her uncanny reaction time and precision, long-range shooting.

Near the end of the week, Marten spoke to her in an EVA tent. It was larger than the survival tents they’d used for the raid into Valles Marineris. He preferred the tents to remaining in New Tijuana. Marten hated the black-visored police there, the similar city strictures as practiced on Earth and the possibility that Chavez could change his mind at any moment and imprison them.

Marten sat on a folding chair, with a folding table between them. On the table was a rollout computer-sheet. It showed Olympus Mons, its various entrance points and the orbital hangers.

Osadar Di stood, with her head near the tent’s ceiling. It was still hard for Marten to look at her. It was like looking at a living mannequin or at a statue that had supernaturally come to life. Her face was so immobile. Her arms and legs were more like metal rods, with bigger, motorized joints that moved them. It was unholy, a cruel joke against the living and a mockery of humanity. Marten had to tell himself constantly that inside this mostly mechanical machine was a living being, a person just like himself with hopes and dreams.

“Osadar,” he said, lifting his gaze from the map, forcing himself to stare into her strange eyes. “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

There was no change of expression on her face. He had no idea what she was thinking.

“Go on,” she said in her metallic voice.

Marten kept himself from flinching and kept his eyes from darting away. “Mars is doomed,” he said.

“We’re all doomed,” Osadar said. Her voice was like a heavy bell, a gong of certain defeat.

“I don’t believe that,” Marten said.

“What you believe makes no difference.”

“…if you think we can’t win,” Marten said, stung, “why do you help us?”

“Shooting gyroc rounds out here is better than those fools asking me a thousand questions in the labs. Do you know they kept me in a sealed vault, only speaking to me via a screen?”

“It doesn’t surprise me,” Marten said.

“Do you think I belong in a vault?” she asked.

“I know you terrify my men.”

“Do I terrify you?” she asked.

“Yes,” Marten admitted, “but I’m trying to learn to control that.”

She nodded, and she tapped a metal finger on the map. “What you propose with this attack, it’s a suicide mission.”

“Do you want to escape Mars?” Marten asked.

Her longish head moved fast, faster than a human could twitch, and she nodded yes.

Marten broke eye contact, and he felt relief doing it. On the computer-map, he indicated an orbital hanger high up on Olympus Mons. “The commando raid’s secondary objective is to reach here. Here we will take an orbital and you, hopefully, will fly us into space.”

“The SU Battlefleet will target and eliminate any stray orbitals,” Osadar said.

“I’m hoping they will be too busy right then,” Marten said.

“How can one orbital affect the battle for—” A grim smile moved her plastic lips. “You wish me to ram the orbital into Toll Seven’s command pod?”

Marten shivered. Osadar Di usually seemed emotionless like a computer. For the first time, Marten felt her hatred, her intense desire to hurt Toll Seven and likely Web-Mind. That expressed hatred coming from an emotionless machine was unnerving.

“There is a better way to hurt the cyborgs,” he said.

“How?”

The single word had sounded metallic and emotionless. But Marten wasn’t fooled. A lifetime of pain, of hope, of bitterness seemed rolled into that one question.

Marten began to tell Osadar his plan and his hope. He also had a new idea. It had sprouted a week ago as he’d accepted the diplomatic credentials Chavez had handed him. Marten had shoved the credentials into a special pouch in his suit. He now told Osadar about his new idea.

When he’d finished talking, she said, “Your plan is impossible.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” he said.

“No. It is impossible.”

Marten slammed a fist against the computer-map and almost broke the fold-up table. He glared at her, glared into her strange eyes. For those seconds he forgot that she was a cyborg. He forgot to be squeamish or afraid of her bizarreness.

“What does impossible have to do with anything?” he shouted. “We fight until we’re dead! Nothing is impossible until you shrivel up and quit. Then it is impossible. If you want out, tell me. I’ll pilot the damn orbital myself, or I’ll die trying.”

“If Toll Seven or any other cyborg captures you—”

“Are you in or out?” Marten asked.

Osadar Di broke eye contact as she stared at the roll-up computer-map. “A madman to lead us and a damned thing to pilot his orbital fighter, we are doomed before we begin. It is the law of the universe, an inexorable truth.”

“Your gaining freedom from Web-Mind was also against all the odds.”

Osadar turned away. “You have a beautiful dream, Marten Kluge. To find the Neptune habitat and burn it—I can conceive of nothing more worthy to do with my miserable existence. Yes, I am in.”

“You won’t regret this,” Marten said.

Osadar regarded him. She had the saddest smile Marten had ever seen. It hurt his heart to witness it. “I hope you don’t live to regret it,” she said. “For it is very likely that sooner or later you will become a cyborg like me.”

Osadar turned away abruptly and hesitated. Then in silence, she began to don her EVA gear. It was time to get moving.

-8-

A little over a week after Marten’s talk with Osadar, the three Doom Stars sailed majestically into far orbit around Mars. Their average velocity for the last seven weeks had been approximately two million kilometers per Earth day.

That velocity had lessened since the hard braking. The three Doom Stars now serenely moved into their firing-range, one million kilometers. For the next three days, all the SU warships, the moons and orbital platforms would be in range of the heavy lasers without being able to fire back with anything but missiles.

The one million kilometers was an immense distance. Light traveled at 300,000 kilometers per second. It would take a fired beam more than three full seconds to travel to the target. In those three seconds, the target could have shifted minutely enough to upset targeting. Thus, the targeting personnel, equipment and computers needed to compute were the target would be in a little over three seconds after the shot. That, however, was nothing compared to the need for precise accuracy. To hit with the beam at one million kilometers was comparable to a sniper hitting a penny on Olympus Mons from orbit.

The Highborn possessed such molecular accuracy, another factor that made them so deadly. Like ill omens of destruction, the three Doom Stars with their heavy laser-ports eerily glided through the stellar void and toward the bright disc of Mars.

The Julius Caesar, the Hannibal Barca and the Napoleon Bonaparte were spheroid vessels and contained massive fusion reactors. Those reactors produced the incredible power needed for the unbeatable heavy lasers. Each Doom Star also carried its own complement of orbital fighters, drop-troops and drones. The heavy lasers were their primary armament, however.

On the bridge of the Julius Caesar, Grand Admiral Cassius waited in his command chair. Around him and on various levels were the modules of his battle staff. There were a hundred monitors, screens, VR-wearing personnel and thousands of lights on a hundred boards. Techs poured over computer-enhanced teleoptic scans and radar specialists studied the graphics. Before the Grand Admiral was a ten–foot holographic globe of Mars, with the two moons in correct alignment and the already spotted SU warships as green dots. Incoming data constantly shifted the information onto the holo-globe. The Grand Admiral watched impassively as prismatic-crystal fields sprayed into existence as out of thin air. They appeared as three-dimensional blankets before the clusters of SU warships. Phobos spayed no fields as the moon was presently behind Mars. Deimos also remained bare of covering crystals or aerosol gels.

Grand Admiral Cassius studied the holographic globe. The normal practice in such a situation would be for his three Doom Stars to attempt a burn through. It would be a mathematical equation of pouring enough laser energy against the constantly replenished prismatic-crystal fields. Once through, the lasers would have to probe for the warships behind the PC-Fields. Those warships would naturally be moving, hoping to confound Highborn targeting computers.

Such was the normal tactic, but the Grand Admiral refrained from giving the order. He had won the Second Battle of Deep Mars Orbit in 2339 practicing just that scheme. Then, he had destroyed the Mars fleet and the armada of the Jupiter Confederation. The premen would naturally expect him to use the same tactic as before. It was reasonable of them to think so, for premen invariably followed the tried and true. Historically, it was also natural for any victor to fight the new war with the old war’s winning methods.

Grand Admiral Cassius sat back in his chair so it creaked. He tapped a forefinger against his gray temple. How good was the premen’s equipment? The likely answer was very good. Soon now, they would spot the Thutmosis III’s stealth-missiles and drones.

The deadly waiting game was nearly over. The battle could begin at any moment. The fleets had made their dispositions. It was soon time to hand the premen a terrible surprise. They thought they could face three mighty Doom Stars. It was monumental arrogance on their part, and animal desperation. The power of the Highborn was about to crush their last aspirations.

Cassius smiled. This was why he had been born. This was his purpose: to conquer, to defeat and to subjugate those weaker and softer than himself. It was the law of life that the strong should devour the weak. It was a good law, a reasonable thing and the way he would reorder the Solar System once he gained mastery of it.

Emperor Cassius. That had a noble ring. Since he was the greatest sentient in the Solar System, he then should mold those under him. Grand Admiral Cassius lowered his hand and stared steely-eyed at the holographic globe. In truth, it was his burden to rule, to govern those too stupid to order their lives correctly. If humanity—and he meant Highborn with that word—were to expand throughout the galaxy, then this Mother System, this womb, must be reordered along rational lines.

The Grand Admiral forced himself to relax. He had many hours yet of waiting. He wanted the premen to sweat and to fear. He wanted them to worry about him, to wonder why the Doom Stars hadn’t fired yet. That was the great premen weakness, the inability to wait without their animal-like nervousness. Only a superior Highborn could control himself properly.

“Soon,” Grand Admiral Cassius whispered. “Very soon now…”

-9-

“What’s wrong with them?” Commodore Blackstone shouted. “Why aren’t the Doom Stars firing?”

Heads turned on the Vladimir Lenin’s cramped command bridge. Commissar Kursk frowned. Only General Fromm remained unmoved at the outburst.

Blackstone, Kursk and Fromm stood around the raised, holographic map-module. Red light bathed the bridge and a constant stream of chatter on headphones and speakers combined with the tap of keyboards.

