Bio-Weapon

1.

Earth—Joho Mountains, China Sector

General James Hawthorne paced in his office as he spoke with Commodore Tivoli, who ran Military Intelligence.

Tivoli was a small woman with compact shoulders and hard crinkles in the corners of her hazel eyes. She played a dangerous and constant game with PHC. In the scheme of Social Unity, three prime movers comprised the State: the Military, the Party and Political Harmony Corps, the State’s secret police.

Ever since 10 May 2350—six long months ago—the game had turned nastier than usual. The asteroid impacts had hurled millions of tons of particleized debris into the air. The previous pollution together with the new additives had created a heavy, greasy cloud of reflective dust. Temperatures dropped rapidly, creating hurricane-strength winds that whipped across the planet in ever-increasing power. That, combined with the billion deaths, had created an intolerable strain on Earth’s social fabric. News of the disaster had leaked over the planet.

Six months ago Greater Hong Kong had vanished, and Beijing, Manila, Taipei and Vladivostok. The million-ton meteors dropped on them had left vast smoking craters.

The numbed inhabitants of Earth wondered how it could have happened. Their holosets had daily informed them that the Supremacists were on the run, soon to be defeated. Yes, Antarctica had fallen because of a treacherous sneak attack by the specially bioengineered soldiers. The neighboring islands of Tasmania and New Zealand had also been snatched up by the self-styled Highborn. Perhaps the loss of Australian Sector soon thereafter shook a few alarmists, but a stint in the slime pits had cured those.

But on May 10 enemy Doom Stars had actually entered the stratosphere. That could only mean the Social Unity Space Fleets had been defeated. No person on Earth, no matter how deep in the mantle he lived, was safe from more million-ton meteors raining down from the heavens.

At that realization, forty billion people knew gut-wrenching fear. Most lived in the vast underground cities, human hives that often sank more than fifty-five levels down. Social Unity gave them harmony, guidance and solace, and had turned them into a sheepish, submissive horde. They believed in humanity’s manifest destiny, and worked for the good of the whole. Now the truth dawned. They’d been given propaganda swill.

One billion people dead in an instant, slain by asteroids maneuvered into Earth orbit and then rocketed down. It meant they were all defenseless.

On the holosets six months ago, the Social Unity familiars urged caution, that the latest disaster had been studied and was now well in hand. Be assured that it couldn’t happen again. The mere idea of a repeat attack was ridiculous and anyone who suggested otherwise should be reported to the nearest hall leader. In memory of those so tragically lost on May 10, a planet-wide hum-a-long would commence in one hour. Anyone not participating would be given ten demerits to his profile.

It should have worked. The people had been well trained and loved the hum-a-longs.

Instead, in one hour, as if psychically connected as a mass organism, the hordes of Social Unity went mad with rage and grief. In the seventy major megalopolises, riots broke out. Billions smashed stores and looted. In some places, the peacekeepers fought back. Sometimes they were stripped of shock batons and beaten, elsewhere they joined the looting. The South American masses turned vicious. There the hordes wielded bricks and recklessly slew the police. In North America the opposite occurred. The peacekeepers went berserk and slaughtered thousands of rioters, thereby gaining temporary control.

Naturally, from their newly conquered Pacific Basin Stronghold, the Highborn gained wind of what occurred.

“Send in the FEC Armies,” urged several ground commanders. The FEC Armies: Free Earth Corps, composed of captured and reeducated Social Unitarians from Antarctica and Australian Sector.

“Nonsense,” said other Highborn. “This is a trap, crudely fashioned by the premen to get us to split our forces and be overwhelmed in detail.”

As the precious days slipped by, the SU peacekeepers regrouped, reinforced by army units and PHC shock squads. They waited for orders from the Directorate. The six surviving members of the Directorate were too busy jockeying for power in the absence of the late Lord Director Enkov. Into the vacuum stepped General James Hawthorne, the man who had almost destroyed the enemy Doom Star Genghis Khan. He steeled himself to issue savage orders. Control must be regained or the war was lost.

Then Highborn electronics broke into the world-wide datanet. If the premen had truly lost their grip, and this wasn’t a Social Unity trick, the HB psychologists said this broadcast would slip the masses over the edge. So Highborn Command beamed images of the former fighting that had gone on in the Japanese home islands, unedited shots of what had really happened on the battlefield before May 10 and the crushing asteroid attack.

Grown weary by several days rioting and thus returning to their cramped apartments, where there was little to do other than watch the holosets, almost the entire populace of Earth witnessed the Japanese Kamikaze assaults: men, women and children hurling themselves at the nine-foot tall, battle-armored Highborn and uselessly dying. The billions in front of their sets were already emotionally drained, fatigued and beginning to wonder what their wild behavior would cost them. They wept as they watched the merciless super-soldiers, the giants in their black battle-armor, butchering inept amateurs. They seethed with a gut wrenching hatred as space-borne lasers devoured transport after sea-transport trying to reach Japan Sector and help their brothers in need. 700,000 SU soldiers died in less than two hours. Thousands of SU fighters, bombers and space interceptors exploded on screen. The last of Earth’s navies were annihilated before their eyes in the blast furnace of 10 May 2350.

“Resistance is illogical. Surrender therefore and serve the New Order.”

Grand Admiral Cassius himself spoke on the holoset. For most of humanity this was their first close-in shot of a Highborn, a bioengineered soldier, originally fashioned to fight for Social Unity, not against it. The giant Grand Admiral had pearl-white skin, with harsh features angled in a most inhuman manner. His lips were razor thin and his hair, cut down almost to his scalp, was like a panther’s pelt. He had fierce black eyes, and an intense, almost pathological energy. He smiled, and to those billions it seemed that he mocked them.

“Come, let us end this useless war. Submit and live. Resist—”

The pirated link was cut at that precise moment, not in canny timing, but because the SU technicians had finally found the Highborn frequency.

Several hours later General Hawthorne gave the order. All over the planet the peacekeepers with army escorts and PHC shock squads reentered the riot zones and then onto the residential levels. They had prepared for bitter battle. Instead, they found a subdued and repentant populace. A chilling glance at Earth’s conquerors had sobered the billions out of their madness. After all, better the government you knew than the one who thought itself your genetic superior.

It should have been the moment of greatest unity. The army and PHC had worked together to save the State. Instead, the head of PHC and certain directors grew alarmed at the military’s newly gained powers. They feared General Hawthorne, and they hated the fact that they had so desperately needed him.

That had been six long months ago. Today… General Hawthorne paced in his office.

“General,” said Commodore Tivoli, “I wish you would look at these figures.”

“What’s that?” said the General, taking the proffered report and scanning it.

“MI has lost too many operatives lately.”

“Eh?” asked the General, as he sped-read the report.

“I think PHC is behind those losses,” Commodore Tivoli said. “They’re assassinating my operatives in a secret war against you, against the military.”

“Hmm.”

“They’re some of my best men, General. Keen agents. Slaughtered like pigs. PHC is poking out our eyes and making sure that we’re blind in intelligence matters.”

The General shook the report. “These aren’t the proton beam figures I asked for.”

“It’s a list of all the slain MI operatives in the last three months.”

“I can see what it is, Commodore.” Hawthorne handed her the report. “That’s your department, your worry. If you need more personnel just ask.”

“It isn’t that, General. PHC—”

“We’re late,” interrupted the General, checking his chronometer.

Commodore Tivoli frowned. “I believe this is critical.”

“Can’t it wait until after the meeting?”

“I—yes, sir.”

General Hawthorne put on his military cap and viewed himself in a mirror, tilting the hat, giving himself a bit of a rakish appearance.

“Sir, have you thought about my other suggestion?”

“Which one?” asked Hawthorne.

Tivoli said, “That any officer or soldier entering your presence should first surrender his sidearm.”

“Ridiculous.”

“But I have reports—”

“No, no,” said Hawthorne, waving his bony hand. “The officers would view it as an imperial gesture. It would alienate too many.”

“But it would make things much easier on your security detail, on keeping you alive from assassination.”

“That’s why I have the best.”

Commodore Tivoli’s frown deepened.

The General knew she had problems, worries, but so did he. He had to keep on conjuring up victories, at least until the cyborgs from Neptune arrived. His throat tightened. Few knew about that secret project, not even the Commodore. What would she think if she did know?

Hawthorne shook his head. It ached all the time. Problems everywhere, burdens dumped onto him. All the domes of Mars had re-rebelled. Terraformed Venus was under orbital blockade. Mercury. He didn’t even want to think about the armaments the Sun Works Factory churned out for the enemy.

Why couldn’t the Highborn gloat in their victory? Instead, they continued to move with their customary speed and brilliance. In six months of blitzkrieg invasions, they had snatched the rest of Earth’s islands. The Philippines, the Indonesian chain, Ceylon, Madagascar, the Azores, England, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Cuba and Haiti and the Hawaii Islands, all had fallen.

During the ensuing months since May 10, he had struggled to correct the strategy of the late Lord Director. But despite his best efforts, many blamed him for the loss of the islands. To his detractors he pointed out his lack of oceanic vessels, and that he’d saved three-quarter a million trained troops, desperately needed troops that now bolstered the Eurasian Continent.

The Directorate had fired back and told him that his statement was illogical. If he could slip troops out, surely he could have put enough in to hold somewhere.

“That is imprecise,” he’d written back. “Enemy laser stations ring the planet. Any of our military craft flying higher than fifty meters are targeted and vaporized. Meanwhile, Highborn orbital fighters routinely buzz any merchant marine we have left. If military men or material are spotted or analyzed to be aboard ship, the vessel is sunk.”

“How, then, did you extract the troops?” returned the query.

“Ah. Now you begin to understand the magnitude of my accomplishment.”

Several on the Directorate had bristled at his tone. He should have used more tact. He knew that now. But he had become so tired.

“General?”

“Hmm?”

The Commodore tapped her chronometer. “It’s time for your staff meeting.”

“The proton beam report?”

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded. Despite heavy PHC interference, he’d begun a crash proton beam-building program. Everyone feared to use them. They said the Highborn would simply drop more asteroids and take them out again. He disagreed. They needed many proton weapons and enough merculite missile batteries to support them. Fortress Earth was his new strategy.

“What about my meeting with Yezhov?” he asked.

“I hadn’t heard about that,” she said. “When was it supposed to take place?”

“Tomorrow, I think.”

She shook her head. “I doubt it will happen now. The Chief of PHC is in New Baghdad. There have been riots in the capital.”

Hawthorne swung open the door.

The Commodore followed, saying, “I still suggest that you should order anyone entering your presence—”

“Please, Commodore, save it until after the meeting.”

2.

Surprise was complete.

The Supreme Commander of Social Unity Armed Forces stood with his staff around a holoimage of Earth. The dark headquarters deep in the Joho Mountains of China Sector provided a safe haven from the space-borne invaders. There the officers studied the red dots circling the softly glowing, blue-green image of the planet. The dots indicated enemy space-laser platforms, orbital-fighter stations and two enemy Doom Stars, one of which orbited the Moon. Grimly, they pointed out to one another the much fewer yellow dots on the Earth: the proton beam installations and the merculite missile batteries.

As the officers discussed various strategies and the coming run of the Bangladesh, the door opened, flooding the darkened room with light. Air Marshal Ulrich, a bull-shouldered German, wearing his immaculate blue uniform, stepped within. A weird look twisted his florid features. Sweat glistened his face and soaked his too-tight collar.

The whispers died as one member of the staff after another glanced up.

The Air Marshal used his heel to close the door. Then, in a jerky motion, he unsnapped his holster flap and drew a heavy .55 magnum revolver.

“Ulrich! What’s the—”

A deafening BOOM cut the question short. The slug tore through the holoimage of Earth and hit Space Commander Shell, a short, hawkish man standing on the other side. Shell flew backward, his chest a gaping cavity. BOOM. Colonel-General Green, formerly of Replacement Army East, lost his head. BOOM, BOOM. Admiral O’Connor ceased to exist and Commodore Tivoli slammed against the back wall, her right shoulder gone.

Stunned, with his eyes bulging and his ears ringing, the Supreme Commander of Social Unity Armed Forces watched Ulrich stalk around the table that contained the electronics that projected the holoimage above it. General James Hawthorne found that he was shaking, and that his limbs refused to obey him. His heart pounded and suddenly he drew an agonizing gasp. Something wet soaked his left sleeve and a horrible groan awoke him to the fact that he was about to die.

Air Marshal Ulrich, with sweat pouring off his face, lifted the heavy hand cannon.

“Please, Ulrich—no!”

BOOM.

General Hawthorne flinched. Then he blinked in amazement. He felt no pain. It finally penetrated that the groaning had stopped. He twisted leftward. Commodore Tivoli no longer had a face. Ulrich had put her out of her misery.

The Air Marshal now drew a deep breath.

Seeming to move in slow motion, General Hawthorne turned toward him. He wished he could think of something profound to say, or something coolly indifferent. Instead, he had to fight not to throw himself onto his knees and beg for his life.

A grimace twisted the Air Marshal’s lips. He re-targeted the smoking .55, while his other hand fumbled in his jacket pocket, finally drawing a rag. He mopped his brow and wiped sweat from his chunky neck.

“Ulrich—”

“They want you alive,” interrupted the Air Marshal, his voice compressed. He wiped spittle from his lips.

Hawthorne’s knees almost buckled, he was so grateful that Ulrich didn’t plan to butcher him. Then his mind kicked back into focus.

The Air Marshal squinted and minutely shook his head. “No, James. Don’t try it. They said to kill you if it looks like it won’t work.”

“Who are they?”

“Turn around.”

“The Highborn?”

“Turn around!”

Although in his fifties, Hawthorne shifted onto the balls of his feet. He hoped Ulrich would wave with that sickeningly heavy pistol for him to turn around. He was grateful now for the agonizing hours he took each week keeping fit.

Ulrich had short, blunt fingers, an even thicker thumb. He used it to cock the hammer. “I understand, General. In fact, maybe it’s better this way, more mercifully that they don’t get their hands on you.”

Panic caused Hawthorne’s heart to thud in his chest. He turned around, his throat suddenly raw. He was too much of a soldier not to look at his dead friends. Space Commander Shell lay grotesquely. Commodore Tivoli—

From behind Ulrich stepped closer. Fabric rustled. Hawthorne willed himself to move, to use his elbow and slam it into Ulrich and spin around for a death-fight. But before the thought could become action, the heavy gun-barrel poked his back.

