Bio-Weapon

1.

“We’re hunting dogs, Omi, nothing more.”

The Korean ex-gang member shook his bullet-shaped head, clearly not liking that kind of talk.

Marten Kluge rolled back his sleeve to show the meaty part of his forearm and a bluish-purple barcode tattoo.

“Branded like cattle,” Marten said.

“In case you die,” Omi said. “So they know your blood-type when they resurrect you.”

“You believe that?” Marten was a lean, ropy-muscled man with bristly blond hair. He wore a brown jumpsuit, the shock-trooper training uniform. It had patch of a skull on his right shoulder and another on his left pectoral pocket.

Omi wore a similar shock-trooper jumpsuit. Both uniforms showed sweat stains and both men had circles under their eyes. Their grueling training surpassed anything they’d ever known, and they’d known plenty of bad.

“They also use the barcode to track you,” Omi said. “We’re little blips in the station computer.”

Marten’s expression didn’t change as they strode down an empty corridor, a utilitarian steel hall with emergency float rails on the sides. This was sleep-time, but Marten had convinced Omi to slip from the barracks so he could show him something.

“Watch,” Marten said. He unlatched a secret wall panel and withdrew a recorder.

Omi frowned before leaning near. The recorder was small, square and compact, voice activated. It was something HB officers used when watching their drills.

“Is it stolen?”

A wild light flashed in Marten’s eyes. Then it was gone, giving him the sleepy obedient look most of them wore around the Highborn. “Admitting a theft gets you five in the pain booth.”

Omi glanced about the deserted corridor.

“It’s clean,” Marten said. “No listening devices.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I searched until I found them.”

Omi lifted a single eyebrow.

“I borrowed a bug and set it in a different corridor, one the HBs use. Then I piped it here.” Marten tapped the recorder.

“Dangerous.”

A hard smile was Marten’s only reply.

“You might as well play it,” Omi said.

Marten set the recorder on the steel floor. Then he sat cross-legged and looked up. Omi raised an eyebrow, a trademark gesture he’d perfected in the slums. Finally, he shrugged and sat on the other side of the recorder.

Marten reached out. Click.

There wasn’t anything at first. Omi leaned closer, so did Marten.

“I thought—”

“Shhh,” Marten said. He glanced at the recorder as the sounds started.

There were footfalls in a corridor, someone wearing boots.

“It’s hard to hear at first,” Marten said, an edge to his voice.

Omi closed his eyes. The sounds of boots striking metal grew louder. He imagined huge Highborn. They always radiated a weird vitality and had eyes like pit bulls about to pounce. Their skin was pearl-white, their lips razor thin, almost nonexistent. Any Highborn could take out a five-man maniple. An HB, he was…Omi didn’t hate their superiority the way Marten did, but he couldn’t say he liked it either.

A hard voice, authoritative, full of vigor, spoke. But the garbled words were still too far from the hidden mike.

“I can’t hear him,” Omi said.

“Shhh,” Marten said, scowling.

Then out of the recorder: “…can’t agree, Praetor.”

“The Praetor?” Omi asked, fear twisting his belly.

“Listen!” Marten said. “It’s him and Training Master Lycon.”

LYCON: Yes, gelding has its virtues. It would make them docile, tractable and more prone to obedience. But what about their fighting spirit?

PRAETOR: Of premen?

LYCON: Not just premen, but trained shock troopers.

PRAETOR: There’s no difference. Their sex drive compels them to wild, unpredictable behavior. In space, we must know exactly how they will react. This thing called fighting spirit… I’ve never really seen premen with it. Let us rely on fierce hate conditioning, combat drugs and hypnotic commands.

LYCON: They are premen and they are inferior to us. But they are still capable of fighting spirit. The shock troops have been trained to a fine pitch. Why ruin it with gelding?

The voices in the recorder had grown stronger. Now they reached apogee and grew fainter again, their footfalls ringing in the background.

PRAETOR: Perhaps as you say, well-trained, some of them even simulate an apparent viciousness.

LYCON: All heel to my command, I assure you.

PRAETOR: Yes, you are to be commended on your work, Training Master. It’s just that…”

Both Marten and Omi leaned over the recorder listening, the tops of their heads almost touching. The words and even the footfalls faded into nothing.

The two shock troopers straightened, Marten taking the recorder and snapping it off.

“Gelding?” asked Omi.

Marten nodded sharply, and said, “Cutting off our balls.”

“They…They can’t be serious.”

Marten snorted. Then he walked to the secret wall panel and sealed the recorder in it.

“The Praetor was talking to Lycon, our Training Master?” Omi asked.

“Yes,” Marten said.

Omi blinked several times. “You’re talking castrated. Would they use a pair of scissors?” Omi shook his head. “The Highborn have done a lot dirty tricks to use, but cutting off our jewels like a neutered dog, that’s too much.”

“What if I said we could leave here?” Marten asked.

“We’re stranded in the Sun Works Factory. We’re orbiting Mercury.”

Marten gestured farther down the corridor.

“Forbidden territory,” Omi said. “Yeah. Show me.”

2.

Both Marten and Omi found themselves aboard the Mercury Sun Works Factory through a complicated set of circumstances.

On 10 May 2350, the Genghis Khan and the Julius Caesar had entered the edge of Earth’s stratosphere. The two Doom Stars had annihilated the vast Social Unity sea and air armadas that had gone into action to help the beleaguered Japanese. Social Unity had sent up half of Earth’s space interceptors and launched swarms of merculite missiles against the Doom Stars. Then they’d fired the newly developed proton beams, a factor more deadly than the old military lasers. It had taken five HB asteroids plunging earthward to take out the five SU beam installations.

Unfortunately, powering the energy-hungry proton beams had taken the full output of five major cities’ deep-core mines. Such mines tapped the thermal power of the planet’s core.

To house Earth’s 40 billion citizens took cities that burrowed kilometers downward. Like bees, humanity survived in vast, underground hives. The asteroids had destroyed Greater Hong Kong, Manila, Beijing, Taipei and Vladivostok, and had thus slain a billion unfortunates.

Even so, Social Unity’s Military Arm came within a hair’s breath of destroying the Genghis Khan. As the Doom Stars were the bedrock of Highborn power, the Genghis Khan needed repairing. In the Solar System, only one place had the capacity to do so, the naval yards where they had been built: the Mercury Sun Works Factory.

The losses of Genghis Khan Personnel had sharply brought home to the Highborn their greatest weakness. They were only a couple million versus billons of Homo sapiens. So Highborn Command had pondered the idea of putting a complement of shock troopers aboard each ship. To the Highborn, the shock troopers were premen—Homo sapiens. The initial shock trooper test-run took place at the Sun Works Factory. The Highborn had combed the FEC divisions used in the Japan Campaign. FEC meant Free Earth Corps, and it was filled with humans the Highborn had convinced to fight for them instead of fighting for Social Unity. Marten and Omi had been in Japan because the Highborn had captured them in Sydney, Australian Sector and each had “volunteered” for military duty. Both had won decorations for bravery, the reason the Highborn had chosen them as shock troopers.

Marten and Omi headed into forbidden territory. Marten knew the way. He’d been here before, and in a certain sense he’d come home. Back in the days when Social Unity ran everything, his parents had been engineers on the Sun Works Factory. Long ago, there had been a labor strike, an attempt at unionization. Political Harmony Corps had brutally suppressed it. His parents and others had then escaped into the vast ring-factory.

Marten opened a hatch and stepped through, Omi followed.

Black and yellow lines painted on the ceiling, wall and floor warned them to stay out. Newly placed red posters with skulls and crossbones made it clear.

“Don’t worry,” Marten said. “I’ve already been here several times.”

They hurried. Sleep-time would soon be over and their maniple would return to training.

“This way,” Marten said. He wheeled a valve, grunted as he swung a heavy hatch and poked his shoulders through. The corridor was smaller here, colder.

“What’s that smell?” asked Omi.

“A leak lets in minute amounts of vacuum. The cold crystallizes the air, and that’s what you smell.”

“Are you sure we’re safe?”

“Here we are,” Marten said.

He led Omi to a small deck, with a bubble-dome where the wall should have been. A hiss came from four meters up the dome’s side.

“Air leaking out,” explained Marten, “but it’s only a pinprick.”

Omi squinted at the bubble-dome’s tiny fracture. “It’s not dangerous, right?”

“Not yet,” Marten said. He pointed outside at Mercury.

The ring-factory rotated around the planet just as Saturn’s rings did around Saturn. The factory’s rotation supplied pseudo-gravity. They presently faced away from the Sun, but the radiation and glare would have killed and blinded them except for the dampening devices and heavy sun-filters.

The dead, pockmarked planet filled over three-quarters of the view. Mercury wasn’t big as planets went. If the Earth were a baseball, Mercury would be a golf ball. It had a magnetic field one percent of Earth’s. A person weighing 100 pounds on Terra would weigh thirty-eight pounds on Mercury. The solar body it most resembled was the Moon. Just like the Lunar Planet, thousands of craters littered Mercury. Dominating the view below was the Caloris Basin, a mare or sea like those on the Moon. Instead of saltwater, however, well-baked dust filled the mares. The Caloris Basin was 1300 kilometers in diameter, on a planet only 4880 kilometers in diameter.

Marten pointed at the Sun Works Factory as it curved away from them—they were inside the fantastic structure. The curving space satellite seemed to go on forever, until it disappeared behind the planet. On the outer side of the factory, unseen from the viewing deck because the outside part faced the Sun, were huge solar panels that soaked up the fierce energy and fed it into waiting furnaces. Catapulted from Mercury came load after load of various ores.

“Look at that,” Omi said.

Far to the left sat the damaged Doom Star Genghis Khan. It was a huge warship kilometers spherical. Blue and red lights winked around it, sometimes dipping into it. They were repair pods. Some were automated robots and some were human-occupied pods.

Omi turned to Marten. “So how is standing here going to help us from getting gelded?”

“Look over there.”

Omi squinted and shook his head.

“There,” Marten said, pointing more emphatically. “See?”

“That pod?”

“Correct.”

A small, one-man pod floated about a hundred meters from the habitat’s inner surface. No lights winked from it. It sat there, seemingly dead, a simple ball with several arms controlled from within. There were welder arms, clamps and work lasers. Anyone sitting inside the pod could punch in a flight code. Particles of hydrogen would spray out the burner.

“What about it?” Omi asked.

“Remember how I told you I grew up here?”

Omi nodded.

“Well,” Marten said, “I bet most of my equipment—my family’s equipment—should still be intact. It was well hidden.”

“So?”

“So my family built an ultra-stealth pod to escape to the Jupiter Confederation.”

“PHC found it, you said, over four and half years ago.”

“I’m pretty sure they found it back then. But that doesn’t matter because I could build another one.”

“Impossible.”

Marten managed a smile. “You’re right. Let’s stay and get gelded.”

Omi paled. “How do you plan on going about this, a…?”

“I need a vacc suit,” Marten said. “So I can go outside and enter the pod.”

“Then?”

“Then it gets hard,” admitted Marten.

“But not impossible, right?”

Marten checked his chronometer. “Time to head back.”

Omi glanced at the hissing spot in the Plexiglas bubble, and then he turned with Marten for the barracks.

3.

On the experimental Social Unity Beamship Bangladesh, Admiral Rica Sioux sank into her acceleration couch. She wore a silver vacc suit, the faceplate dark and the conditioner-unit humming. Around her and suited as well languished the officers of the armored command capsule.

Despite the Bangladesh’s heavy shielding, months in near-Sun orbit had leaked enough radiation so Admiral Sioux had ordered the command crew together with the Security detail into the vacc suits. There had barely been enough suits for higher command and security, a grim oversight from requisitioning. The rest of ship’s company had bitterly complained about the lack of vacc suits for them. After the first cases of radiation sickness, Security had overheard talk of mutiny. Finally, in order to regain a sort of normalcy, the Admiral had ordered drumhead executions of the ringleaders—in this instance, randomly selected personnel.

The experimental spacecraft, the only one of its kind, had already set two hazardous duty records: one for its nearness to the Sun, two for the duration of its stay. Their greatest danger was a wild solar flare. One flare, over 60,000 kilometers long, had already shot out of the Sun’s photosphere and looped over the Bangladesh, only to fall back into the cauldron of nuclear fire. The ship’s heavy magnetic shielding, the same as in Earth’s deep-core mines, kept the x-rays, ultra-violet and visible radiation and high-speed protons and electrons from penetrating the ship and zapping everyone aboard. Not even the vacc suits would have protected them from that. Unfortunately, the rare occurrence of a giant solar flare had signaled the commencement of Admiral Sioux’s troubles. Somehow, the image of their beamship sailing under the flare’s magnetic loop of hot gas had horrified the crew. If a flare should ever hit them—even with the beamship’s magnetic shields at full power— there would be instant annihilation.

They had been in near-Sun orbit since the start of hostilities. Their ship was probably the only one in the Solar System that could have done it. The magnetic shields that protected them this near the nuclear furnace took fantastic amounts of energy to maintain—too much to make the M-shields useful in combat. The gaining of power here was simple but deadly for the personnel aboard. Special solar panels soaked up the incredible wattage poured out of the Sun. Unfortunately, they couldn’t collect when the magnetic shields were up. So they switched off the M-shield and used the heavy particle shields—millions of tons of matter—to keep the worst radiation at bay while the solar collectors collected. Then and none too soon went up the magnetic shields. Most of the radiation leakage, naturally, occurred between these switches.

The reason Admiral Sioux had chosen the near-Sun orbit to hide was basic strategy. Social Unity Military Command well knew the combat capabilities of the enemy Doom Stars. No combination of the Social Unity Fleet could face one, and at the rebellion’s commencement, the Highborn had captured all five. So to save the Fleet, SUMC had ordered an immediate dispersion of ships into the nether regions of space. The scattering kept the Fleet in being, and just as importantly, it forced the enemy to split his Doom Stars, if he wanted to picket each of the four inner planets.

This near the Sun was the perfect hiding spot, at least since the destruction of the robot radar probes that had long ago been set at far-Sun orbit. Neither radar nor optics could spot the Bangladesh if the viewer looked directly at the Sun. The Sun’s harsh radio signals blanketed the beamship, while the Star’s light—seeing the Bangladesh in near-Sun orbit would be like trying to pinpoint a candle’s flame with a forest fire a few millimeters behind it. The trick, of course, would be to look “down” and get a side view, with space as the background and not the nuclear ball of fire. It was the military reason for at least three, robot radar probes at three, equidistant locations around the Sun, and why the Admiral had destroyed the probes.

Admiral Sioux shifted on her couch, trying to relax her left shoulder. The horrible acceleration threatened to cramp her muscles. Nor could she lift her arm and massage her shoulder. Simply breathing, forcing her chest up in order to drag down another breath, was becoming hard.

She took short, small gasps and her thigh cramped. Despite that, she grinned hideously. The acceleration made it so.

They were finally going to hit back. After long months of inactivity, she would be allowed to hurt the enemy.

A week ago, they had picked up General James Hawthorne’s scratchy orders. It had taken computer enhancement to make sense of the Supreme Military Commander’s words. Because of the orders, she now used the Sun as a pivoting post, building up speed.

The Sun’s diameter was roughly 1.4 million kilometers, or 109 times the size of the Earth. The Bangladesh thus orbited or circled a greater distance than the Moon did in its orbit around the Earth. The diameter of the Moon’s orbit was approximately 770,000 kilometers.

The beamship’s huge engines increased power and changed the direction of their thrust, and the experimental Bangladesh broke free from its near-Sun orbit. It sped toward Mercury. In three weeks, the ship would fly past the planet by 30 million kilometers.

A second later, the awful acceleration snapped off. The G-forces shoving Admiral Sioux into the couch quit. She expelled air, and then she clamped her teeth together, forcing herself not to vomit. The sudden weightlessness always did that to her, a weakness she despised in herself.

She unbuckled her harness and sat up. So did the others.

The Bangladesh still hid in the Sun’s glare from anyone looking from Mercury. They coasted now and thus gave away no gravity-wave signatures. Just as importantly, they knew exactly where their target would be during the coming window of opportunity. Everything depended upon surprise, complete, utter and total surprise.

Behind her darkened visor, the Admiral flashed a wicked smile.

The Bangladesh had been built for just such an attack. In this one particular, it broke the “rules” of modern space warfare.

She pushed off the couch and floated to the First Gunner. Together and with ship’s AI, they would work out several attack patterns.

Admiral Sioux chinned on her suit’s outer speakers, and said to the Command Crew, “We must not fail.”

Several dark visors turned toward her.

Finally, they were going to hit back at the Highborn. No more hiding, no more cowering from the enemy. Her chest swelled with pride. “For Social Unity,” she said, thrusting her arm in the Party salute.

Only the First Gunner raised his hand in return. Two others turned away, another was coughing.

Admiral Sioux squinted thoughtfully. If they lived through the attack, she would mark this into their profile, this lack of zeal in face of the enemy. But there was no sense bringing it up now and ruining morale even more. Better if she didn’t have to bring Security onto the command capsule.

Rica Sioux reached the First Gunner, grabbed his shoulder and settled herself into the module beside him. She logged onto the targeting computer and rubbed her gloved hands in glee. Soon everyone would see the power of the Bangladesh. Then, yes, then her name would blaze as the visionary who had saved Social Unity.

4.

The Sun Works Factory rotated around the dead planet. A million lights glittered from this greatest of space stations. Thousands of system-craft darted into docking bays or launched outward. They went to or returned from other parts of the factory that were half a world away. They zoomed down to the planet or caught the billions of tons of ores catapulted from Mercury. Many circled the mighty Doom Star Genghis Khan. Others endlessly patched, fixed and mended the spinning satellite. Relentless work was the only way to keep the hated enemy—entropy—at bay.

Several military shuttles docked at a kilometers-huge Zero-G Training Room that drifted between the Sun Works Factory and Mercury. Training Master Lycon put his shock troops through their paces.

Within the kilometers-huge room floated cubes and triangles the size of barns. The geometric shapes had been made to look like portions of a blasted spaceship. Far in the background and all around appeared points of light, make-believe stars. The farthest wall shone brightly, the supposed sun-reflected side of an orbital habitat.

Floating thickest in the room’s mid-section were nearly fifty frozen shock troops. They wore stiff orange bodysuits that periodically buzzed. The sound was the suit’s generator releasing punishment-volts that zapped through the frozen victim. The enclosed helmets kept any grunting or groaning internal, although a detector within the helmet picked up the noise, causing the generator to add a few extra volts during the next charge.

The Highborn firmly believed in the virtue of suffering in silence. Premen training theory also stated that failures should be instantly punished. Furthermore, these pain procedures accustomed premen to pain endurance, another virtue. Also, the fear of training failure made the exercise “real” in the subjective sense of the zapped trainee. Finally, at least so the theory went, how could an instructor train premen to overcome pressure unless pressure was vigorously applied?

On the simulated space-habitat wall watchdogged a single remaining laser pulse-cannon, this one ready to emit a low-watt beam. The pitted nozzle rotated back and forth, hunting for motion and the color orange.

The last five-man maniple hid behind a nearby cube, out of sight of the cannon. They were all that was left of the attackers. These five knew that if one of those pulses touched their suit they would freeze, giving a practice kill to the enemy for this satellite storming drill.

One of the floating, orange-suited men peeked around the cube’s corner and at the pulse-cannon. On the top of his helmet was stenciled OMI.

The other four floated behind him, holding onto rails. Their helmets read MARTEN, KANG, LANCE and VIP. Kang was a massive man and dwarfed the others. Vip was the smallest. Otherwise, their bodysuits and helmet seemed identical.

Omi jerked back as a low-watt pulse grazed the cube’s corner. He held a heavy laser tube, his image glowing in the momentary red beam.

“A good leader leads through example,” Vip said, peering at Marten as he spoke via comlink. Through Vip’s faceplate showed the little man’s hair-lip scar and a pulp nose, all mashed about his narrow face.

“That’s a good maxim,” said Lance. “Bet the HBs would like it.”

Marten kept staring at Vip, watching the man’s twitchy eyeballs, like little lead pips. They were always on the move. Yeah, like a weasel looking for a chicken to steal.

“What’cha grinning at?” asked Vip.

When Marten didn’t answer, Lance said, “You’ve been outvoted, Marten.”

Marten touched his holster. As maniple leader, his laser pistol could freeze their suits. So far, it had always trumped any of their arguments.

“Whatever we do we’re gonna take hits,” Marten said. “So—”

“Give me Omi’s laser tube and I’ll take out the pulse-cannon,” Vip said.

“Trade potshots with it?” Marten asked.

“You don’t think I can?”

“We have to move,” Kang said.

Omi nodded. “Immobility brings death.” He quoted an HB combat maxim. The genetic super-soldiers had hundreds of them, quoting them with dreadful regularity.

“Right,” Marten said. “Lance, Vip, at my signal you fly left.”

“We’ll get hit,” complained Vip.

“Correct,” Marten said.

“You and Omi fly left,” Vip said sullenly.

Kang hung onto a float rail with his left hand, reached out and grabbed Vip with his right and slammed him against the cube.

“Kang and I will take the wall-buster and go right,” Marten said, paying no attention to those two. “Omi, you take out the pulse-cannon if you can. Everyone ready?”

Vip shook his head from where his helmet had struck the cube. His upper lip curled as he stared at Kang. Lance settled between Kang and Vip as he glared at the massive man.

“Use your thrusters,” Marten said. “Make the pulse-cannon really have to swivel in order to hit us all.”

“What tactical brilliance,” Vip said. “By the time you brake for the wall—”

“Go!” Marten said.

Both Lance and Vip, who hung onto the float rail and had pushed up against the cube, thrust their legs. They sailed in the zero gravity, Lance in the lead. Both men thumbed the switch on the handle gripped in their right fists. Oxygen belched from their jetpacks, causing them to jerk and fly faster.

The pulse-cannon swiveled and tracked. Spat, spat. Twin shots flashed past the men’s feet. The cannon minutely adjusted for thruster-speed and fired again.

Washed with red light, Lance froze. His comlink cut out and sliced his groan in half. Vip fired his laser pistol, an ineffectual weapon against the cannon, but it made the HBs happy seeing aggressive gestures. Vip’s beam washed over the pulse-cannon a second before it froze him.

From the other side of the cube and in the other direction, Kang and Marten jetted. Between them, they held an imitation wall-buster. The pitted pulse-cannon swiveled. Omi peaked from behind the cube as he aimed the heavy laser tube.

The pulse-cannon beeped in warning, jerking hard toward Omi, who fired. His beam missed, splashing a foot from the armored cannon.

“Aim!” crackled Kang’s voice.

Another shot missed and then Omi froze, hit.

Marten and Kang sped at ramming speed toward the fast-approaching wall.

“Brake,” Kang said.

Marten laughed as his jetpack continued to hiss propellant.

The pulse-cannon swiveled onto them as it pumped red flashes like tracers.

Kang let go of the wall-buster. He twisted expertly as his thick thumb jerked the handle switch. His jetpack quit. Once in position—with his back to the wall—Kang jabbed his thumb down. Air hissed and he braked. All the while, his other hand drew his laser and fired at the hated cannon. Then Kang froze as the pulse-cannon triggered the lock on his bodysuit. Each punishment zap brought a muffled curse from in his helmet.