The Commodore gripped the map-module as he stared at the enhanced image of the Doom Stars. Beside the images of the mighty ships were green numbers that constantly changed as their range closed. Blackstone tried to quell the raging uncertainty in his heart. This waiting for the battle to open was the worst feeling. Presently, the Doom Stars held all the advantages. Why then didn’t they begin a burn through? He had ships waiting behind the prismatic-crystal field, ships ready to dump an immense quantity of crystals to add to the field. Other ships were lined up behind those, ready to rush to the field and increase it for days. That the Highborn didn’t attempt the obvious meant they had another plan. That terrified Blackstone.

If he lost the battle—

“Sir,” the communications officer said, “tracking has spotted approaching anomalies.”

“What? What?” Blackstone asked, knowing that he spoke too loudly and too quickly. He strove to control himself. He wanted to control himself. Everything rested on his command decisions. He had the power today to loose everything for Social Unity. If he lost, his ex-wife would become a slave to the Highborn.

Then Blackstone was blinking at new images on the map-module, a flock of images. “What am I seeing?” he shouted.

The targeting officer swiveled around. The bridge’s red glow made his sharp features seem devilish. “Sir, those are missiles.”

“What’s propelling them?” Blackstone asked. “Where’s their exhaust?”

“High velocity moves them, sir. They must have been fired… weeks ago.”

“Why didn’t anyone spot it until now?” Blackstone asked.

“The Bangladesh,” General Fromm said.

Blackstone glared at Fromm. How could the stout Earth General sound so calm? The man’s fleshy features were smooth. His voice was unruffled. Blackstone envied and hated Fromm.

“The Bangladesh,” Fromm repeated. “The Highborn must have fired the missiles from the Sun, or had them gain velocity there. That’s what we did with the Bangladesh. It appears they’ve stolen our method and turned it against us.”

“The missiles are headed for the PC-Fields,” the targeting officer said.

Blackstone slammed an open hand against the map-module as a cold wave of logic quelled his raging heart. He saw the Highborn plan, or this part of it, at least. They would blast a hole through the prismatic-crystal field and only then fire their hated heavy lasers. But he had a reaction team, a squadron of battlewagons. If they could move in time—

“Communications, get me the Fidel Castro. And hurry!” Blackstone added, his voice having the power of a lash.

The Thutmosis III had passed Mars by ten million kilometers. That no enemy missiles burned at high gravities after them showed the Praetor and his crew that the premen had failed to spot the giant stealth-ship. A sense of calm filled the vessel. The great danger was over. Now every resource and effort was bent on one task, using the teleoptic scopes to locate everything behind Mars and behind the prismatic-crystal fields. There were obvious gaps in their knowledge, the areas hidden by Mars for one. What they already knew was vital.

The Praetor watched the enemy through his VR-goggles. Excitement caused him to rise from his chair. SU battleships and… missile-ships engaged their engines.

“Are their ships using full burn?” the Praetor asked.

Computers analyzed the intensity of the various ship exhausts and they analyzed the brightness of the expelled propellants.

“They’re using emergency speeds,” a Highborn answered. “They must have spotted our incoming missiles. The computer gives it an eighty-seven percent probability that they’re sending those ships around their own PC-Fields so they can try to laser our missiles.”

The Praetor gave a sharp, sardonic bark. That was the danger of creating a prismatic-crystal field too soon in a battle. It stopped the enemy from hitting your ships, but it also stopped you from firing lasers at the enemy.

“Ready the lightguide system,” the Praetor ordered. “Then relay our information to the Grand Admiral.”

The Grand Admiral had long ago shot probes in a lateral direction. Otherwise, Social Unity’s PC-Fields would have blocked a lightguide message beam as effectively as it would a battle-beam. Now, the Thutmosis III’s lightguide laser would hit the communication probe, which would relay the message to the Julius Caesar.

The Praetor sat down, although he kept his spine stiff and his pose that of a conqueror. The premen moved predictably. They were such simple creatures, really. How they could ever hope to win against their genetic superiors was beyond him. It was like a child groping to fight an adult. They so yearned to ape Highborn combat efficiency. Inevitably, utter failure was the result.

The Praetor let out his breath as the message was beamed to the Julius Caesar’s probe. If the premen had good equipment, they might spot the lightguide beam, but fail to crack its contents. That meant the premen could theoretically spot the Thutmosis III. It was unlikely, however, as the lightguide beam had been sent in a short burst. If the pathetic premen hadn’t spotted them yet, it was unlikely they would when they had so many other things to worry about.

The Praetor was correct concerning the SU Battlefleet. Every ship, every piece of detection equipment was aimed toward the Doom Stars and the stellar voids in that general direction. It was a massive volume of space. That the Thutmosis III’s stealth-missiles and drones had only been spotted now was not incredible or surprising. A cold dark object fashioned to give almost no radar signature was a maddeningly difficult thing to find. Radar and teleoptic technicians were trained to search for any telltale clue, but until very near, the stealth-missiles simply hadn’t given those clues.

Almost everyone in the SU Battlefleet concentrated on the Doom Stars and on the fast-approaching missiles and drones. But the radar and teleoptic technicians on the Phobos moon scanned in the opposite direction. Phobos was presently on the other side of Mars as the Battlefleet and thus couldn’t track the Doom Stars. The commander of Phobos didn’t expect to find anything. The commander merely wanted his crews busy because busy people had less time to think themselves into useless nervousness.

One radar specialist, a Corporal Bess O’Connor, noticed a blip on her screen, a flash and then nothing. She ran a diagnostic on it and keyed for a computer suggestion. The computer flashed a single message: lightguide beam.

Even though a lightguide beam out there seemed impossible, Corporal Bess O’Connor logged the blip at the computer’s suggestion and passed it along the chain of command. Others in teleoptics received it and that caused a flurry of excitement. Teleoptics backtracked and used percentage probability analyzers. As they did so, they caught a flash of the second lightguide beam sent from the Thutmosis III.

That created an emergency and triggered several command decisions. First, even though the black-ops enemy vessel moved at extreme speeds away from Mars, the Phobos commander ordered a missile launch. Several minutes later, huge hunter-seeker missiles lofted from Phobos and charged into the void after the last known location of the enemy. With them lofted several specialized missiles whose sole purpose was to find and fixate upon this craft and relay the information to the deadly killer missiles. The second command involved three cargo ships. Those three cargo ships engaged emergency thrusters, hurrying into position. Once there, they would begin spraying a fine mist of aerosol gels. That mist was meant to blind the stealth enemy from observing anything more of military importance around Mars.

Grand Admiral Cassius closed his eyes, quietly exuding in his brilliance. He loved chess. He loved any competitive game but especially enjoyed those that involved long-term strategy and careful moves. The moves that now brought him this joy had been planned nearly a year ago.

He had received the Praetor’s lightguide messages, which had given them the precise locations of everything they on the Doom Stars couldn’t see because of the prismatic-crystal fields. Now the desperate premen used battleships to kill the Thutmosis III’s missiles. It was the obvious thing to do. The better strategy would have been to let the missiles hit the PC-Fields as the enemy fleet raced to get behind Mars. Nevertheless, Cassius had given the present action a seventy percent probability. Running for cover behind Mars would have meant leaving the moons to heavy laser attacks. It was only reasonable that the premen would have stocked the moons with weaponry, hoping to use the moons as heavy platforms. What it truly did was leave the moons hostage to the Doom Stars and force the enemy commander to shield them. No prismatic-crystal field guarded Deimos yet. Cassius was certain it was in order to try to fool him into thinking Deimos was harmless. Unfortunately for the premen, he wasn’t fooled in the slightest.

“Enemy vessels have left the protection of the prismatic-crystal field,” a Highborn officer said.

“Begin firing,” Cassius ordered.

The lasers of the battlewagon Fidel Castro speared into the starry darkness. Nearby sister-ships did likewise. From farther away, missile-ships launched anti-missiles. Mars was behind them. A vast prismatic-crystal field like a nebula cloud-system glittered strangely in the vacuum blackness closer to them, but still to their rear.

The commander of the Fidel Castro felt naked and alone out here. His battleship was the oldest in the fleet, but it was still a deadly vessel. The 600-meter thick particle-shields were in place. And the battleship changed positions constantly, jinking, engaging engines, shutting them down and swerving to a different heading. They did all that to avoid the heavy lasers of the Doom Stars one-million kilometers away. All the while, the battleship’s lasers burned the incoming missiles and drones.

Then, out of the voids, incredibly huge lasers stabbed with hellish fury. Those heavy lasers were three times the diameter of the Fidel Castro’s lasers. In them had been pumped five times the killing power. Because the Doom Stars possessed such massive fusion engines, they could afford to pay the energy costs to fuel these lasers.

Nine giant lasers hit the Fidel Castro in unison. It was a display of incredible targeting skill. Three Doom Stars from nearly one-million kilometers away sent nine beams into the SU battleship’s guts. They sliced off huge chunks of the particle-shield. Then the Fidel Castro, which was always moving, changed heading enough that the nine beams stabbed around it. The commander and crew hoped they had time to escape. The Highborn probability computers or maybe the genetically enhanced gunners guessed right again. Six beams chewed off more of the particle-shield. For eight minutes and twenty seconds, the uneven game played out. Then the heavy lasers struck past the ruined particle-shields and slammed into the battleship’s hull.

Titanium and steel burned in nanoseconds. Clouds of heated gas and molten droplets shed from the hull. In another minute, it was over, as the Fidel Castro floated in space, a dead and irradiated hulk.

The forty-year-old battleship had tried to defend the prismatic-crystal field and destroy enough of the incoming missiles. The question was, had it been enough?