“It’s harder to be a hero than you think,” said Ulrich, his breath hot on Hawthorne’s ear. Then something cool touched the back of his neck.

Ulrich shuffled sideways, out of range. “Face me,” he said.

Hawthorne reached for the back of his neck. He heard the click. Next thing he knew he was falling. He didn’t feel anything until his left cheek struck the floor. Pain exploded. He wanted to rub his cheek, but his arms wouldn’t move.

Click. His shoulder throbbed where it had hit the floor, but at least he could move again, and feel.

“Don’t touch your neck,” said Ulrich. “Now, get up slowly.”

Hawthorne did. “What is it?” he said. “What did you put on me?”

“A neural inhibitor. I press my switch and it cuts off your nerve impulses from the neck down. Adhesive bonding keeps it in place.”

Hawthorne noted the thumb-sized switch in Ulrich’s free hand.

“Oh, one more thing. I have a second button. If I press it a mini-bomb detonates and your head detaches from your body.”

“What?”

“You’ll walk in front of me all the way out of here, General. If anything happens to me along the way—boom. No more head.”

“Then my security team kills you.”

Ulrich nodded as he wiped sweat from his face.

“Are you really willing to die?” asked Hawthorne.

Ulrich stuffed the rag in his jacket pocket.

Hawthorne indicated the dead officers. “Shooting them like pigs is one thing. Dying—”

“I’m ready to die, General, I assure you of that.”

“It’s worth that much to you, what they’re offering?”

“James…” Pain flickered in Ulrich’s eyes. He shook his head. He checked his watch, and said, “Take off your jacket. There’s blood on the sleeve.”

Hawthorne hesitated. Then he slipped off his green jacket, tossing it aside. He wore a white shirt with a green tie and green trousers with red piping along the creases.

Ulrich eyed him critically. “We walk all the way out. Your security team will not join us because you will forbid it. Further, you will give the needed codes and commands to insure our safe arrival outside. James.” Ulrich peered closely at his former commanding officer. “I will not hesitate to kill you, even if it means my death. If you doubt my seriousness, look at your friends lying around you.”

“They were your friends, too, Air Marshal.”

“Look at them!”

Hawthorne did. He shivered.

“Ready?”

Hawthorne opened his mouth to say more, and he shut it.

“Good. Walk ahead of me.”

Hawthorne squared his bony shoulders and stepped forward. Ulrich trained the revolver on him and dropped his other hand into his jacket pocket. As Hawthorne passed, Ulrich’s hand jerked up. It held a coin-sized capsule. He pressed it against Hawthorne’s forearm. A jet of air shot the tiny pneumospray hypo, pumping a drug into the General’s bloodstream.

“What?”

Ulrich shoved Hawthorne, hard. Caught by surprise, he staggered sideways and struck the wall, then straightened angrily.

“Wait,” said Ulrich.

Hawthorne checked himself from lunging. After a moment, he rubbed his forearm. “What did you put into me?”

Ulrich smiled bitterly.

A cool, numbing feeling clouded the General’s thinking. He wanted to stay enraged. Air Marshal Ulrich, a professional colleague for more than twenty years… How could he have trusted such a monster? But the rage slipped away. It was getting harder to think.

“You’re ready,” said Ulrich. “Let’s go.”

“But…”

“Go!”

Hawthorne adjusted his tie and moved to the door, opening it. He glanced back. The beefy Air Marshal slid his hand cannon into its holster, clicking the flap shut. Noticing the appraisal, Ulrich held up the black switch, his thumb ready to press.

“Go,” he repeated.

Hawthorne stepped into the outer office. The consoles were empty, the entire room devoid of personnel. No doubt, Ulrich had ordered everyone out before he’d entered the inner sanctum.

Then it became difficult to concentrate as they strode through the vast underground bunker, a massive complex. Faces merged, worried and wondering, but comforted by Ulrich’s explanation that the General needed to relax topside, grab some fresh air and stretch his legs for a brisk walk under the sun. In time, and as the drug lost its edge, Hawthorne found himself riding a seldom-used conveyer. He rubbed his forehead.

“Try not to dwell on it,” said Ulrich.

Hawthorne faced the traitor, who had a shiny face and a foul, damp odor. Sweat stains soaked the armpits of Ulrich’s blue uniform.

“In another few minute it’s over, General. Then you’ll never have to look at me again.”

Hawthorne realized that he sneered at Ulrich. He turned toward the approaching entrance. He’d been given an obedience drug, but he hadn’t been completely obedient. There was one word he should have given to cancel secret surveillance. He had implemented this particular procedure after the late Lord Director’s assassination. He was certain the Air Marshal didn’t know about it.

“Step off,” said Ulrich.

Hawthorne hopped off the conveyer. Ulrich followed. Hawthorne strode to the door and punched in the security code. A green light flashed and the thick titanium door slid aside. They climbed the stairs and went out the last door, to a blustery park rich with evergreen odors. Pinecones littered the needled ground. A gravel path led to a hanger in the distance. Evergreens swayed all around, and surrounding the trees rose snow-capped mountains.

“Head away from the building,” said Ulrich. “South.”

Their shoes crunched over needles. The wind howled. Dark swirling clouds raced overhead. Higher then the stratosphere orbited the enemy’s space platforms. The Highborn besieged Earth.

Ulrich made an angry sound, and said, “What’s he doing here?”

General Hawthorne turned.

From behind a tree, strode a strange man. The common phrase was semi-prosthetic or bionic. Specialists had torn the man down and rebuilt him with synthetic muscles, titanium-reinforced bones and sheath-protected nerves. The bionic captain wore a loose military tunic and slacks. He had heavy features, giving him the image of a Twentieth Century gangster who broke bones for a living. He wore a peaked cap low over his eyes, while a barely audible whine emanated from him. Special wonder glands had been grafted into him and if the need arose would squirt drugs into his bloodstream and dull any pain he might receive or stimulate him to even greater strength and speed.

Ulrich stepped near the General. “It’s your head unless you get rid of him.”

Hawthorne could barely speak, but he managed to stutter, “C-Captain.”

The bionic captain strode up and saluted sharply. “Is everything all right, sir?”

Hawthorne glanced at Ulrich, who sweated even more than before, although it was cold here.

“We… we needed air,” said Hawthorne.

“Very good, sir.” The bionic captain turned toward the Air Marshal.

Ulrich peered past him, and his eyes widened in fear.

Both Hawthorne and the bionic captain turned.

Out of the woods loped six men. They wore the red body armor of Political Harmony Corps, with black helmets, boots and silver packs. A wire from the packs ran to the slim laser pistols clutched in their gloved fists.

The bionic captain moved like liquid death. He leaped and shoved Hawthorne down. Then he drew his sidearm and knelt on one knee, snapping off rapid-fire shots.

Hawthorne spit pine needles out of his mouth.

The captain fired a huge gyroc pistol, the heavy slugs igniting in mid-flight, assisted by internal rockets. The armor-piercing bullets penetrated the intruders’ protective shells and exploded. Three of the PHC squad already lay dead. Two fired lasers. One beam hissed over the General, the heat hot on his cheek. The other beam touched the bionic captain’s non-firing arm, frying flesh and bio-metal. The captain grunted, but drugs clamped down on the pain and kept him lucid. He fired twice more and two more red suits went down.

Hawthorne froze, and he realized Ulrich had pressed the inhibitor switch. But his mouth wasn’t frozen. “Behind you!” shouted Hawthorne.

BOOM.

General Hawthorne closed his eyes in sick defeat. Then he heard a familiar grunt, Ulrich. The Air Marshal pitched onto the needles beside him. The last PHC killer died under a hail of gyroc rounds.

Click.

General Hawthorne slowly rose. A moment later, the captain had his hand on his elbow. Blood dripped from the bionic shoulder.

“Are you all right?” asked Hawthorne.

“Never mind me, sir.” The captain scanned the forest. “Let’s get you below.”

“Yes,” said Hawthorne. He glanced at Ulrich, at the crushed windpipe. The bionic captain was brutally strong. He wondered then what the cyborgs were like, if they were that much superior to the bionic men?

As the captain hustled him to the door, he realized that it had almost ended for him. His stupidity bade him recall an ancient piece of prose.

Thucydides, the historian of the Peloponnesian War between the ancient Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta, had written it. It had concerned the various factions of various feuding city-state allies. Thucydides had written about people plotting and jockeying for political power within those states.

As a rule, those who were least remarkable for intelligence showed the greater powers of survival. Such people recognized their own deficiencies and the superior intelligence of their opponents. Fearing that they might lose a debate or find themselves outmaneuvered in intrigue by their quick-witted enemies, they boldly launched straight into action. Their opponents, over-confident in the belief that they would see what was happening in advance, and not thinking it necessary to seize by force what they could secure by policy, were the more easily destroyed because they were off their guard.

Hawthorne was on his guard now against PHC plots. He just hoped it wasn’t too late.

3.

Nadia lowered the headphones and stared at the bulkhead. She hid in a tiny crawl space, her home away from home. She had a folding lounge chair that served as her bed, several boxes of concentrates, a wall stacked with five-gallon jugs of water and a horde of tech equipment and tools. All this left her about ten square meters of floor space. Her vacc suit and helmet lay on a box and an oxygen re-charger stood beside the porta-pot. The only way out was the airlock. Marten had said that this had been one of his parents’ former bolt holes.

Now…

Nadia shook her head in denial of the latest catastrophe. It simply couldn’t be happening. They had come so close, too close for this to happen. When Marten hadn’t shown—she had waited a half-hour over the limit. Then she’d fled and come here to hide and wait and try again. And he hadn’t shown the next day, at the new location. That’s when she became frightened.

Now…

She dropped the headphones onto the floor. Marten was gone. Everyone in the Sun Works was in a panic. Repair pods to the docks, shuttles scurrying all over, the Doom Star Genghis Khan hiding behind Mercury. Those five boost ships now made sense, and all those missiles lifting from the boost ships. Marten had been in one of those. That’s what the military code said, the one she’d just been listening to. The shock troops were on bearing as targeted.

Nadia sat motionless on the lounge chair, her mind blank. Finally, she forced herself to suck from a food-tube and sip water. “Marten,” she whispered. Tears trickled. She would never see him again. She sank into the lounge chair and cried. Later she wiped away the tears. Then she fiddled with the various pieces of equipment. Maybe he would return home from a successful mission, but she couldn’t believe that, didn’t dare trust it to happen. She had to think and be hardheaded.

The answer finally came. She could see no other way around it.

Nadia donned the vacc suit and boots, entered the airlock and made the long walk to the observation dome where they had first found the pod. She entered the hab and warily studied the bare area. Then she pulled a bug detector from her pocket, scanning her surroundings. Spy-sticks watched the corridor. Well, that couldn’t be helped. Hopefully the operator wouldn’t understand what he saw. She wasn’t a shock trooper, and that’s what Marten had told her they watched for.

She put the vacc suit in the locker and hurried down the corridor. A tangler was strapped to her thigh. It was the one Marten had said he’d used over four and half years ago. It had been exactly where he’d said he had hidden it. She hoped she wouldn’t have to use it.

4.

Hansen chortled in glee. He had her. He sat in his office and watched a screen with Nadia Pravda as its subject. He had re-routed certain spy-sticks so they only played at his desk screen. He watched Nadia stride down a utility corridor and to an empty hanger door. He wasn’t sure what she was doing in there. As he waited, he typed on a special keyboard newly installed in the desk. He loved being Chief Monitor. He loved all these gadgets. Watching people when they didn’t know they were being watched, he couldn’t compare the feeling to anything he’d known before. It was power.

He switched back to the hanger door. What was she doing in there? Too bad, he hadn’t been able to get clearance for spy-sticks in the hangers. He shrugged, waited and then checked his credit account. Oh, lovely. He bobbed his head. Dust sales had skyrocketed since he’d taken over.

A red light blinked.

He switched back to the hanger door, watching Nadia close it, glance both ways and hurry down the corridor with a heavy duffel bag slung over her shoulder.

Hansen leaned forward to examine the bag. It seemed to be full of little baggies. “Beautiful,” he whispered. At last, he would recover the stolen product. He needed it more than ever in order to fill several orders. Patience did pay off.

He turned to his intercom to summon his special team: Ervil, Dalt and Methlen. But his door opened and two Trustees entered unannounced. They were beefy, sneering men in brown plastic armor, the personal servants of Highborn. The Trustees as a group displayed big bushy sideburns. These two seemed too young to have them. Theirs were probably glued on. They stood in the doorway, arrogantly peering at his cluttered office and then at him.

As he swiveled around to better see them, Hansen innocently switched off the screen and pressed another button that caused the keyboard to disappear deep into his desk.

“The least you could do is knock,” he said.

“You’re to come with us,” said the Trustee with narrowly placed, beady eyes.

Hansen sat back, trying to think, wondering why Trustees had been sent. They were notoriously difficult to deal with. He said, “Do you realize that Chief Monitor means I keep taps on everything that occurs on the Sun Works Factory?”

“That don’t mean nothing to us.”

“No?” asked Hansen. “You’re innocent of all wrong doing?”

“We’re Trustees. We’re immune.”

“Certainly,” said Hansen. “Until the moment you step out of line. And who do you think catches others doing that?”

The two Trustees glanced at one another. One of them laughed. The beady-eyed Trustee smiled nastily at Hansen.

“You’re trying to suborn a Trustee?”

“Never!” said Hansen. “I’m simply curious as to your errand. How you think you can barge in unannounced? I ask that you give me a few moments to collect myself.”

“No time, Chief Monitor,” said the beady-eyed Trustee, snapping his thick fingers. “Hustle your butt over here double-time, boy.”

Hansen blustered. “I’d like to come now, but I’m engaged in sensitive business. So, if you will tell me who sent you?”

The Trustees nodded to one another and strode into the office.

Hansen leaned forward and tried to click the foot alarm under his desk. A Trustee grabbed one of his skinny arms and jerked Hansen bodily out of the chair. The other Trustee grabbed the other arm. They hustled him out the office, through his secretaries’ rooms and past the desks of surprised monitors. His special team—led by Ervil with his heavily bandaged nose—rose from their chairs.

“We’re under the Praetor’s orders,” the beady-eyed Trustee said.

Dalt and Methlen sank back into their chairs. The shorter Ervil dared take a step toward them.

“We can come back for you later,” the beady-eyed Trustee said. “If you wanna be stupid about this, that is.”