Marten crashed against the simulated space habitat wall. His teeth rattled and his right ankle twisted and popped. But the wall-buster stuck to the habitat and a loud siren shrieked. At this point, the wall-buster would explode and breach the enemy habitat. That was military success for this tactical practice, as one hundred percent casualties had been within the allowable limits.

Lights immediately snapped on all over the kilometers huge gym, destroying the illusion of a battle-strewn space-field. The bodysuits unfroze and shock troopers shivered, or groaned, or laughed, or did whatever was natural to them with the stoppage of punishment pain. One by one, the premen jetted toward the exit. From there they filed aboard the shuttles, which returned them to barracks.

A few of the shock troopers congratulated Marten. Others scowled. They were angry his maniple had won the competition. Everyone toweled off after showering. Then the winning maniple donned blue tunics, brown spylo jackets, civilian pants and boots and re-boarded a shuttle. Their victory reward was an evening in the famed Recreation Level 49, Section 218 of the Sun Works Factory, the Pleasure Palace.

Marten sat at a shuttle window, glumly peering at the mighty space station.

The ring-factory rotated in order to simulate Earth-normal gravity for those within. The gargantuan space station was a veritable world unto itself, a world now run by the Highborn. It was their furnace and incubation for continued greatness.

The Highborn had controlled it less than a year. Grand Admiral Cassius had made it second priority at the rebellion’s commencement. First priority had been capturing all five Doom Stars. The majority of the population had lived on the satellite for over ten years or more, formerly card-carrying Social Unitarians and in HB parlance: premen. After the native Sun Workers, in terms of numbers, were recently imported Earthmen: FEC soldiers, ex-peacekeepers and ex-SU Military Intelligence operatives. FEC was Free Earth Corps. Their single uniqueness was allegiance to the New Order. The bulk of them came from Antarctica and Australian Sector, although lately several shipments of Japanese had arrived. All had gone through HB re-education camps. The Earthmen comprised nearly one hundred percent of the space station’s guards, police and monitors. The Sun Workers provided the service techs, mechanics, software specialists, recreation personnel, factory coolies and the like.

With the switch from State-sponsored socialism under Social Unity to a quasi-form of capitalism under the Highborn came many new ills. The Highborn urged success of product over rigorous application of ideology. In other words, did a thing work? Monitors watched to suppress rebellion, no longer gauging every thought and action. Thus while before the Highborn a lackluster black-market had survived in the factory, now a thriving illegal drug trade together with greater theft and its accompanying rise in assault and murder rates plagued the giant space habitat. Some said it was the price of doing capitalism. A handful of people got richer quicker while many others died sooner. A few were spaced: shoved out the airlocks without any vacc suits. The Highborn, it was said, threw up their hands. This once again proved their superiority over the premen, who acted like beasts, like cattle. Then several new divisions of monitors hit the streets.

Marten held nominal leadership of the 101st Maniple, Shock Troopers. He wasn’t the toughest, strongest, nor quickest, and he was not the most brutal, savage or street-savvy. The HBs however had judged him to have the best tactical mind. And he had something extra, a deep inner drive.

Kang, a massive Mongol and sitting across from Marten, had black tattoos on his arms and a flat-looking face. He’d shaved his head bald. Before the war, he’d been a Sydney slum gang-leader, running the Red Blades, a vicious lot. During the Japan Campaign, he’d been a psychotic FEC First Lieutenant, personally killing hundreds of Japanese.

“Hey, Kang,” called Vip, standing in the isle. The shuttle was nearly empty, giving the 101st effective run of the passenger area.

Kang ignored the little man as he penciled a crossword puzzle. He didn’t fill in the blanks with letters, but shaded heavy lines in ninety-degree triangles.

Vip nudged Lance, the rangy Brit sitting in an isle seat. Lance counted his pathetic supply of plastic tokens—credits.

“Hey, Kang,” Vip said. “How come you didn’t hit the wall like Marten did?”

Kang stopped his doodling and ponderously raised his head.

“You ever hope to take maniple leadership from Marten you’re gonna have to do stuff like that,” Vip said.

Out of the corner of his eye, Marten watched the silent Mongol. Kang had probably killed more men in combat than the rest of them put together. They were all FEC Army heroes, having all fought in the Japan Campaign six months ago.

“You want to know why?” Kang asked.

“I asked you didn’t I?” Vip said.

Kang scratched at his crossword puzzle. Then he held it out for Vip. “I wrote out the reason.”

Vip winked at Lance before stepping near to grab the journal.

For all his bulk, Kang could strike quicker than a mongoose. He dropped the crossword puzzle and latched onto Vip’s wrist. Then he stood, yanked Vip against his chest and with one hand grabbed the little man by his jacket collar. He lifted Vip off his toes.

“Dance, boy,” Kang said. He jerked Vip up and down until Vip slapped the vast forearm with something that sizzled.

Kang hissed as his hand opened reflexively.

Vip jumped back into the main isle. Metal glittered in his palm. It was a stolen agonizer, a PHC tool, probably dropped somewhere when the Highborn had killed the Social Unitarians at the start of the rebellion. The stubborn PHC people had refused to surrender.

Kang tested his hand by flexing it several times. Then he glared at Vip.

Lance took that moment to stand, pocket his plastic credits and block Kang’s way out. Although as tall and broad-shouldered as Kang, the Brit with his sweeping dark hair probably weighed only half as much. But then he was mostly gristle and whalebone, as he liked to say.

Kang’s upper lip twitched.

“Vip!” Marten said. He desperately wanted to avoid a forbidden shuttle fight that would cancel the trip.

Kang, Lance and Vip glanced at him, as did Omi, who sat beside Marten.

“Give me the agonizer,” Marten said.

“It’s mine,” Vip said.

“Yeah,” Marten said. “But I don’t want you carrying it during leave and getting yourself in trouble.”

“If I don’t have it,” Vip said. “Then you’ll have it, and then you’ll get in trouble. Bet you hadn’t thought of that.”

“Gimme,” Marten said, holding out his hand.

Vip weighed the tiny torture device.

Lance turned from Kang, giving his friend Vip a significant glance before he jerked his head at Marten.

Vip whined, “But I want to fix the dealer who thought he could—”

Lance cleared his throat and shook his head. “Give it up,” he said.

Vip pouted a moment longer, then shrugged and tossed it to Marten. He put the agonizer in his jacket pocket.

Marten now regarded Kang, who still flexed his hand. “You ought to relax. In a few more minutes we’re at the Pleasure Palace and we can all get drinks.”

“Are you buying me a round?” Kang asked.

Marten calculated his slender supply of credits—a few less than Lance because he’d played poker with him last night. “Sure,” he said, knowing he needed every plastic token he had. “One round.”

Kang grunted. Then he picked the crossword journal off the floor and sat down. He used his pencil to trace heavy lines one tiny box at a time.

“Docking in one minute,” a female pilot said over the intercom. “Please take your seats and buckle in.”

Omi and Marten exchanged glances. Because the HB mania for rank had infected most of the shock troopers, they hadn’t told the others about the gelding tape. As elite shock troopers, they outranked all Earthbound FEC fighters. In the carefully layered strata for premen, fighting forces in space or planet-side trumped everyone else. Next, were police and monitors. Below them were the captains of industry and the personal techs of various Highborn. Thus among the shock troops the most coveted position was maniple leader. As soon as the Highborn created higher command slots, such as mission first commander and second and third, then no doubt the struggle among the maniple leaders for those slots would become intense.

So… who to trust, that had been Marten’s question. Not Kang, who had always been first even if only in street gangs. Vip was too twitchy to know which way he’d jump. Lance… he was sneaky. It was hard to know what he really thought about anything so Marten didn’t know if he could trust him.

Marten stared gloomily out the shuttle window. He had his few credits, and Omi’s, he supposed, and a listening device. Otherwise, all he had was his wits to try to find a vacc suit. He had only this trip to do it in, too, because who knew if he could win another reward trip before the snip-snip moment made it all academic. He rubbed his jacket over the spot on his forearm where the barcode was tattooed. Tagged like a beast.

The shuttle began to brake.

Marten’s chest tightened. Whatever it took. Do or die. He blew out his cheeks and wished this shuttle would hurry and dock.

5.

They exited the shuttle and followed the route card that Marten had been given at the barracks. He limped because of his ankle. It was tightly wrapped and he’d been given a shot to reduce swelling, but it was tender. Soon they stood in a sterile hall and before a row of steel-colored lift doors.

“Seventeen C,” Marten said, checking his card.

“This way then,” said Lance.

They found the lift, Marten slid the route card through the slot and door binged, opening. They entered. He slid the card in the destination slot, and up they went toward Level 49, the Pleasure Palace.

Most of the Sun Factory was automated and empty of people. It was a giant construct and it would have taken billions of people to fill. There was a funny psychological fact concerning it. Most people wanted to be around other people. So there were a few areas in the Sun Works Factory were the vast majority congregated. The Pleasure Palace was one of those places. The shock-trooper training area was another and the third was the Highborn facilities.

Each was an oasis of humanity amid an empty sea of thousands of miles of corridors and holding bays.

“You owe me a drink,” Kang said as they rode the lift.

“I haven’t forgotten,” Marten said.

“Where do we go first?” Vip asked Lance. “The game pit or the card room?”

“You got to study the crowds first,” explained Lance. “Get a feel for the luck of a place.”

Vip nodded sagely.

Kang said, “Only losers talk about luck.”

Vip laughed in a know-it-all way, while Lance looked at the ceiling and pursed his lips.

“I don’t how many times I’ve heard losers whine to me to give them a second chance,” Kang said. “‘The shipment got fouled up due to bad luck,’ they’d say. ‘Yeah?’ I’d ask. ‘Real bad luck, Kang. You watch, and my luck will turn around. No,’ I’d say. ‘I don’t think your luck will ever change. Why not, Kang? Sure it will.’ I’d shake my head, get up and stick a vibroblade in their belly. ‘That’s why not,’ I’d tell them. I was never wrong.”

“Where was that?” asked Lance, perhaps a bit too eagerly.

Kang shrugged.

Marten knew where. Back in the slums of Sydney, Australian Sector where Kang had been the gang leader of the Red Blades. Just like in the old French Foreign Legion, many in the shock troops kept their past to themselves. Neither Lance nor Vip had been with them in the Japan Campaign, back when Omi, Kang and Marten had been soldiers in the 93rd Slumlord Battalion of the 10th FEC Division.

Before anyone could say more, the lift opened and they were assaulted by noise and a waft of mingled human odors. They hurried onto the broad passageway with its glittering festival-lights. Slender imitation-trees swayed in the perfumed breeze, while crowds seethed across the floorspace. The people wore bright party clothes and happy drunken grins. Paygirls or men in even gaudier costumes draped on a partygoer’s arm. Dotted among this mass were the obvious uniformed police and undercover monitors. Along the sides of the passageway stood souvenir shops, restaurants, pleasure-parlors and game and card rooms. Snack-shacks provided a shot of pick-me-up that aroused the sluggish or pills and sandwiches to provide energy.

“Back at ten?” asked Lance.

“Don’t be late to the shuttle or it’s a mark against all of us,” Marten said.

Vip waved good-bye and then plunged into the crowd. Lance strode after him.

“Now what?” asked Omi.

“Now Marten owes me a drink,” Kang said.

Marten peered at the festive masses. Tonight few cared that the Highborn ruled, few cared that a vast civil war raged in the Inner Planets. This was Level 49, the party palace. “What’s your poison?” Marten asked Kang.

“Smirnoff on the rocks at Smade’s Tavern.”

“Never heard of either,” Marten said.

Kang turned his bulk toward the crowds and waded in. Marten glanced at Omi, who shrugged. They followed Kang. Like a bear or gorilla, the huge Mongol shouldered people out of the way. Many saw him coming and hurried aside. A few glared. Those found themselves sprawled on the floor. A policeman with a truncheon squinted as Kang headed straight at him. With a brutal shoulder-shove, Kang knocked the cop flying.

As Marten passed, the cop leaped up and snarled into a mike on his collar. Then he sprang after Kang.

“This could take care of our problem,” Omi said.

“No,” Marten said. “Kang’s 101st. We’ve got to back him up.”

“Getting motherly are you?”

The cop grabbed Kang’s arm. Kang jerked his arm in annoyance and kept moving. Then the crowds thinned and two more policemen bore down on Kang. At a more leisurely pace behind them, there followed a thin man with bushy eyebrows. He wore a red tunic, with purple pantaloons and curly-toed slippers. He was older, with sparse hair, maybe in his late forties.

“Halt,” said the cop behind Kang.

Kang neither halted nor acknowledged that he’d heard.

The two approaching cops glanced at one another. They drew shock rods and flicked power so the batons hummed. They braced themselves.

Kang stopped so suddenly that the cop behind crashed into him. Kang seemed barely to swivel around, but he put that cop in a headlock and applied pressure so the man’s face turned red.

“Let him go,” warned the taller of the other two cops.

The thin man with the purple pantaloons and curly-toed slippers widened his eyes in astonishment. “Kang?” he asked.

Kang peered at the thin man with sparse hair. The man had foxy features, sly and cruel. Kang snorted. “Heydrich Hansen, huh? Good old Sydney slum-trash.”

The taller of the two police turned to Hansen. “You know him, sir?”

“Indeed.”

“What are your wishes for him, sir?”

“Sir?” Kang asked Hansen. “Changed professions, huh?”

Hansen’s smile lost some of its charm. “Why not let the policeman go, Kang. I’ll buy you a few drinks—to make up for that time I was late.”

Kang seemed to consider it, as if he was doing Hansen a favor.

Marten leaned near Omi, whispering, “Do you know this Hansen?”

Omi frowned, shaking his head.

The policeman in the headlock had started to turn purple. He no longer seemed to be breathing.

“Sir!” said the taller of the two policemen.

“I’ll buy your friends a round, too, Kang.”

“You said several rounds,” Kang said.

Hansen turned rueful. “Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but these days I’m a monitor. I’m presently on the job.”

Kang tapped the shock trooper patch on the breast of his jacket.

Hansen peered at it. “Ah. You and your happy band of killers are here tonight. Seems like nothing ever changes.”

“No,” Kang said.

“Why not consider yourself my guest tonight?” said Hansen. “For old time’s sake.”

Kang thought a moment longer and finally released the cop, who dropped like a sack of carrots. The cop shuddered and wheezed. He began to tremble.

The two cops with shock rods warily advanced toward their fellow peace officer.

Kang paid them no heed. He lumbered up and slapped Hansen on the back, staggering the monitor, the secret policeman for the Highborn. Marten and Omi trailed behind.

“Where were you headed?” asked Hansen.

“Smade’s,” Kang said.

“I should have known. It’s a rat hole. Just the place a Red Blade would want to go.”

Kang put a heavy paw on Hansen’s shoulder and pushed him along. Then he peered over his shoulder at Marten. “You still owe me a round.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Marten said.

6.

Smade’s Tavern was dim. An oaken bar stood in front a mirror where an ugly bartender hid like a troll under a bridge. Waitresses went to him and sauntered back with drinks on their trays. Booths and tables littered the gloom. Serious drinkers hunched over their glasses. A few nibbled on peanuts.

The four of them sat at two mini-tables that Kang had shoved together. With his thick fingers, Kang twisted a vodka bottle’s cap, breaking the paper seal. The clear liquid gurgled as he poured into a glass filled with ice cubes. He lifted the glass and stretched out his lips, slurping.

“Ah…” Kang said.

Bushy-eyed Hansen grinned like a fox.

Marten and Omi sipped spiced tea, a pot of it on the table. They had declined any liquor or party pills.

“Do you know why Hansen is so happy?” Kang asked Omi.

Hansen cleared his throat, shaking his head when Kang glanced at him.

“They didn’t call Hansen sir back then,” Kang said.

“No?” Omi said.

“A moment, please,” said Hansen.

Kang frowned as he poured himself more vodka. “You interrupting my story, you little maggot?”

“You know me better than that, Kang,” Hansen said. “But why rehash bad feelings? I’m not that man and you’re no longer chief of the Red Blades.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kang asked.

“Only that life has committed one of its constant pranks and rearranged our roles,” said Hansen.

You calling me a mule, a drug runner?” Kang asked.

“No, no,” said Hansen, holding up his slender hands. “Simply that once you ran a vicious—the most vicious—gang in Sydney. Who dared tread on your territory? None!”

Kang stared at Hansen.

“Now,” said the thin man with sly features, “I run Level 49, the Pleasure Palace.” He leaned forward, whispering, “Chief Monitor Bock is my only superior.” Hansen leaned back and crossed his arms, grinning.

“They put a petty thief in charge of security?” asked Kang.

Hansen shook his head. “Kang, Kang, let bygones be bygones. Otherwise I’ll—”

Hansen stopped because Kang dropped a hand onto his wrist. “What’ll you do, you little maggot?”

Hansen licked his lips, and he minutely shook his head.

Marten, who had reached for the teapot, glanced around, trying to see whom Hansen had signaled. He spotted two big men at the bar. They wore silky shirts with billowing sleeves. One of them palmed a gun of some sort. The other slid his weapon back into a sleeve-sheath. Monitors! Marten realized. Secret policemen to back up their— Hadn’t Hansen said he reported to the Chief Monitor? Did he mean the chief preman monitor of the entire Sun Works Factory? As Marten poured tea, he noticed another pair of monitors sitting several tables over. They were a man and woman team, but too hard-eyed to be partygoers, too observant and tense, and too intent on watching Kang.

“Listen up, maggot,” Kang told Hansen. “I know you got a few bully-boys around here. I’m not blind. But you’re in the last stages of syphilis if you think we’ve switched places. You still slink around sniffing people’s butts. I still kill.” Kang tapped the shock trooper patch on his jacket. “Even if you and your thugs could take me out—” Kang leered. “I turn up missing, you little maggot, this party-town gets trashed as the HBs search for me.”

Hansen laughed, a trifle uneasily it seemed to Marten. “Oh, what does it matter? We’re all friends here, aren’t we?”

Kang breathed heavily through his nose, let go of Hansen’s wrist and poured more vodka. After a stiff belt, he said, “Omi used to be a gunman for Eastman.”

“Really?” said Hansen. “Eastman always broke people too soon—in my professional opinion. But then that must have given you a lot of work,” he said to Omi.

Omi shrugged.

Hansen laughed more freely now. “Oh, the old days. I don’t miss them, I’ll tell you. The gang leader and the gunman, two toughs that nobody wants to meet in a back alley or in his home. Good old Sydney! But now you’re shock troopers, hired guns fighting for the Highborn.”

“So speaks the part-time drug runner and full-time informer,” Kang said.

Hansen slapped the table in outrage. “Now see here, Kang. Maybe I smuggled a tot or two of black sand—I won’t deny that among friends. We all lived in the slums, after all, and had to make ends meet. But this charge of, of…” He angrily shook his long head.

“Informer,” Kang said. “Job training, in your case.” He snorted. It was his way of laughing.

Hansen’s foxy eyes narrowed and his veneer of joviality vanished, leaving him sinister seeming.

“Bet I can guess you how you got this far,” Kang said. “You must have fast-talked the HBs when they were looking for people to trust. Yeah, sure, I bet that’s how you did it. You’d learned enough about undercover work to fool them into letting you be a monitor.”

“You used to hold your liquor better,” grumbled Hansen.

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” Kang said. “We’re all friends here, like you’ve been saying. A gang leader, a gunman, a drug runner and a—Marten, you didn’t live in the slums.”

Marten shrugged.

“Where are you from?” asked Hansen, a bit too eagerly, no doubt to stop talking about old times with Kang.

“He’s from here,” Kang said.

“You’re from the Sun Works Factory?” asked Hansen. “That’s very rare for someone here to have made it into the shock troops.”

“He emigrated to Earth first,” Kang said. “Didn’t you, Marten?”

Hansen lifted his eyebrows, giving Marten a more careful examination. It heightened Hansen’s narrow features, the weakness to his chin and the crafty way his pupils darted. He seemed like a weaker animal, one that constantly judged danger and how close it was to him. “How did it happen that you emigrated to Earth?” he asked.

“It’s a long story,” Marten said. He slid his chair and stood. “Nature calls.”

“He’s a quiet one,” Marten heard Hansen saying as he limped away. “They’re always the most dangerous. Remember the time…” Then Marten went to the restroom, relieved himself and as he returned, he noticed a woman in the main doorway glancing about the tavern. He might not have noticed her but she seemed so out of place and frazzled, worried, at wits end.

She wore an engineer’s gray jumpsuit with heavy magnetic boots and a tool belt still hooked around her waist. An engineer’s cap with a sun logo showed that she serviced the habitat’s outer sun shield. Marten idly wondered what she was doing in Smade’s, what she was doing in the Pleasure Palace all together. She had a heart-shaped face, was pretty and of medium height and regular build. Despite the jumpsuit, it was clear she was well endowed. Alert eyes, small nose and a mobile mouth, a kissing mouth, Marten thought to himself.

Their eyes met. He nodded. She looked away, then back at him as he sat down. Her gaze slid onto his tablemates. Recognition leaped onto her face as resolve settled upon her. She strode toward them.

Hansen and Kang argued about something, so neither of them noticed her. Marten saw the two monitors by the bar glance at her, each other and then jump to their feet.

She beat them to the table. “There’s a problem,” the engineer said without preamble.

Hansen looked up. “Nadia Pravda, what are you doing here?”

The two big monitors slid up behind her.

“The sump exploded and we lost an entire batch of product,” Nadia said. “Tell Bock that it wasn’t my fault.”

Hansen’s eyes boggled. He glanced at Kang, then at Nadia Pravda. “Get her out of here,” he said. “Teach her to be more careful about. To, ah—”

The big monitors each grabbed an arm.

Hansen glanced at Kang again, then at his men. “—Just get her out of here,” he said.

“It’s not my fault!” Nadia said, as they started dragging her out. “Tell Bock—”

“Silence!” said Hansen, with a sharp, authoritative bark as he stood and slapped the tabletop.

People looked up. One of the monitors holding onto Nadia peered meaningfully at Hansen, who jerked his head to one side. The big monitor nodded and the two of them hustled her out.

“Product?” Kang asked, as Hansen sat down. “Does that mean you’re still in the drug trade?”

Hansen shot Kang an angry stare.

“It couldn’t be black sand,” Kang said. “The HBs sell it openly to whoever wants it. Ah. Sure. You’re making dream dust, aren’t you?”

Hansen tried to stare Kang down and when it didn’t work, he slumped in his chair.

“She said Bock,” Kang mused. “Could that be the same Chief Monitor Bock you told us that you report to?”

Marten hid his excitement. Hansen made illegal drugs under the noses of the Highborn. He even had an engineer involved. Even better, this Nadia Pravda, this engineer, sounded as if she was in trouble with Hansen. Marten needed a way to move under security if he was ever going to steal a vacc suit in order to spacewalk to the broken-down pod. Here was his chance to find out how Hansen did it.

“Listen, Kang,” Hansen was saying, with a greasy smile on his face. Then he peered at his slender hands and ordered an eye-bender from the bar.

Marten stood. “I’m sorry, but I have to leave. This reunion, it’s none of my affair.” He motioned to Omi.

“Nor mine,” Omi said, standing.

Hansen peered at them, his features calculating. “No,” he said a moment later. “This is between Kang and me. You may go.”