Eighty percent of the Thutmosis III’s stealth-missiles and drones perished under a flurry of SU laser beams and anti-missile missiles. They were winks of bright light in the darkness, sometimes a red glow that died like a shooting star.

Twenty percent of the missiles in layered waves hit the prismatic-crystal field. The nuclear explosions blew vast holes in the field. They opened it up and exposed a portion of the SU Battlefleet behind it. They exposed SU ships to the heavy lasers of the Julius Caesar, the Hannibal Barca and the Napoleon Bonaparte.

The attacked showed to great effect the deadliness of long-rage beams. Blackstone shouted himself hoarse. Ships churned out more prismatic-crystals. But many ships perished under the Doom Star lasers.

“Head behind Mars!” Blackstone shouted. “Hide behind Deimos!”

All around him, battleships, missile-ships, ECM vessels and minelayers engaged their engines and slammed their crews with six Gs of acceleration. Like terrible searchlights, the giant lasers stabbed and killed. They moved so much faster than the sluggish spacecraft. Sometimes they seared chunks of particle-shields off huge battleships. More often, the lasers struck thinner-skinned vessels, cutting some in half so living beings tumbled like space-scum into the black vacuum.

Commodore Blackstone’s plan to absorb energy by taking days of heavy laser fire was destroyed. Yet by sending the Fidel Castro and other ships to their deaths to kill the majority of the enemy missiles, he had saved the majority of the SU Battlefleet. At least, he’d saved it from annihilation here at the opening of the battle.

Like thieves frightened by policemen, the SU Battlefleet scattered for safety. All the while, the terrible beams from the voids fired. The untouchable Doom Stars lived up to their names. The master plan to envelop the Doom Stars had fallen apart days before it could be implemented.

Commodore Blackstone gripped the map-module as he listened to the list of ships destroyed and those that had taken heavy damage. The Fidel Castro and two other battleships were gone, along with two missile-ships. Those were appalling losses when he had absolutely nothing to show for it.

“We have eight battleships left,” Blackstone said tonelessly, “and seven missile-ships. That’s unspeakable. We didn’t even touch them.”

General Fromm looked up from the map-module. He had never changed expression throughout the disaster. “You are incorrect in saying we have achieved nothing.”

Blackstone stared open-mouthed at the stout Earth General. He finally managed to ask, “What are you talking about?”

“The Highborn have played one of their surprises,” Fromm said in his maddeningly calm voice. “We still have our surprises.”

“But three priceless battleships—”

Fromm shook his round head. “The Highborn have a limited number of surprises. Now they approach Mars where our surprises wait. They have damaged us, but we still possess a Battlefleet.” Fromm’s fat fingers indicated the list of other destroyed vessels displayed on the holographic module. “Twenty other vessels destroyed. The greater majority of these are the decoy ships.”

“Which were still full of personnel,” Blackstone half sobbed.

“Battle entails losses, Commodore,” Fromm said without any change of inflection. “The decoy vessels have served a useful purpose. They fulfilled two purposes, in fact. They perished so battle-worthy craft could live to fight again. And they have no doubt given the Highborn a higher sense of accomplishment than they should have. That will heighten one of their greatest weaknesses.”

“Highborn don’t have weaknesses,” Blackstone said. “This attack should have proved that to you.”

“They are arrogant,” General Fromm said. “They are insufferably arrogant. That, in the end, shall be their undoing.”

Commodore Blackstone glanced at Commissar Kursk. She stared at the list of destroyed ships. The Vladimir Lenin along with most of the Battlefleet was now behind Mars in relation to the oncoming Doom Stars. Supreme Commander Hawthorne’s grand plan—Blackstone sneered. They should have kept the fleet in small pieces between the Inner Planets, harrying the Highborn where they were weakest. To try to match the nine-foot super-soldiers in a head-on battle, it was suicide for Social Unity.

Vaguely, Blackstone wondered why Toll Seven wasn’t here aboard the Vladimir Lenin. He could have used the cyborg’s advice. He wondered what the strange cyborg thought about the disaster. The cyborg surprise would be all-important now. Without those stealth capsules…

-10-

Toll Seven sat alone in his command pod with Web-Mind all around him.

Web-Mind was the greatest technological marvel in the Solar System. It was a mass bio-computer merged with metric tons of neural processors. Hundreds of bio-forms had died to supply Web-Mind with the needed brain mass. Each kilo of brain tissue had been personality scrubbed and carefully rearranged on wafer-thin sheets and surrounded by computing gel. Other machinery kept the temperature at a perfect 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Tubes fed the tissues the needed nutrients. Sensors monitored bio-health. Sub-computers did a hundred other necessary chores to keep Web-Mind functioning perfectly. The bio-brain-mass could outthink any known entity and track many thousands of enslaved bio-forms. The Web-Mind on the Neptune Habitat was supreme, but the one in Toll Seven’s command pod had been given override authority here. That meant it could adjust the master plan to suit emergency needs. It had more than enough brain mass to engineer victory at Mars System. Its future function would be to act as syndic for all Inner Planets.

Toll Seven wore a wireless headband, linking him to Web-Mind. Well before the Doom Stars had reached the one-million kilometer range, he had slipped the command pod to a safer location near the atmosphere of Mars. He had initiated shutdown procedures and implemented stealth-sheathing to the outer hull. Then he had cooled the pod’s hull so his vessel imitated space debris. The safety of Web-Mind superseded all other considerations. In the coming days of heavy battle, there would be no real safe place in the Mars System. Web-Mind had considered slipping out of the system and awaiting the battle’s outcome. But it had decided that camouflaging as space debris was safer than engaging engines for an extended burn to reach a suitable distance.

Toll Seven scanned his pre-battle arrangements. The Neptune-made cyborgs were scattered throughout the Mars System. Most waited in single stealth-capsules like the newly converted half-cyborg, Lisa Aster. Others guarded Olympus Mons, ready to take over the proton beam and the point-defense systems there. Perhaps as importantly, critical Webbies were stationed throughout the Battlefleet, ready to assume command positions. They would gain those positions through surprise assassinations.

Toll Seven’s head rotated like a robot’s head. His silver eyes swiveled in their black plastic sockets as he read the message on the monitor before him. The green letters scrolled past at impossible speeds. Toll Seven’s fingers blurred as he typed the reply. Web-Mind concurred.

General Fromm had asked a last question via Web-link. Toll Seven answered. Web-Mind then informed him that General Fromm had unplugged from the link and was returning to his place on the Vladimir Lenin’s bridge.

Several days would pass now as the Doom Stars approached. Likely, the genetic super-soldiers would continue to fire their heavy lasers at targets of opportunity.

A strange reaction surged through Web-Mind. It caused Toll Seven to stiffen because he was linked via the wireless headband. He felt Web-Mind’s emotions and sensed that soothing chemicals poured along the wafer-thin bio-sheets. The great bio-brain entity knew a moment of uncertainty. Was it possible that its secret plan would fail in the face of the Highborn? Web-Mind wished for continued existence. Its location above Mars as camouflaged debris—

Then the soothing chemicals softened the unease and Web-Mind began to reconfigure its strategies and coming tactics. No single entity could outthink it. The Master Plan would surge ahead and the Mars System would fall to Web-Mind. It was inevitable. If only this waiting period could be sped up.

“The wait will unhinge the Highborn more than it can possibly disturb Web-Mind,” Toll Seven interjected.

Both Web-Mind and Toll Seven understood the truth of that. Still, the wait was the wait for unperceived possibilities to interfere with the smooth application of the Master Plan. Only time and events could truly solve that dilemma.

-11-

The Doom Stars bored toward Mars as the heavy lasers swept Deimos with brutal destruction. Belatedly, the commander there began pumping chaff and prismatic-crystals before the moon. Then all the moon’s missiles were launched at the Doom Stars.

With contemptuous ease, the Doom Stars targeted and destroyed them. The heavy lasers swept through the thin PC-Fields and continued their systemic obliteration of anything that appeared dangerous on Deimos.

Deimos was the smaller moon, with the greater orbit. Phobos was larger, although not by much. It was closer to Mars and orbited the planet three times a Martian day or every 7.3 hours. At Commodore Blackstone’s orders, supply ships added their prismatic-crystals to what Phobos poured into a field before itself. The PC-Field was of small width but great thickness and absorbed the heavy lasers for several hours a day. Then it orbited back around Mars and was safe for another cycle from the terrible lasers.

To the Highborn, Mars began to take on greater size. When the Doom Stars were approximately 250,000 kilometers from the Red Planet, Grand Admiral Cassius opened a channel with admirals of the Hannibal Barca and the Napoleon Bonaparte.

“In twenty-four hours at the earliest,” Cassius said, “our ships will be in range of the battleships. We must assume they will form a fighting circle and attempt to attack en masse against one Doom Star.”

“Which side of Mars do you think they will choose to appear around?” asked Admiral Brutus of the Hannibal Barca.”

“I am a fighting man, not a magician,” Grand Admiral Cassius said. “But it would be logical to assume they will try to shield themselves behind Phobos as it orbits into view.”

“I would think the other side,” Admiral Brutus said. “They will expect us to believe they will use Phobos as a shield and then do the opposite for a surprise effect.”

“That hardly amounts to a tactical surprise,” Grand Admiral Cassius said.

“I expect their surprise to be similar to the 10 May Attack and to their recent breakout from Earth,” Admiral Brutus said.

“A mass assault?” asked Cassius. “Yes. I agree. They will use full laser batteries and launch masses of missiles at short range. They will hope to crash through with tonnage instead of with guile. Yet they will have a true surprise for us.”

“You still insist upon that, Grand Admiral?”

“Logic dictates it.”