Ervil hesitated and then moved aside.

5.

Nadia heaved a sigh of relief as she donned the vacc suit and reentered the observation dome airlock. It had been a gamble going after the dream dust. But she was going to need it. She was on her own again. To live one needed credits. That was an unpleasant fact. And the universal currency was drugs in demand. It was better than gold or platinum, something that even the common man wanted.

She made the long walk to her hideaway. Back inside she felt more claustrophobic than ever. She was glad she’d spent all this time studying astrophysics. Putting away the dust, she began rummaging through the pile of electronic equipment. What a packrat’s hoard. Finally, she sat, crossed her legs and went through the computer catalog. Ah, that’s what it looked like.

She searched until she found the code-breaker. Then she began to gather supplies.

6.

Hansen screamed. Only his head stuck out of the metal box. The rest of his naked body was strapped and secured within the pain booth as neurowhips lashed his nerve endings. He bellowed until his voice became hoarse. His beet-colored, flushed head, with sweat pouring out him, made it seem as if he was about to pop.

Female techs with earplugs impassively watched him. They wore long white lab coats and stood behind a panel, adjusting the pain intensity and making certain the Chief Monitor served no more or less than the selected time.

Hansen screamed, wheezed and started pleading, even though he knew they couldn’t hear him. He writhed, but the straps held him tightly, although he tore several muscles and tendons in his efforts.

Finally, a tech twirled a dial. The pain stopped.

Hansen gasped in relief, his eyeballs seeming to sink back into his head. For the first time in seven minutes, his body relaxed, although it continued to twitch and jerk. Tears that had streamed from his eyes began to dry on his skin.

The Praetor opened the only door into the soundproofed room. He wore his brown uniform, and with those intense pink eyes, he glared at Hansen.

The two techs removed their earplugs and came to rigid attention.

“Release him,” said the Praetor.

The techs moved like robots. They unlocked the pain booth, drew back the twin doors and began removing the sweat-soaked leather straps. Hansen shivered at their cold touch, they wore rubber gloves. He was naked and humiliated. Small, weak and helpless: he hated the feeling. They helped him stand, their cold, gloved hands on his skinny arms.

“Bring him here,” the Praetor said.

On shaky, trembling legs, Hansen wobbled near. He would have collapsed without the two techs.

“Chief Monitor,” said the Praetor.

Hansen looked up, way up at the giant Highborn. He felt like a child, a naughty boy brought before his angry father. He wondered if he was about to die.

“You have failed in your task,” the Praetor said. “The shock troops have left and I may no longer prove their disloyalty. While incompetence is the chief feature of premen, you surpass the common ruck. I wonder now why the former Chief Monitor trusted you with so many tasks.”

Hansen bowed his head. He wanted to confess and tell the Praetor that Marten Kluge had been a very busy shock trooper indeed. Why, Kluge had even had confederates. But Hansen knew that he had no wits now. Pain and this wretched treatment were meant to intimidate him, and it did, very much. Thus, he didn’t trust himself. As a policeman, he’d learned that unless criminals were very, very careful they always implicated themselves as they tried to explain. He didn’t have the wits to be careful, but at least he had enough to know that. He hung his head a little lower.

“The matter must rest for now,” the Praetor said. “But I do not want you to feel that I tolerate incompetence. I loathe it. I abhor and despise it. Seven minutes in the pain booth is hardly enough for this failure. Yet you premen are so weak that more might damage you beyond repair. In fact, my psychologists tell me that you are weaker in this regard than most of your ilk.”

Hansen let his head droop as far as it could go.

“A pathetic weakling, a wretched fool, a blunderer and a dolt. That is whom I have chosen as my Chief Monitor. My instincts tell me to throttle you on the spot. Instead, I have selected a new Chief Monitor.”

Hansen lifted his head halfway up.

“Ah, you don’t like that, do you?”

Hansen swallowed. He had too many loose ends. A new chief monitor might discover his… indiscretions. The new chief monitor would also have access to his desk and could replay all those spy-stick files and see Marten Kluge. This was a disaster.

“Yet I will not utterly demote you,” the Praetor said. “Moral Enforcer will be your new title.”

“Highborn?”

“I assign you a new task. It is a problem that has mushroomed. I speak of dream dust usage. The Sun Works Police Chief tells me that the sellers are very subtle. You must find and stamp out these sellers. Then you must discover where they manufacture this foul substance and destroy the sites. If you should fail me in this small task, Moral Enforcer, then these past seven minutes will seem like paradise in comparison.”

Without another word, the Praetor left.

Hansen sagged and his knees buckled. Fortunately, the two techs kept him from falling.

“Time to leave, sir,” said the taller of the two techs.

Hansen nodded and let them guide him to the dressing room.

7.

Nadia Pravda rode the pod to the secret hanger. She meant to leave the Sun Works Factory forever. Her heart raced and she dreaded the lack of running lights of the formerly thousands of busy space vehicles. Near space seemed so empty around the Ring-factory now. Would the station tracker pinpoint her and wonder about her unscheduled flight? She dared it because she couldn’t hide in the crawl space any longer.

Her natural caution caused her to park and anchor the pod a kilometer from her destination. She towed a huge bundle of supplies and clang, clang, clanged her way along the habitat’s inner ring. Later she punched in the door code and went through the smaller hatch. She used the flashlight Marten had used the first time and then clanged to the stealth pod. Soon she reached the craft’s hatch, a smooth, black, oval-shaped door. She put the code-breaker over the lock and pressed a button. Lights flashed as the code-breaker went to work.

Time passed. Nadia grew impatient. After two hours, she switched oxygen tanks. Still the code-breaker winked its lights. She began to feel uneasy. She rechecked the code-breaker. Like the dumb little brute that it was it flash, flash, flashed, coming up with codes and testing each. She clicked the flashlight and washed it around the hanger.

Bad mistake, she realized.

Two men in vacc suits floated toward her.

She yelped in terror and clawed for her tangler. Dark clots flew at her. She ducked and swayed, but one hit her vacc suit and tangled her with strong, wiry strands. She struggled, but that only tightened them.

The vacc-suited duo floated closer. Their visors were dark so she couldn’t see who they were. At least they weren’t big enough to be Highborn.

The code-breaker flashed green as the duo reached her. One of them switched off her magnetic boots and picked her up. No! This wasn’t fair! Her stomach twisted and heaved. The other one opened the hatch and floated inside. Then, to her amazement, the second one entered the pod and took her along. She was in the ultra-stealth pod after long last, but not in the manner she had envisioned.

As the one man held her, the other explored the main cabin. He studied the board and pressed several switches. Lights came on and soon the oxygen bulb showed that the air was breathable.

The first man removed his helmet. It was Hansen. He had circles around his eyes and his mouth twitched. He seemed to be in pain. His eyes bored into her after the other man took off her helmet. Then the second man removed his. It was Ervil, with a big white bandage over his nose. He stared at her in a cold manner, as if she were an insect. He frightened her, he always had.

“What is this ship?” asked Hansen, wincing every time he moved.

“You mean you don’t know?”

“Tell me,” he said, trying to sound patient but doing a poor job of it.

“It’s a ship, like you said.”

Ervil grabbed a fistful of her vacc suit—to steady her, she realized a moment later—and slapped her across the face.

“Yes,” said Hansen. “I can see that it’s a ship. And you don’t need to hit her, Ervil.”

Ervil shrugged.

The setback was too stunning for tears. It left her flat, almost emotionless. She said, “Marten called it an ultra-stealth pod. It will, or should I say that it was supposed to have taken us to the Jupiter Confederation.”

Hansen’s foxy eyebrows rose. “You two have been busy. May I know why you wanted to journey to Jupiter?”

“Who wants to live under the Highborn?” she said. “But Marten also hates Social Unity, so Jupiter, is the closest system after Mars.”

“Word is the Martians rebelled against Social Unity when the Highborn first destroyed Geneva,” said Hansen. “And now the Highborn no longer garrison it with a Doom Star, not after May 10. Why not flee to Mars?”

She shook her head. “It’s in Inner Planets. Sooner or later it will be dragged into the war.”

Hansen glanced around, wincing as he did. He asked her, “Could this pod actually make to the Jupiter System?”

She couldn’t shrug with the tangle strands wrapping her. “The short answer is yes,” she said.

“What are you thinking, boss?” asked Ervil.

“Have you ever spent any time in a pain booth?” Hansen asked Ervil.

The short, wide-shouldered monitor shook his head.

“It’s unpleasant, an experience I don’t plan on repeating,” said Hansen. “It has also opened my eyes to reality. You can never please a Highborn.”

“You don’t think the Praetor would be pleased if you turned this up?” asked Ervil. “He might even make you Chief Monitor again.”

“He plans to stamp out all dream dust production,” said Hansen. “And to find the manufacturers and… I don’t know his plans for them, but that’s us, you and me—and you,” he told Nadia.”

Ervil touched the bandage swathed across his nose. His dead, emotionless eyes revealed nothing.

“I have a question,” said Nadia.

“Ask,” Hansen said.

“How did you find me?”

“Ah. When you last entered the habitat, to get your dream dust, I presume, a spy-stick shot an automated tracker onto your vacc suit.”

Nadia closed her eyes. She had forgotten to sweep her suit for bugs. Stupid. When she opened her eyes, she said, “So what do you plan?”

“Can you pilot this ship?” asked Hansen.

“Yes.”

Hansen blew out his cheeks in relief. “Then here and now I forgive you your errors.”

“What about him?” she asked.

Hansen regarded Ervil. “We’re finished in the Sun Works Factory.”

“You got too greedy, boss, that was the problem.”

Hansen stiffened. Maybe he wasn’t used to that sort of talk from his clean-up man. “Maybe so,” he said. “But I propose that we start fresh in the Jupiter System. She brought dream dust. So did I. That will be our stake in the new world.”

Ervil didn’t move and his gray eyes seemed to grow dull. “How long will the trip take?”

“Six months,” she said. “Maybe longer.”

Ervil shook his head. “You’ll go stir crazy, boss. And two men with one woman, that’s bad.”

“We need her to pilot the ship,” Hansen said.

Ervil turned his lifeless eyes on Nadia. He shrugged. “What about Dalt and Methlen?”

“They’ll have to fend for themselves,” Hansen said. “Five seems like too many people for this craft.”

Ervil grunted.

“Now untangle her,” said Hansen.

“Maybe it would be smarter to keep her tangled,” Ervil said. “She could tell you what to do and you pilot the ship. That way we don’t take no chances.”

Hansen seemed to consider it.

“Piloting is much trickier than that,” Nadia said. “I’d have to actually be at the controls.”

“She double-crossed you once already, boss. I don’t trust her.”

“We’ll watch her closely,” Hansen said.

“Take turns, huh?” said Ervil.

“Now, now, none of that,” Hansen said. “Don’t needlessly frighten her.”

“We can’t leave right away,” Nadia said, who was terrified of these two. Why had she ever gotten involved with drugs in the first place?

“Why can’t we leave?” asked Hansen.

“Things are too quiet,” she said. “We have to wait until the pods come back online.”

Hansen pursed his lips. “I destroyed my files, so we have a little time. The sooner we can leave the better.”

“Dalt and Methlen might be angry that you left them behind,” said Ervil. “They might talk too much once the Highborn catch them.”

“We’ll have to count on their staying out of sight for awhile,” said Hansen. He turned to Nadia. “Do we have a deal?”

She had no choice and she knew it. But she didn’t like the look in Hansen’s eyes, nor in Ervil’s. What would six months be like cooped up with these two? “It’s a deal,” she said.

“Good,” said Hansen, taking the bottle off Ervil’s belt. He sprayed her tangle strands and they wilted and fell to the floor. “Let’s get ready to leave.”

8.

Admiral Rica Sioux wore a spotless tan uniform, with a glittering row of medals. A snug, tan military cap hid her hair. She swiveled in the command chair, with a comlink embedded in her right ear and a VR-monocle over her left eye.

Everyone else on the command capsule wore a stiff, tan uniform of the Social Unity Space Fleet. Most were webbed into their modules, with VR-goggles and twitch-gloves. A clean odor filled the capsule, while brisk movement and sharply spoken words added to the military bearing. The transformation in the past eleven days had taken hold throughout the entire ship.

Admiral Sioux shifted anxiously. Short, swift, gratifying days with command briefings, inspections and practice drills had changed a sluggish, orbital-sick crew into eager warriors. Not even the flock of blips picked up by tracking had been able to check this impulse.

It was too bad about the early radar probe and the subsequent missile launches. Enemy jamming kept them in the dark about the exact nature of the incoming missiles. To warm up their own ECM pods to try to defeat the enemy sensors would give away their exact position. No. Long-distance beam shots out of the dark were the Bangladesh’s MO. The spread of enemy missiles proved the Highborn hadn’t spotted them again… unless they had done so optically. In any case, it would take over a week for the missiles to get close enough to fire any missile-borne lasers—if they even packed lasers.

Unless—she tapped her armrest—unless the very spread of missiles was a bluff! Admiral Sioux frowned, creasing her face full of wrinkles. Maybe the Highborn had spread the missiles to try to fool me. Maybe they track us with a hidden, secret ship of their own.

Admiral Sioux sipped from a sealed cup. It was a special medicated drink that smelled like coffee. This way only the medical officer knew that she was taking drugs to help calm her nerves.

Why did she have to worry so much? She hated it.

The First Gunner broke into her reverie, saying, “Entering firing range… now.”

Admiral Sioux savored the moment. Now! The Bangladesh was intact. Despite her fears, the Highborn could surely have no idea about what was to commence. 30 million kilometers was a short distance in space terms, but in terms of Solar System warfare, it was a revolution.

“Rotate the particle shield aft thirty degrees,” she said.

“Aft thirty degrees,” said the Shield Tech.

Outside the massive beamship, the huge 600-meter thick shield of rock and metal lifted as if a man lifted a visor on a helmet.

“Focus the projectors,” said Admiral Sioux.

“Projectors focused. Projectors in firing position,” said the First Gunner, his supple fingers flying over his control board.

A vast section slid open on the inner armored skin of the Bangladesh. A squat nozzle poked out, a green light winking in its orifice.

“Engage power,” Admiral Sioux said.

“Proton Beam power on,” the Power Chief said.

“Target acquired,” the First Gunner said.

Admiral Rica Sioux smiled thinly. She and ship’s AI had already chosen the targets ten days ago. They would follow a strict procedure aboard the Bangladesh. If the Highborn did something unforeseen, only then would they change procedure.