“Hey, maggot,” Kang said. “My buddies and I do whatever we feel like. We’re shock troopers, which is top of the heap around here. You’re the one who’s going to need permission to leave, not them.”

Marten didn’t hear Hansen’s reply. He pushed Omi toward the door, and whispered, “Do you think Kang will be all right?”

“Hansen is too scared to try anything stupid. Kang could probably clear the bar if felt like it.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

Coming out of Smade’s they blinked at the glittering lights. Marten looked around and pointed at the two monitors frog-marching the engineer. They weren’t far ahead. She seemed resigned to her fate and wasn’t resisting.

“We’d better act natural,” Marten said, thrusting his hands into his jacket pockets. He sauntered along as if looking at the sights.

“You want to follow her?” Omi asked.

“This is our chance,” Marten said. “But we have to hurry.”

Omi blinked once and then laughed, immediately launching into a tourist-type gawker. He pointed at a tall spire in the distance before grabbing Marten’s arm and dragging him faster.

The two monitors frog-marched Nadia Pravda around a corner. Marten and Omi hurried. Marten made it around the corner in time to see them march her behind two plastic trees near the wall. The monitors had taken her down a small alleyway. A hidden door behind the two fake trees swished open. Marten and Omi broke into a run. The woman finally started talking, her voice wheedling, pleading. Marten plunged between the two plastic props, through the door and into a lift, with Omi almost on top of him.

One of the monitors had his back turned. The other jerked his head in surprise. He had a nasty scar across his forehead. “You two aren’t allowed—”

Marten punched him in the throat as the lift closed and headed down. He grabbed the man’s hair and slammed the meaty face down against his up-thrusting knee. Teeth crunched and the monitor slumped onto the floor. When he tried to get up Marten kicked him. Omi took out the second one.

Nadia Pravda the engineer stared at the two of them in wonder and dread.

“They were going to kill you,” Omi told her.

Marten looked at Omi in surprise.

“What?” she said.

“We heard Hansen order it,” Omi lied.

Nadia’s eyes got big and round. She glanced at Marten.

He shrugged.

Omi, who searched the bodies, handed Marten a small pistol. “It’s a projac,” he said. “Shoots drugged ice needles. Knocks a person out in seconds.” Omi checked the monitor’s pocket. “Hello.” He pulled out a small clip and examined the side print. He tossed it to Marten. “Know what that is?”

Marten shook his head.

“Explosive slivers of glass. A perfect murder weapon for use in a space hab.”

“You’re not monitors, are you?” Nadia asked.

Marten stared at her, uncertain how to go about this.

“I’m sure this isn’t about helping me,” she said, “although I do appreciate the help.”

“The lift is slowing down,” warned Omi.

“Look,” she said. “What…” Perspiration glistened on her brow. “You two swear that they were going to kill me?”

“What do you think these are for?” Marten asked, showing her the second clip.

Nadia moaned and hugged herself. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“That doesn’t matter anymore,” Omi said.

“I know that!” she said.

The lift stopped and the door swished open.

She stared at the empty corridor. Then she turned to Marten. Fear twisted her features, turning her skin pale under the shadow of her hat.

“Let’s make a deal,” Marten said.

“What kind of deal?” Nadia asked.

“I want to know why a solar engineer is working for drug lords,” Marten said.

“Not drug lords,” she said. “I work for the monitors.”

“Not for all of them,” Marten said, guessing. “But for the corrupt ones.”

Her shoulders sagged. She nodded. “I needed the credits.”

“I don’t want to know your reason,” Marten said. “Tell me theirs.”

“This is all very interesting,” Omi said. “But what are we going to do about these two? We have to move them.”

“Well?” Marten asked her. “Why did they need you?”

“Because the plant is there,” she shouted. “Why do you think?”

“The plant is where?” Marten asked.

“In the solar panels where I work.”

Marten smiled for the first time. He bet vacc suits were in the solar panels. He needed a vacc suit to spacewalk to the broken-down pod. “Last question.” He shrugged off his jacket and showed her his barcode tattoo. “Have you ever seen one of these before?”

“The monitors have them,” she said. “It tracks them, I think they said.”

“That’s right,” Marten said. “Do you know how they take themselves off the tracking screen?”

A shifty look entered her eyes. “What’s it worth you to know?”

“Nadia,” Marten said. “Either you tell me or there’s no deal. Then you’re on your own again.”

She glanced at the two unconscious monitors, at Omi as he shot each of them with a second projac. The monitors jerked. The one with the forehead scar and the missing teeth opened his eyes. Then the knockout drugs took over and the eyes closed again.

“It’s a little device that Hansen keeps with him,” Nadia said. “I’ve seen him slide it over two of his guards before, when they came to… to help me. One of them said something about it making them invisible. I guess he meant invisible to the station tracker.”

“Good,” Marten said. “That’s all I wanted to hear.”

7.

Marten reentered Smade’s. He needed the device that would deactivate his barcode tattoo. Nadia said Hansen kept it on his person. He hoped she was right.

Before Marten adjusted to the gloom, Kang bellowed a greeting. Marten strode in that direction and a moment later slid into his chair. Hansen had his slender hands wrapped around a frosty glass of blue liquid. He looked dejected, his thinning hair messed up at the sides as if he’d been scratching his head. The massive Kang sat at the table as if he were a king. The dim light shone off the top of his bald head, while his eyes were a little more open than usual. His pupils had started turning glassy.

“Where’s Omi?” Kang asked.

“He’s with a girl,” Marten said. “I figured there’s no sense in trying to find Lance and Vip. So…”

“They’re more of you?” Hansen asked in alarm.

Kang leered. “Poor little informer, always wants to know everything, don’t you?”

Hansen made a peevish gesture.

“What are you having?” Marten asked Hansen.

“Eye-bender,” mumbled the monitor. “Do you want one? It’ll be on me.”

“Sure,” Marten said.

Hansen snapped his fingers and soon a waitress set a tall frosty eye-bender before Marten. He raised his glass to Hansen. Glumly, Hansen raised his and they clicked glasses.

“To old friends,” Marten said.

“I’ll drink to that,” Kang said, picking up his glass and clicking it against theirs.

Kang slurped vodka. Marten sipped, while Hansen took a mouthful of eye-bender and swallowed as if it were a lump of clay.

“Do you know why Hansen looks so sad?” Kang asked.

“Please,” said Hansen. “Do you have to speak so loudly? Must everyone hear?”

Kang leered. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Is that better?”

Hansen sighed, peered at his eye-bender and took another of his doleful swallows.

“He thinks I’ll spill his secrets,” Kang said.

“We’re all Sydney boys,” said Hansen in a dispirited way. “We have to stick together.”

“That’s so right,” Kang said. “So very right.”

Marten wondered how much vodka Kang had put away.

“But if I scratch your back, you little maggot, how are you gonna scratch mine?” asked Kang.

Hansen reached into his pockets and put a small pile of plastic credits on the table. “It’s all I have.”

Kang leered at Marten. “Do you think that’s enough?”

“For what?” asked Marten.

“To buy the 101st’s silence.”

Marten studied the credits and then Hansen. “Isn’t it dangerous what you’re doing? This entire setup?”

“No more dangerous than your profession,” said Hansen.

“Are you trying to say you’re as brave as us?” growled Kang.

“The saints forbid that I dare claim that,” said Hansen. He studied his eye-bender and a grin twitched. “But my profession does pay better and there are more perks.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Kang said. “At least about the better pay.”

Hansen winced, shook his long head and finished his eye-bender. “I must be leaving,” he said.

Kang dropped his hand onto Hansen’s wrist. “Going to get reinforcements are you? Maybe have them take me out somewhere quiet and work me over?”

“Do you think I’m insane?” asked Hansen. “The HBs would come flying to your rescue.”

“That’s right,” Kang said. “Then you’d all be in the pain booth. And then one of you would talk, would break under the pressure. It would be over for you. You’d take a space walk in your skivvies.”

“I know, I know,” said Hansen, sweat beading on his tall forehead.

“You little maggot,” Kang said. “You don’t know at all. You think you’ve finally got me drunk, got me stupid. You really think you can outsmart me. You, a little informer—” Kang spat on the table.

Hansen closed his eyes. When he opened them, the man and woman monitor-team that had been watching them stood at the table. The woman was taller than the man and had long black hair. Although short, the man had wide shoulders and seemingly no neck, and there was something odd about his eyes. They were gray and seemed empty, devoid of emotion.

Kang leaned back, eyeing the pair. “Are they yours?” he asked Hansen.

“Is everything all right, boss?” asked the man.

Hansen pursed his lips. “Have either of you spoken to Dalt or Methlen?”

“No, boss.”

Hansen glanced at Kang as he spoke to his team. “I think you two should check on them.”

Kang grunted his okay.

“Yes,” said Hansen. “That’s what I want you to do.”

“What about you, boss?”

“I’ll be fine,” said Hansen. “These are old friends.”

“Are you certain about that?”

Hansen slapped the table. “I said I would be all right, didn’t I? Now do what I ask, Ervil.”

Ervil darted his dead eyes at Kang and Marten. Finally, he dipped his thick head.

“Report back when you find them,” said Hansen.

“Like you say, boss.” Ervil took the black-haired woman’s hand and they left.

“There,” said Hansen. “Satisfied?”

Kang poured more vodka.

“But I must tell you that if I press a switch or don’t report to HQ in another half hour that monitors will descend upon me,” said Hansen. “Then it’s detention for both of you.”

“And then your secret is out,” Kang said.

“Not necessarily,” said Hansen. “As I said before, Chief Monitor Bock runs the secret police.”

“All the monitors help make dream dust?” asked Kang.

“No,” said Hansen. “But enough.”

Kang nodded and slurped more vodka. “Not a bad racket, you little maggot, not bad at all. I’m impressed.”

The thin monitor sat a little straighter and he even adjusted his collar. “If you can make it in Sydney’s slums then you can make it anywhere.”

“That’s right,” Kang said.

Hansen smiled ruefully. He turned to Marten and noticed his eye-bender. “You’ve hardly sipped your drink.”

“It’s not really what I expected,” Marten said. “Would you like it?” He slid it over.

Hansen peered at him, shrugged. He took the tall glass and took another of his measured swallows. Kang slurped more vodka.

Marten waited, wondering just how big a bladder each man had.

“Maybe this is all for the best,” said Hansen. “I’m looking for more sellers I can trust and Bock wants to break into new areas.”

Kang sneered. “Me work for you?”

“Of course not,” said Hansen. “You’d work for Chief Monitor Bock. What do you think?”

Kang glanced at Marten. Marten sat impassively. Kang shook his head at Hansen, who had watched the exchange. Hansen now looked with new interest at Marten.

Marten slid his chair back. “That spiced tea before has gone right through me. What about you, Hansen?”

It took Hansen a half-beat. “Yes. I need to use the restroom.”

Kang laughed. “Oh no you don’t.”

“Don’t worry,” Marten said. “I won’t let him call for reinforcements.”

Kang grumbled, then shrugged and waved his thick hand. “Go, go, be my guest.”

Marten and Hansen rose and headed for the restroom.

“You’re the leader of the 101st?” whispered Hansen.

“That’s right,” Marten said.

“Kang has to listen to you?”

“Yes,” Marten said.

Hansen nodded ruefully. “Yes. Wise of you to let him play me out. Now it is I who am impressed.”

Marten opened the restroom door and gestured for Hansen to proceed.

“I’m glad I can work with a reasonable man,” said Hansen as he walked in. “Our survival depends upon logic and precision, not brute force and rage.” He turned around.

Marten shot him twice as the projac made little hissing sounds.

The ice slivers penetrated Hansen’s tunic and into his stomach. The thin monitor had time to widen his eyes in astonishment and pain. Then he staggered backward as the knockout drugs took hold. Marten caught him under the armpits and shuffled into a stall. He lowered the drugged monitor onto a toilet seat. He patted Hansen down, coming up with a projac, several more clips, a wallet stuffed with credits, a communicator and a flat device with a barcode on the back. Marten took it and ran it over his tattoo. The device flashed a green light. Marten slid it over his tattoo again. The device flashed red. Green, off, red, on.

Marten debated killing Hansen instead of just leaving him drugged. He shook his head. With that decided, Marten stuffed his jacket with the loot. Then he adjusted Hansen’s clothes, put the man’s hands over his stomach and spread his feet wider. Marten locked the stall, dropped to his stomach and slid under the bottom. Disgusting, but it worked. He dusted himself and strolled into the barroom.

“Where’s Hansen?” Kang said as Marten sat down. “You said you weren’t going to leave him alone.”

“He pulled a gun on me,” Marten said. He pulled out the projac and showed Kang under the table.

“The little maggot! What was he thinking?”

Marten showed Kang his knuckles from where he’s hit the monitor in the throat before. “I took Hansen out. Set him on the toilet seat and locked the stall.”

Kang grunted.

“But I think we’d better get out of here,” Marten said.

“Because of that little maggot? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“He’s a monitor, Kang.”

“He drew a gun on you,” Kang snarled. “I’ll—” Kang half rose, but Marten put his hand on the Mongol’s massive forearms.

“I took these off him,” Marten said, slapping a handful of credits on the table, beside Hansen’s earlier pile. “Take them.”

Kang sat and started stuffing his pockets.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Marten said. “There’s no telling how the Training Master will view all this—if we get thrown into detention or found to have killed monitors.”

Kang grunted.

“So get drunk,” Marten said, “just not here.”

“What about you?”

“I should probably find Lance and Vip and tell them to be careful. Do you want to help me look for them?”

Kang snorted. Then he grabbed his latest vodka bottle by the neck, rose ponderously and headed for the door. A waitress hurried to intercept him.

Marten motioned sharply.

She looked at Kang once more and came over.

“Do you know Hansen?” Marten asked.

“He’s come in here before,” she said. “Wasn’t he with you?”

“He’s still in the restroom.”

“Oh. Yes, that’s right. I saw him go in.”

“He’s sleeping one off,” Marten said. “I don’t think he wants to be disturbed either.”

She blinked several times. “That’s kind of strange,” she finally said.

“He has strange… tastes,” Marten said.

“Oh,” said the waitress. “Then why does he come to Smade’s? There are other places for that sort of thing.”

Marten shrugged.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter to me,” she said.

“A good policy,” agreed Marten. “Hansen will pay the score.”

The waitress glanced at Kang as he exited. “All right,” she said.

“But here’s a small gratuity from us,” Marten said. He put several credits on her tray. “Put the customary fifteen percent tip on Hansen’s bill as well.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Marten patted her arm and hurried out.

8.

Nadia Pravda gasped as the three of them loped down an empty utility corridor. Sweat dripped from her waxen face as her breathing turned harsher. Her heavy magnetic boots clumped at each stride and her tool belt jingled as the tiny clamps struck one another.

Omi and Marten jogged effortlessly. They were both in peak condition and knew that time ran against them.

“Sl—Slow down,” wheezed Nadia.

Marten glanced back and then at Omi. “Hey,” he said. Omi raised an eyebrow. Marten nodded at Nadia. The two of them each took an arm and helped her run.

Marten couldn’t believe he was doing this again. Four and half years ago, he’d hidden in the Sun Works Factory like a rat. His parents had been alive and the monolith of Social Unity had ruled the four Inner Planets.

It had all started seven years ago when Political Harmony Corps had brutally suppressed the unionization attempt of the Sun Works Engineers. If he’d asked, Marten was sure Nadia could have told him a grim tale about that time. Social Unity, it was said back then, provided for all, was all. The State and its people were one, thus unionization was an absurdity, a non sequitur. Thus, the engineer’s strike had been dispersed—a word that failed to convey the savage fighting, the interrogations and the police murders of the ringleaders and their lieutenants. A few Unionists had slipped into hiding among the millions of kilometers of passageways and empty maintenance corridors. Most of them were caught and killed after some agonizing torture. Marten, his father and mother, with several others, had kept one step ahead of the hunters and built an ultra-stealth pod in an abandoned, high radiation area. The long-range goal had been to slip from the Inner Planets and to the Jupiter Confederation or anywhere beyond the reach of the Social Unity fanatics.

PHC had caught his mother and father and killed them. He’d used emergency computer codes and a special credcard that his mother had forged in order to board a shuttle to Earth and then to Australian Sector.

He knew the hidden passageways of the Sun Works Factory, or some of them, at least. But that was a lifetime ago. The Highborn invasion, joining Free Earth Corps in Australia, the brutal Japan Campaign and then transferred to the shock troopers—What if seven years ago his parents had surrendered like everyone else? Would he and Nadia be friends now? It might have happened.

Despite her sorry state, she was pretty and had a beautiful, heart-shaped face.

Omi cleared his throat. Marten gave him a swift glance and then quit staring at Nadia. There was no time to stop and look at the scenery, not and get that vacc suit he hoped was where they made dust. Once he found a vacc suit, he could spacewalk to the forgotten pod.

“Could we stop, please,” Nadia wheezed.

They ignored her. After awhile they turned a corner. The maintenance passage seemed to go on forever.

“Please,” she wheezed, “my sides are going to explode.”

“For a minute,” Marten said.

She slumped to the floor and then slid against a wall as she gasped. She tore off her cap and shook out damp, shoulder-length hair. It made her prettier.

Marten and Omi squatted on their heels, waiting.

She took a rag and mopped her face. She seemed on the verge of speaking and then simply kept on breathing hard.

“Is it much farther?” Marten asked. He studied her, her features and the pretty way her lips quivered.

“Using this route,” she wheezed. “It’s another two kilometers.”

They waited, and her breathing started evening out.

“We’d better go,” Omi said, sounding impatient.

“Wait,” she said. “My side finally isn’t hurting.”

Omi glanced at Marten.

“We’ll give her another minute,” Marten said.

Omi stared stonily at the floor.

“They won’t let us in,” she said.

“That’s not what you said before,” Marten said.

“Do you know how security-conscious they are?”

“I can imagine.”

“Then you should know that I’m not cleared.”

“You worked the sump,” he said.

“That’s different. That’s manufacturing. We’re heading to distribution, where they store the product. They’re crazy about protection.” She put her cap on. “Maybe we should call the whole thing off.”

“Right,” Marten said. “Then Hansen’s people find you and shove you out an airlock.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “You two must have heard it wrong. Hansen can’t afford to kill me. He worked too hard finding someone with my training and position. He needs me.”

“We need you too,” Omi said, without warmth.

She licked her lips. “I can understand that. How about I simply tell you how to get in?”

“No,” Marten said, standing, motioning her to get up.

She didn’t move. “I’m going to insist on doing this another way. You see—”

Omi jerked her to her feet. Marten took the other arm and they started jogging, forcing her to run.

“You’re killing me, doing this,” she said. “They’ll hunt me down and make an example.”

“You were already dead,” Omi said.

“No, I refuse to believe that. Hansen needs me. This is murder what you’re doing.”

Marten stopped so suddenly that Omi didn’t quite realize it in time. They pulled Nadia two ways. She yelled. Omi let go. Marten swung her around to face him. “What we’re doing is murder? What do you think dream dust does to people?”

“Huh?” she said, frowning, looking perplexed.

“People waste away is what happens!” Marten said. “They snort dust, dream their fantasies and forget to eat and drink and even sleep. It kills them if they have enough dust.”

“Hey,” she said, “they don’t have to buy it.”

“They don’t have to buy it!” Marten said, outraged. “Woe to them! You have rushed for profit into Balaam’s error.”

“Come again,” said Nadia. She glanced at Omi, but he looked as confused as she did. Then she became suspicious. “Are you saying you don’t want the dream dust?”

Omi shook his head and turned away.

“You really don’t want the dust,” Nadia said in surprise. “Then what do you want? Why are you even here?”

“Listen to me,” Marten said. “We’re going in and taking the dust.”

She laughed. “No, I don’t think you can take it. So that means I’m out of here.” She turned to go.

Marten put his projac under her chin.

She looked deep into his eyes, and smiled. “No, you can’t shoot me either.”

“I can,” Omi said softly.

“Yes,” she said after a moment. “I believe you could. But would he let you?”

Marten exhaled sharply. “Nadia, I’m desperate. I don’t like making a profit out of other people’s misery—in fact, I won’t. But I’ll kill to stay alive.”

“And to make staying alive worth it,” Omi added.

Marten nodded.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Nadia.

“Never mind,” Marten said.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “I’m supposed to help you rob the monitors. From that moment on, I’m on the run. But none of this is to make any credits. No, it’s to do…” She lifted her eyebrows.

Marten wished he could keep his mouth shut when it counted. But whatever else happened, he had to have a vacc suit.

Omi said, “We’re undercover operatives who watch the monitors.”

She frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. You wouldn’t have needed the barcode eraser from Hansen.”

“Wrong,” Omi said. “We had to make it look as if—”

“If you two want my help you’ll have to tell me what’s really going on. No more smoke,” she said.

Omi glared at Marten, slicing one of his fingers across his muscled throat.

Marten said, “Look—”

“Were they really going to kill me?” she asked.

“Maybe,” Marten said, “maybe just beat you up or just talk to you sternly.”

“But you didn’t hear Hansen order my death?” she asked.

“I didn’t. No.”

Omi groaned, shaking his head.

“Look,” Marten told him. “If we have someone on the outside helping us we can finish faster.”

“Finish what faster?” she asked.

“Let me ask you a question,” Marten said. “Do you want to live here?”

“In the Sun Works Factory?” she asked.

“No,” Marten said, “in the Inner Planets.”

“You mean if I could leave to somewhere else, would I?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She considered it. “I’ve never thought about it before.”

“We want to leave,” Marten said.

She laughed.

“I’m serious.”

She frowned. “How could you leave? Not by high-jacking a shuttle.”

Marten glanced at Omi before saying, “I have a way. It’s dangerous. I won’t deny that. You could come if you wanted, or you could stay. Either way I’ll help you to help us.”

“How can you help me?” she asked.

“By giving you lots of money, for one thing.”

“But I’d have the monitors hunting for me,” she said. “What’s to keep me from going to Hansen and baring all in order to get back into his good graces?”

“Well…” Marten said, trying to think of something.

“If we get caught,” Omi said, “we’ll talk and bring everyone down with us. The Highborn hate dream dust. Your only hope is that we don’t get caught.”

“Or that the monitors kill you,” she said.

Marten grinned. “That won’t be so easy for them.”

“No,” she said, “I suppose not.” She thought about it while chewing her lower lip. “There is the possibility that Dalt and Methlen were dragging me to that corridor to have me killed, right?”

“Who?” asked Marten.

“Dalt and Methlen,” she said. “The monitors you two took out.”

“I’d say without a doubt they were going to kill you,” Omi said.

She heaved a mournful sigh. “Either way it’s dangerous. But…” She eyed Marten. He smiled. She smiled back, before frowning and looking away. “I don’t really trust Hansen. I keep getting the feeling they plan on covering their tracks soon.”

“You’ll help us?” Marten asked.

“At least to hit this place,” she said.

“We’d better hurry,” Omi said.

“One thing,” Marten said.

“What?”

“Do they have any vacc suits there?”

She shrugged. “Two or three are usually lying around. Why?”

“I’ll tell you after we’re done,” Marten said.

9.

Nadia was nervous. Stay calm, stay calm, she told herself. Fortunately, she remembered the code-knock. She wore her cap low so they wouldn’t see the fear in her eyes or that her face was pale. The door opened and Omi and Marten followed her in.