“As you say—”

“The premen are rash and prone to wild panics,” Cassius said. “But their highest officers have a modicum of ability. They will not have used their last fleet to lure us unless they believed they could win. That mandates a surprise.”

“The moons—” Brutus tried to say.

“Surely constituted part of their surprise,” Cassius said. “Their fierce defense of Phobos shows that, as does their former military formation. Remember, gentlemen, both moons show a continual face toward Mars. We have not damaged the Mars-facing side of Deimos.”

“I thought the asteroid-busters—”

“Admiral Gaius, Admiral Brutus,” Cassius said, “I am implementing Attack Plan 27. I gather that each of you gentlemen is familiar with the outlines of it…”

Grand Admiral Cassius continued to speak as the majestic Doom Stars moved toward Mars. Then the admirals began to debate the finer points of Attack Plan 27. The great victory over the final premen space-fleet of Inner Planets was about to enter the annihilation phase.

-12-

A naked Commissar Kursk knelt behind an equally naked Commodore Blackstone. He sat up. She rubbed his shoulders and occasionally ran her fingers across the back of his bald head.

“We can’t win,” Blackstone whispered.

“Hush,” Kursk whispered, leaning against him as she draped her arms around him.

“They swatted us like flies. Three battleships and two missile-ships—they were destroyed like that.” Blackstone snapped his fingers. “Twenty other vessels are dead.”

“They had greater range,” Kursk whispered in his ear. “Now they are closing in. Now our weapons can come into play. If you can lure them near the proton beam—”

“These are Highborn,” Blackstone said.

Kursk tightened her grip around him as her breasts flattened against his back. “I forbid you to fear,” she whispered.

He clutched one of her wrists. “Is this technique in your PHC training manual?”

“As a matter of fact…” she said, and she nibbled on his ear.

Blackstone had responded earlier. Now this felt too much like the last request of a dead man. Instead of a meal, he had taken the Commissar. He had wanted to take her for so long. Now… now he felt as if he’d betrayed his ex-wife. The Highborn were superior. The cyborgs, Toll Seven’s plan would fail.

Blackstone tightened his grip on Commissar Kursk’s wrist just the same. In his gut, he knew that death waited. But he was a fighting man, a fighting officer. He had to show a brave front. If nothing else, he had to die well. He could show his crew how to do that. Yes, he would not shout and rave as last time. This time, he was going to kill at least one Doom Star. To kill all the Doom Stars seemed impossible, but at least they could take down one of those damned super-ships.

He turned around, catching Commissar Kursk by surprise. His decision to die well gave him a resumed appetite.

“Where were we,” he murmured as he kissed her.

Amazingly, she giggled. It seemed like an unnatural sound considering the nearness of the Doom Stars. But maybe that was the sound of life. If they could kill one Doom Star, maybe that meant that someday in the future, man would rise again against the nine-foot supermen. Blackstone didn’t know. Instead, he pushed the Commissar onto her back as his hands roved over her thighs, and he tried to enjoy a final moment of love before oblivion claimed him forever.

-13-

Marten Kluge stood alone on the windswept sands of Mars. Behind him over a large dune were the EVA tents, skimmers and plasma cannons.

It was night, with the stars bright in the cloudless sky. Phobos sailed serenely through the blackness, to him, half the size of Luna as seen on Earth. It was hard to believe that outside Mars’ atmosphere waited the SU Battlefleet. Beyond them came the Doom Stars full of arrogant Highborn, which meant arrogant Training Masters, battleoids and super-soldiers with unnatural vitality and the lust to kill.

Something alerted Marten then. He turned and watched an EVA-suited Omi trudge toward him. He knew the Korean’s stride. Omi shouldered a gyroc rifle and had a grenade-launching carbine dangling from his hip.

Marten pointed in the far distance at the giant volcano of Olympus Mons. It dominated the dark landscape. The majestic mountain was uniquely Martian, a thing of towering awe and splendorous beauty. This was a strange, dead world, similar to the ocean on Earth with its life underground.

“Tomorrow,” Omi said over his com-unit.

“You have word on the Doom Stars?”

“Major Diaz did,” Omi said, “from Chavez. Chavez wants to talk to you.”

Marten shrugged. Everything seemed peaceful tonight. Olympus Mons, the red sands, it was beautiful. The wind never stopped blowing. He wondered if he would miss Mars.

Omi and he stood side-by-side in silence, staring up at the stars.

“It’s up there,” Marten said, breaking the calm. Both of them knew he meant the Mayflower.

“Did you try another signal?” Omi asked.

“I’m not pushing my luck more than I need to,” Marten said.

“Since when did you decide that?”

“—We can’t stay on Mars,” Marten said.

“Never said we should,” Omi replied. “I’m just saying that your supply of luck ran out a long time ago. You’re living on borrowed time.”

“That’s the trick.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Omi said.

“I’ve already borrowed more luck than I can ever hope to repay,” Marten said. “Knowing that, I’ve decided to push it and borrow even more. The bank is open as far as I’m concerned.”

“What’s a bank?” Omi asked.

“It’s like a loan shark.”

“Got it,” Omi said. “You’re not worried about an enforcer like me coming along and demanding repayment because you’re too high on DD.”

“What did Chavez want?” Marten asked.

“More diplomatic jargon,” Omi said. “None of it made any sense to me. I think what he really wants is the commandos back in New Tijuana.”

Marten turned toward Omi and stared at his friend’s visor. All he saw was a dark reflection of himself, with his own EVA helmet and suit.

“It’s time we moved closer to Olympus Mons,” Marten said.

“As he listened to Chavez over the radio, Major Diaz looked pretty thoughtful,” Omi said. “He might not agree with you.”

“Yeah,” Marten said. “We’ll see.” And he began trudging through the red sands back to camp.

-14-

“Help us!” a colonel screamed. “Can anybody hear me? They’re pounding us with missiles and beaming everywhere. Commodore Blackstone! Captain Vargas! Please, somebody answer. Somebody—”

A boom sounded over the com-link. There were the noises of things crashing and then came hissing static. It was a terrible and accusing sound.

“Shut it off,” Blackstone whispered.

Belatedly, the Vladimir Lenin’s communications officer snapped forward and broke the link with Deimos. The Mars-facing side of the tiny moon had been under Highborn attack for the past half-hour.

Commodore Blackstone’s hands were greasy with sweat. His dry mouth tasted like bile. As if he went to a funeral, he wore his black uniform with its row of medals. He also wore his officer’s cap at its regulation angle. On the map-module where he rested his hands was the image of the great mass of Mars, the curvature of it. The flock of specks was the SU Battlefleet. For the past three days, the fleet had remained behind Mars in relation to the terrible Doom Stars. Now the Doom Stars had braked again, and they were in near orbit, hunting for the Battlefleet.

The grim silence on the bridge was like a psychic weight.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Commissar Kursk whispered.

Blackstone savagely wiped his eyes. This entire plan had been madness. Now he had let the personnel on Deimos die because otherwise his one chance to hurt the Highborn—

Blackstone’s head snapped up. Listening to those pleas had broken a dam in him. Maybe it had begun long ago when his ex-wife had first filed for divorce. He had bottled up so much pain and so much anguish. That anguish and pain now poured out in a torrent from his heart. He wanted to hurt somebody. He wanted to hurt them badly.

“It’s time to make them pay,” Blackstone said hoarsely.

Stout General Fromm watched him.

Blackstone made a sharp gesture. “The Highborn have come to step on our necks. It’s time to make them understand that we’re men. It’s time to bring them down by destroying the Doom Stars.”

The bridge’s officers had all turned to stare. Commissar Kursk nodded belated agreement.

The communications officer asked, “Do you think we can win, sir?”

“Yes!” Commodore Blackstone said, although he didn’t believe that. His crisp tone, however, caused several officers to straighten. What Blackstone did believe was that he was going to hurt them now. He was done with waiting. With the help of the cyborg stealth-attacks, the Highborn were going to know that they had been in a battle.

The communications officer turned toward her com-board. “What are your orders, sir?”

Commodore Blackstone studied the map-module. Then he began to issue curt commands.

-15-

The SU warships subtlety changed their dispositions. In his command pod and linked to the Battlefleet-net, Toll Seven heard Blackstone’s orders. Soon, Toll Seven began to issue his own commands, to mesh the cyborg plan with the reinvigorated bio-forms.

A thousand kilometers away in her stealth-capsule, LA31 opened her eyes. In other stealth-capsules scattered throughout the Mars System, other cyborgs readied themselves for the desperate battle to come.

A wait of three hours then occurred as the Doom Stars and the SU Battlefleet maneuvered for position. The super-ships were between the orbits of ruined Deimos and Phobos, which would soon appear from around Mars and face an obviously brutal strike from the enemy. Deimos orbited 23,500 kilometers away from the center of Mars. Phobos orbited 9,400 kilometers away. The three Doom Stars had reached a 17,000-kilometer distance from Mars.

To kill an enemy fleet that was determined to use a planet as a shield meant that the hunting ships had to come into close orbit. The reason was simple. The angles and distances were all on the side of the fleet closest to the planet. If the Doom Stars had stayed even 100,000 kilometers out, they would have had to travel a much greater distance to get onto the other side of the planet as compared to the fleet just above the planet’s atmosphere. Supreme Commander Hawthorne had understood that as he’d made his plans many months ago. His strategy had counted on it. Toll Seven and Web-Mind had concurred. For each side, this was the most dangerous phase of the battle. At these ranges, beams almost struck immediately and missiles streaked the distances in a matter of minutes.