“Admiral?” the First Gunner asked.

She sighed. A good officer, the Pakistani First Gunner, but he was a little too anxious. Why couldn’t he allow her to enjoy the moment? After one hundred and twenty-one years of life, she had learned that savoring a moment was often more enjoyable than the actual moment itself.

“This day,” she said to the command crew, “we teach the Imperialist warmongers that you can contain the People momentarily, but you can’t keep them down forever.”

One fool actually started clapping, although he quickly looked around, saw that no one else clapped and sheepishly turned back to his screen.

“Hear, hear,” said the Second-in-Command.

There, much better, and with an actual touch of the antiquated navy. The Admiral liked that. She closed her eyes and refrained from fiddling with her cap, as much as she wanted to adjust it because her head itched abominably. That would seem like a nervous gesture, though. She opened her eyes, trying to memorize every detail.

“Fire,” she said.

The First Gunner pressed the button.

Ship’s AI took over. Within the Bangladesh, power flooded from the storage cells and the ship’s Fusion Drive pumped in more. Said power charged through the proton generators. Needles and gages jumped and quivered, and then out of the single cannon poured the incredibly powerful proton beam.

It almost sped 300,000 kilometers per second for Mercury, for the Sun Works Factory that churned armaments for the Supremacists. For 1.7034 minutes, the tip of the beam flew through the vacuum of space. Meanwhile, Mercury traveled along its orbital path around the Sun, and around the pitted planet rotated the vast ring habitat, its exact tilt known even to the lone scientists far out on Charon. The proton beam almost charged as fast as anything could possibly travel in the galaxy. It was a little less than the speed of light, amazingly fast to terrestrials, but when set against the vast distances of space, a mere crawl.

On the Sun Works Factory technicians and secretaries, Highborn officers and premen underlings, repairmen, computer specialists, welders, deck crew, cooks and maintenance all went about their normal activities. None knew what sped toward them. Nothing could have given them warning. If radar could have bounced off the proton beam, the return radar blip would have traveled only a little faster than the attacking protons. Like a literal bolt out of the blue, the proton beam flew onward.

Approximately 1.7 minutes after leaving the proton cannon, the beam lanced past the solar collectors that girded the outer shell of the Sun Works Factory. For all the precision of the Bangladesh’s targeting system, the first shot missed its target by 100 meters. The proton beam shot past the solar collectors, flashed over the rest of the spinning station and speared at Mercury. There the beam churned the already molten surface.

Shuttle pilots and pod-crew near the beam stared at it in dread fascination. Highborn command officers swore. In seconds, alarms rang everywhere.

Then the beam shifted, as it had been shifted 1.7 minutes ago aboard the Bangladesh. Ship’s AI had predicated the possibility of a miss. Because of that possibility, ship’s AI had suggested that the Admiral re-target the beam every six seconds.

Thus six seconds after the harsh proton beam flashed past the Sun Works Factory and hit Mercury, it readjusted and smashed into the solar collectors that protected the outer skin of the station. They had never been built to take such punishment. An old-style military laser would have destroyed it and little more. For a laser beam didn’t stay on target, on the same spot, for more than a nanosecond. But this was the improved proton beam, Social Unity’s single ace card against the Highborn. It punched through the solar collector and through the heavy shielding behind it. It stabbed into the Sun Works Factory itself, into the orbital fighter construction yard that had been built in this part of the Factory.

The proton beam touched welder equipment and ignited engines. Blasts added to the destruction, awful, fierce annihilation. For six seconds the proton beam wreaked the needed orbital construction yard. It punched through that part of the ring-factory, slicing it like a gigantic knife. Gouts of purple plasma erupted into space. Burned bodies floated into the vacuum, some of those crisped corpses were Highborn. Titanic ammunition blasts combined with the beam and ruptured the Sun Works, a devastating first strike. In nearby areas, the blasts ruptured hatches and ignited more fires. Shocked technicians, pilots and service personal died by fire, by vacuum and sometimes by toxic fumes.

Then the proton beam shifted again.

The first attack lasted three minutes, the beam shifting every six seconds. It was three minutes of hellish terror for everyone on the nearest side of the Sun Works Factory. In the hit locations, it was three minutes of incredible destruction. It was three minutes of brutal death. Maybe for the first time in the war, the Highborn knew they could be hurt.

Aboard the Bangladesh, the command crew and proton-beam technicians held their breath. Or it seemed to them they did. The three minutes went by in a flash. Then:

“Power low,” the Power Chief said.

Admiral Sioux watched the seconds tick by in her VR-monocle. Three, two, one: “Shut down the proton beam.”

“Proton beam shutting down,” said the First Gunner.

“Engage engines,” ordered the Admiral.

Everyone abandoned the modules and floated to the acceleration couches in the center of the capsule, buckling in. Soon the mighty engines burned. The Bangladesh thrust to a different heading, just in case the Highborn tried anything unexpected.

In another half-hour, they would fire again. For the next several days, they were going to pound the Sun Works Factory and see if they could teach the Highborn a thing or two about space warfare.

Admiral Rica Sioux loved it.

16.

Nadia Pravda nervously paced before a Plexiglas bubble dome that hissed from a crack four meters up. She was a fool. She should phone Hansen and explain that none of this was her fault. She was sick of hiding in crawl spaces, wondering if Marten could build a spacecraft to take her out of here.

She laughed at the impossibility of the idea. Yet she recalled his performance at the Pleasure Palace. He had taken out the two monitors and then everyone in the drug room. Stunning. She shivered as she remembered the tumbling bodies and that dead monitor shot through the eye by the thickly muscled Korean. Omi had checked each person, shooting several just to make sure they were soundly asleep. He’d seemed ruthless. But Marten, he seemed to be more than ruthless. Something drove him.

She made a face. The smart thing would be to call in and tell her foreman she’d been sick, so sick that she hadn’t even been able to reach the com system. He would know she was lying. That’s why she might need a call from Hansen. Then she should have her job back. Yes, and then she would owe Hansen two favors, one for not killing her and another for getting her job back.

Why had the sump exploded that day?

Nadia eyed the hissing crack and checked her watch. Marten was late. Fear twisted her resolve. What if he didn’t show? What if he had been caught? What if even now monitors raced here to, to—Nadia hugged herself. Would they really shove her naked out an airlock? That’s what they’d threatened to do if she double-crossed them.

Nadia began to pace. Being alone for days, hiding in that crawl space was driving her mad. Why—

Her head snapped up. Her eyes grew round and she couldn’t breath.

A valve turned. A door creaked. Someone was coming.

Please, please let it be Marten.

A man turned the corner, a white-faced, sweating man who stumbled toward her. He looked exhausted and sick. Then Nadia breathed again as she realized it was Marten. And despite her resolve over the past several days not to, she felt a stirring within her.

9.

The attack came as a dreadful shock to the Highborn. It two places, space and molten debris floated where once had been the solid ring-factory. In other places, torn skin and blasted wreckage told of the fierce annihilating power of the proton beam. More than one Highborn swore awful oaths. Many premen sat at screens, studying the orange plasma clouds, the tumbling bodies and the gaping holes in the station. Maybe for the first time, they doubted an automatic Highborn victory. The superiors could be hurt.

Repair pods flew to the scene of the worst destruction, as well as damage control teams in Zero-G Worksuits. All over the Sun Works Factory, hanger doors opened and working orbitals zoomed out to emergency zones. Meanwhile, behind Mercury, the Genghis Khan powered up to fight as it was. The Doom Star Gustavus Adolphus halted refit as personal raced onboard. At this point, the Highborn expected anything to happen.

The Praetor of the Sun Works Factory ordered all premen to barracks. This would be the perfect moment for SU sympathizers to strike, or so suggested several Highborn in charge of various security areas. Debates raged on what to do next. Vectors and velocities of all known Social Unity spacecraft were carefully computed.

“I want to know when each of them can reach Mercury!” the Praetor shouted.

“Do you believe this a prelude to a mass premen space attack?” Lycon asked.

“What do you call this?” snarled the Praetor, before striding out to collect the latest damage reports.

“They will attack again,” messaged the Grand Admiral from the Julius Caesar in orbit around the Moon. “Implement total defense measures.”

Several minutes after receiving it, a communications officer handed the memo to the Praetor. He scanned it. Then he asked his staff, “What does he think we’ve been doing?”

“You’re one step ahead of him, sir,” said a staff member.

The Praetor grunted.

Unlike the lower species, the Highborn prided themselves on quick reactions. Shock often produced confused sluggishness. Surprise left many bewildered. Not the Highborn, however, and certainly not the Praetor.

The Genghis Khan and a hundred shuttles roared to the outer portion of the Sun Works Factory. They pumped aerogel with lead additives between the probable location of the Bangladesh and the space hab. The aerogel was a dull cloud. Behind it, other shuttles shot packets of prismatic crystals. It was reflective chaff, useful against lasers. Maybe it would help a little against the dreaded proton beam. The mass of protective “junk” moved at the same relative speed as the planet and ring hab, thus seeming to remain stationary. The volume of space needing protection was knowable and measurable. The problem was that it was also vast.

As bad, the next attack commenced before the aerogel and reactive shielding had begun to take form. Yet wherever the proton beam struck the aerogel with lead additives, it lost power because it had to burn through. The clouds weren’t thick enough yet to stop the beam. And most of the places the beams slashed were unshielded by these aerosols.

Just like the first attack, the second wreaked awful destruction. More bodies tumbled into vacuum. Purple, orange and red plasma roiled into space. The proton beam sliced through another two sections of the ring-factory. Months of factory work burned, exploded or drifted into the void. Debris began a slow tumble toward Mercury, captured by the planet’s gravity.

There was, however, an incredible amount of mass to attack. The sheer volume of the Sun Works Factory made its total destruction a matter of weeks of such beaming. Long before that happened, effective use of the factory would cease. The Highborn were as close to panic as they could be.

Three minutes later this attacked stopped just as the first one had.

“Faster!” the Praetor shouted. “More aerogel, more crystals, get my station shielded!”

10.

Hansen and Ervil watched her too closely. Hansen boasted endlessly during his watches. She found out he’d been a skinny boy in Sydney, Australian Sector when his parents had been kicked out of Social Unity for graft. They had been forced to move into the sprawling slums and eke out an existence there. According to Hansen, most of the slum dwellers were third and fourth generation and knew its filthy, brutal ways. People like Kang and Omi fit perfectly. But sensitive lads like him…

Nadia learned that around the city’s lower deep-core shaft radiated the slums, from City Level 41 to 49. Peacekeeper raids seldom helped keep order. Social workers rarely ventured into the slums even if guaranteed army patrols. Hall and block leaders kept a low profile there. Ward officers seldom set foot in their own territory. Desperate people lived in the slums, uneducated, violent people with bizarre modes of thought and behavior. Gangs roved at night, youth gangs being particular bloodthirsty. Drug-lords hired people called mules, bodyguards and gunmen.

Hansen told her that his only method for survival had been to sharpen his wits. Subterfuge and cunning, that’s how a skinny young boy had dodged the worst horrors.

She supposed that’s how a skinny older man had tried to dodge them on the Sun Works Factory.

Ervil’s watches were worse. He stared at her with those dead eyes. He didn’t say anything. Sometimes he did isometric exercises with a pull bar. When he did this, he took off his shirt. A layer of smooth fat hid his muscles and the stench of his sweat wasn’t pleasant. She once checked the amount of pull he used. Strange Ervil was strong, probably one of those naturals that could live in any slum, at least according to Hansen’s theories.

They didn’t even trust her to use the bathroom alone. Each took turns watching, making her keep the door open. That’s when she decided. There was no way she’d survive a six-month trip cooped with these two.

So when Ervil was asleep one shift she began working on Hansen. She found ways to nudge him. She laughed at his jokes. She kept her eyes bright and showed interest when he repeatedly told the same stories. She soon realized he considered himself the slyest man in the solar system. He had big plans. It dawned on her that his ambition had helped him trick the Highborn into thinking he’d been a PHC agent. He knew undercover procedures because he had informed on everyone in Sydney. The way he told it, he had taught some of the agents a thing or two when sent on sting operations. And he had thoroughly learned the drug trade.

Then came a day she dared let her eyes linger on him. When he turned and noticed, she looked away with a guilty start.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head.

He moved closer. Ervil snored in the sleep compartment.

“Do you miss Marten?” he asked.

“Him?” she asked, facing Hansen. “Marten was a monomaniac. All he thought about was how to get to Jupiter.” A wry look came over her. “He didn’t have time for much else.”

“At least his single-mindedness was good for the three of us,” Hansen said with a laugh.

She laughed, too.

He let his hand fall on top of hers.

She looked up, her eyes wide. “What if Ervil catches us?” she whispered.

“Ervil does what I tell him.”

“I don’t understand that,” she said. “He’s so strong and nothing scares him.”

“He’s strong,” admitted Hansen. He tapped his forehead. “But this is where strength really counts.”

“You’re so right.”

He grinned and touched her cheek. She melted against his hand before she jerked away.

“I’m too scared,” she whispered.

“Of me?”

“Ervil! In six months, he’ll get jealous. What if he kills you?”

“Nonsense.”

“Then I’ll be all alone with him.” She shuddered. “I don’t think he practices normal sex.”

Hansen slid closer and gripped her shoulders. He kissed her. She kissed back. Suddenly noise came out the sleep compartment: Ervil moving around. Hansen dropped his hands and acted normally. Nadia could have done likewise, but as the compartment door slid open, she leaped up as her hand flew to her mouth.

“Did you sleep well?” Hansen asked, covering for her.

Ervil blinked at them.

Nadia fidgeted.

Later, she told Hansen Ervil had questioned her about what had happened when he was asleep. Hansen seemed doubtful. She dropped the subject. Half a day later Hansen said he couldn’t believe Ervil would ask such a thing.

“You don’t see the way he watches me when you’re asleep,” she said. “I think he’s planning to trick you.”

Hansen snorted. But when the proton beam first struck the Sun Works Factory Nadia noticed he’d taken to wearing his projac at all times. Later, when the pods and shuttles flooded out to build the space shield, and she said now was the moment to leave, that’s when her work bore fruit.

“We should leave for the Jupiter System today,” she said, moving to the pilot seat.

“Hold it,” said Ervil, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Let her go,” said Hansen.