Their projacs hissed. Men and women standing at tables chopping and packaging dust fell. One monitor to the side wore body-armor. Omi shot him in the face. Marten bounded across the room, diving as a man popped up over a heavy box.

“Hey!” shouted Omi.

The monitor swiveled a las-rifle at the Korean shock trooper. Marten rolled around the box and pumped shots into the man’s side.

Then silence filled the large room, what was a former engineer tool shed. Marten and Omi checked every corner, then every person and that they were out. The man Omi shot in the face was dead.

“You switched clips,” Nadia whispered, staring at the corpse.

“No,” Omi said, kneeling beside him. “A sliver went through his eye and must have lodged in his brain.”

Marten overturned boxes. Then he shouted and showed Omi a vacc suit.

“Is it good?” asked Omi.

Marten checked it. “It’s good.” He laughed and turned to Nadia. “Help us stuff dust into these suits.”

She continued to stare at the dead man, a monitor, wondering what that meant for her future.

“Help us,” Omi said, who already grabbed baggies and shoved them down a vacc suit.

They worked in silence, until two suits were full. They lifted the suits and put them in a box marked as sealant. Marten rolled out a trolley and hefted the box onto it. “Let’s go,” he said.

“I don’t get it,” she said, bewildered at their speed and professionalism. “If you’re not going to sell the dream dust, why take it? Why not burn it?”

“I want them to think we hit for the dust,” Marten said. “Now do you notice this box?”

She nodded.

“You’re going to make sure it ends up at Dock 10, Bay EE. Think you can do that?”

“What if someone opens it?” she asked.

“That’s my worry.”

“What if I take the dust?” she said.

“Then Omi comes hunting for you.”

Nadia studied the muscle-bound Korean, and told Marten, “He would never be able to find me.”

“Hansen could,” Marten said.

“He can anyway,” she said.

“Maybe not,” Marten said. “I know of a few hideaways I bet no one else does. You could go there.”

“Then I lose my job,” she said.

Marten went to a table and scooped up handfuls of plastic credits, shoving them into a sack. He brought her the sack. “Do you think you can last on those awhile?”

“Why don’t you come with me?” she said, hefting the sack, liking its weight.

“Not yet,” Marten said.

“These won’t last me forever,” she said.

“But for several weeks it should.”

“You can get us out of the Sun Works Factory in several weeks?”

“Are you a gambler?” he asked.

She stared at him. “I listened to Hansen’s recruitment speech. So I guess I am.”

“I can get us out of here in several weeks,” Marten said. “At least now I can, and with your help.”

She peered at the box on the trolley. Finally, she thought she understood. “You want the vacc suits. None of this is about dream dust.” She squinted. Could she trust him? He looked trustworthy. But what did that mean? She reexamined the dead monitor, and all those lying in drugged sleep. In a fight, she’d never seen anything like these two. “I’ll give you the three weeks,” she whispered. “But if you’re wrong…”

“I’m not wrong,” Marten said. He pushed the trolley toward the door and Omi followed.

10.

They left Nadia and reentered the Pleasure Palace, Level 49.

“Our luck can’t hold,” Omi said.

“We’re not using luck,” Marten said. “Speed and surprise, and savagery, those are our tools. The only luck we had was running into Hansen. Everything else we’ve taken.”

Marten studied the crowds, the costumes, and the gaiety, the drunkenness and drugged hyperactivity. Women laughed as men pawed them. Musicians danced as they piped a merry tune or strummed guitars. Comedians with senso-masks acted out plays and scenes on various corners. Jugglers juggled holocubes imaged to look like naked women or flickering suns or black holes that swirled with ultimate destruction. Over it, festive lights sparkled with colors.

It was strange walking in the Pleasure Palace, knowing that around them were thousands of miles of empty corridors, holding bays and ore bins. For a moment, Marten felt surreal. With an effort of will, he shook off the feeling.

“Take off your jacket,” Marten said, as he shrugged off his and slung it over his arm. He eyed Omi and shook his head. “Follow me.”

In the distance rose the main spire. Smade’s Tavern was on the other side of it. That meant… Marten turned in a circle and finally noticed the square lift building. People poured out of it while others staggered in or had friends carry them through the archways. The Pleasure Palace never stopped, although different shifts came and went. Marten saw unobtrusive janitors sweeping up, polishing and hauling litter. He stepped behind a large man in a flowing robe as a janitor glanced his way.

“Over here,” he told Omi, pulling him by the arm. Janitor seemed like a perfect disguise for a monitor. “Hey,” he said, “this is just what we need.” He darted into a costume shop.

“We gotta find the others,” Omi said. “We don’t have time for shopping.”

A slim man in an ancient-style toga greeted them with raised hands. He wore a wreath around his head and glitter about his dark eyes. “Ah, and how may I help you gentlemen today?”

“We’d like something… baggy,” Marten said.

“Baggy?” asked the man.

Marten glanced about. “Like that.”

“Ah, splendid indeed, sir. Pirates on the High Seas. Rogues and ruffians!” The salesman led them to the mannequin of a Black Beard-type pirate. “I suggest complete sets, sir. Let the pirate persona overwhelm and invest you. Here we are. Hat, shirt, breeches and boots, and accessories, too. An eye-patch would be perfect for you, sir,” he told Omi. “And cutlasses all around and imitation wheel-lock pistols, I’m sure. And—”

“We’ll take the hats,” Marten said, “and these shirts.” He pursed his lips. “Do you have tote bags?”

“Indeed, sir. But I suggest lockers. Why carry around your old clothes when you can safely store your belongings in our—”

“Three tote bags,” Marten said. Then his eyes lit as he scanned another rack. “Throw in two red kerchiefs, yes, like those over there, and add a tube of glitter like you’re wearing.”

“A fine start, sir. Now—”

“Do you have a changing room?” asked Marten.

“Certainly.”

“What’s all this cost?”

“A trifling sum, I assure you, sir. Enough so that this jacket here and a brace of pistols for your partner—”

“No, this is good,” Marten said. “Tally it please while we change.”

“Very well, sir,” said the salesman, a bit crestfallen.

Marten and Omi entered the dressing rooms and came out wearing the silky red shirts with billowing sleeves and floppy black pirate hats. Their shock trooper jackets and shirts were stuffed in the tote bags hidden and slung around their torsos. Each of them kept his projac tucked in the waist of his pants. The kerchiefs, tube of glitter and other needed items Marten carried in a third tote bag.

“Twenty-six credits, sir,” the man said at the counter.

Marten paid the sum with stolen plastic chips, and Omi and he sauntered onto the street.

“Flimsy disguises,” grumbled Omi.

“But better than strutting around in here-I-am shock trooper jackets.”

They started checking card rooms and game pits as they searched for Lance and Vip. They choked on narcotic stimstick smoke in Billy the Kid’s Card Room. Men and women sat hunched around Western Period wooden tables. Many drank. Others popped pills. The lights were dim and the constant sound of shuffling cards and “draw, hit me,” tinkling chips and scraping chairs as angry people left and eager gamblers took their place filled the place, and as the pounding piano provided backdrop noise. Sharper’s Place was quieter and more serious. Red stimstick smoke drifted lazily in the dim lighting. Men and women inhaled their narcotic cigarettes to life and examined their cards close to their vests. Roulette wheels spun and several black jack tables did brisk business.

“Aye, matey,” said a drunken masked man to Omi.

Later Marten chopped a thief’s wrist as he tried to rifle credits.

As they stepped outside, Omi spat. “I’m sick of those places, and I’m starting to feel lightheaded.”

They marched into Razor’s Den, one of the fish tank places. Bloodthirsty, cheering bettors surrounded the nearest octagonal-shaped pool. The pond had been sunken into the floor and contained tiny pens along the sides. Each contained a six-inch, colorful fish that seemed to be three-quarters teeth. They swam in furious circles, lashing their tail fins, which had been stamped with a tiny colored tag. As the throng cheered lustily, others crouched and studied the little monsters. People argued, or shoved credits into a slot and ripped out the paper ticket vomited in return. Finally, the first match ended. Then the doors in the little cages opened and out darted the fighting fish into the main tank. A furious, twisting battle engaged, those teeth biting, tearing and devouring similar fish. In a few moments, only one survived, and the winning bettors rushed to the pay-desk to collect.

“That’s what we are,” Omi said. “Little fish fighting for our masters.”

The comment startled Marten. He didn’t expect something like that from Omi. He nodded though, and they continued the search.

As they exited Razor’s Den Marten heard a new sound, one he’d been dreading. He put his finger in his ear and stood very still.

“What is it?” Omi asked.

Marten held up a hand for silence. Then he swallowed audibly. “It just got worse,” he said.

Omi waited.

“I planted my listening device on Hansen.”

“When?”

“When I put him to sleep on the toilet seat. But someone just shot him with wake-up stims. Shhh.” Marten shut his eyes, listening. “Hansen has ordered a hunt.”

“For us?”

“Let’s go.”

They half-ran into Galaxy Gold and then out, rushed through Sly Man’s Pit and finally found Lance and Vip in the Barracuda Barn. A large shark tank had been built into the south wall. Three-meter monsters fought, made savage through electrodes implanted within their tiny brains. People cheered so loudly that Marten had to shout in Lance’s ear. Lance gave him a wondering look. Marten motioned him and Vip toward the door.

“Here, put these on,” Marten said, opening the tote bag and handing each a red kerchief. “And take off your jackets.”

“Whatever for?” asked Lance.

“For a disguise,” Marten said.

Vip fingered Omi’s red silk shirt. “That must have cost.”

“You’re right,” said Lance. To Marten: “Where did you get the money?”

Marten glanced both ways and lifted his shirt to show them the projac tucked in his waistband.

“Are you insane?” asked Lance. “No wonder the monitors are after you.”

“What?” Vip said. “They are? How come, Marten? What did you do?”

“It’s a long story,” Marten said.

“This doesn’t make sense,” said Lance.

“Maybe not,” Marten said. “But the monitors will kill us now.”

“Whoa,” said Lance. “Slow down. They’ll do what? Kill you? Is that what you said?”

“There’s no time to explain,” Marten said.

“I don’t want to get killed,” Vip said.

“You won’t,” Omi said. He patted his waist.

“You have a weapon too?” said Lance.

Marten put a finger in his ear, adjusting the tiny receiver. He cursed quietly and removed the receiver, a little black speck on the tip of his index finger.

“Hansen find it?” Omi asked.

Marten nodded.

Lance grabbed him by the arm. “Guns, bugs and credits, did the Training Master put you up to this?”

Omi snorted.

“Either we find Kang and get to the shuttle now or the monitors will kill us,” Marten said. “At this point it’s them or us.”

“Yeah?” said Lance. “So why don’t they pick you up at the barracks? All the monitors have to do is show cause, fill out a request and the Training Master will hand you over.”

Marten shook his head. “We stumbled onto a drug ring. These are corrupt monitors.”

“So report them,” said Lance.

Marten shoved the majority of his credits at Lance. “We robbed them.”

Lance squinted suspiciously. “That isn’t like you, maniple leader. What’s really going on?”

“Do you want your cut or not?” asked Marten.

Lance shoved the credits back. “Sorry, not my style.”

“Okay,” Marten said, almost trusting Lance enough to tell him the truth. But there wasn’t time. “You can report us and you’re safe. Or you can come with us. But you have to decide now. If you do nothing they’ll think you’re with us and kill you too.”

Lance studied the two of them. “What do you think, Vip?”

Small Vip said, “They’re 101st. The others are corrupt monitors.”

“Right,” said Lance. “We’re in,” he told Marten.

Ten minutes later, they found Kang in a dark bar where he sang quietly to himself. Marten dosed him with anti-drunk that he’d picked up at a pill shop. They dragged Kang outside and hurried down the street, brushing through the crowds.

“Shouldn’t we move more slowly?” asked Lance. “Try and catch them napping?”

“Speed and surprise,” Marten said.

“And savagery,” added Omi.

“Right,” Marten said. “That’s all we’ve got.”

“It probably doesn’t hurt then that we’re shock troopers,” said Lance.

They neared the lift building as Kang started blinking. He’d been in a near trance, eyes staring as he moved like a sleepwalker. “What’s going on?” he muttered.

“Hansen is double-crossing us,” Omi said.

“The little maggot?” Kang said.

“What—” Lance started to say.

“Sir!” said a policeman, stepping in front of Marten.

Omi used Vip to shield the projac from the crowd and shot the cop with two sleep needles. They pushed the falling policeman aside and hurried through an imitation, vine-covered archway.

“Stop them!” shouted a man on the street, a janitor who dropped his broom and pulled out a communicator and gun.

“Run!” shouted Marten.

The five-man team knocked people flying. Kang bellowed in delight. Vip giggled. Omi, Lance and Marten concentrated with grim intensity. They skidded and almost tripped as they hit the lifts. Marten dug out his card. Omi twisted around and snapped off shots at three monitors running at them. Two fell. The last monitor, shorter than the other two and with wide shoulders—it was Ervil from Smade’s—threw himself prone, drew and fired back. Vip grunted and slammed against the lift as the door opened. Lance dragged him in and they all hugged the floor. The door slid shut as needles prickled the back wall.

“I’m hit,” Vip said, touching his thigh. Then his eyes drooped shut.

“This is too much,” said Lance. “Either way the HBs are gonna know about it.”

“Maybe not,” Marten said.

“In any case,” said Lance, “the monitors will be waiting for us.”

“Hansen can’t have that many crooked monitors,” Marten said. “Besides, he just woke up and must be trying to pull them all together.”

“Yeah, right” said Lance. He checked Vip and turned back to Marten. “Where did you get the bug?”

“What bug?” Kang said.

“He stole it from Hansen,” Omi said.

“We’re slowing down,” Marten said.

They braced themselves, projacs drawn as they knelt on either side of the door. It opened—the hall was empty.

“Go, Kang,” whispered Marten. “Take Vip. Use him as a shield.”

“Hey,” said Lance. “That’s—”

Kang charged with the unconscious Vip in his arms. Two big men in black suits stepped from around a corner, firing. It was Dalt and Methlen, the original duo from Smade’s. One had a bloody mouth and he was missing two front teeth. Someone must have found the sleeping due, reported it and medics had probably given them wake-up and stims.

Omi and Marten began to fire.

One of the monitors slid to the floor. The other, who was missing his teeth, must have been wearing a vest.

Kang roared as he charged.

The last monitor snarled, lifted his projac—

Marten dove out of the lift for a better angle, firing, hitting the man’s arm. The man dropped his weapon. Then Kang was on him.

“Go,” Marten said, jumping off the floor.

“Is he hit again?” Lance asked Kang as they sprinted down the corridor.

“He’s still breathing. Here.” Kang tossed little Vip. Then the four ran even harder. Behind them, lift doors opened and angry men shouted. Pounding feet told of a hotly contested chase.

“Kang!” shouted Hansen, probably using an amplifier. “This isn’t the end of it, Kang!”

Kang laughed. “We can take them,” he said.

“Go, go,” Marten said.

They raced toward the docking tube, Marten in the lead. He forgot what Lycon had told them about shuttle procedure. He didn’t know if the tube doors would only open when their leave was over or whether they could come back early and get in.

“Here we go,” Marten said, pitching his projac to Kang. Marten hit the tube door with a grunt, fumbled with the slot and slid the card through. “Open,” he pleaded.

“Here they come,” Omi said.

“Try it again!” snarled Lance.

Marten slid the card again, and again. He cursed, turned the card and slid it through a last time. The door opened. They piled through, Marten last of all. He glanced back. Three monitors with guns raced into view, one of them short wide-shouldered Ervil together with his taller, dark-haired companion. Hansen, his thin hair disheveled and his face flushed and sweaty, came up behind them.

“Stop!” shouted Hansen.

The door closed and Marten raced up the boarding tube to catch up with the others. Finally, he passed the airlock and entered the military shuttle.

“What are you going to do about your weapons?” whispered Lance. “We can’t take them to the barracks.”

“Wait,” Marten said, who took his projac from Kang.

A minute went by, two, three and four more.

“We made it,” Omi said. “We’re safe—for now.”

Marten heaved off his knee where he’d hidden beside the airlock. He slid into a seat and grinned. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.” He raised his projac. “We’ll break them apart and flush them down the toilet once we take off.”

Lance shook his head. “Sure hope it works.”

“Yeah,” Marten said. “Me too.”

11.

Earth—Joho Mountains, China Sector

Taking a billion civilian casualties hardly seemed like a victory, especially when added to the loss of the Japanese home islands, the evaporation of 700,000 trained soldiers and the destruction of Earth’s naval and air fleets. In return, they had only bled the Highborn by several thousand personnel, a couple hundred orbital fighters and a nearly crippled Doom Star, the Genghis Khan. Still, to date, it was the best Social Unity had been able to achieve against their genetic superiors, and the tactics that had allowed it were the brainchild of General James Hawthorne.

Thus the Earth government’s propaganda mills proclaimed him the Savior of Social Unity, and the Directorate of Inner Planets, led by Madam Director Blanche-Aster, granted him vast powers for the further prosecution of the war.

That had been six months ago. Now General Hawthorne paced in his office in China Sector as he spoke via comlink with Director Blanche-Aster. The tall, gaunt Supreme Commander with his wispy blond hair and aristocratic bearing had worn a long path in his carpet. He thought best while pacing, a nervous habit. He wore a green uniform with red piping along the crease of his trousers.

“I can’t help you there, General,” said Madam Director Blanche-Aster. The holo-screen was blank. She had been operated on yesterday, and had said she didn’t feel like having people stare at her, gauging her health.

“Political Harmony Corps chips away at my authority,” said Hawthorne. “Six months ago PHC worked hand in glove with me. Now they’ve thrown a blizzard of red tape and bad will in my face.”

“You’ve scared them, General. You’ve shown them a Social Unity world where they wield diminished power.”

“Nonsense!”

“General Hawthorne,” she said. “For the last time. I can’t help you there. You must accept the reemergence of PHC hostility and concentrate on military matters. I hesitate to tell you this, but the other directors—Director Gannel has gained a following. I must tread carefully when arbitrating between you and PHC. There’s nothing more I can say.”

Hawthorne swung his long arms behind his back. So it had come to this. It was going to make everything that much harder.

“About the Bangladesh,” said Blanche-Aster. “The attack must not fail.”

“No military endeavor is without risks.”

“But you assured me we would catch the Highborn by surprise.”

“I still believe we shall,” said Hawthorne. “Yet a good commander has contingency plans. I cannot simply point my finger and say: Here I will win.”

“Don’t be fatuous, General.

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“We must win somewhere,” said Blanche-Aster. “We must hurt the Highborn. Make them bled.”

“The Sun Works Factory is such a place,” Hawthorne said. “It is their supply base and headquarters. It is their vulnerable point. The Bangladesh is the best tool we have to hit them, to hurt them, to surprise them—which is probably the only way we could do this.”

“Then… Do you think we will catch them by surprise?” asked Blanche-Aster.

“I wouldn’t have ordered the attack unless I thought so.”

“So it isn’t a gamble?” she asked.

“Director. War is always a gamble. It is the nature of the beast. We have weapons and will, they have weapons and will. Each side reacts to the other.”

“Yes, yes, but—”

“I urge you to relax. To wait patiently.”

“How can I wait?” asked Blanche-Aster. “How do you propose I sit patiently while Director Gannel rouses the others with his militant speeches? General, I don’t think you understand the precariousness of our position.”

“Social Unity is strong,” said Hawthorne. “We are all bound together as one: humanity against the Supremacists. In time our sheer numbers will tell against the genetic freaks.”

There was a pause before Blanche-Aster said, “I was speaking about our positions, General, yours and mine as Supreme War Leader and Madam Director. We can be replaced. Neither of our posts is as secure as only six months ago. The Bangladesh must be victorious.”

“I see,” said Hawthorne.

“I sincerely hope you do, General. PHC wants your head. Director Gannel is after my chair. Only victory somewhere will secure our posts. Now, my doctor has arrived. I must go.”

“Thank you for your time, Director.”

“Yes. Good-bye.”

The link closed.

General Hawthorne continued to pace. The Bangladesh sped toward Mercury, toward its destiny with the Sun Works Factory. Would they catch the Highborn by surprise? He wondered what the space hab’s defenses were like. How did the stationmaster spend his time? If the stationmaster should guess how the attack would be made…

General Hawthorne exhaled sharply. Much rested upon this attack. It was a wild gamble. He knew that. But the Highborn were winning the war and they had to hurt them somehow. He hoped the Bangladesh was the answer, or at the very least, that it would buy him some time until the Cyborgs from Neptune arrived.

12.

Training Master Lycon of the shock troops hurried to his appointment with the Praetor of the Sun Works Factory. Like all Highborn, the Training Master seethed with plans and programs, and never seemed to have enough hours in the day to see them through. Unlike a preman, however, what he did have was endless energy, boundless enthusiasm and a grinding work ethic.

He hoped the Praetor didn’t bring up that wild idea again of castrating his shock troopers. What a preposterous scheme!

Lycon strode down a “street”-sized corridor bustling with harried-looking aides and monitors. They were all premen, the hardest-working and most ambitious among them. Their very rank and unbelievably close access to their genetic superiors proved it.

The overhead lights blazed like miniature suns, while stunted and potted pines lent a forest-like feel to the corridor. The holo-walls had been imaged to look like old log buildings. Quaint, to say the least, and ruined by the modern uniforms everyone wore. The aides provided technical and mechanical help: shipping masters in their silk executive suits, chief industrialists in rough-cut jackets and heavy boots. They wished to show their nearness to the workers they had so recently risen from. There were white-coated computer specialists and solar engineers in their ubiquitous jumpsuits. The monitors were just a fancy name for secret policemen. They were the Highborn’s eyes and ears among the premen masses.

Lycon wore a smart blue uniform with crisscrossing white belts across his torso and another around his waist. A gold “Magnetic Star” First Class decorated his chest and a pitted sidearm rode his hip. Finally finished speaking, he flicked off the recorder in his hand. He loathed losing ideas, and thus spoke into the recorder in order to capture the purest essence of them the moment they arrived.

He was seven feet tall and powerful, and had lightning-like reflexes and pearl-white skin. Older than most Highborn, he had white hair cut close to his scalp so it seemed like panther’s fur. His dark eyes were intense beyond any normal man’s, but regular among Highborn, while his features were severely angular, as if a woodsman had taken an axe to hew him cheeks and a forehead.

“Training Master Lycon?”

Surprised out of his reverie, Lycon glanced about to see who had addressed him. Aides hurried by, their eyes downcast. It was inconceivable that any of them had hailed him. These premen knew better. Then he noticed an older, heavier man in a black uniform and hat. The fool peered up at him, stared at him, in fact, and seemed on the verge of addressing him.

“Sir,” said the man.

Taken aback, Lycon could only raise his hand.

The black-uniformed man paused.

Lycon didn’t recognize him, and he prided himself on being able to distinguish premen. To most Highborn, premen looked alike: dull, gapping stupidity stamped on their features, slow of wit and speech and sluggish almost beyond conception. His work among the shock troopers had allowed Lycon to penetrate the subtle differences, the ones the sub-species found so fascinating among themselves. Still, he didn’t recognize this monitor.

The man blinked anxiously—a much older man, fat instead of merely heavy. The man blinked as if he would gush out with a torrent of words.