The commander of Phobos sprayed a prismatic-crystal field before the moon. Then every laser-port, missile battery and point-defense systems went on high alert. Behind the moon as it moved in its orbit followed the bulk of the decoy fleet. Behind the decoy-vessels flew the SU orbitals, over five hundred fighters. They had little chance against massive lasers and point-defense systems. It was a suicide run and most of the pilots knew it. But here at this hour every piece of equipment would enter the cauldron of battle to try to eke out a few more percentage points for its side. The presence of the orbitals provided one other benefit, a hopeful overloading of the Highborn targeting computers.

The cyborg stealth-capsules waited for that time as they floated in the system like space debris.

As Commodore Blackstone gave the orders, relayed by the Vladimir Lenin’s communications officers, the SU Battlefleet accelerated behind Phobos for its death-ride.

Although Grand Admiral Cassius was a Highborn with a heroic ethos, and although he had personally taken command in the field for the final stroke against Social Unity, he used a medieval Mongol general’s strategy in terms of himself. He remained in the Julius Caesar, which was the last Doom Star in the three-ship fleet. He remained at the safest spot in order that his fleet would continue to have the benefit of his presence.

Admiral Brutus in the Hannibal Barca led them, with Admiral Gaius in the Napoleon Bonaparte behind at an oblique angle, using the formation that the Theban Strategos Epaminondas had used against the Spartans in the Battle of Leuctra July, 371 B.C.

The Grand Admiral sat before the holographic globe as the Doom Stars headed to meet Phobos. Deimos had fired more missiles and lasers than Cassius would have thought possible. Clearly, the premen were readier for him than he would have believed. The premen either had taken Deimos intact or had brought more supplies than he had counted on. Could the Planetary Union have thrown in their lot with Social Unity?

Cassius shook his large head. The Planetary Union bosses hated Social Unity. Premen naturally and foolishly divided at the worst possible moments. It was another mark of their inferiority.

Grand Admiral Cassius allowed himself a smirk. Whatever the case with Deimos, in the end, it hadn’t mattered. He’d heard the final broadcasts. The cowardly premen hadn’t even known how to die well. It was a portent of good fortune.

“The moon has appeared!” a Highborn tracking-officer shouted.

“I can see that well enough,” the Grand Admiral said, allowing just a hint of displeasure to enter his voice. That should calm any undue excitement from his command crew.

“It has a PC-Shield,” the tracking officer said, his voice under control now.

Grand Admiral Cassius pressed a com-button on his chair. It was a direct link to Admiral Brutus and Admiral Gaius. Beside the holographic globe of Mars now appeared two faces. Admiral Brutus had a low forehead for a Highborn, with a large nose and fiercely dark eyes. A stark, red scar like a half-moon had been burned years ago onto his right cheek. Brutus wore his admiral’s hat at a jaunty angle. On it was pinned a Galactic Spiral for extreme courage in battle.

Cassius spoke to the two holographic faces. “As I’m sure you gentlemen are aware, the prismatic-crystal field this time is a trick.”

“A trick, Grand Admiral?” asked Brutus.

Sometimes Cassius wondered how Brutus had ever made it to Third. It clearly wasn’t for cleverness.

“An elementary trick,” Cassius said. “Behind the field await their ships, ready to attack once we burn through.”

“Have you received another burst of information from the Thutmosis III?” Admiral Brutus asked with a concentrated frown.

“If you’ll remember, the Praetor sent us a lightguide-message saying the premen were wise enough to form an aerosol-gel cloud, blocking his view. No, gentlemen, my knowledge comes from analyzing premen tactics and personalities. Their hope now will rest on tonnage. That indicates a mass attack.”

“We’ll slaughter them,” Admiral Brutus predicted.

“Undoubtedly true,” Grand Admiral Cassius said. “But we must be ready for the true surprise. It must come now or it will never help them.”

“What surprise?” Admiral Brutus asked.

“An astute question,” Cassius said dryly. “Make sure you report any unusual activities. Happy hunting, gentlemen, Grand Admiral Cassius out.”

The two faces wavered for a moment and then folded in on themselves and disappeared. It left the Mars holographic image hanging by itself.

The Grand Admiral leaned back in his chair, studying the holographic globe. Then he uttered a low-toned command. “Begin emergency engine sequences,” he said.

Several Highborn glanced down at him from their higher levels.

Cassius smiled grimly. “In the next few hours, we’re going to need all the energy we can lay our hands on. We must wipe the Mars System clean of all enemy vessels. This is the hour when Social Unity dies, when its last hope is killed.”

Highborn officers turned back to their boards as the needed commands were relayed.

Grand Admiral Cassius leaned forward, with his balled fists resting on the arms of his command chair.

-16-

Three mighty Doom Stars bore down on Phobos as the moon swung around Mars. The Doom Stars were composed of an unbelievable tonnage of steel, titanium and asteroid particle shielding.

Phobos was asteroid-shaped and had three axes about 27, 21 and 19 kilometers in length. Although a tiny moon in Solar System terms, it dwarfed the three super-ships. On it bristled a mass of point-defense systems, missile launch sites and laser ports. In front of Phobos floated a prismatic-crystal field.

Highborn heavy lasers remorselessly chewed through the field. The prismatic crystals reflected the laser-light and dissipated its strength. The power of the lasers slagged and destroyed the crystals, slowly digging deeper, deeper and deeper into the field. Then the lasers burned through and hit Phobos, burning moon-dust, melting some of it into glass. That action opened what many would come to call the third phase of the Third Battle for Mars.

As the prismatic-crystal field disappeared under the hellish fury of the Highborn lasers, the SU Battlefleet engaged engines. Just behind Phobos was the decoy fleet, and it charged at the Doom Stars. Behind them followed the orbitals and finally came the heart of the SU Battlefleet, the eight Zhukov-class battlewagons and the seven missile-ships.

“Launch Operation Trojan Hearse,” Grand Admiral Cassius thundered.

In seconds, three huge missiles launched from each of the three Doom Stars. Every weapon aboard the Hannibal Barca, the Napoleon Bonaparte and the Julius Caesar was now dedicated toward destroying whatever tried to hinder the flight of these nine asteroid-busters. The spaceship-sized missiles accelerated hard for Phobos, flashing through a maelstrom of lasers, shells, anti-missiles and the final wisps of the prismatic-crystal field.

Six of the nine giant missiles died before reaching the moon. An orbital fighter rammed one, the pilot thinking it a new Highborn spacecraft. The nuclear explosion sent X-rays and EMP blasts through the vacuum. Most of the SU vessels washed by the X-rays were hardened against that, although twenty orbital fighters perished in a wave of EMP. Then the moon’s point-defense cannons smashed through the seventh missile’s hull and made a clean kill, this time without igniting the gargantuan warhead.

The eighth and ninth mega-missiles, however, slammed into the moon in an interesting manner. Seconds before impact, a heavy plasma cannon in the missile’s nose sent a gout of super-heated plasma ahead of itself. That plasma ate dust and moon-rock, and the missile slammed deeper and bored in an incredible distance. Everyone on Phobos felt the impact like a quake. Then only did the nova-warhead explode. It was like a miniature sun and caused a cataclysmic reaction. Gigantic cracks like the end of the world splintered through the entire moon, tearing buildings apart and destroying merculite-missile launch-sites and point-defense emplacements. Then the second asteroid-buster exploded.

The Gotterdammerung moment came for the Martian moon. The nova-warhead lived up to its name as Phobos blew apart into fourteen large chunks and millions of tiny particles of rock and dust. Several of the larger chunks tumbled toward the Red Planet. In a matter of days, several of those would slam against the planet and create unbelievable misery for hundreds of millions of unsuspecting Martians waiting unsuspectingly below.

From the safety of the cyborg command-pod, Toll Seven and Web-Mind observed this incredible display of military might. This was more than they had anticipated. The genetic super-soldiers had amassed fierce weaponry in the Doom Stars and its newest ordnance created on the Sun-Works Factory.

Yet the moon’s destruction played to their secret plan. It filled space with matter, with dust, rocks and chunks. The SU Battlefleet, under the terse orders of Commodore Blackstone, roared through the debris like army ants yearning for vengeance. Missiles, lasers, sabot-rounds and orbital cannons blazed at the three super-ships in the distance.

Like ancient gods, the Doom Stars hung in the heavens and beamed with abandon, killing the last hope of Social Unity.

At the same time, the countless asteroid-appearing capsules scattered throughout the Mars System split open. Out of them like space-insects appeared vacc-suited humanoids. These vacc-suited cyborgs leaped from their capsules and engaged their hydrogen-thruster packs. They jetted for the Doom Stars. Each individually was an insignificant particle as compared to the orbitals, missiles and laser-beaming battleships. Time would tell if united on the skin of a Doom Star whether they could prove a battle-winning tactic or not.

-17-

On Mars, it was early morning as Marten Kluge and his Martian commandos skimmed fast over the red dunes. The volcanic base of Olympus Mons was before them. In the high altitudes near the peak where ice-crystal clouds drifted, several more orbitals boomed as they broke the sound barrier and screamed toward space to join the fight. Perhaps even more ominous, a heavy whine emanated from the volcano.

“The proton beam is online,” Omi crackled over the headphones.

“That’s the injured dynamos revving with power,” Marten said. He sat in front beside Osadar. The cyborg was the best pilot among them and the best driver, and thus she drove the skimmer.

As if she knew Marten was thinking about her, Osadar swiveled her helmet toward him.

“Over there!” Marten pointed. About five kilometers away, the blast doors were shut. He had studied those doors before, and for days, he’d studied the specs of Olympus Mons that Chavez had emailed him from New Tijuana.

Marten’s stomach churned. The skimmers were frail craft. As everyone had been telling him lately, this was a matter of luck. He shook his head. It was more than luck. This was the hour of decision. Logically, eyes were on the main event in space. When your enemy was distracted, that was the time to strike.