Something in his boss’s voice must have warned Ervil. The short man spun around fast and slid to the left, as if to dodge shots. Hansen, his hand on his holstered projac, now clawed to get it out. Ervil roared, “You’re double-crossing me?” He charged Hansen, who pumped ice slivers into him. The momentum took Ervil into Hansen. Both men crumbled to the floor. Hansen thrashed to disentangle himself. The short, wide-shouldered Ervil lay limply. Hansen finally leaped up, aiming his weapon at Nadia.

She, uncertain about the outcome, had simply played the part of a terrified woman, standing with her mouth and eyes wide.

The suspicion left Hansen. He laughed sharply as he lowered the projac. “Brains over brawn,” he said. “Now to do it right.” He pulled a clip out of his pocket.

“You’re not going to kill him.”

Hansen shrugged, switching clips.

“Why not use Suspend?” she said.

“We don’t have any.”

“I have some,” she said.

He raised his head. “Only the military has access to Suspend.”

“Marten pilfered some. I brought it with my supplies.”

“Why shouldn’t I just kill him?” asked Hansen. “It’s much simpler and makes sure there aren’t any complications.”

“He was your friend once,” she said. “That counts for something.” She searched his eyes, giving him the doe-eyed look of an innocent.

“Certainly,” he said after a moment. “Yes, yes, of course. I’m not heartless.”

“Why don’t you put him in his vacc suit and I’ll get the Suspend. But we’ll have to hurry. This is the perfect moment to leave.”

Hansen nodded, holstering his weapon.

She strode to her belongings and took out a pneumospray hypo filled with a dose of Suspend. She waited as Hansen wrestled heavy Ervil into his suit. Then, as Hansen closed the magnetic seal, she stepped behind him and pressed the hypo to his neck. Air hissed. Hansen jerked upright, whirled and grabbed her. Suspend took almost a full minute to take effect. So she kneed him hard in the groin. He doubled over, gasping. She clutched her hands together and struck him across the back of the head. He slumped onto the deck, the Suspend making him sluggish, and soon he was out.

“Night-night,” she whispered.

She used a second dose and pumped Suspend into Ervil. Then she worked Hansen’s vacc suit onto him, donned one herself and dragged them into the hanger. The Suspend would keep them several weeks in their suits. Their biological functions were now slower than animals in hibernation. She set them beyond the pod’s hydrogen burn range and returned to the ship.

It would be a lonely voyage to Jupiter, but better than with those two.

Thus, as the thousands of pods and shuttles ferried aerogel and prismatic crystals from the Genghis Khan and to the growing space shield, a small and secret hanger in the Sun Works Factory opened. Out of it nosed the stealth pod. Using low power Nadia eased it from Mercury.

An automated tracker spotted it, studied it and decided that one of the pods had malfunctioned. Later a Highborn examined the tape and agreed with the analysis.

Several hours later Nadia dared give a little more thrust. Then the ultra-stealth pod began to coast once more.

11.

Endless monotony left Marten exhausted. The crushing pressure of three atmospheres gave him nightmares of choking to death. So as much as he needed and craved it he hated sleeping. Just as bad were the mind-numbing dramas on his Head-Up-Display, crudely rehashed Social Unity propaganda.

Apparently, the Highborn didn’t see the need for new dramas slanted to their philosophy, or maybe they simply hadn’t gotten around to filming them yet. Whatever the case, someone must have told them that SU propcorp played on everyone’s holos.

By law and technology no one living within Social Unity could switch off their set. The inane shows provided Inner Planets with its mass mentality. From Mercury to Mars people quoted the most popular slogans.

What the Highborn had done was take some of the old shows and ‘fix’ the endings.

SU morality shows, which made up about 90% of the holoset fare, came in two flavors. One, a wily villain out for himself succumbed to the mass suggestion of his hall-mates or hall leader and renounced his villainy. Or two a self-serving villain died hideously as socially aware folk tried to save him or as a socially conscious peacekeeper blew him away in order to save others from his self-centered madness. The HB video-tech had simply chopped the ending and computer-generated new ones. Now the villain working for himself turned out to have been the smart one. Everyone else had been a jerk. The villain lived while an insane hall leader ordered the hall-mates into slime pits where weird funguses rotted them to death. That had hit a little too close to reality for Marten. He more enjoyed it where the hall-mates were beaten to death by out-of-control peacekeepers. At the very end of the show the former villain hurried to join the HBs in order to keep his newly won rank of self-made-man, first step.

After the third show, Marten decided that old or new, they were all swill. So to keep from going stir-crazy he kept his HUD on the stars, at least as routed through the missile’s nose-cone camera.

Space, and a million stars, it was beautiful. If only there were things like starships so he could travel to distant worlds. Or maybe if he could just get out of this suit and somehow head to the Neptune System. Instead, he raced closer toward a suicide ship-assault. Or worse, there would be no assault because the missile missed. Then they would die, buried in glop, and for a million years, five dead men would serenely sail through the interstellar voids.

BUMP.

“Did you feel that?” asked Vip, via comlink. He sounded scared.

“I felt it,” Marten said.

“Were we hit?”

“No, the outer pressure would’ve dropped and we would have exploded, turned into red smears in the bulkhead. Until the drugs wear off, we’re like deep-sea creatures, kept intact by the three atmospheric pressures holding us in.”

Marten’s headphones crackled. A Highborn cleared his throat.

“Men.”

It was Training Master Lycon, speaking via laser-link, no doubt, all the way from Mercury.

“As you may have surmised, each missile has just changed vectors, some of you rather sharply. With greater incoming data, we have discovered that each had enough fuel to re-target. You will now engage the Bangladesh en mass. I repeat: it will be a mass assault. Battle-files of Assault Formation 42 have been beamed into your AI’s for your study and implementation. Vladimir of 83rd Maniple is promoted to Hauptsturmfuhrer of the 42-type Assault. Second-in-Command will be Wu of 192nd Maniple. Third in Command will be Kang of 101st Maniple. Remember, men, excellence brings rank. That is all.”

The crackling in the headphones quit, and for a moment, there was silence as each absorbed the news. Then:

“Congratulations, Kang,” Marten said.

A grunt was the reply.

“That should have been you who was promoted, Marten,” said Lance. “What a sham. Mad Vlad in charge and our own murderer as the third runner up.”

“Kang knows his business,” Marten said.

“He’s a psychotic killer,” said Lance.

“Isn’t that what Marten just said?” asked Omi.

“What?” asked Lance. “Are you saying we’re all psychotic?”

No one answered.

“Oh, right,” said Lance. “We’ve all killed people. We all survived Japan Sector. What a hellhole that was. What I’m saying is that Kang loves it. The thrill of pulling a trigger and watching the bullets rip into flesh, releasing the spirit.”

“I didn’t know you’re religious,” Vip said.

“How do you figure religious out of that?” asked Marten.

“The spirit part,” Vip said.

“Oh,” Marten said. “So, Lance, are you religious?”

“Of course. The whole thing is self-evident.”

“What do you mean?” asked Vip.

“Look, there’s God and the devil, right?” said Lance.

“Right,” Marten said, when no one else answered.

“Well, look around you,” said Lance. “The devil is supposed to be the Lord of Evil, and I see a lot of evil around this solar system. It proves beyond a doubt that the devil is alive and well.”

“Okay,” Vip said. “But that doesn’t mean God is real.”

“Oh yes it does,” said Lance. “Because how did the devil get here unless God made him? For evil to be around there has to be God.”

“God made evil?” Marten asked.

“No!” said Lance. “Without God there’s no conception of evil. You don’t know something unless you see its opposite. And since we’ve seen so much evil, well, that proves God is real.”

“I’m not psychotic,” Kang said.

Lance guffawed.

“Am I psychotic, Omi?”

“No,” Omi said.

“Oh, right,” said Lance, “he has to say that ‘cause he knows you’ll kill him if he doesn’t.”

“Maybe you’re not psychotic, Kang” Vip said. “But you’re a bastard. I’d rather have Marten as maniple leader.”

“None of that,” Marten said. “Kang is in charge.”

“But you know that you’re a better tactician than Kang,” said Lance. “You’re better than Mad Vlad, too. Hauptsturmfuhrer. I thought the Highborn always made logical choices, especially in matters of combat. This time they screwed up.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Marten said.

“I don’t want to have to shoot you, Marten,” Kang said.

“No, not about you being maniple leader,” Marten said. “You’re welcome to it.”

“Are you saying that you don’t want to be maniple leader?” asked Kang. He sounded dubious.

“Forget about that, will you?” Marten said. “I’m talking about the Highborn.”

Omi spoke quietly. “These comlines might be bugged, Marten.”

After Marten stopped laughing, he said, “That’s good. We’re traveling at twenty-five-Gs into oblivion and you’re worried that the HBs might be tapping us. Screw them.”

“That’s insubordination,” Kang said.

“So what?”

“So once we’re out of here the discipline codes state that—”

“Kang,” Marten said. “What if we don’t get out of here?”

Silence.

Finally Vip said, “Don’t talk defeatist.”

“Why don’t you switch your HUD to the stars instead of all that porn you’ve been watching,” Marten said.

“Yeah, so,” Vip said a few seconds later.

“Aren’t the stars beautiful?”

“Marten’s cracking up,” Vip said.

“No,” Marten said. “I’m facing the fact that this might be it. And that’s thanks to the HBs. So like I said before: Screw them.”

“You have a point,” said Lance.

“No he doesn’t,” Kang said. “You live by the rules given you. You survive.”

“Screw the rules,” Marten said. “You live by being who you are.”

“Or you die if that’s too far out of whack with everyone else,” said Lance.

“Maybe,” Marten said. “Or maybe you find somewhere else to go, somewhere sane.”

“Like where?” asked Lance.

“The Outer Planets.”

“Enough of that,” Kang said. “While I’m leader, you’ll can that kind of talk.”

“Doesn’t it bother you being shot at the Bangladesh?” asked Marten. “The fact that you’re nothing more than a biological bullet?”

“Ain’t nothing I can do about that,” Kang said.

“Isn’t there?”

A heavy sigh. “Your problem, Marten, is that you’re a dreamer. The world chews up dreamers and spits them out.”

“Or we change the world,” Marten said.

“One time out of a thousand,” Kang said. “The way I count, those are poor odds.”

“Okay,” Marten said. “You want to let them hook you to the harness like a horse, you go ahead. You want to let them stuff you into a missile and fire you into a frozen void, you do that.”

“You’re letting them do it to you too,” Kang said.

“What I’m saying,” Marten said, “is that maybe we should rethink that.”

“Rethink it how?” asked Lance.

“Maybe by declaring our independence,” Marten said.

Silence.

“If I’m psychotic,” Kang said, “you’re a nut.”

“Omi, tell them about the gelding.”

Quietly, Omi did just that. When he was done, there was more silence.

“Yeah,” said Lance. “A rotten deal if I ever heard of one. But this independence… I don’t get it.”

“I’ll shoot the lot of you,” Kang said. “You get that, don’t you?”

“All I’m saying is that we have to be ready to play our chance,” Marten said. “If we see it—I’m going for it.”

“First we have to get onto the beamship,” Omi said. “Tell me how we’re going to do that.”

“Well,” Marten said, “by first hoping that our masters have outsmarted the enemy, and that our missile reaches the Bangladesh, and then that the beamship doesn’t kill us. Then we can worry about whether we fight our way aboard or not.”

They thought about that.

“I’ll shoot anybody that does something stupid,” Kang said. “And if you’re thinking about fragging your maniple leader, then I’ll shoot you even sooner.”

Marten sighed. “Look at the stars for a while, will you? And then think about your life, what it means, what it is worth and what it’s all about. Maybe while you’re at it you can think about Lance’s God, too.”

“Or the devil,” Vip said.

“Sure,” Marten said. “Why not? It seems like he’s making the rules these days.”

12.

At first, General Hawthorne was dazed. The chief members of his staff were dead, blown away by Air Marshal Ulrich. A PHC-squad in Joho Park had come to whisk him away to who knew where and for what nefarious reason. And that neural inhibitor on his neck—the bionic captain had noticed it while they descended the stairs. He’d peeled it off, and later had said that he’d felt its vibration. Reflexively the captain had clutched the neural inhibitor in his hand, and watched his hand explode a second later.

The captain was in surgery even now, as they grafted a new and better bionic hand onto him.

General Hawthorne had been dazed by the audacity of the attack, the bloody-handedness and slyness of it. It smacked of Chief Yezhov.

Right away, he noticed the rest of Bunker Command turning restive, wary, as if he had an incurable disease. Oh, at first, they made protesting noises about the immorality of the attack, but it seemed more as a matter of form than genuine passion. They soon checked themselves, and seemed to calculate their words, as if they were being recorded for posterity. Or maybe for some PHC officer later who tested their loyalty to Social Unity.

An unasked question seemed to hover on everyone’s lips. If PHC could reach the General and his staff, whom couldn’t they touch?

Fortunately, his dazedness didn’t last.

A march to his private office, throwing open the bottom drawer and lifting the bottle of vodka there and a tumbler had begun the healing. He poured himself a stiff jolt and tossed it down. His eyes bulged as the warmth blossomed in his gut. He poured himself another. He blinked several times, the dazed, unreal feeling draining from him. In its place came a cold clarity.

He set the tumbler and bottle on the desk. He went to his private closet, rummaging in the back until he found his old belt and holster. He strapped it on, looping the one belt over his right shoulder and hooking it to the belt around his waist. He slapped the holster. In it was a small gun, but brutal, a short-barrel .44 that shot exploding slugs.

He marched to the command center. People grew quiet. A few noticed the holster, although no one commented. He stalked about until they went back to work. Then he eavesdropped, trying to gage how far they would step out for him, for him personally.

With his new clarity, he was shocked to realize that it wasn’t very far at all. Maybe six months ago right after the asteroid attacks they would have. Today… some muttered about PHC’s latest purge. It was called the Anti-Rightist Purification. Rightist in SU jargon usually meant capitalists when referring to Outer Planets people or the military when talking about Inner Planets. It came to him that he’d been so concerned about his proton beams and merculite missiles that he’d forgotten to worry about the home front.

Theoretically, of course, all power in Inner Planets stemmed from the Directorate, the nine that guided the people through the principles of Social Unity. Also in theory, each director was equal. In fact, some were more equal than others were. Since the dictatorial days of the late Lord Director Enkov, Blanche-Aster had taken the mantle of leadership. In deference to her position, she bore the title: Madam Blanche-Aster. She deemed the title inoffensive but still original to her and signifying the manner of her guidance. “I am the mother of humanity,” she was fond of saying. “And as a mother I wish to be gentle but firm, unwavering as I uphold Social Unity.”