Many, actually, most Highborn would have slapped such an impertinent fellow hard enough across the face to knock him down, perhaps even hard enough to break his neck. But Lycon was more tolerant than most Highborn. Perhaps it was because he was beta. His eyes tightened. He loathed that word, beta. He hated any indication that he was less than a superior.

“Yes?” asked Lycon, in a voice as deep as a bear’s.

The old man dipped his head, although he continued to stare upward. “The Praetor asks you to join him in the Gymnasium.”

“Who are you?” said Lycon.

“Chief Monitor Bock, Training Master. I would also like a word with you, if I may.”

“You dare to address me without proper protocol?”

A minute widening of the man’s brown eyes indicated fear. Then he lowered his head and stared at the floor. “Forgive me, Highborn. I meant no offense.”

Lycon grunted. Strict discipline was his guidepost in dealing with premen. He knew the Praetor thought likewise. This… it was more than impertinence. Chief Monitor was the highest rank premen secret policemen could achieve. So…

Lycon’s angular features stiffened. He turned and strode toward the lift to the Gymnasium.

Lot 6, beta, an original, they all were derogatory terms used to describe a so-called inferior Highborn, used by others to describe him! —At least behind his back.

He touched his “Magnetic Star” as his intense eyes narrowed. Beta, eh? Well, he knew that the road to rank went fastest by combat exploits. He would ride his shock troopers roughshod over every obstacle. A hard smile played on his lips. He would use his supposed inferiority to lap his superiors. His beta-ness had allowed him to see a truth that the others missed. No, they didn’t all miss it. Grand Admiral Cassius understood. But he was a rarity among the Top Ranked. This truth was perhaps his single card, his lone ace to play in his quest for greatness. It had gotten him the Magnetic Star in the Japan Campaign. It had earned him this berth in the Sun Works Factory, as the Training Master of the shock troops.

“Training Master!”

Lycon scowled and turned. Who could have addressed him? All he saw were premen. Then he saw the Chief Monitor huffing to catch up. The overweight, older man surely couldn’t have dared to shout at him, could he?

“Training Master,” said Chief Monitor Bock. “I would like a word with you.”

“You shouted at me?”

“I have information about your shock troopers that I’m sure would interest you.”

“So you did shout at me. You actually admit it.”

The Chief Monitor bobbed his head.

Rage washed over Lycon. That the Praetor should use a preman to relay a message was bad enough. That this preman dared speak first was double impertinence. No, it was an insult. The Praetor wanted to rub his nose in his Lot 6-ness. Why else did the Praetor want to meet in the Gymnasium? Why else had the Chief Monitor dared act as he had?

Lycon turned from the Chief Monitor as he struggled to control his rage. Remember that the Praetor is Fourth, and very dangerous. You must watch yourself. He nodded. Although his sponsor was the Grand Admiral, the Admiral was a long way from the Sun Works Factory.

“Wait, Training Master,” Chief Monitor Bock panted. “Your 101st has committed a terrible breach of discipline.”

Lycon rubbed his forehead. The Praetor is Fourth and the Chief Monitor is his preman.

Then Chief Monitor Bock put his hand on Lycon’s arm. “Training Master, please, I would like a word with—”

With an inarticulate roar, Lycon spun around and chopped with the flat of his hand. He caught the flabby Chief Monitor in the neck. Bones snapped. The preman flopped onto the deck, jerking, choking and trying to form words. His eyes boggled and then he relaxed. Blood seeped past his lips.

Lycon blinked at the dead heap. He frowned, looked up and saw the still sea of premen staring at him. His eyes narrowed. The crowd dropped their gaze. He strode to the nearest premen and grabbed him by the arm.

The man mewled in fear.

“What is your rank?” asked Lycon.

“Shipping Master, Second Class, Highborn.”

“Do you have security clearance?”

“Yes, Highborn.”

“Good.” Lycon took out his recorder, flicking it. “Tell me what you just witnessed.”

“Highborn, I saw the Chief Monitor grab your arm.”

“He touched me without my leave then, is that correct?”

“Yes, Highborn.”

The crowd began to slink away.

“Halt!” ordered Lycon.

Everyone froze.

One preman after another spoke into his recorder. They stated that the Chief Monitor had dared grab a Highborn, a death offense. Lycon had simply acted as any Highborn would, defending his honor and person.

Though I am beta, not even the Praetor’s Chief Monitor may dare lay hands on me.

Finally satisfied with his recordings, Lycon let them leave. Then he marched to the lift, wondering how to breach this to the Praetor. He peered at the old-style Western saloon door. A beep told of a successful retina scan. The door slid open and he entered the computerized box. The pioneer motif ended here, thankfully. He was sick of it.

“Gymnasium,” he said.

The door closed and the lift purred as it headed up.

Lycon wondered if the Praetor… No, no, better to keep such suspicions hidden deep inside. The walls had ears. How soon, he wondered, until some tech invented a device that monitored thoughts?

The lift slowed, and Lycon’s premonitions grew. He must tread extra softly. The Praetor would make a terrible enemy. Yet he hoped the Praetor wasn’t going to make the common and mistaken assumption that a beta always rolled over for a superior.

13.

Lycon and the Praetor stood together—he still hadn’t told him about the Chief Monitor. They peered down a walkway railing and at a sandpit, where twelve-year-old boys wrestled. Surrounding the boys stood the coaches, Highborn with silver whistles glittering on their tunics.

The boys were huge and muscular, sweating as they grappled for a throw-hold. They wore loincloths and angry red welts, purple bruises and scars. Each seethed with Highborn vigor, clamped his mouth and breathed heavily through his nose. They moved fast, lunging, grunting, twisting, grinning at successful throws and growling if they left their feet. None asked for quarter. None offered any.

“They fight well,” said the Praetor.

Lycon nodded.

The Praetor towered over Lycon by an easy two feet. His shoulders were broader, his chest deeper and the angles of his face sharper. He wore a loose-fitting brown uniform with green bars on the sleeves. His hands were massive and strong. Like Lycon, his dark hair was cut to his scalp. But his eyes were strangely pink, eerie and unearthly and filled with unholy zeal.

The harsh breathing, the meaty slaps as boys grappled and clutched for holds and the sound of feet kicking sand filled this area.

The training of Highborn had changed since Lycon’s birth.

He rankled at the thought of birth…

It was a taboo subject among the Highborn. None of them had ever been in a fleshly womb. Eugenicists had carefully bioengineered them in labs. Many long years ago, the rulers of Social Unity, of the four Inner Planets, had decided that the good of humanity mandated that the Solar System be governed rationally. Capitalist exploitation and imperialist designs had no place in the scheme of social harmony. Equality of resources meant that the Outer Planets had to share their wealth and technology with the masses in the Inner Planets. But evil men would want to keep their inequities. Selfishness yet ruled in too many hearts. So the rulers of Social Unity had come to the sad conclusion that they needed an army and space fleet second to none. However, the social synthesis policies and quietness of mass humanity—and that the troublemakers had all been killed in the slime pits—meant that soldierly qualities were lacking in the Inner Planets. At least so the rulers believed.

“Let us make super-soldiers,” they said to one another.

The Directorate thus gathered biologists and eugenicists and other needed technicians and began the secret program of bioengineered man. The results were cloned thousands of times over. And so the soldiers were born.

Well, not born exactly, not like regular humans. Test tube babies they would have said in past centuries.

Lab-grown, vat-clones, tankers, the fetuses grew by the hundreds in carefully controlled machines. “Birth” occurred six months after fertilization. The batch obtained its number and feeders and comforters took care of the crying little specimens. Den mother and fathers changed too often for growing pre-soldiers to get attached. In truth, the less said about the first seven years the better. After the seventh year, they entered barracks and school and began their soldiering trade.

Somewhere along the line—before an Invasion Fleet had been sent to the Jupiter Confederation, the closest target—the super-soldiers had decided that they should rule the Inner Planets. Most commentators believed that the decision to rebel had happened after they were given Doom Stars and after they had shown their mettle at the Second Battle of Deep Mars Orbit. Soon thereafter, they bit the hand that fed them. They tried to kill those who had given them birth.

Birth. It was a touchy word with the super-soldiers. And didn’t they need a better name than super-soldiers or space marines? They wanted to be called something that would distinguish them from, from… premen, normals, Homo sapiens (said with a lilting sneer).

What about Highborn?

Yes!

High-BORN.

Perfect.

“Look at the boy over there,” said the Praetor, who stood with his shoulders arrogantly thrust back and his head as erect and predatory as an eagle.

Lycon nodded. He saw him: A long-armed lad with a bloody nose. He clutched an opponent in a full nelson. The boy’s hands were pressed against the back of his opponent’s head, while his arms were wrapped under his opponent’s armpits.

Whistles blew as instructors noticed the two.

“Will he kill him?” asked the Praetor.

Lycon was shocked to realize that he would.

The winning boy’s teeth were visible as his lips curled in a savage snarl. His forearm muscles were stark and trembling, his neck was seemingly made of cords and cables as he strained with all his might. The other boy’s head bent lower and lower, but he refused to cry out or ask for quarter.

Lycon resisted the urge to leap over the barrier and into the sandpit. He disproved of killing one so young. Revival at this age strangely tainted them. He recalled a Lot 6 specimen by the name of Sigmir. He shook his head. If he jumped down and stopped the lad from killing the weaker boy, he knew he would lose rank in the Praetor’s eyes. He couldn’t afford that, not today.

“Well?” asked the Praetor. “Will he kill him or not?”

The instructors shrilly blew their whistles as they rushed toward the two boys.

The crack of a breaking neck was loud and sinister. The killer didn’t gasp in disbelief at what he’d done. He simply let go and watched the corpse drop onto the sand.

The instructors knocked the killer aside as they knelt beside the dead boy, with his head titled at an impossible angle. Pneumospray hypos appeared in their hands and hissed as the instructors pumped Suspend into the corpse.

“Will they be in time?” asked the Praetor.

“It seems so,” said Lycon.

“Yes,” said the Praetor. “The boy should make a clean revival.”

In 2350, the dead didn’t always stay down. Resurrection techniques revived many if Suspend froze their brains and various organs in time.

“What will happen to the other boy?” asked Lycon.

“The killer?” said the Praetor.

Lycon waited. Over-talkativeness was a bad trait.

“He will be punished,” said the Praetor, “and marked as a ranker, a climber.”

Lycon had known it would be so. Teach them to obey, but use a natural killer where he belonged: leading combat troops. The Praetor ran the Gymnasium strictly according to regulations.

“Come with me,” said the Praetor.

They strolled along the walkway, passing other sandpits: knife-training areas, boxing matches and battle-stick duels. Lycon kept debating with himself when he should tell the Praetor about today’s little incident.

“You are an infantry specialist,” the Praetor said. “What is your analysis of our future?”

“They are well-trained.”

“And strong, yes?

“Big and strong,” said Lycon.

“True Highborn,” the Praetor said.

Lycon nodded, not trusting himself to speak, wondering if the Praetor meant more by the remark.

They came to the end of the walkway. To the left, stairs led down to a staging area. The Praetor ignored the stairs. He kept heading toward the wall.

“Praetor,” said Lycon.

The Praetor turned.

“Did you instruct your Chief Monitor to relay a message to me today?”

“You query me, Training Master?”

“Your Chief Monitor spoke to me. I’m simply curious if he was ordered by you to do so.”

“He had no orders from me,” the Praetor said.

“It was from him that I learned to come to the Gymnasium.”

The Praetor appeared surprised. “I left a note on my door. Perhaps he read it and took it upon himself to deliver the message.”

“Ah,” said Lycon.

“He spoke with you?”

“The Chief Monitor hailed me.”

“Without correct address?” the Praetor asked.

Lycon nodded.

“He will be punished.”

Lycon rubbed his jaw. “He touched me. He grabbed my arm to stop me.”

The Praetor blinked. “You can verify this?”

Lycon hid his anger at being asked such a question. “I struck him for this outrage. Unfortunately, my blow killed.”

“You killed my Chief Monitor?”

Lycon pulled out his recorder. “If you would care to replay this…”

The Praetor accepted the slender recorder and listened to the premen. “You acted correctly,” he said later, returning the recorder.

“It was not my wish to kill him,” said Lycon.

“Next time I won’t select a fool for a Chief Monitor. I hold no ill will, Training Master.”

Lycon dipped his head.

“Now, come with me.” The Praetor strode toward the wall.

Lycon was puzzled but said nothing. He was relieved the Praetor had taken the Chief Monitor’s death so well. Some Highborn became attached to their premen.

The Praetor strode to the wall, glanced about—no one seemed to be watching—and spoke sharply. A section of wall slid open. The Praetor hurried through and Lycon followed.

Behind them, the wall section slid shut. Lights snapped on. They stood in a small changing room, complete with lockers and benches. The Praetor marched to the farthest bench and opened a locker, taking out leather garments.

“Yours are in the next one,” said the Praetor.

Lycon hesitated.

The Praetor, perhaps alert for this, asked, “Is something wrong, Training Master?”

“I don’t understand the meaning of this.”

“Exercise.”

“I have plenty of it while training the shock troops.”

“I’m certain of that, Training Master. But I have so many chores and tasks that often I’m forced to skip physical activity. Also, you’re an infantry specialist. So I wanted your opinion, and how better than to actually engage in it.”

“It, Praetor?”

“Oh, do leave me my surprises, Training Master. It’s finally ready and you’re the first beside me to run through it.”

Highborn prided themselves on snap decisions. Lycon wasn’t any different. “Yes, of course,” he said.

He disrobed, folding his blue uniform. Beside him, the Praetor did likewise. Both were highly muscled and perfectly toned. Flab appeared nowhere on the Praetor, despite his protests of lack of exercise. Lycon was thinner and leaner, although compared to a preman he was massive and thick. Both donned skin-suits and went barefoot.

“You’ll have to leave your sidearm behind,” the Praetor said.

Lycon set his big gun on top of his uniform. Then he put them in a locker.

“Take this,” said the Praetor.

Lycon accepted gauntlets with small iron knobs on the knuckles. He watched the Praetor slip on his own pair.

“Are we to spar?” asked Lycon.

The Praetor’s weird pink eyes seemed to glitter. “Does such a prospect worry an infantry specialist?”

“Only a fool ignores the odds,” Lycon said. “I do not like to think of myself as a fool.”

“Well said, Training Master. No, it is not my wish to spar today. Rather, we hunt.”

“What?”

“That is an interesting question,” the Praetor said. “I haven’t yet thought of a formal name. Perhaps after today you can name them for me.”

Lycon liked this less and less. He followed the Praetor out the locker room and through another sliding wall.

14.

They entered a huge room unlike any other in the Sun Works Factory, a former zoological area. It seemed endless. Sand, tall cacti and sagebrush was everywhere, together with rolling dunes and rust-colored boulders. Overhead, an undeterminable distance away, shined what seemed to be a sun. A breeze blew. Birds called.

“Observe,” said the Praetor, pointing.

Lycon frowned. A vulture wheeled overhead. “Is it real?”

“A holo-image, but very convincing. Yes?”

“Are there any real animals here?”

“Most certainly.”

“The ones we are to hunt?” asked Lycon.

The Praetor said, “Perhaps hunt isn’t the correct word. Perhaps it is we who are the prey.” He slapped the wall. “We can’t get out this way. We have to cross the dunes to the other side.”

Lycon dared put a hand on the Praetor’s forearm. “Am I to believe that you would allow yourself to be hunted, the Praetor of the Sun Works Factory, the Fourth Highest among us?”

The Praetor stared haughtily at the hand.

Lycon removed it.

The Praetor considered the dunes as he expanded his massive chest. He exuded power and rank and something the Highborn referred to as excellence. “Yes. I allow myself to be hunted.”

“Why? “To prove a point.”

“Which is?”

“Walk with me,” the Praetor said, with a harder tone.

Lycon moved on the balls of his feet, listening, watching and ready for some insane beast, a wolf-tiger hybrid or some other monstrosity, to leap out and attack.

The Praetor also watched, his head swiveling like a lion, his pink eyes alert and alive.

“It would help if I knew what to look for,” Lycon said.

“I will pose a question. How can two million Highborn conquer the Solar System?”

Was this a complaint against the Grand Admiral’s strategy? Lycon didn’t think so, but…

“Earth alone holds forty billion premen,” the Praetor said.

“Our conquest of the Inner Planets moves strictly according to the Grand Admiral’s scheme,” said Lycon

“Ah,” the Praetor said. “Therein is your reluctance, eh? Rest assured that I am not asking in a seditious manner. No. Think of it as a… as a philosophical question.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

The Praetor froze. His nostrils widened. Tension coiled with unbelievable urgency. Although motionless, a frenzy seemed to have gripped him.

Lycon also tested the air, but he could detect nothing unusual. A whispery wind stirred grit against a nearby boulder. Before them rose a dune dotted with sagebrush.

The Praetor minutely twisted his head. Then he set out in a half crouch. Lycon followed, wary, troubled and alert. They crested the dune. Before them, spread a tiny valley. Boulders rose here and there. Giant cacti held aloft their spiky branches. The breeze rattled grit in shifting patterns over the hardpan.

Tension oozed from the Praetor, although his pink eyes seemed to shine as he regarded Lycon. “Two million, Training Master. Just a mere two million Highborn to conquer billions of premen. Oh, we have replacements as you’ve just seen. But a handful, really, a hundred thousand each year. Say we do conquer the Solar System. How can we control them?”

Lycon grew even more wary. “You are Fourth, Praetor. I am certain such questions engage your energies. As for me, I train the shock troopers.”

“Which is exactly why I pose you the question. Come. This way.”

The Praetor started down the hill. His eyes roved everywhere. He paused once to test the wind. Lycon followed. At a boulder the Praetor stopped. He touched the towering rock. “Take a look around.”

Lycon scrambled up the boulder. He peered at every shadow. Then he jumped down and shook his head.

The Praetor appeared puzzled, and a twitch of annoyance crossed his features. He strode several steps before he froze. He turned back. A strange ecstasy now softened his features. When he spoke, it was with husky overtones.

“I’ve read your paper, Training Master.”

Lycon tested the wind. He smelled nothing unusual. Were the Praetor’s senses so much sharper than his? He disliked the idea.

“Janissaries in 2350,” the Praetor said.

“Oh.”

“Please, no false modesty. We both know the Grand Admiral fawns on historical anecdotes.”

“I might phrase it differently.”

“Finally!” the Praetor said. “We see the Janissary Lieutenant-Aga speaking, not simply the meek Training Master of Shock Troopers.”

Lycon debated with himself. The Grand Admiral had sponsored him. To the Grand Admiral lay his loyalties, while the Praetor had perhaps already mocked him with Chief Monitor Bock, perhaps mocked him even now.

“You have addressed a profound problem,” Lycon said. “Two million of us, billions of them. There may be many answers. One of them, I believe, has been supplied by history.”

“By your Janissaries?”

Lycon nodded.

The Janissaries had been an extraordinary invention of the Ottoman Turks of the Middle Ages. Yeni-Tzeri or “New Soldiers,” had become the corps d’elite of the conquering Ottomans. “Send in the Janissaries” became a cry to terrify the world. An empire had been carved with them. Yet not one soldier in the Janissaries had been Turkish. All had been the children of Christian parents who had lived within the Muslim Ottoman Empire.

Every five years the Muslim Sultan levied the Christians parents with a general conscription. Seven-year-old sons—of the Christians only—were inspected. Those of promising physique and intelligence were taken, never to return home or see their parents again. In the Muslim capital, they were given further tests. Those who seemed destined to strength and endurance went to special camps. Harsh training, enforced abstinence, countless privations and strict discipline turned them into hard professional soldiers. They were forbidden to marry or have families. Rather, pride in their order was taught. Pride in their privileges and battle skills.

Christian by birth, Spartan by upbringing and fanatical Moslems by conversion, the Janissaries combined the arrogant militarism of the West with the religious fanaticism of the East. With scimitar, arquebus and round shield they had carved an empire for their Ottoman overlords. More than simple slave-soldiers and much greater than mere mercenaries, the Janissaries had been unique.

“You’ve modeled your shock troopers on them,” the Praetor said.

Lycon agreed.

The Praetor sneered. “Slave soldiers, Training Master, that’s all they really are. The same as the Free Earth Corps fools who enlisted under the Grand Admiral’s banner.”

“You speak of Mamelukes, Praetor.”

“I said slave soldiers.”

“So the Mamelukes were, at least originally. Enslaved horse-archers sold in the Egyptian slave marts. They became the first warriors to defeat the conquering Mongols.”

“Ah. You spout historical anecdotes. Illusions propped up by official lies that we dare say is the truth.”

“You are wrong to spurn facts, Praetor. History is simply race experience. A wise man studies past errors so he can avoid the obvious pitfalls before him.”

The Praetor’s weird pink eyes narrowed.

“Slave soldiers or Mamelukes can under the right conditions prove to be excellent warriors,” Lycon said. “As I would argue our FEC Armies are now worthwhile. But Janissaries, that is another type of soldier. Ideas, even more than force or simple rewards, motivated them.”

The Praetor exploded with passion. “Do you believe your shock troopers to be loyal?”

“I stake my reputation on it,” said Lycon.

“So we must put all our trust in you then?”

“Praetor, each shock trooper is a proven soldier, a FEC Army hero from the Japan Campaign. Each of them has already fought hard in our cause.”

“So you base such assumptions on bits of tin?” asked the Praetor.

“I base it on past actions and performances.”

The Praetor ran massive fingers through his hair. Blood flushed his features. He turned away and in a half crouch slid toward a new boulder.

“Battling on a planet is one thing, Training Master. War in space… we must be doubly and triply certain of premen loyalty there.”

“If we can’t trust the shock troops, who can we trust?” Lycon asked.

The Praetor stopped, and straightened. A strange smile played on his lips. “You state my own worry. Two million of us, as you’ve said, billions and more billions of them. If they ever learned to fight, even a little bit… How can we defeat them all, and then rule them?”

“Increase the number of Highborn,” Lycon said.

“Are you certain that’s wise?”

“I don’t understand,” Lycon said carefully.

“Come now, Training Master. You, a beta, don’t understand?”

Lycon stiffened.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I meant no offense. But surely it’s clear to you that our bio-geneticists will keep improving us.”

Lycon kept his features immobile. “You are Fourth, Praetor, and are surely privy to policies and questions that if spoken or thought of by someone like me would be considered treasonous.”

“Meaning?”

“That I am under-qualified to consider such things.”

The Praetor tapped his muscled thigh. “Then… I should throw out your paper?”

“Might that not be hasty, Praetor? Why not let the shock troopers prove themselves. Actions after all speak louder than boasts.”

The Praetor twisted his lips. “So if your shock troopers proved treasonous…”

“Do you have any evidence of treason?”

“Not yet.”

Lycon considered the holo-clouds. He couldn’t understand the Praetor’s dislike of the shock troops. Yet clearly, it was there, as well as threats.

“I have a counter-proposal for you, Training Master.”

“You merely need order me,” said Lycon.

“I do not want automatons. I want believers.”

“Believers in what way?” asked Lycon.

“Your Janissary idea has certain promise. Take and convert is right. But ideas—we cannot trust premen to hold to mere ideas. Look how easily we’ve shifted these socialists and turned them into capitalists.”

“The upper crust has shifted,” Lycon said.

“They are the only ones that matter. In any case, take and convert, change, in other words.”