“Check your rifles,” he said over the com-unit. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. Marten turned back to Omi.

Instead of saying anything, Omi patted his shoulder a second time. Then his best friend returned to his portable plasma cannon. It was a dirty job and a risky task, but Marten couldn’t trust anyone else to do it right. Omi and he had survived many battles together. Dear God, let his good friend survive this battle, too.

-18-

In the middle of a deadly space battle where bright beams lased, huge ships passed like mini-planets and missiles zoomed and exploded with dazzling pyrotechnics, the creature formerly know as Lisa Aster rotated her cyborg body. A Doom Star with its pitted particle-shield was her entire world. She applied thrust from her nearly empty hydrogen-pack, braking. At the last moment, she rotated back and readied her legs. The asteroid-like particle-shield rushed at her. Then she crashed against a Doom Star, smashing her head against rock.

She awoke seconds or minutes later. She was never sure afterward. She clung tenaciously like a mechanical spider to the pitted surface. The surface shook and trembled constantly as beams, missiles and cannon-rounds struck it. It was badly chewed up and had craters and deep laser holes, although it was still intact. Dust, rocks and boulder-sized chunks floated before the immensely thick shield.

LA31 cocked her dented helmet with its short antenna. The radio-pulse was low-key and garbled. Radiation, EMP blasts, jamming waves: the vacuum here was thick with invisibly harmful elements. LA31 felt sick and wanted to vomit. Worse, she felt weak. Programming kept her going, and enhancement drugs surged through her system like blood. She began to crawl like an insect across the pitted surface.

If there had been an independent observer between the two fleets, between the flashing lasers and streaking missiles, they might have seen hundreds of shifting motes on the particle-shields of the Hannibal Barca. Like a broken nest of spider bantlings, the mechanical-seeming motes crawled fast and headed for the seams between the giant blocks of particle-shielding. Lasers indifferently burned many of them into blackened crisps. Missiles blew off even more along with asteroid-chunks and dust from the abused particle-shield. Yet for every three killed, one made it between the seams and crawled quickly for the hull below.

It was a cyborg infestation. LA31 was one of the lucky ones. She no longer felt lucky, as she had already vomited a black bile. She felt sicker than ever. Drugs, Web-Mind-programming and cyborg enhancements barely kept her functioning. She wanted to curl up and die. Instead, with fifty-three other cyborgs, she used magnetic clamps and clanged along the hull and to a main heavy laser-port.

There, with breach bombs, the cyborgs gained entrance to the Doom Star. Like cockroaches, they scurried into the hull, behind the walls and corridors that made up the vast spacecraft. They had the super-ship’s specs imprinted in their memories. They had one goal, one destination—the giant fusion engines in the center of the unbeatable vessel.

“Sir…” a Highborn officer said aboard the Hannibal Barca.

“What?” Admiral Brutus shouted. On the holographic display before him, his number three particle-shield had almost crumbled into nothing. A suicidal SU missile-ship was too close, launching an unbelievable number of missiles from its tubes. Admiral Brutus had killed SU ship after SU ship, yet still these rabid premen attacked. He would kill every mother-birthing one of them.

“Sir!” another officer shouted. “We’ve been boarded.”

“What?” Admiral Brutus roared, his features turning crimson with rage.

“Take a look, sir,” the Highborn tech said.

Before Admiral Brutus appeared a holographic image of strange bionic soldiers scurrying through emergency hatches and repair corridors. Their vacc-suit emblems were nothing issued by the Highborn.

Admiral Brutus snarled orders to his security teams. They would take care of these intruders. Then he concentrated on the SU missile-ship that still dared to rush a Doom Star.

Blue-tattooed Neutraloid Heydrich Hansen paced endlessly in his confinement chamber. He gnashed his teeth in hatred and felt every tremor that washed through the Doom Star. He wanted out of confinement. He wanted to kill. He wanted to rend. He wanted to destroy and feel hot blood gushing over his hands.

Then a terrific blow shook the vessel and threw Hansen to the metal floor. Lights flickered and then went out so darkness filled his world.

With a roar of almost feline excitement, Hansen leaped to his feet and tore at the door. In the blackness, he opened it and snarled with joy. At the same moment, emergency lighting came on and the electronic locks snapped back into place. It didn’t matter for Neutraloid Heydrich Hansen. He was out of confinement. He was free. Now he needed weapons and he needed reinforcements. That meant freeing more neutraloids. He cackled with berserk laughter and floated toward the next door.

“Begin ship-shielding maneuver,” Grand Admiral Cassius ordered. He sank into his chair as the Julius Caesar’s engines engaged hard.

With grim concentration, Cassius studied the battlefield on his holographic display. Radiation, EMP blasts, X-rays, enemy jamming and debris meant his holographic image was fuzzy in places. He lacked full intelligence. But that had always been the nature of the battlefield. Making the right decision with only partial information had been a commander’s lot for untold millennia. They had destroyed countless enemy vessels. Finally, Cassius had come to realize that many of those kills had been shells, decoys. The heart of the enemy fleet remained: the Zhukov-class battleships. Even a Doom Star needed time to take out the most modern of them.

Those SU battleships concentrated on the Hannibal Barca. Admiral Brutus’s Doom Star had taken damage. Now it was time to relieve the Hannibal Barca, to shield it with the relatively intact Julius Caesar.

“A few more minutes, old friend,” Grand Admiral Cassius muttered. “More speed!” he ordered, keeping any worry out of his voice. In another twenty seconds, Cassius was pushed even deeper into his chair as the warship sped for war and glory.

“You’re fighting hard, premen,” Cassius muttered. “But it’s not going to be enough to give you victory over me.”

Aboard the Vladimir Lenin, Blackstone wanted to shout himself hoarse. The fight had come down to two giants grappling for a death-hold, to break the other giant’s back.

His orbital fighters were nearly all destroyed. They had never had a chance against the Doom Stars. It had been a grim order to give and still sickened him. The bulk of the decoy fleet was space wreckage. Now he faced off against the battered Hannibal Barca. He had maneuvered the battlewagons so the first Doom Star shielded his battleships from the other Doom Stars. It might have been a clever tactic, but Blackstone felt too sick at Social Unity’s losses to feel elated.

“We’re beaming into the Doom Star’s hull!” the targeting officer shouted.

“It’s so huge,” Commissar Kursk said. “A super-ship like that will take time to die.”

“It’s rotating!” the targeting officer shouted. “Damn! They’re swinging the entire ship to bring an untouched shield into our line of fire.”

Blackstone wondered if he dared to order a charge. It would likely mean the final destruction of the last battleships of his fleet. If he bored in now and kept chewing the particle-shields, he might actually kill a Doom Star. But the cost, the entire SU Battlefleet, that seemed too high a price.

As he hesitated, General Fromm’s eyes narrowed. “We must accelerate,” Fromm said in his strangely calm voice.

“…no,” Blackstone whispered. “We can kill the Hannibal Barca from here.”

The stout Earth General cocked his head strangely. Then a small dark object appeared in his hands. It was a needler. General Fromm aimed it at Blackstone.

“You will order full acceleration toward the Doom Star,” Fromm said.

“He has a needler!” someone shouted.

Fromm drew a solar grenade from his garments. “One flick of my thumb,” he said, “and I can destroy the command center of the Battlefleet. If you want to live, you must do as I order.”

“Why are you doing this?” Blackstone asked.

“Do not attempt any subterfuge tactics,” Fromm said. “You will obey me or—”

There was a strange sound and then General Fromm crumpled, sliding in an almost boneless fashion from the map-module and onto the floor. Commissar Kursk rushed around the module. She had a stun gun in her hand. She had shot Fromm at full power. The tall Commissar knelt beside the Earth General as Blackstone stumbled to that side of the module. He watched in shock as Kursk picked up Fromm’s needler. She pressed the tip of the needler against Fromm’s head, shooting twenty needles into his cranium, making it a bloody mass of mush and bone. She dropped the needler and snatched the solar grenade, carefully examining it.

Her face pale, Kursk looked up and met Blackstone’s eyes.

“You killed General Fromm,” was all Blackstone could say.

“I’m taking this elsewhere,” Kursk said, hefting the still live solar grenade.

Blackstone was too stunned to respond.

“Commodore!” Kursk snapped in her best PHC voice. “You have a battle to run. See to it and let me worry about security.”

A moment later, Blackstone nodded and turned back to the map-module.

-19-

The Hannibal Barca was vast beyond any other class of spacecraft. It contained thousands of decks, chambers, corridors, storage bays, launching tubes, laser coils, reactor space, sleeping quarters, exercise areas, weapons lockers, toilet cubicles, hatches and repair space-ways in a complex maze. The cyborgs propelled themselves through the maze like a metallic infestation. Their memories were flawless. Their execution of attack proved fast, lethal and bewildering.

Out of Hatch ATR-19 shot cyborg after cyborg. During the weightless periods, they magnetized their palms and pressed them against the metal walls to propel themselves like swimmers. When ship acceleration produced pseudo-gravity, the cyborgs magnetized their boots and ran in a clank, clank, clank charge.

The first Highborn to witness them was Third Rank Marco in a damage-control suit. He swiveled toward a strange sound, gawked at the cyborgs for a full second. Then he snatched up his laser-welder, roared a battle cry and died in a fusillade of red laser-light. Each cyborg in turn, including LA31, leaped over his smoldering corpse as they invaded deeper into the Hannibal Barca, seeking the massive fusion cores.

A minute later, interior ship-cameras recorded the slaughter of a Highborn reaction-team.