She backed him, and she forced the rest of the Directorate to do likewise.

A call two hours later showed him yet another crack in his position. Fortunately, he took the call in a side room, a communications center.

“General Hawthorne?”

“Yes, Director.”

The man in the wavering holo-image sat in a chair. He was a big man, a Venusian, and he wore an old-fashioned bond lord uniform. He had a square face and a blunt nose, with sagging jowls that wobbled as he spoke. He was seventy-five and he was therefore the youngest and most physically active of the Directorate.

Director Gannel swept a big beefy hand in a theatrical gesture. Heavy brass rings encircled each finger. He loved to strike poses as he spoke. It was an old habit from his hall leader days in the thorium mines.

Director Gannel had arrived several months ago from Venus. His was a daring tale of braving the Highborn space blockade of his terraformed planet and slipping onto an “open” farm hab orbiting Earth. From there he’d taken a grain transport down to Australia Sector and slipped aboard one of Earth’s last submarines and to India. In the readjustments that had occurred after the late Lord Director’s death, Gannel had skillfully maneuvered his way onto a director’s chair.

“Then the rumors aren’t true,” said Gannel.

“Rumors?” asked Hawthorne.

His jowls wobbled as Gannel smiled, showing big white teeth so obviously false that they made him look like a vampire.

You want to suck my blood, you obscene old plotter.

“Why, General, it’s been said that you were shot.”

“How very interesting,” said Hawthorne. “And who was the supposed shooter?”

“Why, I don’t know,” said Director Gannel.

“You do seem surprised to see me alive.”

The holo-image shimmered. HB jamming and the incredibly bad storms since the asteroid attacks had adversely effected communications. Soon the image settled down.

“Yes! I am surprised,” Gannel said. “Surprised that anyone would be fool enough to joke with me. To tell me you were dead.”

“Well, then, Director, if that’s all. It’s been a pleasure, of course, speaking with you.”

“Wait a minute, General. Now that I have you online there’s something, well, I hope I haven’t heard two wrong rumors in one day. But there’s talk that you plan to prematurely order the Bangladesh to break off its attack.”

And who leaked that? Hawthorne wondered. Oh, of course, the Air Marshal.

“Yes, Director. It’s time to cut and run.”

In his communications studio in New Baghdad, the big Venusian hunched forward, his brawler’s fists clenched, showing off the heavy brass rings. “Now look here, General, that’s just the sort of talk I’m sick of hearing.”

“Of a successful hit and run?”

“You know that isn’t what I mean. This entire… I’m going to use a word I hope you don’t find offensive, General: Cowardice.”

“Why would I find a charge of cowardice offensive?”

“I’m not calling you that, of course.”

“Ah, splendid.”

“But what else can one say to this suggestion of running away when we’re finally hurting these bastards?”

“I see. Then maybe you should consider this, Director. Three irreplaceable spacecraft didn’t cut and run in the Venus System. They stuck around to trade fire with the enemy. Those three missile ships were destroyed.”

“Of course they were!” said Gannel. “These piecemeal attacks of yours, General, are suicide.”

“A strategy dictates the tactics, Director. Our present strategy is the death of a thousand cuts, to bleed the enemy to death one Highborn at a time. There are only two million of them. Thus, one hits hard and runs, to fight another day. What one doesn’t do is trade blows with the Highborn or get greedy and go for more than is reasonable. Because their one great advantage is the ability to win any sustained engagement, usually with spectacular style.”

“Don’t lecture me. I know all about strategy and tactics. How do you think I achieved my rank?”

“We’re dealing with Highborn. Not Venusian rabble.”

The cold calculating stare of Director Gannel seemed to measure Hawthorne. “I’m going to be frank, General. We don’t like this splitting of the Fleet, this nipping at our enemy’s heels. Our battleships should be together and used to strike at one precise point, to break the grip of the Highborn one at a time at each of the four planets.”

“After we’ve sufficiently hemorrhaged them, yes, I quite agree.”

“We don’t have that kind of time, General. We must strike now! We must crush this rebellion before the Highborn gain allies from the Outer Planets.”

“It is we who should be seeking allies,” said Hawthorne.

“No!”

“Director—”

“You’d better listen to me, General. The Directorate is weary of your defeatist talk. Boldness! We want boldness in our planning.”

Hawthorne pursed his lips. With his cold clarity, he analyzed the situation. He nodded. “Very well.”

“Furthermore—what did you say?”

“I agree.”

“You agree to what?”

“Boldness.”

“If this is some verbal trick, General.”

“No. You’re right. This is a time for boldness.”

Director Gannel leaned back. “Uh, yes, yes, good. Very good, General. I’m glad to hear you say that. You are a man of reason after all. I just hope… Well. I’m glad we could have this talk.”

“As am I, Director Gannel.”

Gannel glanced at something in his room that was out of sight of his holo-projector. “I must beg your pardon, General, my agenda forces me to cut the conversation short.”

“Good bye, Director,” said Hawthorne.

The communications ended as the holo-image collapsed into a tiny dot of light and winked out.

It left General Hawthorne silent and thoughtful. He finally rose and began to pace around the holoset. What had Commodore Tivoli told him before her untimely death? There was rioting in New Baghdad, in the capital.

He whirled around and strode for the door.

13.

No one would remember later who ordered the autopsy. But Air Marshal Ulrich’s corpse lay on an operating table deep in Bunker Command’s Medical Facility. Doctor Varro, the two technicians and a nurse discovered an odd reading from Ulrich’s skull. An x-ray showed tiny filaments running through the frontal lobes and a strange little lead device embedded near the pituitary gland.

“Can you make any sense out of it?” asked Doctor Varro. She showed them the x-ray.

The two technicians shook their heads.

“Nurse?”

“It’s ghastly. Sticking things in a man’s brain. Who did it?”

“Yes,” said Doctor Varro, a slender woman, who had helped create over twenty bionic men. “Who indeed?”

“Should we run more tests?” asked the more cautious technician.

Doctor Varro studied the x-ray. What was that little lead device beside the pituitary gland? Her green eyes shone with curiosity. “Get the cranial saw,” she said.

The nurse picked it up, a small circular saw, and handed it to Doctor Varro.

The more cautious technician grabbed the x-ray off the tray and peered at it again. He didn’t like it, not one bit.

The cranial saw whirred into life. Doctor Varro leaned over the skull.

“Excuse me,” said the more cautious technician. He hurried out of the operating room, heading for the lavatory.

Thus, only he survived the explosion that obliterated the corpse’s skull and killed Doctor Varro, the other technician and the nurse. For the next two-and-a-half hours, the more cautious technician retold his story to the MI operatives grilling him on what exactly had happened. Don’t leave out any facts. Do you understand?

He did understand, and he didn’t leave out any facts. Not even the one that he practiced mediation and firmly believed in gut level instincts. Didn’t they trust their own?

They did, so they drugged him, and were surprised to find out he was telling the truth—So much for the instinctual theory.

14.

General Hawthorne paced. The reports lay thick on his desk. A spontaneous riot, they called it. Several directors had fled the city. Their location was presently unknown. Nor had he been able to get through to the Madam Director, who was said to be under siege in the Directorate Complex, on New Baghdad’s ninth level. Her communications were tied up, or else it was very good jamming.

His door swished open and in rushed his wife, Martha Hawthorne. She peered at him, her eyes worried and she came into his arms.

“James,” she whispered.

They kissed and he released her, looking into her face. She was small and in her mid-forties. Still a beautiful woman with dark, shoulder-length hair and deep dark eyes, she wore a modest executive outfit. Their only daughter went to school in Montreal, Quebec Sector. Martha ran financing for Data Corp., but she’d joined him at Bunker Command ever since May 10.

They spoke tenderly, and he unburdened himself. In time, she sat at his desk, scanning the reports. She picked one up, her eyes narrowing.

“Did you see this, James?”

He stopped his infernal pacing to frown at her.

“Cybertanks in the capital,” she said.

“In New Baghdad?” She nodded.

“That seals it then.”

“James,” she said. “You must tread carefully. You know that PHC is already purging the army units you brought over from England Sector.”

“They tried to kidnap me, Martha. Turning Air Marshal Ulrich to do their filthy deeds! They even put electrodes in his brain.”

“But they failed to take you, my dear.”

“Only because of Captain Mune. The rest of the military—” He shook his head. “They’re paralyzed with fear and uncertainty.”

She set down the cybertank report and took to worrying a fingernail with her teeth. Despite his love for her, he disliked watching her do that. It annoyed him, but he’d learned to keep quiet about it. He resumed pacing.

“The bionic men are different,” she said.

“Quite.”

“No. I don’t mean the obvious difference of their bionics. They’re… Everyone hates them.”

He shrugged.

“They hate their strength, their power and bravery.” Her eyes widened. “They hate their individuality.”

“What do you mean?”

“The bionic men are different, James. They’re not SU. Consider: Each has been carefully crafted into a devastating fighting man. He’s unique, a one of a kind. Other people fear them because of that. Because most people are… aren’t unique. Thus, the bionic men avoid the masses, staying among their own. And as if to heighten their differences, the late Lord-Director gathered them into a single unit and gave them vast discretionary powers.”

“Police powers,” said the General.

“No, more an imperial guard power. They were loyal to him, guarded his interests when he wasn’t there.”

“Hmm,” said the General, recalling the horrible asteroid attack on May 10, how Captain Mune had stopped him from launching the nukes that might have broken up the incoming asteroids enough so that the proton beams could have annihilated the separate and much smaller chunks. But the late Lord Director had given a no-nuke launching order without his express permission. They hadn’t been able to contact him, and Captain Mune’s men, bionic warriors, had watched then in the Command Center to insure complete obedience to the Lord Director and his dictates.

The General grimaced. “I take your point.”

“Do you?”

“I can’t do without Captain Mune now.”

“No, dear, you’re missing the point. They’re loyal to you, to you personally. They know they’re hated. And they know you’re the one who saved them from the tribunal. They’re no longer Social Unitarians in thought, if they ever were to begin with.”

The General considered that.

After the late Lord Director’s death, and when Madam Blanche-Aster took over, there had been a tribunal. Someone had to take the official blame for the billion deaths. The bionic guards at the Command Center that day had seemed like the perfect choice. Hawthorne had lobbied hard otherwise, and for good reason.

Before Lord Director Enkov had died, Captain Mune had taken the General to the Director’s HQ. There the captain had shot and killed the Lord Director, because during the trip Hawthorne had convinced him that the Lord Director would sacrifice him, the captain, in order to shift the blame of the stupid no-nuke launch order. Hawthorne had had been certain that he too would be scapegoated, which was why he’d talked so persuasively that day.

When the members of the tribunal had wished to question the bionic security teams, Hawthorne had taken them under his protection. Right after May 10, when he’d quelled the planet-wide riots, his authority had been vast. He’d simply vetoed the tribunal request. He didn’t want to lose his special forces to a witch-hunt, and of course, he’d wanted his role in the… removal of the late Lord Director kept quiet. Later he’d come to incorporate the bionic warriors into his own security arrangements.

“I don’t intend to sacrifice them, dear,” said the General. “I didn’t do so then and I won’t now.”

“I’m not suggesting you sacrifice them.”

“But you called them un-SU.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Don’t you realize that’s tantamount to signing their death warrants?”

“James, I’m telling you that here is the answer. You need loyal troops, isn’t that right? Everyone else thinks like good, card-carrying Social Unitarians. Even your elite troops do. They’re all terrified of PHC.”

General Hawthorne saw her point, and then he saw deeper. A chill swept through him. Did he really have the nerve? For several seconds he stood frozen, trying to consider the angles. He couldn’t. This had to be a gut thing. A tight grin forced its way to his lips. Do it, a deep part in him whispered. Better to try and fail than never to have tried at all.

He strode to the desk. His wife moved aside so he could sit down. He picked up the cybertank report, reading it thoroughly. Finally, he slapped the report onto the desk and pressed his intercom button. “Get me Colonel Manteuffel. And tell him to bring the cybertank codes. All of them! What? No. Don’t argue. Just do what I order.”

“What are thinking, dear?”

“Um,” he said, picking up another report, one that gave the positions of the army units nearest the capital.

“James,” she said, touching his shoulder.

He glanced up.

“Are you…” Fear had drained the color from her cheeks.

“They struck first, Martha.”

“Maybe that’s what Yezhov is planning for. An overreaction on your part.”

The General smiled coldly. “Maybe. But I doubt he expects a coup d’etat from me.” A harsh laugh slipped out. He rose, and turned as the door swished open. Captain Mune, with his new hand bandaged, entered and saluted.

“Excellent timing, Captain. Come with me.”

15.

The tube-train whisked toward New Baghdad at 400 kilometers an hour. It rode a cushion of polarized magnetism, a mechanical worm hidden from the HB space-laser stations. Seven cars were linked together, holding less than a battalion.

Sitting together, General James Hawthorne conferred with Colonel Manteuffel, the younger brother of slain Commodore Tivoli. The Colonel was an inch over five feet, a terrier of a man with a keen, alert bearing and a shiny bald head. He wore the black uniform of a tanker, and was the General’s expert on cybertanks. On his lap lay a thin computerized briefcase full of CT codes.

The cybertanks were the latest in the dehumanization of war. Human brain tissue from criminals who had been liquidated for the good of the state or purchased from Callistoian brain thieves had been carefully teased from the main brain mass. All former personality was carefully scrubbed from the tissue, embedded in special cryo-sheets, and surrounded by programming gel. Several kilos of this processed brain tissue could replace tons of specialized control and volitional systems. As important, military virtues encoded into these biocomps gave them a human-like cunning and bloodthirstiness. Naturally, emergency override codes had been built into such a deadly war-machine. The entirety of Social Unity cybertank codes lay in the briefcase propped on Colonel Manteuffel’s knees.

Ten other normals surrounded the General, the only volunteers from Commodore Tivoli’s MI (Military Intelligence) section. Each had lost a friend or relative to PHC in the last few months of undercover war. They worked out schedules of arrival and wrote out movement orders for the General’s troops nearest New Baghdad. The troop commanders were given no explanations for the movement orders. To them it would appear all very innocent.

As Hawthorne had said, “The most important thing is that they move. It will send the PHC assessors into their think tanks to figure out what it all means.”