“My shock troopers—”

The Praetor waved that aside. “Sometimes they will fight as trained, for even the FEC soldiers fought. But what if I produced men who will always fight and do exactly what I train them to do?”

“Why not use both our ideas?” asked Lycon.

The Praetor’s nostrils twitched. He grinned. “Let me show you why not.” He moved sideways toward the nearest boulder.

And now Lycon noticed a new odor. It was subtle and musty.

The Praetor hissed. Lycon hurried beside him. “Look,” whispered the Praetor, as he knelt beside the boulder. Lycon saw the footprint, man-sized, preman. He frowned at the Praetor, who rose and scanned the small valley. “Ah. There.” Lycon followed the Praetor’s gesture. He caught a glimpse of deep blue. The color stood out in this stark landscape.

“They’re hiding,” whispered Lycon.

“No. They’re flanking us.”

Lycon stared at the Praetor, who kept watching the dunes. “How many of them are there?” asked Lycon.

“Six.”

Lycon frowned. “Why all this caution, Praetor? Do the premen have weapons?”

“Indeed.”

Lycon dropped to a crouch and scanned all around. “Lasers or carbines?” he snapped.

“Knives.”

“Knives?” asked Lycon, wondering why he’d been worried.

“Meter-long knives”

“Six premen with knives?” Lycon asked, as he rose from his crouch.

“Too few do you think?”

“Praetor…” Lycon frowned more deeply than before.

“No, I am not so soft that six premen frighten me. But these aren’t premen.”

“What are they then?”

“You tell me,” the Praetor said. “Here they come.”

Lycon saw five blue-colored men march down the dune toward them. Despite the strange color, they were normal-sized. Their eyes bulged, although not in fear but intense hatred. Their taut muscles quivered. They wore loincloths and wielded glittering meter-long knives. A strong odor exuded from them.

“Are they combat-trained?” Lycon asked.

“No.”

“Why do you consider them so fearsome?”

“Tell me, Training Master. Do they look afraid?”

Lycon observed no fear. Strange, unless…

“Do they cower as most premen would against two such as us?” asked the Praetor, the way a father might ask another about his son.

“Are they familiar with Highborn?” asked Lycon.

A harsh laugh and a nod told him the answer.

“You said there were six of them,” said Lycon. “I count five.”

A startling cry, from behind, surprised him. Lycon spun around. A blue man sliding toward them sprang at him. The man moved fast. His knife flashed. Lycon twisted minutely. His gauntlet smashed the leering face. Lycon picked up the knife. He turned and raced to help the Praetor, who set himself against five sprinting, snarling, bestial premen.

Only a Highborn could have followed the swift moves. These premen had uncanny reflexes. They circled the Praetor, and together lunged at him. A knife slashed skin. Blood spurted. The Praetor roared, kicked and punched. Two blue men flew backward. Knives stabbed again. One blade now stuck from the Praetor’s thigh like a growth. Then Lycon jumped among them, a whirlwind of thrusts and blocks. Seven seconds more and it was over. Six blue corpses lay bleeding and broken on the sand.

Lycon turned toward the Praetor, who jerked the knife from his thigh. He ripped a strip of buckskin from his garment and tied it around his wounded leg.

“Is it bad?” asked Lycon.

“Lucky for us I didn’t give them poison.”

It was only then that Lycon realized he had a cut under his ribs. It was shallow, but it was there. That was amazing.

“You said they weren’t combat trained,” Lycon said.

“They weren’t,” said the Praetor.

“Why were they so fast and clever?”

“Faster than any normal man, yes?”

“Unless a soldier took a dose of Tempo,” Lycon said. But even then he wouldn’t be so fast.”

The Praetor limped to the nearest blue corpse. “Let me show you this.”

Lycon went to the other side.

The Praetor ripped away the loincloth.

Lycon saw it immediately. The man’s genitals had been removed.

“Gelded,” the Praetor said.

Lycon stared up sharply. “Surely the removal of his sex organs didn’t grant him such speed.”

“Each was given a new internal organ. Said organ seeps Tempo and other drugs directly into their bloodstream.”

“What?” said Lycon. Direct tampering?

“Naturally, they must eat certain foods for the new organ to manufacture these drugs. But the toxins in their skin cause them to crave these foods.”

“Toxins?”

“They are tattooed into the skin.”

Lycon studied the altered men. Part of him considered this monstrous. Another part—“They’re Neutraloids,” he said. “You’ve neutered them, but made them…” Lycon shook his head in wonder.

“What did you call them?”

“Neutraloids.”

The Praetor clapped his hands. “I accept the name. They are Neutraloids. And these are what we must have in space with us.”

“Instead of the shock troopers?”

“Can you think of any reason why not?”

Lycon pondered the six corpses. Gelded. Implanted with a new organ. Tattooed over their entire body, and that a deep blue color. “Yes, Praetor, I can think of several reasons.”

“Please enumerate them.”

“Perhaps once I have pondered—”

The Praetor limped beside Lycon. “I picked you, Training Master, because you’re unbiased. You hope to ride your shock troopers. I’ve read your paper and understood that immediately. Yet here I’ve shown you a new and better way to rise.”

“Certainly they fought savagely,” said Lycon.

“Which is exactly what we need.”

“But why are they castrated?”

“Why is that bad?” asked the Praetor.

“It will ruin the morale of other premen.”

“Ah. I see your point. Already you’ve been helpful. Good, good. Now, I propose that only space soldiers be converted. Leave the FEC Armies alone for now. But in space, our very special preserve, here we inject only the Neutraloids and none of the other lesser species. Of course we keep the making of Neutraloids secret from the FEC masses.”

“It won’t stay secret for long,” Lycon said.

“The trick will be in doing it for long enough.”

“Not that I agree with you,” Lycon said, “but I understand your reasoning. My second objection is the new gland.”

“Meaningless. Only the space soldiers will be so converted. The others will not have to fear it.”

“It isn’t the reaction of the premen I was thinking about. Rather, the cost, time and effort to plant these organs into these… these Neutraloids.”

“Hmm. Any other objections?”

“They attacked us.”

“They had been ordered to do.”

“Will they obey orders not to?” asked Lycon.

The Praetor frowned, hesitated and then admitted, “Their worldview has become distorted. They are pessimists. Hate dominates their thinking and a certain feeling of futility. A right combination of drugs will correct that.”

Lycon nodded thoughtfully.

“Any other objections?”

“Praetor, as I see it you mean drugs to replace ideas as the motive force.”

“Drugs are more trustworthy.”

“I’m not so certain. In any case, they’re more expensive. With ideas we’ve pried millions of Social Unitarians onto our side.”

“Fear did that,” the Praetor said.

“Fear helped,” agreed Lycon.

The Praetor expanded his chest. He seemed to consider his words. “Are you with me?”

“I am not against you.”

“Let me rephrase. The shock troops will make perfect test subjects. This week we should begin to convert them into Neutraloids.”

“But the shock troops are trained and ready to deploy,” Lycon said.

“Let me be frank, Training Master. I do not trust premen in space. On planets and at this point in our conquest we need them. In space and in our spacecraft, we must have utterly loyal soldiers. Space is the high ground. We dare not take chances there.”

“I tell you that shock troops are loyal.”

The Praetor stared at Lycon. “For your sake you’d better be right.”

15.

“We can’t do it,” whispered Omi. “Not with those new spy-sticks the Training Master put in.”

The 101st lay asleep in their bunks, Kang already snoring. Several days had passed since their return from the Pleasure Palace. Yesterday the entire shock troop regiment had been marched onto the training field. Lycon had stepped onto a stand and addressed them in his deep voice. He told them about the spy-sticks, about rumors of disloyalty and that nothing would stand in his way of making their names shine among the Highborn. They, the shock troopers, could climb in rank and privilege as long as they remained loyal. Disloyalty, traitorous actions after they had been given so much—no, the Training Master couldn’t envision that from any of them.

“Why doesn’t he tell us about the upcoming gelding?” Marten had whispered to Omi.

The Training Master had warned them that when they were away from the barracks they should be careful. Not everyone in the Sun Works Factory wanted them to succeed and gain rank. However, even given that, such things shouldn’t concern them. Excellence alone was what every one of them should strive for.

“We can’t do it,” Omi whispered from his bunk.

Marten rolled out.

“They just put in spy-sticks,” Omi hissed. “The watchers will be alert.”

“I have a timetable to keep.”

“Because of Nadia? Because you want to see her again?”

Marten eased into the slick-suit he’d secreted under his bunk. It was a smooth piece of body-fabric that clung to every muscle. He picked up the barcode eraser and ran it over his tattoo.

“Madness,” whispered Omi.

Marten leaned near. “It’s better if I do this alone.”

Omi stared at him in the darkness, rolled over and pulled the blanket over his head.

Marten crept out of the 101st’s sleep zone and through the 910th and 52nd’s. He checked both ways, slid open a window whose tripwire he’d spliced yesterday and rerouted. Crawling through, he shut the window and removed a floor-piece outside. His body ached and he craved sleep. Shock trooper training went apace with brutal intensity. He slipped a stim-pill and waited. Chemical strength soon flooded. He was going to pay one of these days, but hopefully on the long trip to the Jupiter Confederation and not as a gelded neuter here.

He took the sucker climbing equipment from the hidden floor space, the elbow, kneepads and gloves, and like a fly—pop, pop, pop as quietly as he could—climbed the tall barracks building. The brown-colored cube rose over a track and field area where the Highborn ran them like dogs every day and night. He couldn’t cross the area on foot with the new spy-sticks in place.

He reached the top of the barracks, his muscles quivering from the exertion, and rested for a moment. Then he shucked off the climbing equipment and crawled to the barracks’ flagpole. He shimmied to the top, unclipped a line from his belt, swung the hook twice and threw it. With a soft click, it latched to the ceiling vent. He tested it, closed his eyes as he muttered a prayer, and then hoisted himself to the vent. The fit between the grilles was tight, but he crawled through, coiled his line and hooked it to his belt. Then he put his back against one side of the shaft and his feet against the other and climbed like a crab. By the time he reached the joint where the shaft leveled, he dripped with sweat.

Ten minutes later, he dropped from a vent in a maintenance area. He donned a previously hidden maintenance uniform, opened a door-lock and jogged down a utility corridor. Five kilometers later, he opened another hatch and walked briskly past other maintenance personnel with their mops, buckets and spray kits. Soon he passed dockworkers and shuttle mechanics. He entered a huge hanger buzzing with lifts removing shuttle engines and yellow-suited mechanics working on the engines or shuttles. Foremen shouted. Welding equipment created bright arc-glares. Marten hurried, nodded at a man who yelled at him and pointed at Marten’s bare head. Everyone else wore hardhats. Marten stepped through a door and walked down the carpeted corridor. He passed men and women drinking coffee in a cafeteria and opened a door with a restricted sign.

He jogged again and entered a different hanger. This one was empty, with a dusty floor and feeling of disuse. He hurried down rows of fifty-foot shelves made of girders and steel sheets. Finally, he reached his destination. Up four shelves sat two boxes. One should be marked: sealant.

He lacked a forklift, so he climbed the shelves. At the box, he balanced himself and crowbarred the lid, looked in and smiled.

“I knew you’d do it,” he whispered.

Marten removed the baggies, stuffed the vacc-suit and helmet into a duffel bag and returned to the floor. He checked his chronometer. Lycon might call an emergency drill in another hour. That would be cutting it tight if he tried to make it back in time. But the Training Master might not call one. He’d hope for luck.

Marten exited the empty hanger, strode to a new utility corridor and set off on the six-kilometer jog. Halfway there he palmed another stim, knowing the price his body would soon demand, or even worse that he would give himself a heart attack. Maybe that was the price of freedom, or attempting freedom.

“Don’t think, Marten. Do.”

He wondered if Nadia would keep her appointment. He hoped so. Then the stim kicked in and he increased the pace.

17.

Marten staggered, caught himself and leaned against the wall as he wheezed. He shivered and wondered if he was sick.

“Marten?”

He willed himself upright. Nadia looked better than he remembered. Her hair was combed, her face clean and not disheveled. She seemed worried for him. He liked that, and smiled.

“You look awful,” she said.

He used his sleeve to wipe his forehead.

“And you’re shivering,” she said.

He felt cold, that’s true.

“Are you sure you can do this?” she asked.

“How have you been?”

“You’re kidding, right? I’m hunted. I’ve lost my job. If I get caught I’m dead. Oh, I’ve been fine. You?”

“Did you bring water?”

She stared at him before handing him a flask.

He drained it despite the queasiness in his stomach. He needed fluids. “Do you have any more?”

“You’re a camel,” she asked, handing him a second flask.

He drained that one too, although he almost threw up. The sweat on his face started to dry. He shivered, feeling colder than before.

“I don’t think you can do this,” she said.

“I’m not dead.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“When I’m dead I’ll quit. Until then it’s simply mind over matter.”

“Oh, you’re one of those. You can think things into existence. Like bullets in the belly wouldn’t stop you, not if you will-powered them away.”

He grinned. “It’s good to see you, Nadia.” He opened the duffel bag, pulled out the vacc suit and started donning it. She already wore hers.

“Do you really think we can do this?” she asked.

“Did you bring the line and the magnetic anchor?”

“It was all where you said it should be. How did you get it? That’s what I kept wondering.”

“It was stashed several years ago,” he said.

Interest flickered on her face. “Who put it there?”

“Me.”

“You lived here before the war?” she asked in surprise.

“My parents were Unionists. PHC got them both.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

He shrugged. “That was several years ago.”

She stepped closer and touched his face. “You were a Nonconformist?”

“The square peg,” he said bitterly.

“When you say that, your eyes…” She nodded. “Maybe we can do this.”

“Ready?” he asked, with the vacc helmet in his hands.

“Do you have stims?” she asked.

“If I take another one, my heart will explode. But I still have a lot of will power.”

She shook her head. “If you can joke about it, it can’t be that bad.”

“Right,” he said, putting on the helmet and snapping the seals. He still felt nauseous and shivered, but this was the time to do it. He hefted the magnetic anchor, a long flexible coil-line and the tool kit she’d brought that his mother had once made. All this was backup equipment from a time he would rather forget. He sighed. He’d better remember if he wanted off the Sun Works.

A valve hissed and oxygen flooded his vacc suit. Nadia was ready, so he moved to the hatch.

A few minutes later, they exited the airlock and switched on their boots. With a metallic clang, clang, clang they walked outside the Sun Works, the magnetic attraction keeping them on the shadowy side of the station. The Plexiglas dome was to their right, but now they were looking into the hab, not out. From their subjective sense, Mercury loomed above, while all around in the distance moved a myriad of lights that indicated repair pods, shuttles and various spacecraft, hundreds, maybe thousands of them in an ever moving, shifting pattern.

Marten pointed. Nadia nodded. They didn’t have radios or comlinks. This was going to be done with hand signals. She came beside him. He couldn’t see into her helmet. Like his, the visor was polarized against sun-glare. She grabbed his free hand. He smiled, but all he saw was her dark visor.

Hand-in-hand they moved one hundred meters. He checked his bearings, stopped and pointed at the dead pod floating above, the small engine with a dome built around a pilot’s seat and that had three arms, a clamping arm, a laser-welder arm and an arm that riveted. The pod had the same velocity-spin as the habitat and therefore stayed at exactly the same relative position. It was nearly a hundred meters out of reach.

Marten attached the anchor to the Sun Works and snapped the line to it. The other end of the line he snapped to his belt. He switched off his magnetic boots, judged the distance and leaped at the dead pod. He floated from Nadia. He looked back and waved. She waved back. Then he watched the nearing pod. Closer, closer, he stretched and tried to claw it. Then he relaxed and sighed as he floated past the pod by several arms-lengths. He started reeling himself back to the magnetic anchor, looping the line as he went. Nadia reeled him from her end. In time, he was back on the Sun Works. He studied the pod, gauged his earlier failure and remembered that both the satellite and the pod moved as he sailed through space. He leaped again, floated toward it, closer, closer—his fingertips brushed across the pod’s skin, sliding, sliding. Then his fingers curled around a float rail. He hung on. His momentum pulled him and his forearm strained. He used his other hand and pulled himself to the pod, and switched on his boots.

Marten whooped with delight, the sound loud in his helmet, and he no longer shivered. He began to explore.

The pod wasn’t locked, which was a big break. He wedged himself into the tiny cabin. The controls looked fine. He tried turning it on. Dead. Nothing. Okay, he hadn’t expected it to work. He used tools from the kit and pulled out a panel. A blown fuse box. He hoped that was all that was wrong with the pod.

He moved outside, attached the line and hand over hand hauled himself to Nadia. Together, very gently, they tugged the pod toward them. Its mass was several tons, so they didn’t want to build up momentum. Instead, they waited fifteen minutes until it arrived. Then they used gentle pressure to stop it and they dragged it with them and secured it near the airlock. That was all they could do for now, so they entered the airlock, waited for it to pressurize and soon stepped into the observation pit.

He took off his helmet.

“You did it,” she said, hugging him.

They laughed. He peered into her eyes and that was a mistake. She was beautiful and he kissed her.

She arched her head, staring at him in surprise.

A mixture of impulses surged through him. He ignored the ones that said slow down, this might not be wise. He put his hand behind her head and kissed her again. She responded, and then both his arms were around her.

“Marten,” she whispered.

He pulled back, blinking, finally thinking about what he was doing. “I have to go,” he said.

“Not now.”

“I’m late already.”

“But…”

“Don’t worry. Tomorrow—”

She kissed him. “Are you really sure you want to go?”

“I don’t want to go.”

“Let’s hide together like the Nonconformists.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. “What about my friends? I won’t be able to slip into the barracks and get them if the Highborn are hunting for me. Especially now. The Training Master is worried about something.”

“Is Hansen—?”

“There’s no time to explain. I need a class 5a fuse box and a cylinder of hydrogen propellant. The way you’ll get them—I’d better write it down so you won’t forget.”

She disengaged, stared into his eyes and turned away. “…I don’t know if can do this.”

He put a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll have the trip to the Jupiter Confederation together.”

“With all your friends along?” she asked.

“Nadia!”

She turned and forced a smile. “What do I need?”

She wrote as he removed his vacc suit, telling her. He then stored the suit in a locker by the airlock.

“Tomorrow, same time,” he said.

She nodded, but brooded.

He shouldn’t have kissed her. He turned to go, came back, hugged her and kissed her again. They lingered.

“I’ll come back,” he said.

“You’d better.”

He touched her face, pulled free and hurried for the barracks.

18.

Hansen’s stomach cramped, so he popped another pill and suppressed a groan. He hurried down the same street where Chief Monitor Bock had been slain. Pain creased Hansen’s sly features. The doctors said he couldn’t feel the stitches in his abdominal region where Marten Kluge had shot him. Where the ice slivers had melted and drugged him. But he didn’t trust the doctors. He felt those stitches all right.

Hansen mopped his face with his sleeve. He would have scowled, but that increased the pain, the eternal cramp. Ah! It tightened. Hansen leaned against a holo-pine on the wall, breathing heavily.

Here in this very street Chief Monitor Bock had spoken with Training Master Lycon. Hansen had talked to a monitor who had witnessed everything. He had warned Bock against bringing the charges to the Training Master. Highborn were notoriously touchy about their areas of authority. Stubborn Bock, outraged at how the shock troopers had stolen from him and killed one of his top operatives in the cutting room, Bock had claimed he had them. Shootings in public, assaulting policemen Bock had ranted. Well, Bock was dead, slain by the Training Master. It was amazing really. The files said that Lycon was a paragon of Highborn virtue. Yet he had killed the Chief Monitor in order to protect Marten Kluge and his allies. It was very strange and unusual. Despite his warning to Bock, Hansen still couldn’t fathom it.

And now he’d been summoned to see the Praetor.

Hansen mopped his face and dared touch his stomach. Pain flared. He groaned. The Praetor—why did the lord of the Sun Works Factory want to speak with him?

He popped another painkiller, straightened his uniform and hurried down the street.

Had the Training Master known about the dust? Is that why he’d killed Bock? Hansen dreaded the pain booth and even more, he dreaded the, the… He groaned. He didn’t even want to envision the punishment worse than the pain booth, no, not for a moment. The Highborn were unbelievably cruel and savage. Oh, why had he ever agreed to help Bock make and sell dream dust? They had money, lots and lots of money, that’s true. They were almost millionaires now—well, Bock had been a near millionaire—but that was meaningless before the wrath of the Highborn.

“Why, Bock?” whispered Hansen. “Why tell the Training Master?”

He swallowed, straightened his uniform once more and knocked on the Praetor’s door.

A stern-eyed woman with ponderous breasts ushered him down a hall where others strode this way and that. She brought him to a steel chair and told him to sit. He did, and he fidgeted, sweated and gritted his teeth whenever a cramp came.

“Monitor?”

Hansen almost yelped in terror. Instead, he sat straighter and nodded.

“This way, please,” said a husky, uniformed man.

Hansen followed him down another plain hall. The man pointed at an open office door. Hansen peered in, gulped and tiptoed into a spartan room. The huge Praetor in his stiff uniform, with his back to him, sat behind a mammoth desk with a model of a Doom Star the only thing on it. The dull blue walls were bare. Nothing hung on them, no paintings, mementos or plaques, nothing. The Praetor spoke softly into a wall-phone. It sounded like the rumblings of a tiger. Suddenly, the huge Praetor turned and stared at him with those eerie pink eyes. The eyes tightened, and menace, a near hysterical rage barely held under control swept into the room.

Hansen was horrified to realize that he stared at the Praetor. He immediately looked at the floor, at his feet. He almost apologized, but then he would have spoken first, a taboo breaking of the worst sort. The Praetor’s presence, his vitality and excellence seemed to expand and roll against him. Hansen felt smaller and smaller, and his knees quaked and the worst cramp of all roiled in his gut.

“Monitor Hansen.”

“Yes, Highborn.”

“You have heard of Chief Monitor Bock’s death?”

“Yes, Highborn.” Hansen oozed sweat and fear.

The Praetor paused. “Are you ill, Monitor? You sway and your pulse races. I detect abnormal fear.”

“I’ll be fine, Highborn. May, may I speak?”

“Speak.”

“I’m awed to be here, Highborn. I truly am not worthy. Perhaps that is the ‘abnormal fear’ you sense.”

“Hmm. Perhaps. Training Master Lycon slew the Chief Monitor.”

Hansen remained silent, as he hadn’t been directly addressed.

“Did you know the Chief Monitor well?”

“Yes, Highborn,” Hansen whispered.

“Speak up, preman.”

“Yes, Highborn,” Hansen almost shouted.

“Would you like to avenge his death?”

Hansen looked up in surprise. The Praetor stared strangely at him. Hansen dropped his gaze and peered at the spotless floor.

“When I ask a question, preman, I want an answer.”

“Highborn, I-I would never dream of doing anything against one of the Master Race.”

“Have you ever seen the Training Master?”

“No, Highborn.”

“He is not a true Highborn. He is an original, a beta.”

Hansen said nothing. He didn’t understand what was going on.

“A beta slew my Chief Monitor. Now I lack. I have studied the files and I find that Chief Monitor Bock relied heavily upon you. You will be the new Chief Monitor.”

“Thank you, Highborn,” Hansen said, his mind racing.