On the command deck, Admiral Brutus roared, “What are those?”

The admiral received his answer two-and-a-half minutes later. In gymnasium F-7, three Highborn in battleoid-armor opened up with .55-caliber rotating hand-cannons. A cyborg staggered backward before dodging behind a bulkhead. Depleted uranium slugs had slammed against its armored torso, but failed to kill it. Return laser-fire reflected off the shiny battleoid skin.

“The things aren’t human. They’re some kind of battle machine!” the Highborn officer shouted into his mike. “I don’t think they feel pain, and they’re faster than greased death.”

As if to prove the officer’s point, three cyborgs sheathed their laser-carbines and charged with vibroknives. A single cyborg blew backward from more hand-cannon fire. The three Highborn had targeted its head. The .55-caliber Gatling guns were an integral part of a Highborn’s battleoid-arm. The two surviving cyborgs were wasp-fast. Graphite-enhanced muscles drove the vibroknives as the blades whined at high-performance. And in a shocking display of knife-fighting techniques, the cyborgs opened the three battleoid-suits and butchered the giants inside.

Now that they were meeting real resistance, the cyborgs broke into triad teams. They ceased the single concentrated thrust and attacked in a wave-assault. The next ten minutes saw savage fighting as cyborgs clashed with more battleoid-armored Highborn. To the astonishment of Admiral Brutus, it took three Highborn dead to produce a cyborg kill.

“Are they better than us?” Brutus shouted, as he pounded the arm of his command chair.

Three Highborn dead verses one cyborg killed, the honor went to the cyborgs but the victory pushed toward the Highborn. As remorseless as the cyborgs were, the Highborn kept setting up ambushes, taking the losses and killing the alien things.

LA31’s triad reached deeper into the Doom Star than any other cyborg team. Because of that, she neared the mighty fusion cores. Those cores produced a constant sound and caused the ship’s walls and corridors to vibrate with power.

Five Highborn waited for her in a narrow corridor, one painted with yellow and black stripes, with red warning signs. They had set up a plasma cannon. One Highborn watched a monitor-board, which showed the cyborgs advancing toward them. Two Highborn knelt beside and readied the plasma cannon. Another battleoid soldier stood behind it, eager to fire the dangerous weapon. The last Highborn stood back with his rotating hand-cannon ready, playing lookout.

“Eight seconds,” the monitor-board watching Highborn said.

“I’m ready,” the plasma gunner said.

LA31 led the other two cyborgs against the waiting Highborn. They floated fast as they pushed off the walls and attacked around the corridor.

A Highborn in battleoid-armor shouted. Another pointed. Then superheated plasma roiled toward LA31. She pushed off against a deckplate, moving even faster. The plasma caught the cyborg behind her, killing it in a wash of superheated mass. Bits of plasma scorched the back of LA31’s legs, eating into her. It caused a microsecond of intense pain. Then her internal computer shut it off.

Two Highborn swiveled the big gun. Another aimed his hand-cannon. It rotated wildly as flames spewed. The shells spanged off LA31’s shoulder-guards and the impacts slowed her. Then her left arm refused to respond to her will.

Before the .55 caliber shells could halt or kill her, however, LA31 and the other cyborg were among the Highborn. The battle was lethally quick. The second last Highborn with battleoid-armored strength, twisted the head off the other cyborg. Then LA31 used her vibroblade to deadly effect, slaughtering the last two giants.

LA31 might have smiled, but she felt sick and her emotions had died some time ago. Remorselessly, she continued her lonely charge toward the fusion cores.

A lone Highborn waited in LA31’s path. He was the last of the battleoid-armored super-soldiers to stand between her and the fusion cores. He watched a monitor and knew she was injured. He could kill this thing. He promised Admiral Brutus that over his com-link.

But the last battleoid-armored Highborn was unaware that another factor was about to enter the situation.

Neutraloid Heydrich Hansen lurked nearby. With Hansen were seven other neutraloids. They had floated past many dropped guns and knives, taking several. The floating globules of blood and the Highborn corpses had unhinged them. The teeth-gnashing, blue-tattooed berserks wanted to kill the Masters. They wanted the joy of feeling the Masters gasping their last breath as the giants shuddered in death-agony.

Hansen raised a hand for silence. He heard the lone Highborn ahead of them in the corridor. “We must kill him,” he said in his strangely high-pitched voice.

The others whined with eagerness.

Hansen smiled savagely as he remembered the training table. Then he hissed with rage and floated around the corridor and behind the last Highborn defending the fusion cores from LA31.

The Highborn must have heard something. He turned, with his servos whining. Then he brought up his arm as the hand-cannon boomed.

Neutraloids screamed. Neutraloids lost fist-sized pieces of flesh as the .55 caliber bullets shredded them. Yet they kept coming, and three of them gripped vibroknives, finally have learned to hang onto them.

The neutraloids grappled with the armored Highborn. He squeezed the head of one, killing it. Then vibroknives entered his armor, and one smashed into his guts. He staggered, and he crashed onto the deckplates.

The remaining neutraloids howled with glee. Then the three grinned down at the fallen Highborn.

“Fools,” the Highborn said.

One of the neutraloid slapped his chest. “I am Heydrich Hanson.” He couldn’t say more. Instead, Hanson screamed in high-pitched rage. So did the others.

They tore the last Highborn before the fusion cores out of his armor. They tore him out and began to beat him to death.

-20-

“It’s too late, Commodore,” the targeting officer said. “If the Doom Star hadn’t rotated to a relatively undamaged particle-shield, we would have killed it. Unless the cyborgs are going to do something…”

Blackstone stared down at the map-module. On the holographic display, two huge Doom Stars appeared like vast planets. They moved into position above and below the most damaged Doom Star. Blackstone gripped the map-module’s steel-gleaming sides and willed the first Doom Star to die. What had happened to the cyborgs and their stealth attacks? He had five battleships left and one missile-ship. He couldn’t lose an entire SU Battlefleet and not even kill a single Doom Star. Were the Highborn that much better than regular humans and cyborgs?

Blackstone’s gut churned with the knowledge of defeat. He had been given the solemn task of halting the Highborn, and he had failed miserably and totally. The Solar System belonged to the Highborn. The genetic super-soldiers would rule. The question now was how to die. Should he charge with the remnants of his fleet? Or should he take these last vessels and run to try to fight another day?

“Sir,” the communications officer whispered. “I’ve decrypted a strange message.”

“What is it?” Blackstone asked listlessly.

“The Highborn are broadcasting it openly, sir,” the communications officer said. “I think you should see this.”

“Put it on the map-module,” Blackstone said.

The images of the space battle wavered and Blackstone frowned. It looked like a cyborg in a fusion reactor area. The cyborg used a laser, beaming into delicate equipment.

“Who is broadcasting this again?” Blackstone asked.

“The Highborn, sir.”

Blackstone continued to blink at the startling image.

“Kill it!” Admiral Brutus roared. “Destroy it! The machine is in a fusion core!”

Ten Highborn reaction-teams in battleoid armor clanked through the corridors, each knowing life and death for an entire Doom Star depended on reaching that thing soon enough.

Even cyborgs couldn’t take lethal doses of radiation for long. LA31 could hardly see anymore. Her pain sensors—

It stopped mattering then as the fusion core overloaded. In another three seconds, the former Lisa Aster ceased to exist.

From his command bridge, Grand Admiral Cassius watched in horror as the Hannibal Barca went nova.

The vast bulk of the super-ship absorbed some of the radiation, X-rays and EMP blasts. Then the incredible mass and tonnage exploded outward like a vast grenade. Its bulkheads, cargos, particle-shields, coils, walls and hull became projectiles.

The Napoleon Bonaparte and the Julius Caesar took the brunt of those projectiles. The heavy SU battlewagons received a lesser wave. The majority of the former Hannibal Barca sped out into space and toward Mars in the near distance as a million particles of debris.

The Vladimir Lenin shuddered as its particle-shields took the heavy impacts of the exploded Doom Star. Blackstone was pitched off his feet and he hit his shoulder hard against the map-module. He lay stunned for seconds and in throbbing pain. Then someone was helping him up.

Blackstone stared at the image of the map-module. There were two Doom Stars where seconds earlier there had been three. The SU Battlefleet had destroyed a Doom Star. The other two must have taken heavy damage from the blast.

“Awaiting orders, Commodore,” the targeting officer said.

Blackstone blinked at the map-module. What was the correct decision now? One third of the Highborn fleet was dead. The other two Doom Stars were hurt, perhaps critically. The question was: Could he finish them off?

He listened several seconds to battle reports. The SU Battlefleet was almost gone. He had four battleships left and no missile-ships. The last one hadn’t survived the Doom Star’s destruction. Four battleships could not defeat two Doom Stars, not even badly wounded ones.

“It’s time to run,” Blackstone said.

“Run where, sir?” the targeting officer asked. “We can’t outrun a Doom Star’s long-range lasers.”

Then it hit Blackstone, and he realized this could be his most brilliant move of the battle. “We run for Mars. We head for the outer edge of the atmosphere.”

“Sir?” the targeting officer asked.

“We run toward the proton beam,” Blackstone said.

-21-

Only a handful of the Martian commandos had survived the last firefight. Without Osadar’s swift reactions, the lone cyborg on guard would have slain all of them.

Marten, Omi, Osadar, Major Diaz, Rojas and two other Martian commandos rode a magnetic lift. Everyone else who had broken through the blast doors and seen the cyborg converter was either dead or captured.

Marten was grim-faced and thoughtful. Omi cradled a burned hand, his face white and strained with the pain. Osadar seemed impassive. Major Diaz stared wordlessly at a spot in the elevator.