“And what does it mean?” asked a MI operative.

“Misdirection and time,” said Hawthorne, and then on that subject he would say no more.

The rest of the seven train-cars contained bionic men, big, bulky warriors with bionic body-parts and commando-style weapons and training.

Less than a thousand men to take over the rule of forty billion, mused Hawthorne. But hopefully it was the right thousand, at the right place and at the right time. Otherwise… Maybe they’d stuff a mini-bomb into his cortex as they’d done to Ulrich, or maybe they’d just line him up against a wall to be shot.

“One hour to New Baghdad,” said a MI operative.

Hawthorne rose, with his military cap set at a rakish angle. He grinned, exuding confidence. To add to the pose he clutched his belt with both hands. “Boldness,” he said, using a parade ground voice. “Absolute assurance of victory, that’s what I expect from each of you.” And he continued to bolster them as the tube-train zoomed toward his destiny or destruction.

16.

The very audacity of the raid aided General Hawthorne. And he had also predicated it upon the fact that none of the megalopolises, the super-cities, could remain self-contained for any appreciable amount of time. New Baghdad wasn’t any different. The city’s population of over 200 million needed billions of different items, the majority of which arrived via tube-train. Clothing, food and water made up the bulk of the needs, and manufactured goods. Tube-trains thus arrived around the clock and from many varying directions. PHC had taken control by manning critical rail posts and switchyards with armored shock squads. General Hawthorne’s answer had become routine by the time they reached the last checkpoint.

The tube-trained stopped because cannons trained on the line would, at PHC orders, have destroyed it. The front train doors slid open and a five-man squad in red plastic body-armor stormed aboard. They bore carbines or lasers. Usually a sneering, arrogant PHC major followed, a man or woman used to obedience and seeing others cringe in fear. Waiting bionic men plucked the weapons from the surprised shock squad members and then threw them to the floor. The bionic strength always won against human muscles. Another bionic man slapped the major’s communicator from his hand and put a vibroblade under his chin. At a nod from the MI operative who did the talking, the bionic soldier flicked the blade. Its awful hum and vibrating power so very near the major’s throat had a debilitating effect on the previous arrogance.

A door swished on the last tube-car and out fanned a ten-man bionic commando team. As on so many of these posts along the way, General Hawthorne received the all-clear signal minutes later.

Five bionic men stayed behind at the post or switchyard, with the subdued PHC major to answer any calls from higher headquarters. Whenever the PHC major spoke by comlink or holo-transmission, an ugly hand cannon was aimed between his eyes. So far, the ploy had proven effective. Thus for the last two hundred kilometers, ten of these squads, fifty bionic warriors in all, kept the link to New Baghdad open for Hawthorne to his nearest Army Command Post.

“Let’s hope the next part is as easy,” Colonel Manteuffel said.

“You know it won’t be,” Hawthorne said.

17.

“She won’t budge,” Director Gannel said. He hunched over a communicator in his inner sanctum. Outside his door waited his Venusian security team, people who had been with him since his thorium mine days.

“Tell her the Highborn plan another asteroid attack,” answered Yezhov, Chief of PHC. “That they’re targeting New Baghdad.”

“I did,” said Gannel. “She doesn’t believe it. She asks why I don’t flee then.”

“Maybe you should.”

Gannel laughed. “Oh, no, Yezhov. We’re partners, but no more than that. I’m not putting myself in your custody.”

“A little more faith on your part would greatly oil our plans, Director.”

“So would divine power. But I don’t see any.”

“Then we’ll have to squeeze her,” said Yezhov.

“Dangerous.”

“Yes, at least until the new conditioning is implemented.”

“True, true,” said Gannel. “But…”

“What troubles you, Director?”

“Do you trust the cybertanks?”

“Of course I don’t trust them.”

“You know what I mean,” said Gannel. “It’s a dangerous expedient using them.”

“Oh, but the mobs fear them so. Frankenstein monsters, they say. Once you’re in charge you must order the Military to turn over all the cybertanks to PHC.”

“Certainly,” said Gannel, who had no intention of doing so. He already feared Yezhov more than any man. Only his lust for the chairmanship kept him working with such a devious schemer.

“Yes, it’s time to squeeze Blanche-Aster,” said Yezhov. “We have to finish this before the mobs become used to running amok. Call her in… an hour.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then we may be wishing that the Highborn really do drop an asteroid.”

18.

After inexplicably failing to gain control of a selected cybertank, Colonel Manteuffel tucked the compucase under his arm and sprinted down the street as if the devil himself chased him. The small officer dove behind an overturned car. Behind him, rounding the heavy building’s corner where he’d just been, clanked the 100-ton cybertank he’d failed to control. Bricks and twisted girders exploded out of the building’s corner. The edge of the metal monster simply shouldered through, heavy treads crunching over the debris. The 100-ton cybertank then wheeled in its uniquely ponderous way toward Manteuffel

Manteuffel crawled madly, tearing and scuffing his black tanker’s uniform.

Two bionic men lunged from behind another building. They grabbed the Colonel by the arms and pulled him behind their corner. At the same instant, one of the cybertank’s six warfare pods aimed its cannon. A deafening roar issued. The overturned car exploded. Explosive pellets ricocheted off the street, as two antipersonnel pods chugged a thousand rounds.

The bionic men didn’t hesitate. They ran. One of them threw the small Manteuffel unceremoniously over his shoulder. Gears and bionic parts whined as they pumped their legs like pistons. Manteuffel clenched his teeth. The jar of the bionic man’s shoulder thrust against his gut threatened to tear Manteuffel’s stomach muscles loose. Thankfully, however, the heavy, clanking sound of the cybertank receded. They fled several blocks, zigzagging through the city, until they reached where General Hawthorne waited with the bulk of the commandos.

Dumped onto his feet, Colonel Manteuffel leaned against a nearby wall. His pale face winced horribly. When he straightened, it felt as if a knife slashed through his gut. A MI operative thrust something in his face. Oh. Manteuffel nodded, and with a trembling hand, he accepted a bottle of medication.

“Well?” asked Hawthorne. “What happened?”

They stood in a brick-laid plaza, open-air shops surrounding them. Overhead the level’s sunlamps shone at ‘daytime’ brightness.

Manteuffel sipped the soothing liquid.

“If you could spare us a moment, Colonel.”

“It’s like we thought,” Manteuffel said between gasps. “The cybertanks have been tampered with.”

“Yes,” said Hawthorne, “I can see that. But tampered how? You told me before that if anyone tried to breach their brain-case that it would detonate.”

Manteuffel grimaced. “Just like the Air Marshal.”

“Now isn’t the time to get sentimental, Colonel.”

“Sorry, sir.”

Hawthorne waved it aside. He paced as his bionic commandos waited in their teams. They were on the ninth level, very near the Directorate Building and Madam Blanche-Aster’s residence. Unfortunately, cybertanks kept anyone from approaching too closely.

“How did PHC sabotage the CT codes?” asked Hawthorne.

“I’m not sure they did,” Manteuffel said.

“But you just said the cybertanks have been tampered with.”

“Yes, but maybe not in the manner we first envisioned it.”

“Explain.”

“The cybertanks are human.”

Hawthorne raised his eyebrows.

Manteuffel pushed himself off the wall and lowered his voice. “Are the bionic warriors human?”

“Of course they are.”

“But they’re part machine.”

Hawthorne frowned before nodding. “You’re saying that the cybertanks are part machine, but also partly human?”

“Entirely machine,” Manteuffel said, “except for the brain.”

“But not a real brain,” said Hawthorne. “The brain tissue is from various donors and set in programming gel.”

“Don’t be deceived, General. Each cybertank quickly gains its own personality. They begin to think of themselves as human.”

“Oh very well, Colonel. Now get to the point.”

“I think PHC convinced the cybertanks to go along with whatever it is they’re planning.”

“They’re part of the coup?” asked Hawthorne.

“No. Not that far in. The Mark 2042 I spoke with believes that he’s protecting the government.”

“You spoke to him?” said Hawthorne. “Then why didn’t the override codes work?”

“I think we’ll find that a new input plug was inserted.”

“Is that possible?”

“The fact that the override codes don’t work seems to prove it.”

Hawthorne paced. “What if we yanked the new input plug?”

Manteuffel nodded, and then he winced because the head motion made his stomach rip with pain. Through clenched teeth, he said, “Maybe pulling this new plug would allow us to use the CT codes. But how would we get in close enough to pull it?”

“You’re the expert!” shouted Hawthorne. He frowned as bionic men turned toward him. “Sorry, Colonel. But that’s your area of expertise. Don’t you know of a way?”

Manteuffel sipped from the medical bottle. He considered his torn stomach muscles. Then he studied the bionic men. Soon he said, “Yes, I think there is a way.”

19.

The Mark 2042 Cybertank prowled the area of the subterfuge attack. He seethed with rage, but not enough so that he disobeyed orders and left the perimeter given him to guard. In the background rose the monumental Directorate Building. Around it fanned broad streets, plazas, fountains and squat, pentagonal government buildings.

The Mark 2042 exalted in his might and ability to destroy. In all human history, no warrior could do what he did. He was 100 tons of lethality, 20 meters by 12 by 5. Heavy tracks and a Zeitzler 5000 Electromagnetic Engine provided him motive power. He loved the sound of his clanking tracks as he chased the primitive bio-beasts. He had six interchangeable weapons pods, giving him more firepower and flexibility than any warrior ever born or made. To protect him from missiles and cannon shells he had “beehive” flechette launchers, exploding shrapnel that knocked them down before they could strike. The forty beehives also made excellent antipersonnel systems. Earlier this week he’d exploded one of them into a crowd, killing five hundred at a single blow. How the others had fled after that! He’d recorded it, and replayed the video whenever he was bored. That’s how he knew it was 500. Well, precisely 489 dead and wounded. He’d shot the wounded one at a time or smeared them into the pavement with his treads.

On open terrain, his great weight allowed him to fire his magnetic force cannons and heavy lasers even when he moved at top speed. The 100 tons and uncanny shock systems provided the needed stability. And to finish his uniqueness and near invulnerability was his covering of 260mm-thick composite armor.

No one in New Baghdad could take him, and he knew it. The great threat of air attacks and worse, space lasers, ha, they couldn’t touch him down here on the ninth city level. Oh no. If everything worked out right, it was city duty from here on in.

He shot off fifty tracers to punctuate his thought.

Tremble, worms. Hear me roar and flee like the vermin you are.

His radar and visuals had picked up movement and weaponry. He knew that several bio-beasts with strange mechanical readings prowled his precinct. What the Mark 2042 didn’t know was that he’d fallen prey to one of man’s oldest vices, arrogance.

Suddenly, three of the strange bio-beasts rolled onto the street, heavy rocket launchers aimed at him. Whooshes and rocket ignition sped the missiles on their way.

How pathetic, a rookie’s assault.

The Mark 2042 chugged shrapnel from a single beehive. He meant it as a shrug. The missiles blew apart. Then he revved the mighty Zeitzler 5000 and let his treads rip, tearing chunks of pavement as he gave chase.

But these three were different then other bio-beasts. Their legs pumped fast, and they moved. Each time he shot at them, they zipped around another corner.

Well, watch this.

He swiveled his 100-ton bulk and charged into a building. Masonry exploded. He plowed, his treads churning over desks, chairs and waiting sofas. Glass shattered and walls disappeared. Bricks rained on him.

I am unstoppable.

He burst through the rear wall and onto the next street.

The three bio-beasts had nowhere to hide. He had them dead in his sights. Usually bio-beasts gaped in horror right about now, or they started crying. He got a kick out of that. But these three were different. It’s why he’d gone through the building. They dropped to their bellies and aimed their rocket launchers.

Now that’s a sweet try, rookies. But I’m the big boy.

A thousand antipersonnel shells disintegrated them.

Hey, where’d you go?

As a joke, pretending he was looking for them, he clanked atop their gory shreds and then wheeled, smearing them into the pavement.

Then his sensors pinged with a new attack.

Twenty of them popped up from twenty different locations, firing lasers and rocket launchers. He shrugged off their feeble efforts, but it was nice to see they were trying. Then his probability indicator flashed a warning.

Why were they all ready for him here? Why was this particular spot seemingly point-zero?

Are you rookies trying to trap me?

Twenty of these tougher, weird-reading bio-beasts dropped from the ceiling. They dropped from the sunlamps way up there. Oh, this was going to be rich. He knew bio-beasts, what their water-sack bodies could take and what they couldn’t. From that high up…

I have to get this on video.

They would go splat, gushing organs and blood everywhere.

The probability indicator flashed another warning.

Pipe down and let me have some fun, will you?

Radar and visuals showed that the twenty falling bio-beasts lacked weapons or breaching bombs.

It’s raining men.

Slam, slam, slam, they dropped atop him. But they didn’t go splat.

Warning!—that from the probability indicator.

Servos in the bio-beasts whined. The Mark 2042 could hear them. A few of them had broken limbs or hands, but now they started crawling over him.

Die!

All forty beehives exploded shrapnel, lifting and killing fifteen of them.

Now let’s try the new grid, shall we.

An electrical grid had been installed onto him twelve days ago. He charged it with power. ZAP!

Two of them actually screamed.

It was a dance of death.

But one of them still crawled.

A pesky rookie, aren’t you?

A camera showed him the bio-beast’s screwed up face. That was beautiful. This one was really trying, fighting through the pain and everything.

Warning!

He understood. The beast crawled for the crevice where the red suits had put the new server.

ZAP!

The bio-beast bellowed, but he kept crawling. And then he dropped into that crevice.

“DON’T TOUCH THAT!” The Mark 2042 cranked his speakers to full volume.

The bio-beast didn’t listen.

And suddenly the Mark 2042 felt disoriented, dizzy, and not so certain about everything.

“Cybertank 2042,” said someone via comlink.

“Yes?”

“Prepare for transmission.”

“I… 2042 ready,” said the Mark 2042.

20.

Colonel Manteuffel typed in the CT code and pressed transmit. Then he studied the return reading before looking up at General Hawthorne.

“He’s ours.”

“Yes, after twenty-three good men died,” Hawthorne said.

“We can use the Mark 2042 to approach the other cybertanks.”

“But we could still lose more men,” said Hawthorne. “I wasn’t counting on those electrical surges.”

“PHC must have put that in,” said Manteuffel. “It’s clever. You must give them that.”

Hawthorne stared at the small Colonel. Finally, he forced a smile as he patted the man’s shoulder. “Well done, Manteuffel. Now let’s convert the other cybertanks.”