“Your first order of business will be to watch the shock troops. I want you to find anything out of the ordinary. By doing this, by finding treasonous action, you will break the Training Master for me and gain your revenge. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Highborn.” Hansen wondered if this was a trap. Was this the moment he should spill the information about the dream dust? Could he put it all on Bock’s shoulders? Then he could tell the Praetor about Marten Kluge and give the Highborn the traitorous action he apparently craved. Hansen opened his mouth.

“That is all. You may go.”

Hansen hesitated. Then it registered he’d been dismissed. That meant the Praetor didn’t know about the dust. That meant that he, Heydrich Hansen, had control of it. He spun on his heels and marched out the room. He didn’t realize it, but his stomach no longer cramped or hurt.

Now he would have his revenge on Marten Kluge and then… Ha! Then Kang would die screaming, pleading for life.

“We’ll see who is the maggot,” whispered Hansen, hurrying to his new office and wondering where Bock had stashed his hidden credits.

19.

Two days later an exhausted Marten Kluge slipped from barracks to work on the repair pod. He’d lost several pounds and the skin under his eyes sagged and had an unhealthy tinge. He had a rattle in his throat whenever he breathed too deeply. No, matter. Work until you drop, sleep in the grave. If they gelded him, he’d rue every second he’d rested.

While wearing the bulky vacc suit he took out the old fuse box and installed one rebuilt by his mother over five years ago. He checked and double-checked the wiring of the flight panel. Sweat forever dripped into his eyes, stinging them, making him blink. He made mistakes and had to go over procedures he should have gotten right the first time. Everything seemed to take twice as long as it should, and Nadia kept getting in the way. He’d point there. She’d go there and watch him. Then he’d float beside her, bump into her and point outside. Finally, she tapped his shoulder and signaled that she was returning to the hab. He gave her the okay signal, and it seemed that she whirled around a bit too suddenly. He shrugged. He didn’t have time to keep her happy.

He double-checked fuel. Luckily, the pod still had propellant in the tanks. With the extra Nadia had brought each day, the tanks were a third full. That wasn’t great, but at least he had some.

Then came the moment Marten feared. Everything checked, so he carefully put away each tool and secured the kit to his belt. He settled into the pilot seat. The controls for the three outer arms—the clamp, laser-welder and riveter—were to his left. The flight dials and switches were to his right. A glance around showed him the shadowy inner side of the habitat, with lights shining from observation decks. Cratered Mercury dominated his right. The background stars where dulled by the thousands of spacecrafts’ running lights and exhaust plumes. He studied the flight board. His gloved index finger hovered over the ignition switch. If the pod didn’t work… He crossed his fingers, said a prayer and flipped the switch. The little repair pod shuddered, quivered and then the hydrogen burner purred into life.

Marten sagged into the cramped pilot’s seat. If it hadn’t worked—maybe then he wouldn’t have to slip out the barracks anymore and he could rest. Rest and sleep and rest and… he shook his head, poked outside the pod and made a thumb’s up sign to Nadia, who watched from the observation dome.

Several minutes later she space-walked outside and detached the anchor from the hab and clamped it to the pod.

He squeezed over and she wedged beside him.

They clinked helmets together.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Let’s go.”

They didn’t have radios or comlinks, but they could speak by shouting and letting the metal of their helmets carry the sound waves.

Marten engaged and the thrusters spewed a fine spray of hydrogen particles. Below them in a subjective sense, the Sun Works Factory’s inner skin passed underneath the pod. Their pod had no running lights, although their tracker worked.

It was a gamble, but better than being gelded.

He glanced at Nadia as she pressed against him. This was much better than being gelded! He squeezed her arm. She faced him and he imagined her smiling. It made him smile. Then he concentrated on flying.

The kilometers went by. He checked the fuel. He slowed and read huge numbers painted on the habitat skin and dared take them into an area that four and half years ago he’d never flown in for security reasons. He had realized several days ago that he couldn’t build a ship like his parents. It was either this or highjack a shuttle, which would be desperation indeed.

He braked, slowed and stopped. They secured the pod with the anchor and floated onto the habitat, switching on their magnetic boots. His heart thudded as they clanged across the surface. So many memories… his eyes turned watery. Clang. Clang. Clang.

Marten stopped at an ordinary looking hatch. By careful observation, one could see the welded lines of a much bigger opening. This hatch was akin to a portal in a castle gate. As soon as he pressed the 4, it all came back. 4-8-8-2-A-1-1-2-3. He felt the hatch shudder. If someone had punched in the wrong code, well, he was certain that his Dad’s rigging would still kill the unwary or overcurious, if it was still operative.

The hatch swung open. Marten couldn’t breath. He didn’t dare believe that, that… He grabbed the float rail and drew himself into a dark shaft, with Nadia behind him. Here. He reached for a flashlight that long ago… yes. His heart pounded harder as he wrapped his hand around the flashlight. He turned and groped for Nadia’s hand, clenching it tightly. Then he turned on the flashlight and washed the beam into the darkness. His eyes boggled. It was going to work. They really could get off the Sun Works Factory.

A huge shape made out of stealth material sat before him. He blinked and remembered the countless hours his Dad and he had worked to make the ultra-stealth pod. And here it was. PHC had never found it. It had no fuel, however. But…

Nadia clinked her helmet against his.

“Is that it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“That means we can escape?”

“As soon as we fill her with hydrogen.”

The flood of emotions became too much and Marten began laughing and whooping in delight and shedding tears in remembrance of his parents.

20.

“Chief Monitor,” said a young woman in a dark, secret policeman’s uniform.

Hansen looked up from behind his messy desk. There were a thousand details to this job and finding Bock’s hidden wealth had taken all his extra time. He’d had no idea that Bock was so secretive. He scratched his cheek. The woman before him, ah, by her shoulder tabs she was a class three operative. She was pretty in a slattern sort of way. No doubt, she had once been Sydney slum-trash just like him. She held onto photos and grinned as if she had something important.

“Yes,” he said.

She slid a photo onto the litter of papers.

He peered at—he smiled. There was Marten Kluge as he hurried down a utility corridor. Marten wore a white maintenance uniform. Well, well, well. He reached for the photo, but the woman placed a second one on top of the first.

He hunched forward, glanced up sharply and picked up the second photo. He couldn’t be certain, but the woman in the photo looked like Nadia Pravda. She wore a vacc suit.

“I brought them right away,” the class three operative said.

Hansen leaned back. This woman was ambitious, a climber, in Highborn terms.

“I knew you’d want to see them,” she said, smiling, promising many things with it.

Yes, a climber indeed. “These photos were taken during night duty?” he asked.

“Yes, Chief Monitor.” She cocked a hip and her smile grew.

“I take it that only you have seen these?”

“Yes, Chief Monitor. I knew you’d be interested. The man is a shock trooper. The computer matched him. Marten Kluge is his name.”

“Very good work,” said Hansen. “Does your superior know?”

“I hope I did the right then by bringing them directly to you.”

Hansen gave her his patented fox-with-a-chicken-in-his-mouth grin. “Would you wait outside, please? And tell no one else about this.”

“Yes, Chief Monitor.”

She exited. Hansen studied the photos and then called on the intercom for his best clean-up man. The Praetor wanted the shock troopers, and he would give them to him. But first, he planned a little revenge of his own, a few more key deaths, some returned product and mouths that would never talk. Too bad the class three operative who had given him this would have to die. Loose lips sink ships. Well, no one was going to sink him.

The door opened and a short, wide-shouldered monitor entered. His gray eyes seemed dead, lifeless, without any emotion.

“I have a little assignment for you, Ervil,” Hansen began.

21.

Behind her dark visor, Admiral Rica Sioux chewed her lip.

A little over a week of weightlessness had given her chest pains. She refused medication, as that would be a sign of weakness. And if the others saw weakness as they neared the Sun Works Factory—no, at least admit it to yourself. They neared the Highborn. No one had defeated the genetic super-soldiers. Who was she to think the Bangladesh could?

She squeezed her eyelids together. The waiting wearied her. She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned.

The First Gunner raised his gloved thumb.

What did he want now?

He tapped the command-pad on his arm. His visor slid open, revealing a dark, bearded, unwashed face. Hollow marks ringed his brown eyes. He was from Pakistan Sector, a good officer, one of the last true loyalists aboard the beamship.

Ship etiquette overruled her wants. Admiral Sioux chinned a control, and her visor slid open. She was old, with a terribly wrinkled face, as only her Native American ancestors seemed to have ever had. Her longevity treatments had started late, and she’d never had time for skin tucks. So her face showed all of her one hundred and twenty-one years of age.

Admiral Sioux scrunched the flat, triangular-shaped nose that dominated her face. The command capsule stank of unwashed bodies and stale sweat. She peered around the small circular room, with its sunken pits and VR-module screens. Only half the posts were filled. Some of the officers lay strapped on the acceleration couches in the center of the capsule. They were apparently asleep as their visors pointed up at the low ceiling.

“Admiral,” said the First Gunner. “I think you should look at this.”

“Do you smell that?” she said.

“What? Oh, yes, yes, of course. If you’ll please look at this, Admiral.”

“Maybe I should order them out of their suits. We’re past the radiation leakage.” She knew she should have already thought of that.

“Admiral Sioux.”

Maybe this enforced inactivity, or maybe the dreadful waiting…

“Admiral!”

She scowled, not liking the First Gunner’s tone.

“Admiral,” he said, pointing at his VR-imager.

She studied the readings and frowned. “Radar pulses?” she asked.

“Enemy.”

A sharp pain stabbed her chest. She wanted to vomit. So she clenched her teeth together.

Of course, the Highborn would launch new robot probes. And just as certain, a few of the SU Cruisers in this region were supposed to have tracked and destroyed them. SUMC had assured her of that.

“As per your orders, Admiral, the beamship’s ECM warfare pods are inactive.”

She chewed her lip, thinking. The Bangladesh traveled roughly 90,000 kilometers an hour, or 25.4 kilometers per second. She’d ordered the heavy particle shields aimed at Mercury and to the sides of their craft. 600-meter thick shields of rock and metal would probably give a radar signature of an asteroid. The question became, when the Highborn checked their radar would they think of the Bangladesh as a rogue asteroid or a newly discovered comet?

No, definitely not.

“Admiral—”

“Let me think!” she said. Her rheumy old eyes glittered, a window to the reason why at her age she still captained a ship. Not just any ship, either, but an experimental super-ship.

In a little less than two weeks, Mercury would reach perihelion, its closest distance to the Sun: 46 million kilometers. During much of those two weeks the fiery Sun looming behind the Bangladesh would make it impossible for optic visuals of them from Mercury. The harsh radio waves from the Sun would make it just as impossible for radar location.

Admiral Sioux was certain the Highborn didn’t have a combat beam that could reach this far, at least not accurately. She grinned tightly. Space warfare brought a unique set of problems to the game.

Light traveled at roughly 300,000 kilometers per second. So a laser beam shot from the Sun to Mercury at perihelion (46 million kilometers) would take nearly 2.6 minutes to reach the target. Yet how did one spot the target? If by radar, the beam had to travel to the target, bounce off it and then return. That took 5.2 minutes. If by optics… it had better be damn good optics, and there had better be enough light to see by, too.

What if the target shifted or jinked just a little? Then by the time the beam reached its target, the beam would sail harmlessly past, that’s what.

Admiral Rica Sioux studied the radar signal being bounced off her precious beamship. They had traveled from the Sun for over a week. She needed approximately eleven more days to bring her to what the SUMC tacticians on Earth considered her practical, outer-range limit. When Mercury reached perihelion, its closest orbital distance to the Sun, the Bangladesh would fly past the planet by 30 million kilometers. The beamship angled toward the flyby point at 25.4 kilometers per second, while Mercury sped along its orbital path at roughly 50 kilometers per second. In eleven days therefore, and for a week after, Mercury would be in the Bangladesh’s range, or more accurately said, the very stable Sun Works Factory circling Mercury would be in range.

Admiral Sioux grinned, and some of the chest pain went away.

By their very nature, spaceships moved, shifted and jinked. But space habitats, especially world spanning ones like the Sun Works Factory, their orbital location was known to a mathematical nicety.

In eleven days, the target would be a little over 30 million kilometers away. Her ultra-powerful proton beam, the same type used in Earth’s May 10 Defense, would fire and travel at 300,000 kilometers per second. It would reach the target about 1.7 minutes later. Of course, the proton beam could reach farther than that. The truth of that made it important to know if any friends were behind what one attacked. In this case, that wasn’t going to be a problem. The reason 30 million kilometers was the practical range-limit was that the proton beam spread over distance (its dissipation range) and that the Bangladesh lacked a more accurate targeting system.

Thus, as a matter of reality, because spaceships jinked, shifted and changed headings, lasers were close-in weapons, usually used at a distance no greater than 100,000 kilometers. She recalled her training teacher and his comparison reference. The average distance of the Moon from the Earth was 385,000 kilometers. Under 100,000 kilometers, the time lag of the speed of light became much less of a tactical military problem.

Long-range missiles, although infinitely slower than beam weapons, became the tools of choice in distance-duels because of their self-adjusting abilities. A missile was launched toward a cone of probability: to where the enemy ship would most likely be at the time of the missile’s arrival. Then the nearness to the target would allow more accurate readings and the missile could readjust. Sometimes there were laser-firing missiles, and sometimes—

Admiral Sioux shook her head and scrunched her brow. The entire point of a 30 million-kilometer flyby was that by the time they first fired their beam, the Highborn would be unable to launch any missiles from Mercury that could reach them before the missile’s fuel exhausted itself. The Bangladesh’s head start would make missiles catching them a near impossibility. Or rather the ship’s much greater velocity, as it shot past the planet, would do that. But if the Highborn knew where they were now… This radar ping might turn the entire mission into a close run thing.

“Do we kill the radar probe?” whispered the First Gunner.

“Ship’s AI has backtracked the pulse?” asked Admiral Sioux.

The First Gunner pointed at his screen.

“If we kill it,” she said, “the HBs will have no doubt that we’re hostile.”

“In my opinion, Admiral…” The First Gunner trailed off as she peered at him.

“Yes? For the record, First Gunner?”

He swallowed, perspiration slicking his brow.

“You don’t want to stick out your professional neck, is that it, mister?”

The First Gunner licked his lips and said, “They already know we’re a ship, Admiral.”

“I agree,” she said. “Destroy the radar probe.”

His hands flew over the controls.

Admiral Sioux shouted to propulsion. “Warm up the engines. We’re going to jink.” She peered at her screen. Then she turned sharply. “Everyone out of their vacc suits, and let’s take showers, people. This place smells like a gym.”

22.

Marten strolled down a corridor, one they were allowed to use during a break period such as this. He checked for spy-sticks, to see if they’d put in a new one. He’d deactivated the one already in place. Satisfied, he pried open a secret wall panel and took out his recorder and clicked it. Nadia had secured another bug in place of the one he’d used on Hansen. The bug was linked to this device.

He clicked on the recorder.

NADIA: It’s fueled and ready to go. All I need is the entrance code and you and your friends. Then… Well, you know what I mean. I love you. Please hurry. Out.

He hefted the recorder, smiling, and then shook his head. After all this time, it was really going to happen. His features hardened. He wasn’t aboard yet. So he erased the message and replaced the recorder.

He checked his chronometer: forty-five minutes until the end of break. With a rueful smile, he strode to a hatch at the end of the corridor. It was specially coded, but he’d cracked that several weeks ago. It was with surprise that he now saw it open. He didn’t know of anyone else who used it.

Hansen stepped through, together with Ervil and two other backup men. The backup men were big and tough looking. One of them had a nasty scar across his forehead and two obviously false teeth. They aimed projacs at Marten, grinning the entire time.

“Marten Kluge,” said Hansen. “This is a surprise. Well, a surprise for you, I would imagine. I’ve been itching to speak with you again. So have Dalt and Methlen. They’ve reminded me more than once than they owe you several beatings.”

“This is a restricted area,” Marten said.

“Is it now?” asked Hansen. He glanced about. “Who enforces the restriction?”

“There are spy-sticks recording every move,” Marten said.

“How can that be?” asked Hansen. “You removed them. Or should I say you short-circuited them?”

Marten glanced at the projacs. If he made a break—

Ervil stepped near, reaching. Marten struck the wide hand. Ervil moved with the economical speed of a close-combat expert and used his other hand to grab. He caught Marten’s sleeve and jerked Marten toward him. Marten lowered his head and butted Ervil’s nose.

A whistle blasted.

Hansen hissed.

Ervil released Marten’s sleeve and stepped back. Marten jumped away, warily eyeing the projacs. Ervil held his bloody nose and eyed Marten with those strange, dead eyes.

A whistle blasted again, and a beta Highborn marched into the hall.

“Hurry to the auditorium!” the Highborn shouted at Marten.

Marten backed away from Hansen.

“I know what you’re up to, Mr. Kluge,” Hansen said, just loud enough for Marten to hear. “Unless I get my product back I’ll blow the whistle on your little game.”

“You premen,” the Highborn said, “you aren’t shock troopers. Identify yourselves.”

“Chief Monitor Hansen, Highborn.”

“Why are you in shock trooper territory?”

“We came at the Praetor’s express orders, Highborn. We enforce the curfew.”

Marten paused.

“Yes,” said Hansen quietly. “I’m the new Chief Monitor.”

“Training Master Lycon enforces the curfew,” the Highborn shouted.

“I beg your pardon, Highborn. In my zeal I have perhaps overstepped myself.”

“Hurry, shock trooper,” the Highborn told Marten. “The entire corps will be addressed in fifteen minutes. It is an A-One priority message.”

“Do you request further investigation of our actions, Highborn?” Hansen asked.

“No, but leave at once.”

“Yes, Highborn.”

Hansen sneered at Marten before motioning his men.

23.

The shock troopers stared silently, eyes forward. Each black beret was perfectly aslant and their black boots the regulation twelve inches apart as they sat in the auditorium seats. Two white-coated techs stood by the front screen. Ten beta Highborn stood against the walls, heavy blasters holstered on their belts. Training Master Lycon wore his blue dress uniform with a gold “Magnetic Star” First Class on his chest.

“Men,” said Lycon, in his bear-deep voice.

The shock troopers swiped away their berets in a single, fluid motion.

Lycon inclined his head and cleared his throat. “Men, the moment has arrived to put theory to the test, to see if practice matches reality. You have trained these many months and you are now more capable than any human before you could have dreamed possible. Most of you were already combat veterans. Clearly, you are the best of the best that Homo sapiens have to offer. But,” he held up a single finger. “How will you react in space combat? Does our faith in you always have to rely upon possibilities and probabilities? No, it does not. The enemy—”

Training Master Lycon closed his eyes. His lip-less mouth twitched. Then he regarded them, peering at his shock troopers.

“I shall be frank. There are those on the Grand Admiral’s Command Staff who feel that it is unworthy of us to allow… to allow the Homo sapiens among us. They do not mean on the planets. The FEC Armies are useful allies. But in space, where the Highborn are supreme, do the… the Homo sapiens truly belong here as well?

“Certainly we shall soon find out,” Lycon said. “This great test, this honor. It is difficult to express the glory put upon you. As your trainer I am keenly anxious.” He smiled. “Yes. Sometimes Highborn can know the flutter of uncertainty. Have you soldiers been able to absorb my theories, my lessons so painstakingly given you? In that sense, I am anxious about the outcome of your coming combat. Naturally, only the best maniples will be chosen for this assignment, although I understand that if you could fight among yourselves for this privilege, that no doubt not one of you would be left standing.

“Now. I have but a single question. What is the ingredient for true glory?”

The Training Master scanned the throng. Not a shock trooper moved. “Come now, this is rare moment. I have given you leave to speak. Surely, one of you… ah, very good.”

An arm stretched.

“Marten Kluge, Leader of the 101st Maniple. Speak.”

A sinking, dreadful feeling made Marten reckless. “Training Master,” he said, too loudly perhaps, “HB glory is gained through insane risks.”

A profound silence descended upon the auditorium.

Marten glanced about and then snapped his head forward to stare in regulation pose at Lycon. “Um. Please forgive me, Training Master. Not HB, I meant Highborn.”

Lycon’s eyes seemed to glitter.

A cold sweat broke over Marten. Beside him, Omi dug the toe of his boot into his leg. Otherwise, no one moved or looked at the doomed maniple leader.

“Because I have selected you and your maniple as first team, Marten, this… this breach of protocol will be treated as not to have occurred.”

Shock troopers widened their eyes in disbelief. Such a gesture was unprecedented.

“Lights,” said Lycon.

One of the techs touched his wrist. The auditorium went dark.

Click.

On screen blazed the Sun, with swirling dark sunspots and spewing solar flares.

Dwarfed by the image of the Sun, Lycon stood beside the screen, clicker in hand, as he spoke.

“The Highborn Battlefleets have swept the four inner planets of orbital enemy. However, for good or for ill, the various units as well as single ships of the SU Space Fleets fled precipitously. Some have gone to the Jupiter Confederation, and there been confiscated and incorporated into the Jupiter navy. Others hide in the void between the planets. A few crept near Venus to ply a misguided guerrilla-duel. Those perished. One ship in particular has been hiding here, very near the Sun.

“This ship has now dared leave its sanctuary and try a sneak-run to points unknown. Cleverly, most of our robot radar probes near the Sun have been destroyed. But one probe arriving on station a mere few hours ago spotted them. Before the probe was destroyed we learned among other facts the ship’s configuration.”

Click.

A strange sort of spacecraft filled the screen. It was massive, oblong-shaped, with heavy particle shields making it look like a smooth asteroid with engine nozzles in the rear. When the 600-meter shields rolled away—like a visor on a helmet—big laser tubes and missile launch systems would be visible.

“The spotted ship’s mass conforms to the Zhukov-class Battleship you see on the screen, but with several interesting peculiarities that are of little matter to you. Further analysis of this ship has led the Grand Admiral’s Command Staff to a single clue, a name.”

Click.

X-Ship Bangladesh.

“An experimental spacecraft of battleship size,” said Lycon, “the Bangladesh. Again, it is meaningless to you, but of great interest to the Grand Admiral. Apparently, SU Military Intelligence has been able to keep this ship’s capabilities secret. We have reason to believe that our greatest interest lies in the ship’s ability to orbit near enough to the Sun to hide from our detectors. That is a feat of value and the reason why the Grand Admiral wants this ship intact.”

Click.

The Sun Works Factory circling Mercury leaped onto the screen.

“If it keeps its present heading, the Bangladesh will flyby Mercury at 30 million kilometers when Mercury reaches perihelion.”

Click.

The edge of the Sun filled one end of the screen, Mercury the other.

Click.

A bright dot appeared a bit over a third of the way from the Sun to Mercury.

“The Bangladesh’s present location.”

Click.

A dotted line went from the Bangladesh to past Mercury.

“As is well known, effective beam range is one hundred thousand kilometers. During a recent wargame, however, the Doom Star Napoleon Bonaparte hit with lasers at ranges exceeding a million kilometers. The proviso was that a stable target, like the Sun Works Factory, was selected. Perhaps Social Unity could do likewise, although High Command gives this a low probability. A million kilometers would be a revolution in space beam warfare. Let us then note once more that this X-ship approaches Mercury no nearer than 30 million kilometers.”

The Training Master let that hang. Then he smiled, the way a tiger might as it appraised a baby deer.