Diaz finally turned his head. “Did you see those things on the conveyer?”

Marten had been the one to shoot those things. None of those things had possessed skin, only exposed musculature.

“People turned into cyborgs,” Omi whispered.

“Is that what awaits Mars?” Diaz asked in a choked voice.

“Yes,” Osadar said.

Diaz shivered and squeezed his eyes closed as sweat oozed onto his forehead.

Marten checked the lift monitor. “We’re almost there. Let’s get ready.” He flicked off the safety of his gyroc rifle as his thighs tensed for running.

The whine of the lift slowed, stopped and the doors swished open. And each of them opened fire even before they saw the two cyborgs waiting for them. One cyborg went down, his brainpan smashed through. The other lifted its carbine and cut down two commandos before Osadar leaped out and shoved a vibroblade into it.

“Don’t stand around and gawk!” Marten shouted. “Follow me!”

He dragged Diaz with him. Then they ran for the hanger as the sounds in the volcano became unbearably loud.

“The dynamos are pumping the proton beam with power!” Major Diaz screamed into Marten’s ear.

Marten skidded to a halt and dropped to his knees. Then he fired his gyroc rifle in quick succession and took out a PHC security team that stood before a door.

“What if there aren’t any orbitals left?” Diaz shouted.

“Then we’re screwed!” Marten roared.

Osadar swiveled her head to stare at him.

“Come on!” Marten screamed over the rising whine of the dynamos. “Let’s find out the worst.”

Aboard the Julius Caesar, Grand Admiral Cassius was white-faced with fury. But he did not shout any orders or rave at fate. Instead, he chased the SU battleships around the curvature of Mars, seeking to bring his heavy lasers on them.

The premen had destroyed a Doom Star. The animals had managed to kill one-fifth of Highborn space power. That the SU Battlefleet had almost ceased to exist was something, but to Cassius it wasn’t enough. He must annihilate all of it. Four battleships and a few other sundry vessels could still be enough to form the nucleus of another fleet. Other SU warships hadn’t made it to Mars. If those warships joined the four battleships—

“That won’t happen,” Cassius whispered, “because soon these last battleships will be just more space debris.”

In their haste to kill the battleships, the Doom Stars edged nearer Mars. They edged to within range of the deadly proton beam on Olympus Mons. As the Doom Stars accelerated around the curvature of Mars, the huge volcano became visible on the planet below.

The white proton beam stabbed into space. It stabbed at the Napoleon Bonaparte. And as the beam had sliced through the particle shield of the Ho Chi Minh several weeks ago, it now sliced through the particle shield of the battle-worn Doom Star.

Highborn reactions were much faster than Homo sapien reactions. As the Napoleon Bonaparte began to take terrible damage from the proton beam, Grand Admiral Cassius ordered the launching of a Hellburner.

While the Hellburner launched and fell toward the cone of the Solar System’s largest mountain, the Napoleon Bonaparte took critical hits. Admiral Gaius did everything he could think of, but the proton beam proved superior to his actions.

The Hellburner shrugged off the point-defense cannons of Olympus Mons. And it maneuvered too sharply for the proton beam to target it. As the giant bomb neared, a lone orbital roared out of a hanger bay in the highest third of the mountain. The orbital engaged afterburners almost immediately as it shot toward the heavens. The Hellburner slammed into Olympus Mons and ignited. It made sunlight because it was sunlight. A Bethe solar-phoenix reaction began. It would burn for hours and harm those within a five-hundred-kilometer radius. It killed the proton beam. It killed the cyborgs in and on Olympus Mons and it destroyed the cyborg converter deep in the mountain, although it failed to kill Toll Seven and Web-Mind.

The Hellburner pushed up a massive mushroom cloud that climbed into the Martian atmosphere. It had destroyed many, but also saved what was left of the Napoleon Bonaparte.

The Third Battle for Mars was nearly over.

-22-

Three humanoids in vacc-suits drifted between the abandoned orbital fighter and the Mayflower. The former Highborn shuttle orbited Mars. Tall Osadar Di was in the lead, with a towline attached between her and Marten. Another line connected Marten to Omi.

Soon, Osadar reached the shuttle and she engaged her magnetic clamps. She stuck to the side of the shuttle and pulled in Marten. He soon magnetized himself beside her and drew in Omi. Afterward, Marten unclipped a handscanner and typed in the needed codes. They waited as the Mayflower’s computer decided if the codes matched. Then the outer lock that Training Master Lycon had shot out of many months ago, opened for them. Marten, Omi and Osadar floated in. Major Diaz and Squad Leader Rojas had died in the hanger. Their bodies were gone in the continuing solar-phoenix reaction on Mars.

Far to the west of them down on Mars, Olympus Mons glowed brightly.

Hissing occurred as the airlock filled with a breathable atmosphere. Soon, the inner hatch slid open. Leaving his helmet on, Marten floated for the pilot’s chair. Osadar and Omi floated after him. It was time to leave Mars, to slip away if they could.

Grand Admiral Cassius came to a painful conclusion. He needed to get the Napoleon Bonaparte to the Sun-Works Factory as fast as possible. It would take at least a full year, maybe more, to repair the mighty super-ship.

The number of sick and dying Highborn aboard the radiated Doom Star was horrifying. Combined with the dead of the Hannibal Barca… the Third Battle for Mars had been a disaster.

Yes, he had destroyed the bulk of the SU Battlefleet. Intelligence reports indicated that twelve battleships had arrived at Mars. The battleships were the heart of the SU Fleet. One third of those vessels remained. He wasn’t sure how heavy their damage was. The fact Social Unity still had one third of their most crucial warships left was galling.

The new factor made his decision obvious. That factor was the cyborgs. They were a new element in the war for Solar System Supremacy. The tactic of swarming a Doom Star with stealth cyborgs—

Grand Admiral Cassius slowly eased out of near-Mars orbit. The Napoleon Bonaparte was a crippled warship. Even worse were the Highborn dead. Cassius refused to accept he had lost the battle. He had done better than a draw. Yes, the premen had killed one third of his fleet. But he had destroyed close to ninety percent of their force. The galling truth, however, was that he was retreating.

Could Social Unity hang onto Mars with what it had? What about the cyborgs? Where had they come from?

Grand Admiral Cassius felt something strange then. In a lesser being, it would have been fear. He refused to accept that this feeling was fear. Maybe it was trepidation about the future.

“This is a setback,” he whispered. He would not lie to himself. The premen had hurt the Highborn. Yet the essence of the Highborn was to fight through to victory.

What about the cyborgs? The machine men troubled him. They were an unknown factor. He consoled himself with one thought. Working hard to keep their presence hidden, the cyborgs had played their bid to destroy three Doom Stars. Instead, one Doom Star was dead and another badly hurt. Yet now the Highborn realized they had another enemy to contend with. Next time he would be ready for the cyborgs.

The war with them had just begun.

Commodore Blackstone and his four battleships hid behind Mars as probes watched the two Doom Stars leave near-Mars orbit.

“Did we win?” Commissar Kursk asked.

Blackstone stared stonily at his vidscreen. They were in his wardroom. On another computer-box in his screen, he was reading the report of what the medical officers had found implanted in General Fromm’s neck.

“The cyborgs did this to Fromm,” Blackstone said.

“What did you say?” Kursk asked.

“Here,” Blackstone said, shifting aside. “You’d better read this.”

In the hidden command-pod from the Neptune System, in its close-Mars orbit, Toll Seven and Web-Mind debated their next move. Almost all the Neptune cyborgs were gone. Everything on Olympus Mons was lost. General Fromm had failed to report in. What had happened aboard the Vladimir Lenin? Their allied bio-forms had been strangely silent. The bio-forms should have tried to communicate with him by now.

It was then Web-Mind alerted Toll Seven.

Toll Seven turned on a screen. There was a bright image on it that showed an engine was burning. Before Toll Seven could ask, Web-Mind had computed the shuttle’s flight-path. It seemed to be headed for Jupiter. Cyborg Osadar Di had been from the Jupiter System. Web-Mind therefore gave it a thirty-three percent probability that Osadar Di was aboard that shuttle. They could not allow her to escape. She knew too much.

Toll Seven acknowledged Web-Mind’s probabilities and he recognized the danger. He opened a com-link and hailed the Vladimir Lenin. Then he sent them the shuttle’s coordinates and asked that they destroy the vessel.

Seconds later, at Blackstone’s urgent command, lasers burned into space. They used Toll Seven’s radio-message, triangulating from the four battleships. Those lasers pierced the camouflaged hull of Toll Seven’s command-pod, killing the Neptune cyborg and Web-Mind.

“What will you tell Supreme Commander Hawthorne?” Kursk asked on the Vladimir Lenin’s bridge.

Blackstone gave her a wintry grin, and said, “Mission completed.”

Aboard the Mayflower, Marten and Osadar noticed the lasers. Omi was in the medical unit, receiving treatment for his burned hand.

“I wonder who they’re firing at?” asked Marten.

Osadar remained silent. Perhaps she was waiting for fate to screw her further.

“Get ready,” Marten said. “We’re going to increase thrust and pretend we’re a missile.” After alerting Omi, Marten applied greater power. And the former Highborn shuttle left Mars orbit.

Marten Kluge grinned at Osadar. “We did it,” he said. “We finally escaped Inner Planets.”

“For how long?” she asked.

“For now,” he said.

“And tomorrow?”

Marten shrugged. “Tomorrow will take care of itself. Today, we’ve done the impossible and won.” He felt the diplomatic credentials in his hidden pocket. He thought about the Martian commandos who had died to make his dream possible. He owed them a blood-debt. He would try to repay. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew that he was going to help the Planetary Union gain its freedom and keep it.