21.

The old woman in the wheelchair heard gunfire.

She peered over the balcony railing and at the squat buildings below. Fruitless apple trees lined the empty streets. Well, empty of people, at least. Dropped placards and crumpled papers lay everywhere, but that no longer concerned her. She counted five cybertanks. Like giant watchdogs, they surrounded her building. An hour ago, she had considered them protection from the protesting mobs that had been chased away by PHC shock squads. After listening to General Hawthorne, she wondered if the cybertanks were the final move in an intricate PHC plot to overthrow the government.

She was one hundred and sixty-two, kept alive by longevity treatments and her special chair. She sat in a bulky, gleaming-white unit. A withered old crone, said her detractors. The medical unit in back of the wheelchair gurgled. Tubes from it snaked into her. Fluids surged through the tubes. Her unnaturally smooth face seemed brittle, although it was dotted by several stubborn liver spots that none of the skin specialists had been able to remove. She wore a white turban to cover her baldness, while a red plaid blanket hid her useless legs. A jutting, narrow nose and bright eyes, dangerously vibrant, belied any idea that she was senile.

Madam Director Blanche-Aster wasn’t native to New Baghdad, the famed city of seventy-seven levels. She cocked her head. There it was again. Gunfire! According to Chief Yezhov of Political Harmony Corps, the rioting had been spontaneous and sudden, catching everyone by surprise. PHC most of all.

Dropping her trembling hand onto the chair’s controls, she wheeled around, off the balcony and into her office. It was minimalist, with a few white cubes randomly placed as objects d’art and her chrome desk that was keyed to her voice.

General James Hawthorne sat on one of the cubes. He was flanked by someone he called Captain Mune. She shivered. She didn’t like the bionic men. It was unnatural doing that to a person. The General against all the rules of someone in her presence wore a holster and sidearm. His face that her profilers had called granite gave little away. But she was practiced in body kinetics and read the tension in him.

“It’s most incredible,” she said. “Air Marshal Ulrich. How were they able to turn him?”

“Does it matter?” asked Hawthorne.

“But Yezhov is mad if he thinks he can just send an assassin and shoot me.”

“How many directors are in the city?” asked Hawthorne.

“What? Oh, um, Director Gannel, for one.”

“The Venusian?” Hawthorne asked.

“What difference does that make?”

“He’s Yezhov’s puppet.”

“You’re shooting in the dark, making unsubstantiated accusations.”

“Director Gannel has flooded my headquarters with demands that I launch an immediate, all-out Fleet attack against one of the systems.”

“The majority of the Directorate backs him on that,” said Blanche-Aster.

“And it backs him on the continued beam-assault against the Sun Works Factory. When now is the moment to break off the attack.”

“No,” said Blanche-Aster, “you simply don’t understand, General. After many bitter months we’re finally hurting them, making them bleed. You must continue to do so for as long as possible. It does wonders for morale.”

General Hawthorne rose. “Our initial assessment—by long-range radar scan—showed great damage to the Sun Works Factory. But now our radar is jammed and any optic visuals are hidden because of a vast aerosol cloud. We must never forget that the Highborn react with uncanny speed. The longer we attack, the less will be our return.”

“That’s speculation, not hard fact.”

“I speculate from having watched and studied their reactions on several occasions.”

She raised a withered hand. A chime had sounded. “Enter.”

The door swished open and her chief bodyguard stepped in. She was young and hard-eyed, with a buzz haircut and with a long, supple body armored in silvery mesh. When they had first arrived, the bionic men had relived the bodyguard of her weapons. The General maintained that he didn’t want any hasty mistakes.

“Yezhov has arrived in the building,” the bodyguard said.

Blanche-Aster pursed her ancient lips. “Which directors are still in the city?”

“From our last reports, Madam, only Director Gannel remains here.”

“That’s it?” asked Blanche-Aster.

“Yes, Madam.”

Blanche-Aster’s eyes seemed to glitter. She had a narrow, hatchet-thin face, remarkably similar to her bodyguard’s face. She peered out the window, then back at General Hawthorne and then to her bodyguard. “Has Yezhov seen Director Gannel?”

“None of my operatives think so, Madam. But that was before…” The bodyguard glanced at Captain Mune.

Blanche-Aster gave her a minute nod, and then turned to Hawthorne. “Despite your predications, Yezhov has come when summoned.”

“I’m very surprised, to say the least,” said Hawthorne.

“Surprised, General? Don’t you mean elated?”

A hard smile edged onto Hawthorne’s lips.

“If you and your guard will be kind enough to step into the other room I’ll let Yezhov in,” Blanche-Aster said.

“Madam Director, I wish to remind you that my… You have a new security arrangement, which I hope you’ll keep in mind,” Hawthorne said. “Depending on developments today, well, perhaps your former security teams will be rearmed. I also wish to remind you that the cybertanks are again under Military control.”

“This is all highly unusual, General.”

“So is the fact that your bodyguards are clones of yourself,” said Hawthorne.

Blanche-Aster and her bodyguard traded glances, before she told Hawthorne, “I’m sure you’ve discovered that finding loyal people is difficult.”

General Hawthorne nodded curtly. Then he put his right hand on his holster as he marched into hiding. Captain Mune followed, although he never took his eyes off the Director’s clone.

Soon Madam Blanche-Aster said to her bodyguard, “Let him in.”

The door swished open and Yezhov, the Chief of Political Harmony Corps, walked in. He wore a scarlet uniform, with black boots and a black, plastic helmet held in place by a black chinstrap. Naturally, he’d surrendered his sidearm before entering the building. The bionic men had stayed out of sight, and the cybertanks had been ordered to act as if they still followed PHC’s orders.

Yezhov’s skin was pale and he had washed-out blue eyes and a ridiculous little mustache, twin dots under his nose. There was nothing else remarkable about his appearance: short and thin, a potbelly and an almost nonexistent chin. Long ago as a youth, he’d failed the Military’s physical. Next, the Peacekeeper Academy had flunked him. Choice number three had been Political Harmony Corps. Since then, forty years of dedicated service had finally paid off.

“Madam Director,” he said, in a normal, unremarkable voice. He managed a small smile by stretching the corners of his lips.

“Good of you to come, Yezhov.”

“I am at your service, Madam.”

“Why? To try and convince me to leave the city?”

“Madam knows best, of course.”

“Which city would you suggest?”

He pulled his eyebrows together, as if considering it for the first time. “Perhaps not any city, Madam. Highborn espionage has become most cunning lately.”

“Meaning?”

“We’ve begun to suspect that the attack on Beijing wasn’t solely to take out the proton beam station.”

“That’s very interesting,” said Blanche-Aster. “How did you arrive at that conclusion?”

He shifted uncomfortably but said nothing.

She said, “The three directors who died there on May 10 influenced your thinking, no doubt.”

“Certainly that’s part of it.”

“But more importantly because such talk scares the other directors into doing whatever you suggest.”

“Madam?”

“Come now, Yezhov, let’s not lie to each other. This is your moment, is it not?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“I’ve heard your theories before. You’ve likened Social Unity to a triangle. How did it go? The Party is one point of the angle, the Military the other and finally PHC, our benevolent secret police, complete the geometry. Each is used to keep the masses docile. The Party supplies the propaganda, the slogans that beguile the masses. The Military insures that no one physically harms Social Unity, while PHC watches the people and weeds out the insubordinate. Yet the Military is like a bear, you’ve been known to say. It is a beast that will devour the other two. For the Military, if unrestrained, could rule alone. Therefore, the Party and the Secret Police hold the leashes that keep the Military from eating them. As long as the two hold on tightly, each is safe. Yet now the Military has been sorely wounded by the Highborn. May 10 and the late Lord Director’s foolish policies saw to that.”

Yezhov licked his lips.

“I have no intention of leaving the city,” Blanche-Aster said.

“What if the Highborn drop an asteroid here?”

“Why would they?”

“To decapitate Social Unity, to kill you and the other directors. I’m afraid that I must insist that you leave, for the good of the State.”

“Their targets before were the proton beam stations.”

“We can’t be certain of Highborn logic, Madam. They don’t think like us, after all.”

“I’ll grant you that. But the changing weather patterns will no doubt cause them to rethink this particular tactic.”

“The winds are a temporary inconvenience,” Yezhov said. “They’re meaningless.”

“Some of my meteorologists suggest it could lead to nuclear winter.”

“I’m unfamiliar with the term.”

“As I’m unfamiliar with giving in to fear. Until Director Gannel flees New Baghdad, I also will remain in the seat of power.”

“But the rioters, Madam, what if they storm the Directorate and injure you?”

“You will restrain them long before, of that I have no doubt. However, if it turns out that you cannot, well, Social Unity will quickly find someone who can.”

A hint of anger colored his checks. “If you think the Public Security Bureaus have teams who will face the mobs—”

“My dear man: Face the mobs? What a quaint term for the sheep that have lifted their heads and bleated a little louder than usual.”

“Madam, I wish you would reconsider.”

“Let us talk about General Hawthorne.”

Yezhov blinked slowly. For the first time he glanced about the room, noticing the bodyguard. The clone gave him a faint nod. He ignored her and turned to the director.

“There was an attempt upon the General’s life,” Blanche-Aster said.

“A terrible tragedy. Air Marshal Ulrich became unbalanced.”

“Why do you suppose that happened?”

“Madam, the military clique is rife with non-socialist behavior that on examination the rest of us find quite inexplicable.”

“Ah, yes. Your latest witch-hunt is called the Anti-Rightist Movement.”

“The Highborn rebellion proves the thesis, Madam. The Military is a seedbed for rightist tendencies. PHC works hard to root out this madness.”

“To bring unity to society?” asked Blanche-Aster.

Yezhov stiffened, and he now spoke with a nasal quality. “Director Blanche-Aster, PHC will mercilessly destroy any rightist who dares sabotage Social Unity. High or low, we will root them out.”

The one hundred and sixty-two-year-old director leaned forward, pulling the many medical tubes with her. “You dare hint that I’m unorthodox. You dare this here?” The physical effort cost the ancient Blanche-Aster. She fell back into her padded rest.

Yezhov seemed to remember where “here” was. “Madam, I assure you your ideology is not under scrutiny.”

“I’ve long served the people and kept them safe from class-enemy exploiters and profit-imperialists. Before you ever memorized the social crèche credo—”

“We are all tiny cogs in the machine of State service,” Yezhov quoted. He stretched his lips in an imitation of a smile. “The Air Marshal’s strange behavior proves that we are on the correct path. The Rightist Movement must be stamped out. I’m sure you agree that at this time we cannot tolerate any deviancy in the upper echelons of Social Unity. The ripple effect the billion casualties had on the rest of the populace has left us little room to maneuver.”

She stared at the Chief of PHC. “Do you know that the Military found six members of your shock squads in the Joho Park, slain by the General’s bodyguard?”

Yezhov shrugged. “Foul slander, Madam.”

“I’ve seen the pictures.”

Yezhov shook his head. “Crude plants to throw the blame of this assassination attempt onto PHC.”

There was wonder in Blanche-Aster’s tone. “Can you be this certain about your position?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Yezhov.”

“Game, Madam?”

“We suffered brutal losses on May 10. But because of General Hawthorne we inflicted hurt on the Highborn.”

“Excuse me, Madam, but several thousand enemy dead, a couple hundred destroyed orbital fighters and a nearly crippled Doom Star… Those can’t compare to a billion deaths.”

“I didn’t say that. However, those Highborn losses are the best Social Unity has been able to achieve, at least until the Bangladesh struck. Both times the tactics that allowed it were the brainchild of General James Hawthorne.”

“Any general could have supplied similar tactics.”

“Oh, there you are badly mistaken, Yezhov. He is a genius, at least in the venue of military moves.”

Yezhov’s smile turned sardonic. “Madam… perhaps you place too much faith in this general.”

“Oh?”

“He refuses to recombine the Fleet and attack the enemy, to hit him hard, to disrupt the Highborn in their free space movements.”

“The Bangladesh—”

Yezhov interrupted with a snort. “This one attack, which he yearns to break off. Isn’t it obvious? General Hawthorne has no stomach for a stand-up fight. Maybe he pulled a stunt on May 10, but the ferociousness of that battle scarred him. He’s terrified of the Highborn, overcome by their style of warfare.”

“Hard words, Yezhov. They may come to rebound against you.”

“They are words of truth, Madam. Look how the islands of Earth fell one after the other. And what did the General boast as his major achievement? That he slipped a few troops out of the cauldron.”

“Three-quarters of a million trained soldiers,” said Blanche-Aster.

“Bah! Men that are trained in running, in hiding, in fleeing from the enemy.”

“You could do better?” asked Blanche-Aster.

Yezhov squinted. “I have a plan, yes.”

“Go on.”

“I will kill the Highborn and their highest-ranking FEC traitors.”

“How would you do it?”

“Assassination teams.”

Madam Director Blanche-Aster raised her old eyebrows. “How will get past their security?”

“Notice.”

Yezhov moved his fingers into a unique pattern. Before he could take aim, however, a door burst open. Behind it stood General Hawthorne and a team of his bionics. The general had waited for this precise moment. As Yezhov’s hand rose, Hawthorne stepped through, his short-barrel .44 in hand. He fired three times, driving Chief Yezhov against the wall, body chunks exploding at each hit. The bionics beside him held their fire, calculating that more bullets were unnecessary.

It took the ancient Blanche-Aster time to regain her composure. “What… What is the meaning of this?”

“Check him,” said Hawthorne.

The door swished and bionic men rushed in. They began searching the slain Yezhov.

“Check him?” she asked.

“His fingers,” said Captain Mune.

A moment later, a bionic warrior looked up. “Street tech, all right.”

“What?” said Blanche-Aster.

“His finger is a one-shot gun,” the bionic man said.

Blanche-Aster wheeled around to face Hawthorne. “How did you know he was going to try to kill me?”

The General shrugged.

Before she could ask again, the Madam Director’s chrome desk chimed.

“May I answer it?” she asked Hawthorne.

“Certainly.”

She wheeled her chair there and turned on the screen. Her jaw sagged.

“What is it?” said Hawthorne.

“The Chief of PHC wishes to speak with you,” she whispered.

General Hawthorne scowled. “But that’s impossible. Yezhov lies dead on the floor. Wait! Who is it you say?”

“It’s the real Yezhov,” she said. “He wants to make a deal.”