“Men, Social Unity is getting desperate. Command believes this new ship to be a missile carrier of unique capacity. To try to sneak past us as near as 30 million kilometers—no, the SU Fleet is much more cautious than that. The nearness can only signal one thing. This must be another attempt to duel via missile. They hoped to slip this X-ship very near the Sun Works Factory and launch a surprise attack. Normally a quick spread of our missiles would take care of such folly. However, this is no ordinary ship. This is perhaps the most secret and modern weapon developed by the former lords of Inner Planets.”

Training Master Lycon fixed the shock troopers with an eagle-like stare.

“Grand Admiral Cassius wants this X-ship.”

Click.

A squat sort of missile-ship hybrid filled the screen.

“The Storm-Assault Missile,” Lycon said.

Clothes rustled in the darkness as shock troopers squirmed. They’d heard about this missile, none of it to their liking.

Click.

On screen, a swarm of missiles flew in perfect formation. In front were EMP Blasters and X-ray Pulse Bombs. Behind them came ECM drones, used to jam enemy radar and optics, and finally followed twenty Storm-Assault Missiles.

“There are those on the Grand Admiral’s Command Staff who don’t believe that… that Homo sapiens are capable of combat-precision feats. I argued otherwise. Highborn of exalted rank were swayed by my impassioned pleas, to let this be a test of the shock troopers. Men.”

Lycon’s eyes shone with brilliance.

“The honor of the shock troops rides upon this performance, this chance granted me. Your mission will be to fly out to the Bangladesh, storm aboard and capture it before the X-ship escapes out of range.”

24.

Marten stared at his feet. From the auditorium, they’d marched in formation to the shuttles. All shock trooper-Highborn with their weapons had marched with them. He’d had no chance to break and run. He’d had no way to slip out and scurrying into hiding. What would Nadia think when he didn’t show up? How could he warn her about Hansen? Marten peered past the pilot’s window. He saw orbital fighters flying with them. Even if he overpowered the pilot and took control of this craft, it was all senseless.

A void within stole his strength. He was so tired. He was only vaguely aware of people speaking.

“What?” Vip said. “Are you crazy?”

“It’s perfectly safe,” the young tech said. He had slick black hair and wore an air of bored superiority. He kept pursing his thin lips and tapping his chin as he made his pronouncements. He slouched in his crash-seat as if he didn’t care what they thought about what he said.

“I ain’t no vampire,” Vip said, his eyeballs jittering. “Weeks of sleep, no, sorry, that ain’t for me.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” the tech said. “You’ll be awake most of the time.”

“What?” Vip asked.

“Drugged, though.” The tech tap-tapped his chin. “Some of the testers said it felt like being buried alive.”

Vip’s eyeballs slued around.

They rode in a tiny shuttle, a teardrop-shaped van. The pilot was crammed low up front so they could barely see the top of her head. The maniple sat on a U-shaped padded couch and faced the tech in his white coat. He explained the particulars of the Storm-Assault Missile they shuttled to.

“But you’re not mere test subjects,” the tech said, grinning, “you’re the military elite. You could probably do this whole, three-week trip while standing on your head. This’ll be nothing for you guys.”

With the twitch now in his voice, Vip asked, “What do mean: buried alive?”

The tech pursed his lips.

Marten, although sunk in gloom, shook his head at the young tech. Vip more than any of them was freaking out about the particulars of the SA missile.

“A smothering sensation,” the tech said, ignoring Marten. “Like being several kilometers deep in the ocean.”

Vip moaned.

“What’s the matter with you?” Marten said.

“Me?” asked the tech. “Just answering questions as ordered.”

“Did you see me shake my head?” asked Marten.

“I can’t help it if you have a nervous tic,” the tech said. “I thought it was better to pretend I didn’t notice.”

Kang raised his head. He’d been resting his chin on his massive chest. Omi also peered at the tech.

“You could put me under though, couldn’t you?” asked Vip. “As a favor? Just shoot me full of Suspend or something, timed until we’re almost there.”

The tech shrugged.

“I’m talking to you,” Marten said, now fully alert to his surroundings and deeply angry.

The young tech frowned, maybe realizing how close he was to these shock troopers. With a sudden move he swiveled his crash-seat and said to the pilot, “How much longer, Kim?”

“Ten minutes,” said the pilot, the Sun Works Factory passing outside her view-screen.

The tech swiveled back. His bored grin had returned, as if the pilot’s proven nearness had reinforced his confidence. He told Vip, “Really, it’s best not to think about it.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” asked Vip, his left cheek twitching.

“Sure wish I knew,” said the tech. He pursed his lips. Tap-tap to the chin. “Maybe if you pretended you’re a worm. You know, digging your way to the bottom of the Earth. Then the buried feeling will seem natural.” He chuckled as Vip paled, jerked around and stared dull-eyed at the shuttle’s low bulkhead.

Marten put his left hand on the tech’s knee. In his right hand, under the tech’s nose, he held a knife, a wicked little blade.

The tech with the dark, slicked-back hair stopped chuckling. His lifted his eyebrows, trying to appear nonchalant, as if he had angry shock troopers pull knives on him all the time.

“I’m talking to you,” whispered Marten.

“It’s the pain booth for sure if I report this,” said the tech.

Marten stared dead-eyed.

“He’s right, Marten,” said Lance, sounding worried.

“What about this?” Omi asked. “The little prick isn’t alive to report it?”

“That would make it harder,” Kang rumbled.

“Not if the HBs resurrected him,” Lance said.

“Maybe,” Kang said. “But there isn’t any Suspend aboard. So he’d stay down.”

“Look here,” said the tech.

Marten pressed the razor-point against the smooth skin.

“Do you see what you did?” Omi asked the tech. “Now he’s mad.”

“Hey, you’re right,” said Lance. He turned to the tech. “That was pretty stupid of you.” Then, in a perfect imitation of the tech, Lance pursed his lips and tapped his chin. “Maybe if you unbuckled yourself and bent down and kissed Marten’s boots. That might mollify him.”

The tech opened his mouth.

“Shhh,” Marten said. With the knife, he rotated the tech’s head so he faced Vip. “Lance,” Marten said.

Lance gently shook Vip, who still stared at the low bulkhead. The little shock trooper hummed to himself.

“Vip,” Marten said.

When he didn’t respond, Lance shook him again.

“What?” Vip asked.

“I want you to listen to a promise I going to make this—he’s a vulture, Vip. He thinks it’s funny that you’re—”

“I’m not scared,” Vip said.

“I know that,” Marten said, as he stared at the ever-increasingly-worried tech. “It’s no big deal, Vip. But listen anyway, okay?”

“Okay.”

Marten pushed the knifepoint just a little more, making the tech cry out and arch his head in order to escape the deadly blade.

“What’s going on back there?” the pilot asked.

“Nothing,” Kang said.

“Are you okay, Ito?” asked the pilot.

A pinprick of blood welled on the tech’s check.

“He’s fine,” Marten said. “Aren’t you, Ito?”

“Fine!” said the tech, his head arched back but unwilling to turn and face the pilot.

The pilot shifted in her seat to look over her shoulder, but she was jammed down low and couldn’t see past the tech’s back.

“Worry about flying,” Kang told her.

Maybe the menace in his voice convinced her, maybe the fact that they were about to dock. Besides, what would the shock troopers dare do to a Highborn’s tech?

Marten stared at the young man. “If you die in this coming assault, Vip, then one of us will come back and kill this vulture who thought it funny to try to scare you.”

“Really?” Vip said.

“I swear it.”

“So do I,” Omi said.

“Me, too,” said Lance.

Kang grunted, gracing the pale tech with a brutal, sinister study.

“Think about that while we’re traveling,” Marten said, but whether he meant it for Vip or the tech he didn’t say.

“Docking in four minutes,” the pilot said, sounding very professional now, as if shuttling was all she cared about.

Marten released the tech’s knee and wiped the blade on the tech’s suit. He then slipped the knife into its armpit sheath.

The tech reached a trembling hand to his cheek. He stared at the minute red dot on his fingertip. Disbelief made round circles of his eyes. For a second it seemed he would speak, then he whirled around, facing the pilot, even as Kang and Lance starting talking about the tech’s probable sex preferences.

The subdued tech led them through the airlock and into the Storm-Assault Missile. The first room contained five, penetrator torpedoes. Like huge cartridges, they lay side by side, near the single firing tube. Beside each torpedo was a shock trooper battlesuit. There were five names stenciled on the helmets: MARTEN, OMI, KANG, LANCE and VIP. They were big, exoskeleton-powered suits, with oxygen tanks in back, HUD helmets and articulated armor. The shock trooper skull-patch was on the right sleeve of each battlesuit and the left pectoral. Their lasers, breach-bombs and torches were already packed in the torpedoes.

Marten and the others eyed the suits and the torps. They were accustomed to them, well-practiced in their use.

“It won’t be a space hab we’re storming,” Omi said.

“A freaking ship in the voids,” said Lance.

Kang cracked his knuckles. “Won’t make any difference. Either we get in or we don’t.”

“No,” Omi said. “There’s no pickup ship if we don’t get in.”

“We’ll get in,” Marten said. He refused to think about Nadia or how close he’d come to escaping. He would get another chance if he could survive. That’s all that mattered now. And killing Hansen later if the Chief Monitor harmed Nadia.

“The void,” whispered Vip, shivering.

The tech cleared his throat. He floated by the partition hatch. “Training Master Lycon wants everyone in by oh-eight-hundred.”

“Gonna wet your pants if we’re late?” asked Lance.

“You’re really starting to get on my nerves, you little creep,” Kang said. “Marten, where’s your knife?”

Marten patted his armpit sheath.

“What’cha got in mind?” asked Lance.

“It’s an old Mongol custom,” Kang said. “Blood sacrifice. I practiced it back in Sydney.”

Marten believed it.

“Blood sacrifice appeases the spirits and helps gain victory,” Kang said.

Omi lifted his left eyebrow, and nodded sagely.

The young tech licked his lips as he kept searching their faces for a smile, or for some indication that they were joking. “Y-You need my help getting into the G-suits,” he finally said.

Lance snorted. “We know how to climb into suits.”

“Not these,” said the tech. “T-They’re…”

A clang sounded from the outer hatch. Air hissed into the lock. Everyone turned. The inner hatch popped open. Into the cramped room floated Training Master Lycon. He wore a vacc suit, working off its bubble helmet as he entered.

The five men of the maniple straightened even as they lowered their eyes in regulation pose.

Huge Training Master Lycon swept his gaze over them, settling onto Marten. There seemed something extra ferocious in his glance. Maybe he’d talked with the pilot.

“Tech,” he said.

The tech floated near the Highborn. He also carefully kept his eyes cast downward.

“Is everything in order?”

“Yes, Training Master.”

“The maniple has been thoroughly briefed?”

“Yes, Training Master.”

“Do you believe they understand the procedure?”

“Yes, Training Master.”

“Then you have nothing else to report, is that correct?”

The tech hesitated as his shoulders tensed.

“Time is critical,” said Lycon.

The tech swallowed audibly. “Yes, Training Master. I-I mean no, nothing else to report.”

Lycon nodded. Then he studied the five shock troopers, finally settling on Marten. “Maniple Leader.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Excellence in training does not negate all sins. You are therefore under disciplinary punishment. Kang.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are maniple leader for the duration of the mission.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If Marten commits any breach of discipline, shoot him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Unless you perform an outstanding feat of daring, Marten, noted and reported by your maniple leader, on your return you will receive twenty minutes in the pain booth.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lycon swept his fierce gaze over the team. He abruptly settled the vacc helmet over his head and left through the hatch.

After it clanged, Lance turned to Marten. “That’s tough luck.”

Marten shrugged.

The tech had his grin back. “Okay, let’s go,” he said. “Into the G-suits.”

“Don’t think this nulls my promise,” Marten told him.

The young tech appeared shocked. “Threatening me is a breach of discipline.” He turned and pointed to Kang. “That means you have to shoot him.”

“Shut up,” growled Kang.

“But—”

Kang floated over, grabbed the tech’s finger and twisted so he yelped

“None of that,” Marten said. “You heard the Training Master, we have to harness up.”

Kang turned, with a frown on his flat face. “I’m giving the orders now.”

Marten hesitated only a moment. “Right. I’m sorry, Maniple Leader.”

“Noted,” Kang said. “Okay, let’s harness up.”

Since Marten was nearest to the hatch, he opened it and was the first into the next room. There were only two human-habitable ones on the entire SA Missile.

Even more cramped than the first room, this one had five acceleration couches side by side. On the couches lay the G-suits, heavy, ponderous things, with thick tubes attached to the top of the helmets and out the heels and other various locations. For as long as the trip took, they would be in those things.

Shedding their garments until they were naked, and helped by the tech, the five-man maniple worked past the eel-like mass of tubes and slid into the very slick fabric within the suits.

“It’s freezing,” said Lance.

“It feels like oil,” Omi said.

“The inside of each suit conforms to your body shape,” said the tech, for once sounding professional.

After they were secure, he latched them, checking the seals and dropping their visors. He came to Marten last.

“You know what?” whispered the tech.

Marten lay snug like a caterpillar in its cocoon, and about as immobile. He peered at the tech smiling down at him. The boy had bad breath.

“You getting brave now?” asked Marten.

“I could poke out your eyes,” said the tech, showing Marten the penlight laser-spotter in his hand. “But you know why I’m not going too?”

“‘Cause the sight of blood scares you?”

“No, Mr. Tough-Guy, because every way you look at this, you’re doomed. The Highborn are firing their spreads into five different cones of probability, and even then, they’re not really sure they’ll get this X-ship. Think about that. Five different vectors they’re firing into, using a hundred Storm-Assault Missiles like this one. And you can bet that if you miss your target that you’re never coming home. You’ll just go on sailing forever, sooner or later dying from lack of oxygen.”

Marten remained silent because he couldn’t think of anything to say.

The tech nodded and looked at the others.

Marten knew the look. He was building up courage, probably to shout this information to everyone.

Marten said, “Remember, though, we might make it back.”

“What?”

“One out of five isn’t zero.”

The tech stared. “You’re even dumber than you look if you think those are good odds. Besides, even if you get there you have to break into the battleship.”

“Yeah, bad odds,” Marten said. “But do you want to bet your life on it?”

The tech’s eyes shifted away. He pushed off Marten’s suit and floated out the room. As the hatch slammed shut, hypos from the suit’s medikit pricked each of them. A cool, numbing sensation spread over Marten. Then his helmet grew opaque and VR-images blossomed onto the HUD (Heads Up Display) section of the visor. It showed him the outside of the missile, from a camera there.

A bloated, gross feeling suddenly overwhelmed him. Then his helmet’s intercom buzzed.

“I feel like throwing up,” Vip said.

“Try and relax,” said Lance.

“Yeah,” Marten said.

By the sounds, valves in the room opened and an ethylene glycol solution that made sludge seem thin glopped in. It pressed against the G-suits and the oily inner surface of the suit’s interior seemed to sink into Marten’s skin. As the tech had predicated, Marten felt as if he was being smothered. three atmospheric pressures compressed against each of their G-suits. The reason they’d been given drugs was so their innards became pressurized enough to resist the outer force.

The delicacy of the human body meant that a person could only take eight Gs before passing out from lack of oxygen to the brain. Highborn could take about twice as much, which was another of their superiorities over premen. With these suits, however, the shock troopers could survive the twenty-five G acceleration that the missile needed in order to catch up to the Bangladesh after the beamship passed Mercury. The suits would also stimulate their muscles throughout the trip so they wouldn’t atrophy.

“This is gonna be a load of fun,” said Lance.

With his chin pressing the various switches in his suit, Marten checked the VR files. Battle plans, entertainment dramas, porn, it was all here. He switched to the missile’s cone camera, watching them being slid out of the hanger and toward the gargantuan boost ship.

Highborn glory: Succeed or die.

The quiet, desperate rage that he’d been struggling to contain blossomed into something darker and more urgent. Not only were they ripping him away from all that he’d ever worked for, but… They were cheap missile fodder, a mere biological component webbed into a warhead—becoming the warhead. They were a bio-weapon of a different sort. They were dogs to kick around and abuse, and geld if they became too intractable. No. This was worse than madness. It was inhuman debasement, a shredding of all dignity. Escape was no longer good enough. If he made to the Outer Planets he vowed to warn them of the hell that was coming and do everything he could to help stop it.

25.

Both Highborn Grand Admiral Cassius and Social Unity’s Supreme Commander, General James Hawthorne, considered themselves keen students of military history. Each searched the past for clues, looking for what to avoid or what to do.

Throughout his life, the Grand Admiral had only known victory. Beginning as a young clone-cadet in the Moscow War Academy, to the stunning and brilliant Second Battle of Deep Mars Orbit in 2339, he’d shown dash, iron will and a fanatical, almost otherworldly genius. In the Second Battle of Deep Mars Orbit, he had crushed the combined Fleets of the Mars Rebels and the Jupiter Confederation’s Expeditionary Force sent to help the Martians. Genius had marked even his planning and execution of the Highborn Rebellion in 2349.

Most Highborn likened him to the ancient world-conqueror, Alexander the Great, while the Social Unitarians thought he more resembled the worst of civilization’s scourges, Genghis Khan.

The Grand Admiral planned to outdo both ancient warlords. After conquering the four inner planets and crushing Social Unity, he dreamt of continuing with the Jupiter System. He would crush its Galilean moon-kingdoms of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, together with the rest of the gas giant’s snowballs awash in wealth and high technology. The strange space-habitat states orbiting Jupiter would also be plucked like ripe fruit. Then he would lunge at the Saturn System, at Uranus. He dreamed of the subjection of the entire Solar System, all the way to the distant science outposts on Charon. The crux of his reasoning settled upon the fact that he was a Highborn, a true lord of Order and genetically superior to the masses of Homo sapiens spread helter-skelter throughout the system. After all, the two examples from the past had been mere premen. Still, both premen had overcome fantastic odds and preformed outstanding feats of daring and strategic brilliance. In some senses, they could be emulated. But instead of their earth-bound glories, future ages would marvel at his conquests, at his stunning judgments and genius. Or so he mused in his quieter moments of reflection.

As he lay in his study aboard the Doom Star Julius Caesar, which orbited the Earth’s Moon, he pondered a different problem: namely, the X-Ship Bangladesh. He pondered it as he laid his nine-foot frame on the couch. He had tossed his boots aside. His feet crossed at the ankles and perched on the couch’s armrest. He kept twitching his VR-gloved hand, images flashing across the lens of his VR-goggles.

The people and point in history he settled upon were the Japanese of the early to middle Twentieth Century. They had been militarists, men who understood about honor and the will to fight. What most intrigued the Grand Admiral were the last days of 1941 and the next several months of 1942. It began with a naval battle called Pearl Harbor. He twitched his fingers, studying the plan, the risks and the brilliant execution of this Nipponese Admiral Yamamoto. After the incredible victory in Hawaii, the Japanese Fleets had scored one stunning win after another from the Philippines to the Indian Ocean. Finally, with their island empire won in a few swift months, the Japanese gathered their naval vessels into a vast armada to finish off the Americans at Midway.

The Grand Admiral read fast and he frowned at what he read. At Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had planned in minute detail and with painstaking thoroughness. They had trained to a pitch of excellence of nearly Highborn quality. But the Midway Operation, it had been a sloppy affair born of conceit. Ah, the old historian had a phrase for it: victory disease. The Japanese of World War Two had won so handily and so quickly that they soon believed that their superiority was inborn, innate and would always be that way.

Much like how many of his men were now behaving and thinking.

Victory disease… Becoming sloppy…

The Grand Admiral read about the staggering Japanese defeat off the Midway Islands. Prime carriers destroyed one, two, three. It was most amazing. The mighty Admiral Yamamoto forced to flee from the very foes he had come to annihilate.

Grand Admiral Cassius sat up and tore off his VR-goggles.

The premen weren’t stupid. They were inferior, yes, but still with the ability to bite. Hadn’t he almost lost the Genghis Khan to them on May 10?

This X-ship, the Bangladesh, it could very well be dangerous. And it approached the one location the Highborn could not afford destroyed.

The Grand Admiral pulled on his boots and strode out the door.

26.

The Grand Admiral’s laser-beamed orders took immediate effect, even as the massive booster ships built up speed orbiting Mercury. Each booster ship appeared to be little more than an asteroid with a flock of missiles perched on its forward surface. X-ray Pulse Bombs, EMP Blasters, ECM drones and the SA Missiles were all ready to launch. Meanwhile, massive engines fed on hydrogen and left a white exhaust behind the booster ship. It looked like a comet’s tail. Faster and faster went the booster ships, automated vessels, increasing velocity in as short a time as possible.

The Grand Admiral’s orders brought a burst of activity to the Sun Works Factory. The horde of repair pods zoomed from the Doom Star Genghis Khan. The giant warship’s engines were warmed. Soon the mighty spacecraft pulled out of the cradle that had been so carefully built around it. The Grand Admiral had ordered the Genghis Khan behind Mercury, in relation to the approaching Bangladesh. There it would stay until they discovered what the X in the X-ship actually meant.

The majority of the repair pods flew into storage and shut down, while the millions of tons of warheads, laser juice and other combustibles and military explosives went into their special emergency compartments on the Sun Works. The Grand Admiral didn’t want the SU military catching the Sun Works Factory the way the American pilots at the Battle of Midway had caught the four Japanese Carriers Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu. He didn’t know how the Bangladesh could possibly do any damage to the Sun Works, but—why were they flying by at 30 million kilometers, why not much farther out or much nearer in? There was a reason for the 30 million-kilometer range, and he didn’t know what it was. He felt certain about what the SU could and could not do—but he would not allow himself to become arrogant. Pride went before the fall. It was an ancient proverb, well proven by history. And in yet another area, he would show the Highborn superior to the premen. He would actually learn from history.

As the Sun Works Factory went into emergency war-drill, the five booster ships reached boost velocity.

The first asteroid-ship changed the direction of its thrust and shot from Mercury’s orbit. The white hydrogen tail billowed behind it. It sped toward the first cone of probability. Then the first missiles launched off the boost ship. The Law of Motion was immutable. For every action, there is a reaction. So the launching of these missiles slowed the forward motion of the boost ship by the amount of their mass, which was the reason why these boost ships had been built so massively. Then the next set of missiles lifted off the asteroid, the hunk of rock turned into a ship.

As those missiles launched, the second boost ship altered orbit. It sped toward a different cone of probability.

“Do you feel that?” Vip asked, sounding worried.

“We’re launching,” Marten said. His VR-goggles were set on the missile’s viewer.

Then his suit’s gages wobbled. It felt as if he was being flattened. He found it hard to breathe.

“This is horrible,” Lance said in a choking voice.

“The tachyon drive has kicked in,” Marten said. He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on breathing. Would his internal organs rupture?

“Are we accelerating at twenty-five Gs?”

Marten didn’t know who said that. “Yeah,” he said. He wondered if he could ever get used to this feeling.

“How long is this trip gonna last?” Vip asked, with a tremor in his voice.

“Watch a video,” Marten suggested.

“I don’t know how.”

Marten had to concentrate before he explained it one more time. He wondered if he was going to die like this, squeezed in a suit and buried in goop, or would they reach the Bangladesh and start the automated drain procedure?

Maybe it was time for him to watch a video. Anything to get his mind off this grinding pressure and off Nadia and the ultra-stealth pod waiting in the Sun Works Factory for somebody to use.